My night with Strombo.

Social media works.

I was at school this past Saturday night when, in a moment of procrastination, I logged onto Facebook to see what was up and happening that night whilst I slaved away at an ad campaign. This caught my attention:

Hmmm. I decided to investigate this claim by going over to Twitter to see if anyone could confirm this.

It was then I saw this tweet from none other than George Stroumboulopoulos himself:

The rumours must have been true considering that place looked awfully like the King's Head Pub. I felt as though I needed to offer Strombo some sound advice about the pub:

Minutes later, I received one new tweet:

Huzzah, an @mention from Strombo himself. I felt blessed and burdened. Burdened by the question he posed me. Unsure of myself, I posted the question as my status on Facebook. Within seconds I received 14 responses. Here are some of my personal favorites:





Using my better judgement I decided to reply with this:

Playing it cool, I decided to leave it at that and return to my campaign. After getting nothing accomplished, I felt faint and parched. The cure? A beer at the King's Head. While I was there, I might as well peek around to see if George did in fact take my advice, right?

I strode over a street and entered the overflowing King's Head. Surely this wasn't because of George. Alas, it wasn't. Some band was playing. Anyways, I went up to the bar, purchased a beer, and poked my head around the corner. Strombo and friends. Wait, what? Those are my friends! As I stood, dumbfounded by this coincidence, Esther, Jamie and Liz waved me over to sit. Uh, yes.

"Hey man, are you Mike Choi?" is the first thing he said to me. I watch Strombo Tonight and listen to his radio show whenever I get the chance, so it didn't surprise me that he knew my name without me having told him. A telltale sign of a prepared and professional interviewer: knowing everything about the person you're about to talk to. Turns out they had just returned from an adventure in Churchill, and had one night to kill in Winnipeg before returning home to do the show Sunday.

We chatted about how Twitter was a great communication tool, and the effectiveness of social media in general. He then offered insights to professional relationships and how keeping a positive and cooperative attitude in any work place benefits you in the long run. He also told me that he had touched some polar bears.

I then had an opportunity to speak with Darby Wheeler, producer and video journalist extraordinaire. He was very warm and amiable as well, telling me about his career experiences and offering some great advice. I also learned that he recently broke his tailbone from an incident with his bike which led to him having to sit on a donut at a friend's wedding.

From Twitter mention to having a beer, this story proves that social media works.

Cheers boys!

George Stroumboulopoulos:

Twitter

Website

Darby Wheeler:

Twitter

YouTube

UPDATE: He read my blog

Twitbook/Facetter

The biggest names of social media in the history in the entire world are "Facebook" and "Twitter". This is partly because Web 2.0 devices have only been around for a couple years but the number of users that are involved with them are increase exponentially.

Even though they are on the same medium, there are benefits that one has that the other does not.



Facebook has many more options and features than Twitter, but this also make it easier for messages and information someone wants to send, to get buried under all the clutter. People always complain about wasting time on Facebook and never getting work done, and I think this because you go on to update your status, or send a message to a friend, but you see a revealing picture of a girl you went to high school with, or you just remembered you need to harvest your crops in Farmville or Barn Buddy.

The focus of Facebook is to bring everyone together regardless of where in the world they are, and this is true, to some extent, but how effective is it really? It's not only a communication tool but also an arcade. It's a outlet for emotions and feelings through notes and rants. You can draw, you can take pictures and you can creep on people you don't know.

It is, effective in the PR world because it allows you to make yourself unique with what groups you join, what people and causes you support and what events you say you're going to or not going to. This pre-segregates the critical mass of Facebook users into smaller and smaller communities which, in turn, makes it easier for organizations to target specific groups.

Also, because Facebook has so many capabilities other than messaging, you can pile on as many extra features you think people you want to target would enjoy, giving them more of what they and making things more personal and customized for them.



If Facebook is the articles, crosswords and personals, Twitter is the front page. Now, we have to establish something first. Yeah sure, you follow 5628 people and almost as many follow you but you're doing more harm to yourself than good. You want a front page that is convenient and readable. You only want to see the things you want to see and will follow whatever interests you.

You have to weed out everyone who's tweets are just that. Tweets. You need to cut down your follow list to people and organizations that have a message and information in everything they post. You might feel bad not follow Timmy, but he'll get over it. If you do this, everything that appears on your feed will be relevant to your interests and if they tweeter is serious, their messages will be of value.

My sister an I had an argument about the effectiveness of Twitter. The thing I noticed is that the only people she mentioned was Ashton Kutcher, Perez Hilton and some other celebrity. This proved my point. Most people follow people because they're famous or their friends, and this isn't effective use. (Except Sarah Silverman, she's too funny)

Now, you might think it's not a powerful tool because of the 140 character limit. This is true in some cases, but in other cases, not. You can always link the follower to the Facebook page or somewhere else. The tweet is simply to get their attention so they go to the bigger thing. It's the headline, it's the lead, it's the melted peanut butter on the toast. Once you get them to click on the link, you've got them. They've already invested their time into that click, so there's a greater chance they'll at least read a bit of whatever you linked than just close the window right away. Sure, all the cool things you have to show aren't on Twitter, but it's easy enough to show them the way to get there.

If people who send messages and people who receive them use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, use them properly, effectively and remove all unneeded clutter, their message can remain focused and be received as it should.

For everyone else, I hope your harvest in Farmville was better than last year's.

"I think I'll have some toast"

I never understood what the big hype about Twitter was.

The majority of the tweets that appear on my homepage are from friends that inform me of their feelings about work, school and their dietary choices for the day. I'm not saying I don't enjoy finding those things out, I just didn't see a supreme use of knowing these things.

I opened up more towards Twitter when I started to follow the Winnipeg Folk Festival's tweets and Pitchfork Media. They both tweet often and with relevance to what their organization is about. They linked to useful information that expanded on their 140 character message and also retweeted messages from other users that they thought might peak interests in their followers. They tweet effectively.

I finally realized what awesome power and reach Twitter possessed until last week. Most of my tweets run along the lines of pointless jibber-jab that really can be looked over since they contribute nothing to any one's existence. Sometime last week, I tweeted that I had an old camera that I would have liked to get fixed. I received a reply from a friend in Vancouver suggesting I try Don's Photo. Later in the day I received a reply from a complete stranger.


There were no hashtags or anything in my tweet, but somehow, this camera shop owner from Minnesota, USA answered my plea for help. I didn't end up sending my camera all the way to the states to get it fixed but I was amazed that my tweets were being heard!

Wow! Twitter sure is useful! Next time you have a question that needs to be answered, take a shot in the dark and tweet it. You might be lucky enough to get an informed answer from someone you don't know!

Oh, and follow me on Twitter!

REMINDER

School starts soon and I have topics I want to blog on.
Can't do them now but I will in the next week or so.

1) My first real encounter with Twitter and it's effectivness in social media.
2) I hate robots.

Stay Tuned!

Twitta

I started using Twitter in the summer so I could tell my friends how bored at work I was. I went on a trip to Vancouver and posted links to pictures and updated friends and family of all the things I did there. Now I must tweet about relevant topics and not just narcissistic blabber. We'll see how this goes.

I don't think Twitter is THAT useful for non-professionals. I mean, you can let people know what you think is cool by linking them to something or update them on your daily doings but most people won't care. Twitter is more effective for organizations that have importnat information they need to get out to people who deal with them directly or indirectly.

Basically what I'm saying is, I'm a non-professional, my tweets won't blow minds or give deep insight. I don't have any substantial information you will benefit from but if you wanna hear about some oddities I see throughout the day or hear about some new music I like, check my Twitter page out and...


FOLLOW ME!