Alberta Business Marketing

Did MLA Doug Elniski do something dumb? Yes. Was posting his thoughts online the mistake? No.

This is what makes social media such a powerful tool when it comes to politics: you get a chance to see inside the mind of our leaders and what makes them tick. And as you can imagine, when you get a chance to look inside someone’s mind you might not always like what you see.

The alternative to this is what we have been doing for generations. In that example, we elect someone without really knowing much about them and then either approve of what they do on our behalf or become belligerent and shocked when a massive scandal blows up.

I would argue social media like Twitter and Facebook allow us to get an inside perspective of what our elected officials do and think and that is a good thing. If they are corrupt or disengaged, status updates may give a peek at that attitude. If they don’t? Well they were just lying to us anyway so we’re no worse off then we were before.

Personally, I don’t agree with Doug’s comments. When I first read his tweets at the Edmonton Pride Parade I thought to myself, “Gee, I don’t think those are appropriate comments to say out loud.” And when I read what he said at a grade 9 graduation I thought, “That does not seem appropriate at all.” But you know what? He has a right to think and say those things. Just like we have a right to judge him based on what he said.

I would much rather an elected leader show me their true face and let me decide what to do with that information, than live a lie and pretend to be something they are not.

Where I really became disappointed with Doug was with his reaction to the controversy created by his remarks on his blog. Rather than apologizing on his blog and trying to help us understand why he made the remarks and what he is doing/going through in getting past them, he simply deleted the blog all together.

And in doing so left us all to wonder what is going on in his head and became just another walled off politician. And that is our loss.

Tags: Doug Elniski, Facebook, Twitter
Posted in Alberta Government, Alberta PC Party | | Comments Off

Did MLA Doug Elniski do something dumb? Yes. Was posting his thoughts online the mistake? No.

This is what makes social media such a powerful tool when it comes to politics: you get a chance to see inside the mind of our leaders and what makes them tick. And as you can imagine, when you get a chance to look inside someone’s mind you might not always like what you see.

The alternative to this is what we have been doing for generations. In that example, we elect someone without really knowing much about them and then either approve of what they do on our behalf or become belligerent and shocked when a massive scandal blows up.

I would argue social media like Twitter and Facebook allow us to get an inside perspective of what our elected officials do and think and that is a good thing. If they are corrupt or disengaged, status updates may give a peek at that attitude. If they don’t? Well they were just lying to us anyway so we’re no worse off then we were before.

Personally, I don’t agree with Doug’s comments. When I first read his tweets at the Edmonton Pride Parade I thought to myself, “Gee, I don’t think those are appropriate comments to say out loud.” And when I read what he said at a grade 9 graduation I thought, “That does not seem appropriate at all.” But you know what? He has a right to think and say those things. Just like we have a right to judge him based on what he said.

I would much rather an elected leader show me their true face and let me decide what to do with that information, than live a lie and pretend to be something they are not.

Where I really became disappointed with Doug was with his reaction to the controversy created by his remarks on his blog. Rather than apologizing on his blog and trying to help us understand why he made the remarks and what he is doing/going through in getting past them, he simply deleted the blog all together.

And in doing so left us all to wonder what is going on in his head and became just another walled off politician. And that is our loss.

Posted in Alberta Government, Alberta PC Party | | Comments Off

I’ve been a strong advocate of Twitter for quite a while. There are significant benefits for users, but not everyone needs access to the “here and now web” for communication. I’m becoming more convinced that only a thin minority of people will use Twitter as a communication platform in the future.

Why Twitter isn’t for everyone

• “I don’t have the time” or “I don’t want to be connected all the time!”- Twitter requires a commitment to both sharing content and listening.
• “I don’t get it” – Twitter timeline is a stream and every tweet doesn’t need to be read, but many people who don’t use Twitter daily miss out on most of the relevance of time-sensitive information
• “I don’t need another thing to check!” or “I really don’t care about this stuff”- The value of access to relevant and timely information just isn’t there for many people.  If it’s important, they’ll hear about it on another channel, but they don’t need to know now.

Why Facebook is better for most mainstream people

• “I don’t have to think” – Facebook information is purely social in nature. It’s fun! It’s about family and friends. Twitter is very often about connecting with people with common interests and has more of a business information orientation.
• “I check it every few days and can see what everyone is up to” – Twitter users are more continuously connected (by computer or handheld), while Facebook users can drop in every three days and still feel like they are getting relevant information about their friends and family.
• “I know the people on Facebook” – Facebook is always relevant. These are people I know.

