Scaling Beyond Grad School

Laurel Hart, Senior Fellow at The Logos Institute, brought up an interesting point on Twitter after giving a talk about social media to a group of grad students at NYU:

First, I don't know if Laurel happened upon a group of Luddites, but I'm going to assume for now that the situations she describes isn't unique.

If that's the case, I would imagine the reason why grad students aren't big on Twitter is that their word's current judges - their professors - are their key audience and they don't need to use Twitter to reach them. Email, phone, or physically visiting their professors in class or during office hours is probably sufficient.

But when they're out of school and trying to reach a much larger audience, they may find more use for communication technologies that scale. All of a sudden, it becomes physically impossible to email, phone, or physically visit everyone you're trying to communicate with.

Hopefully, the students realize that their lack of need is situational and will likely change over time.

Listen to this article posted by Ed Kohler on November 19, 2008 10:48 AM | Permalink
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Thanks for continuing this discussion, Ed. You're right in that this situation isn't unique. And actually, this was a group of NYU grad students in a master's program in Public Relations and Corporate Communications, many of whom are currently working in the industry while getting their master's degree. (I also encountered the same thing last month with a Wharton MBA group.) Many of them are familiar with Twitter (and other social media tools beyond Facebook), but are more observers/viewers than users or participants. The same is true for many business audiences I speak with - I've heard over and over, when is enough, enough? I have to admit, after starting in with Twitter earlier this year, I took a sabbatical for awhile, recently reentering the fold. For both business & academic audiences, I usually stress that even if you decide that Twitter isn't for you, you have to at least familiarize yourself with it and begin to understand the conversations and opportunities it presents. The encouraging thing for me is that over the last year, I've seen a definite increase in these students social media "literacy."

Well, I am a grad student at this point too, so you may want to dismiss my idea on the same ground as that of grad. student you mention in the post, but I tend to disagree with your conclusion, Ed. I think that the main takeaway point from what the students said (as well as what apparently Wharton students said) is that we should be thoughtful and critical about our media environments.

On the one hand, there is a lot of media out there and it cannot be the role of everyone to be an active player in each medium. I agree with Laurel that it is important to be familiar with the what is out there, but it does not mean that we all need to be actively using every single channel out there. On the other hand, each medium is good for answering particular needs and there is no single answer to all our communication needs at once. As our needs vary, so should be the channels we choose to active employ. I think it is more productive and it indicates a better understanding of contemporary media, when you know what to use and when. Trying to do everything at once is counterproductive.

I also think we should move beyond the dichotomous distinction between Luddites and technocrats. For example, I consider myself a technological junkie. But because of that I also am trying to practice a CommFree day - a day a month where I shut my communication technology devices down completely. I think it is healthy and also gives an opportunity to reflect on what is the most efficient way for me to utilize this wealth of communication channels around me.

The biggest mistake that I see is that people want to use many of these sites as just another communication channel, they forget that first and foremost these sites are a community.

You can't just jump in to a community, vomit out "hey check out xyz...its awesome" and expect to have any luck. Time must be invested learning the unique culture/voice, building trust and possibly even offering up value first long before you ever make a pitch. If you want juicy tomatoes you can't plant today and expect to harvest tomorrow.

As a marketing professional time and time again I see people that just want to "use" a community for their gain....be it a link drop here, a call to action there...maybe an astro-turfed review....whatever they don't understand that you have to have some "trust" built up before you try a stunt like that. You also have to realize that you can't keep robbing the "trust bank" without putting something back in.

Unfortunately in today's day an age that means planting tons of seeds (registering/actively participating)...you have to farm these channels/communities...it takes time.

Expect a large majority of the successful web companies of the future to be focused on helping you simply manage and filter the signal from the noise.

As the NYU graduate students that Laurel spoke to last week, we wanted to respond to your post. First, we are not only grad students, but also many of us are full-time communication/public relations professionals in New York City. We communicate with our "Luddite" professors and in our professional and personal lives.

Second, as communication professionals, we routinely use social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, wikis, RSS, blogs, social media press releases and so forth. Just because we don't care for Twitter, doesn't mean we're not aware of it and how it's used in a personal and professional setting.

Finally, with so many communication outlets available, we feel it's important to choose the most effective media and to avoid communication overload. Using Twitter may be too much.

Full Disclosure: I am not a grad student. I am not a Luddite. I'm a real estate professional just out there trying to make a living. However, I will acknowledge that there are parts or the technological evolution that still baffles me.

I agree with both Emily and Ryan L (above) that most of what I see on Twitter is, um, irrelevant at best. I'm not sure keeping posted about "followers" going for cup of coffee at Starbucks or getting ready to do their laundry helps with building community or disseminate useful information. Ditto links. Some are references to full blog posts which may or may not be interesting, some are to ads or jokes or any number of other blind alleys.

Along the lines of "when is enough enough": my personal experience has been that new social networks tend to pop up almost weekly - some in alpha form, some in beta form, almost none in any sort of robust or useful form. They all promise community or business opportunity and my guess is they can't deliver. Moreover, there is a limited amount of time to keep up with multiple social networks unless, of course, I use one of the syndication tools which will populate all my social networks with the same exact words so that my "friends" or "followers" or whatever will be inundated with the same phrase multiple times (depending on how many social networking sites they're on).

Maybe I'm missing someting.

Ken, rather than focusing on what you don't find interesting about Twitter, focus on what is (or could be) interesting.

NYU Luddites, I think that's the first group comment I've ever received.

Ryan, scaling is definitely an issue. This is much different from broadcast at this point.

Dima, exactly. There is a time and place for different forms of communication. And those forms are evolving.

Laurel, to me, use of technology is a lot like running a marathon. You can be familiar with marathoning and observe marathons, but you don't really understand marathoning until you participate.

NYU, I'm so glad to see the class response!

Ed: In response, I'd say not all runners are marathoners. On that note, I've run one marathon, but will I run another? Still under consideration... There are scads of excellent runners out there (much more so than me!) that have never, and will never, run a marathon because it's not the right distance for them. They may run 5k's, 10k's, even half marathons, but not marathons. I'd say the same is true for social media. I see Twitter as a tool or tactic, but just one in a variety of options. The bigger question is what goal or objective you're trying to reach, and then you choose and adjust the tactics to fit your goal and strategy - and especially your audience. (E.g. Why would you choose to speak to an audience through a medium they're not using?) Not every tactic is right or necessary for everyone, and sometimes the wrong tactic can even be counter-productive. (Just like running marathons, when your body can't withstand it, is counter-productive. You can become a faster, better runner without running marathons.) With limited hours in the day, you have to choose between various options to reach your strategic goal.

This is an interesting conversation to listen in on.

When I see Twitter used as a news service on both our local affiliate and CNN, it reinforces my belief that twitter is a valid and viable communication channel.

Whether or not you actively participate depends on your message and it's intended audience.

Twitter gives you a one to one audience. Sure you can send out a press release and it will probably get picked up by media and eventually re-blogged/re-tweeted, but now you've lost your equity in the conversation. The dialog is now between a blogger (third party) and your audience.

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