Ian M Rountree

Copywriter, Project Manager, Digital Marketing

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Education and Social Media

May 19, 2011 by Ian 3 Comments

Graduation 2008 - Thirty30 Photography | FlickrThere’s a lot of discussion in professional social media circles – from publishers, to consultants, to agencies – about education. Clients need it, businesses need it, the public needs it – but so do the professionals working in these very complex, highly unorganized fields.

There’s now very little stringent education directly related to social networking as a business communication tool; while there are plenty of dyed in the wool professionals, the building of a knowledge base accessible through higher education seems slow in catching up. This isn’t even a theory versus practice problem – I think it’s an educational system problem.

How can we create education for new kinds of professionals, when education itself is failing?

This article from MENG Blend on May 17th tells a strong story about the state of education in general:

[…] even though the real ROI of college over time is well-documented, college completion rates are falling rapidly.  On average, four year public schools graduate only 37% of their students within four years.  The story at community colleges, which account for 46% of all undergraduates, is even worse:  just 25% of those at 2-year colleges graduate within three years of the time they start.

Damning, isn’t it? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: business, college, commentary, education, on-the-web, qualifications, rant-alert, reaction, social media, sociology, statistics, teaching, the-web, university

7 Reasons I Don’t Care If You Tweet This Post

April 28, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

When I published 5 Ways to Make Every Blog Post Count two days ago, I knew it’d get retweeted. In fact, I believe I said this:

Linkbait: Effective Blog Writing

And it did. But I didn’t get more traffic than I normally do – for a lot of reasons. Specific to the post; I knew it was linkbait, but it was helpful as well. I truly intended to write a useful post, and I’ll be referring to it several times in upcoming work. However, as effective as the title was at getting a few extra mentions from people who don’t normally interact with my stuff, there are some reasons I’m less concerned with the effect the article – and the title – had on Twitter.

1. Not all of my traffic comes from social media.

A decreasing amount, in fact, comes from Twitter. Yet I have more followers now than I have in the past, and I’m actively working on writing better headlines. So what’s happening to the traffic that’s supposed to come with tweets?

2. Twitter is for conversation.

While a lot of people use Twitter for sending links back and forth, and information traffic control, I’ve had a better time using it as an ongoing chat. I’m a chat person, not a forum person, so this works for me. I don’t use twitter for sharing, but this might change, as my habits change; with any platform, there are bound to be reasons to use the tool one way more than another, but leaving yourself open to change is a good idea.

3. Twitter is not the only network I care about.

Lots of people consider Twitter the penultimate location for networking. However, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even other blogs, also have a lot of power. Considering I spend most of my time using Twitter for conversation, rather than linking, I’d be happier with blog comments, reactions, or other kinds of interaction than just sending another headline into the broader stream.

4. Not every post needs to be read by everyone.

Maybe you already knew how to make each blog post work harder for you. Just like you already know how to measure the effectiveness of tweets – if that’s the case, you’re not going to care what I have to say. You don’t need it. Instead, you could be reading about being awesome somewhere else. Any of this means that one more post on single-blog-post efficiency is just going to float by, and you’re not going to click. And that’s fine.

5. It’s just another list!

There are so many lists! Yes, it’s effective as linkbait, but more importantly if a list doesn’t contain actionable information (or at least informative entertainment), passing it on won’t help anyone. Granted, I do hope this list is helpful – but speaking broadly about link tweeting in general, passing nothing but links without the benefit of meta conversation or commentary only provides so much benefit to your followers. Tell me why it’s important, in a tweet, or don’t endorse it.

6. Linkbait retweets don’t work anyway.

Yes, the link mentioned above got retweeted – the trouble is that I know – and you do too, let’s be honest – that most of the time people bump articles with good titles, but don’t read the article itself. Whether it’s the headline, the tweet wrapping the link, or the person sending the tweet – there are lots of reasons to hit the “Me Too” button that don’t involve appropriately curating and endorsing things you pass on. And that’s ok. But it doesn’t make me care more about Twitter than I do already.

