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Social Media Works: a case for Twitter
Jun 24I expect that some would like to see this topic die, but I just saw a very effective communication and decision-making excercise, complete with real data behind it, happen in less than 4 hours.
Neil Gaiman is a long-time Twitter user (Really! he doesn’t have an admin assistant filling in for him) who often posts more than 15 messages a day. He isn’t trying to sell anything; his tweets aren’t carefully crafted, focused 140-character mini-campaigns to get followers to buy his books or go see the movies or plays so he will receive yet more royalties.
He basically (or so it looks to me) just shares things about his life to anyone who cares to know. Kind of like what you do when you’re kicking back with a beer and some friends on a Saturday afternoon get-together.
OK, he’s a VERY successful writer, who has more than a half-million followers, and he can put a sentence together. But I would estimate that less than 20% of his posts relate to promoting his works. The rest are about people he knows, things he likes to do, people he wants others to know about, and just kind of random stuff. I do exactly that (except I don’t have a speaking schedule that I want to remind you of), as do most of you. Usually via e-mail.
Why Gaiman’s example from today as a case for the benefits of Social Media’s importance, is that he seems to care an awful lot about certain causes, like free and open education, and logical and reasonable copyright, and is an enthusiastic proponent for people using the technologies available to the limit of their ingenuity (assuming that no-one really suffers as a result).
This morning, Gaiman posted a request to any teachers following him, or for followers to ask any teachers they knew, whether they would prefer to get a DVD of his recent The Grave Book, or just get to the multimedia via a website (search Twitter for #TGBDVD). The end of the story is that he got a very solid response back from his followers, which enabled him to go to his publisher (Harper Children) and tell them that 97% of teachers who responded wanted a DVD to be available.
A quick perusal of the tagged messages revealed loads of information that wouldn’t be obvious, like “websites can go away, and so would the media available from them” “I would BUY the DVD” and “My school’s firewall wouldn’t let the content through.”
I wonder if such insights were discussed at the production and distribution meetings at the publishers? My guess, from experience working at publishers, as well as other content “producers”, is that they would have been worried about the costs of copying DVDs and the additional distribution hassle. The numbers (as they see them) come first, the customers after. And, what the customers actually want usually comes as a complete surprise to the “content providers”.
So, with Mr. Gaiman’s presentation of a significant percentage of the marketplace, in less than 1/2 a day Harper Childrens has flipped from distributing the multimedia version of this book on web only to also distributing DVDs, possibly even for additional revenue (and profit. It’s WAY cheaper to burn a DVD that it is to print & bind a book).
The target market community was polled at a very high sample rate about their preferred means of acquiring product. The product creator did it himself, with virtually no overhead. Is it so difficult for the “content providers” to wrap their heads around the possibilities available? This affects everything about product and service. And it shouldn’t take long before the early adopter curve tops out and everyone gets on the train. Be prepared. We will all be affected.