Peter Shankman on the Future of Social Media
When my CEO sent me a friend request on Facebook last year, I had to rethink how I was using the site.
When Facebook changed its Terms of Service earlier this month, before quickly backtracking in the face of a growing uproar, I started to rethink my approach to social media overall.
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation/Q&A with social networking guru Peter Shankman — who suffers from a self-described extreme case of ADOS (Attention Defici- Oh, Shiny!) and an abundance of eccentric charisma (one of his many claims to fame is as the original creator of the “It Sank. Get Over It!” t-shirts) — and while it was targeted to PR professionals and focused on his terrific Help a Reporter Out initiative, there were a lot of general marketing-related takeaways that I found interesting.
I wish I had taken notes, or live-Tweeted some of his comments, but I was so engaged in the moment that I didn’t want to be distracted by trying to share it with others!
PR is the most effective form of marketing and, these days, we’re all marketers at some level, no matter what our actual job title is or income bracket we’re in. We’re all influencers, and while our respective tribes might be small, through social networking we have exponentially more individual power than ever before. It’s something publishers are slowly realizing, though some might argue, much too late.
Shankman spoke a lot about Twitter, but went beyond the usual hype of it being the platform du jour, offering some excellent tips on communicating effectively that were just as applicable to email, telephone and in-person communication. We’re bombarded with an average of 17,000 separate demands on our attention every day — from family and co-workers to email to “don’t walk” signs — so getting to the point quickly is crucial.
On Twitter (he’s @skydiver), brevity also happens to be a requirement: 140 characters to get your point across; always add value to the stream.
ie: don’t just Tweet “I’m eating yogurt.” Instead, Tweet “Pinkberry has 50% off coupons all day, today only.”