7. Getting a retweet isn’t my highest measurement of value in social media.

It’s really not!

There are many ways you can encourage reactions in social media, and gain traffic or further conversation. Things like:

  • Retweets (mediatrope: Me Too Button)
  • Facebook likes or comments
  • Trackbacks
  • Comments on the blog post itself, or
  • Even better off site blog reactions

… All contribute to a blog post’s effectiveness as a communication tool, beyond being just another publication. It’s up to you, as a content creator, to know – and appropriately rank – which of these is most important to your own measurements of value, and acceptance of success where you find it.

If we don’t decide on what matters before we hit publish, hindsight cannot help is.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: calls to action, lists, measurement, priorities, rant-alert, twitter

Genre Dodging (or) the Curse of the Self-Proclaimed Anything

March 12, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

Dodgeball by iShane on FlickrOne of the most insidious problems fiction has to deal with is the issue of Genre Dodging.

Simply put, Genre Dodging is what happens when authors ignore an element necessary for their stated genre to function. Like missing an opportunity for the first female victim in a horror movie to run in obviously the wrong direction.

When you remove a key element of a genre, even with good intention, the entire narrative suffers.

This happens all the time. We’ve got lots of examples. Whether it’s having vampires that can survive sunlight, or another form of applied phlebotinum – it breaks the rule of cool pretty thoroughly.

What you get, when you try to dodge your own genre too thoroughly, is something too far from the box.  The quality of any genre-based work lies heavily on interpretation of that genre, not necessarily in making if better, worse, or pear-shaped.

I have to deal with this working on the Dowager Shadow.

When I built the world that the story takes place on, I very intentionally turned a few elements of the fantasy genre on their sides. I didn’t remove them (which is a key element in genre dodging), but I did twist them a bit. When you think fantasy, you’re liable to think warriors and magic users, dwarves and elves. If the book doesn’t have any of these, is it fantasy? Maybe.  Or maybe it’s strategic. The trick is that those four things, while recognizable, are not pillars of the genre. Not all fantasy has elves. Not all fantasy has magic.

But all vampires ought to be unable to walk in the sunlight, right? And, while we’re at it, if science fiction doesn’t have awesome tech, is it actually science fiction or just fiction?

Where else does this apply?

Blogging? If you’re a blogger without comments on your site, are you just publishing?

Twitter? If you don’t discuss anything with anyone, or lock your tweets, what happens to the chances of gaining a following?

If you’re a business person, and don’t actively build your network and create relationships, where’s the longevity of your business?

Building a world – whether it’s fictional planets, a business community, or a personal network – requires addressing the pillars that hold up the kind of world you’re building needs to function as a well-oiled, recognizable machine.

Are you missing any key elements in a non-strategic way? You might be Genre Dodging. And it’s not usually a good thing.

Photo by Shane Adams.

Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: advice, books, fiction, mediatropes, rant-alert, tropes, writing

Embracing Practice and Theory in Social Marketing

January 10, 2011 by Ian 5 Comments

In a typical paroxysm of brilliant insight, Amber Naslund posted what she called “one of those pensive posts [that needs a lot of thought]” on Sunday evening. The crux of the post was how theory can play a role in such highly action-sequence oriented fields like marketing – especially social media and content marketing.

As Amber says in the post, current social media advice is largely prescriptive; How To and 3 Steps To, and so on. This is beneficial to a point, but is it all we can do to move the work forward?

From her post – Elements of Knowledge and Embracing Social Media:

And in many ways, when you’re starting something new, that’s exactly what you want. The what and the how. Some understanding of what the established and familiar rules are, some guideposts to meter your own activities and behavior, and some reassurance that you’re headed in the “right” direction, or at least one that makes sense to you.

But when it comes to comprehension, there’s more than just the instructive side of the equation. There’s also understanding.

This is an important point, and one that I think needs some more elaboration and consideration.

The Case for Theory Before Practice

If school has taught us anything, it’s that there’s a use for having domain knowledge before practice begins. Just like we teach our kids (or try to), if something’s too hot to touch, there’s an effect from touching it regardless of cautions. Learning anything early that we can apply before negative happenstance can be helpful.

