Comments on: Emotion doesn’t trump reality

By: GrantWuellner (Grant Wuellner)

GrantWuellner (Grant Wuellner) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:29:04 +0000

Twitter Comment

from post "...social media tools add to our communications toolkit; they don’t replace the old tools..." [link to post]

- Posted using Chat Catcher

By: Susan Villas Lewis

Susan Villas Lewis — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:53:07 +0000

So what’s your take on what causes the fragile reputation of the communications industry to start with? Could it be that same lack of real-world experience and strategic communications insight you’ve charged “social media experts” with? (I’d argue so.) Which makes this more of a systemic problem than one laid at the feet of those self-proclaimed social media experts. (And I’m so with you on that part of the point.) They are just one more symptom in an industry where people think what we do is so simple, when the strategies are quite complex.

By: Paul Bearne

Paul Bearne — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:34:35 +0000

You are so right the big question for me is “I am one of them or do I know what I am doing?”
I guess that I know enough to ask the question is a good start.

By: Amber Naslund

Amber Naslund — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:29:17 +0000

Hi Dave,

I can definitively tell you that we, as a company, have landed accounts through Twitter outreach (one huge one this week that started with a Twitter conversation), resolved customer service issues, secured media coverage, and increased both our visibility and the leads that come through our website as a result. In my view, it’s because we’re there as people first who represent a company, and our customers appreciate that they can find us there.

In fact, our B2B company has been build and grown on the back of social communications. We’re passionate not just about the tools, but about their potential to make human connections between business relationships and to give our community a platform for feedback and engagement.

Thanks for a great post, and for sharing your take on the article.

Best,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra

By: Dave Fleet

Dave Fleet — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:21:54 +0000

Phil – thanks for your comment!

You’re right – emotion certainly has its place and it doesn’t preclude valuable points. It just needs to be supported with substance.

Another point where I agree – this kind of conversation is very valuable – it’s where the power of these tools lies, and I very much appreciate your contribution here.

Cheers,
Dave

By: Phil Butler

Phil Butler — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:14:01 +0000

Superb post! Points all well taken on my commentary as well. You are obviously a skilled writer and also obviously know what you are talking about.

Just for clarity, and to gain what we all want in this life – understanding, I should address the “hatred” aspect. I do hate supposed innovation where luck or pop culture intercede in place of refined technology. I expect this is from my experience as one of the early tech writers for such technologies. Not that I am a fan of over engineered platforms either.

That being said, if I implied that engaging journalists was unfeasible in my post, I did not mean to and am sorry I did not make a longer review out of it. The notoriety aspect, is, and perhaps will be for some time, up in the air in my opinion in as far as no one I know of having proven the effectiveness for the average Joe. I would love to see a matrix of data on this.

Finally, being angry or emotional in my case, does not preclude putting out logical and viable information. Rather, this is a function of being passionate about things both positively and negatively. If you ever read my analysis of startups, then you would see I am equally enthusiastic when relating the other side of the coin.

I hope I explained myself to you and your readers. Somehow, this is the kind of discourse that should drive the Internet. The two way street, with in depth abilities to express, which in itself proves Twitter to be deficient except as a notifier.

Thanks for the conversation, and I meant what I said about this post, your blog and my sincere desire to not be “correct”, but to make things better whatever the outcome for me personally.

Always,
Phil Butler