Curious People Use Twitter

• Twitter is for teachers and learners – People who are thirsty for information and knowledge. Twitter users stay on top of news, generate business ideas, monitor leads and are more actively engaged in distributing information, ideas, links, knowledge.
• Information spreads quickly across Twitter, while Facebook posts generally earn comments from people you know.

So, Do you Tweet? Why or why not?

Many people rely on others for their news. If you are a source of information for others, Twitter will  continue to be a very important part of your world.

Tweet This

Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

What does the behavioural trend mean for marketing strategies?

We are moving from a pop culture to a peep culture. In pop culture, we turn on the TV and watch our celebrities entertain us with their performances. In peep culture, we turn on the computer, we move through people’s lives on blogs, face book and Youtube. Instead of getting our entertainment from scripted performances, we get our entertainment from unscripted, supposedly spontaneous peeping into other people’s lives. It can be friends and family. It’s just as likely to be people we have never met around the world.

Susan Boyle became an overnight celebrity because of peep culture. The entire world was staring at her after her transformation from a resident of a small town Scottish town to a global celebrity. We like the story and the peep into her life. In many ways, the breakdown and her struggle will keep her story going.

We have entered the age of “peep culture”: a tell-all, show-all, know-all digital phenomenon that is dramatically altering notions of privacy, individuality, security, and even humanity. Peep culture is reality TV, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn, surveillance technology, cell phone and more. Can Facebook and Myspace be a cure for loneliness? It’s not the ultimate solution. That’s the irony. We are trying to look for community by moving in solitude into these technologies. You are more likely to see people in a social environment immersed in their PDAs instead of communicating with people in the room. The name of the game is the number of followers. It becomes a narcissistic obsession.

As a society we have become incredibly fast paced without really being aware of these seismic changes in our lives. Today’s generation is the most photographed generation. We are moving into a time where our virtual personality is going to be more important than our actual physical presence. It’s going to be more important what we have online vs. what we do offline. We are going to be judged by our virtual portfolios, socially and professionally. We are not having a substantive debate about this trend in society. What we need to think about is what privacy means to each individual – politically, ethically and socially. We are a highly atomized and fairly lonely society.

In the age of peep, core values and rights we once took for granted are rapidly being renegotiated, often without our even noticing. Author Hal Niedzviecki on his new project, the Peep Diaries says the more we reveal about ourselves, the more attention we seem to get. So what happens next? Does privacy matter anymore? Can we be too connected? Is there anything we won’t put out there? Suddenly we’re spending all of our time tracking other people. And we’re inviting them to watch us! People reveal themselves to get attention and to feel like they are part of a community.

Peep culture is intersecting with pop culture and is evolving it and coming to replace it. For example, we see reality TV as the primary entertainment mode on TV. The phenomenon continues to grow. Game shows from the 1950 are more like pop culture. Peep culture is more like Trading Spouses, John and Kate plus 8 which had 10 Million people watch the debut episode in North America. US Weekly had 5 covers in a row of John and Kate plus 8. That is peep culture.

This has never happened before, where we have turned the spot light on random regular people. It’s an ongoing fascination. It’s really about how underground cultures are changing people’s lives. The biggest problem is what happens when we turn our lives reflexively, without thinking about it, into entertainment product. We are seeing a clash of values of people who are facebooking, blogging, youtubing and being encouraged to do so by an overall entertainment culture that says more attention is better. In contrast, we see a traditional society that says that a very active online persona may not be a good fit with a job or university.

People are being turned into celebrity product. Popular culture is encouraging people to move forward with even less scrutiny with what they are doing. There aren’t any secrets anymore. The notion of private life has changed. First of all, people want private moments to reflect. But they have redefined the meaning of privacy. The problem is we are alone most of the time- in our houses, in front of our computers, in our cars, at work in our cubicles or offices. The fact is human beings are hard wired to be social. We are descendents of apes who spend 80% of their day picking nits out of each others hair.

There are two issues. We have moved in the spectrum of community all the way to the end of gated fences, SUVs and tinted windows, into the belief that the fantasy celebrity lifestyle of having your own limo, private island, bodyguard, and having every appointment vetted by your people is the way to live. That is the fantasy that we have, we think we want. But for most of us, the further we get along that spectrum the more alone we are. So then we move to the other spectrum which is constant flow of details about your life, your blog, and your status updates. That’s what community used to be. There is this flow of information from other human beings that connects us together, which makes us feel more intrinsically human and less like we need to constantly be proving ourselves.

Posted in Viral Marketing | | Comments Off