There’s also the possibility for analysis-in-the-moment, for anything we have knowledge of before practice. When something beneficial comes from what we might otherwise perceive as a negative action (for example, breaking up a flame war by making an explosive remark yourself), a theoretical understanding of human motivation and debate habits can be really helpful; with a theoretical knowledge to guide us, we might understand why that explosive comment worked to diffuse the situation, and another one might have made things worse.

The ability to understand the effects our actions might have can be hugely beneficial. The question is not whether theory has a place, but whether or not it should come first.

The Case for Practice Before Theory

In the Karate Kid, when Ralph Macchio is being taught to wax cars and paint fences, he spends a lot of time being annoyed that he’s not really learning karate. His sensei, Mr Miagi, smiles and fails to explain until much later. After weeks of labour and practice, finally the lesson becomes clear; the Kid was building muscle memory for the activities relevant to his required expertise.

Of course once the purpose of the practice is explained, there’s a blossoming of understanding. Having the muscle memory for the work that needs to be done makes the actual doing of the work so much easier. All that needs to be done in each instance is decide which skill to apply in which circumstance. This makes activity of any kind highly strategic – counter follows block follows jab and so forth. Natural progression and rhythm of action becomes easily apparent, for reasons entirely different to the in-the-moment analysis that those who learn theory before practice take advantage of.

But Which Should Come First?

And should it always be that way? Matt Ridings (@techguerilla) almost immediately responded with a question about why linear thought about theory and practice were such a big deal. It’s a good question; not everyone needs the muscle memory that comes from preemptive practice, and not everyone else can apply theory to their initial exploration of a task or domain.

I think there’s a case to be made for both directions, but it’s a case that has to be made on a per-instance basis. Some of us are polymaths, able to learn a huge variety of things easily. Some of us are intuitive learners, others kinesthetic. There is a huge variety of learning style out there – and it’s on the teachers, the instructors… The sensei among us to look for the signs that a student (hello, fellow grasshopper) can benefit better from one style of teaching than they can from another.

Before we can decide which style of teaching to employ, however, we need to define our theory. That, I think, goes far beyond just deciding who learns what better in what form.

Me? I’m going to do some more study. I’ve spent the last year playing karate kid – and I know, from how the year turned out, that I need more of that. My muscle memory isn’t as strong as it should be in some areas. However, I know I can’t survive on practice alone. Part of my work this year, I think, will be building some core theories out of observations of my own habits, and tending to the things that have succeeded.

What do you think? Where are you on the scale of theory vs practice?

Image by Woodley Wonderworks.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: amber naslund, blog measurement, Blogging, blogs, follow-the-linker, internet, learning, metahuman, practice, rant-alert, social media, sociology, the-web, Theory

The 5 Stages of Societal Adoption

August 18, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

los angeles 101New stuff! We all love it. But how do we go from new, to Now, to accepted? As Clay Shirky said, things get socially interesting when they become technologically boring. But what happens after that?

We start with:

Exploration, when something is new, after it’s just been discovered or invented. Social Media saw this in the late 1990’s, much as people ignore the time gap between then and now, when Usenet was waning and live chats, blogging and personal TLDs were just becoming relevant.

Exploitation, when anyone and everyone tries to squeeze every ounce of satisfaction and value from something. Hunting before agriculture, the current fishery structure. Slavery. Child stars. MLM. There’s always exploitation where the gap exists between acknowledgment of a resource and real understanding of how to make that resource sustainable.

Ubiquity, when exploitation becomes commonplace, and people stop noticing the novelty behind the resource.

Utilization, when – for whatever reason, be it revolution or evolution of understanding – the exploitation of the resource becomes passe (and even taboo) and people get down to the business of integrating that resource into their lives.

Assimilation / Intuition, where we all forget it didn’t exist before we explored it and get on with our lives.

Discuss.

Image by kworth30.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: commentary, community, learning, rant-alert, social media

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