June 2009 Archive

The Iranian uprising has been covered extensively these last couple of weeks, including coverage of the chatter on Twitter. The communication on Twitter struck me as interestigly similar to the description of communications from another revolution – the American one.

Inspired possibly by HBO’s “John Adams” series, I’ve been reading Bernard Bailyn’s pulitzer-winning “Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.”

During the American Revolution, there was a medium of communication that allowed for “complete freedom of expression,” yet could also “be more detailed than is ever possible in a newspaper,” and “can be produced much more quickly than a book, and in principle, at any rate, can reach a bigger public.”

This medium did not have to follow any standard rules. “It can be in prose or in verse, it can consist largely of maps or statistics or quotations, it can take the form of a story, a fable, a letter, an essay, a dialogue, or a piece of ‘reportage.’”

All that was required of it was that it be “topical, polemical, and short.”

Sounds a lot like blogging or micro-blogging, but these were pamphlets. Pamphlets, in many ways drove public sentiment in colonial America against the British, and as John Adams famously wrote:

“What do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760-1775.”

He goes on to say that the pamphlets of the time period are what should be inspected to learn what formed public opinion.

And much like Twitter and blogging, they were cheap, fast, and difficult to suppress.

Unlike today’s social media, however, pamphlets did not allow for certain social aspects like the instantaneous and public nature of comments, re-tweeting and Digg’ing. But they were similar in that they allowed for conversation in a way that resembles the modern day YouTube response video. It takes longer to put together than a “thumbs up” rating, but they’re not feature length productions that take months to make.

The key lesson here is that even though we’re in the digital age, the basic tenets of PR and communications remain the same. Oftentimes the most effective communicators are the ones who find the fastest, broadest, and most credible ways to put their messages across.

While reviewing applications to the Ruder Finn Executive Training program recently, my colleague mentioned that we’re in a place in PR where perhaps we shouldn’t consider applicants without Twitter accounts. They are, afterall, applying to work at a pretigious, global NY PR firm heavily focused on social media.

The idea sparked a good old-fashioned watercooler debate yesterday on whether or not certain digital trends are here to stay. One colleague claimed to know enough about Twitter without being on it. That might indeed be enough. As we saw from a Harvard Business School study last week, 90% of tweets come from just 10% of users, and average lifetime number of tweets per user on Twitter is 1. The vast majority of Twitter users, it would seem, are “just looking.”

Maybe “just looking” at social media is enough to cut it in today’s PR world.

We can all survive without the latest tech, sure (he said writing a digital trends blog post on his BlabkBerry on the subway). In many cases, we’re probably better without it – Hulu even advertises that it rots your brain.

But, much like my grandmother who is opposed to getting an answering machine because it’s too newfangled, my colleague might do just fine, thank you very much, but will be missing out on a whole world of possibilities. She’ll be missing out on the virtual watercooler conversations taking place at Ruder Finn on Twitter, missing access to journalists who prefer 140-character pitches, and being behind on what’s going on with Shaq.

Another colleague was considering leaving Facebook, failing to see the point of it all. Her argument was that Facebook replaced prevailing technology that came before it, and something else will be along soon to replace it as well.

Without a doubt, there will be something to replace Facebook, and the question today is, “will I someday look back and wonder how I survived without Facebook?”

Is Facebook like the cellphone – a tool that has become so pervasive in our culture that some people don’t communicate any other way? Is Facebook like email – a tool that many people can’t imagine their work lives without?

Does your business live and breathe social media, or can you do without?