Social Media Top 5: Brian Solis Gives Me a Headache, Twitter Chat Advice, & Outside the Echo

Getting Out of the Echo Chamber:

My good friend Kyle Flaherty blogged recently about getting out of the social media “echo chamber,” and the resultant decrease in his activity blogging and on Twitter. There has been a lot of talk about taking social media out of the “echo chamber” so everyone uses it, but this is more about just shutting it off for a bit and losing nothing (well, blog traffic– if that’s important, and other social media channel momentum).

So, is it good to disconnect to get perspective? To recharge? To prevent burnout? I probably is. Many colleagues know when to shut it off (some do it for work only, other the other way around. I simply see this post as a reminder that all of us have social networks that exist outside of the online networks, and those need just as much tending.

A Frightening Walk Through Past Failures:
Mack collier did something brave recently: he sifted through his early blog posts and found himself cringing at some of his early posts. The lesson? We all find our voices online– or in any medium, including our “meatspace” groups– after time, after starting out tentatively, after making mistakes, after chaning focus or direction.

I took a look through my early blog posts too, and recommend that you don’t (look at mine, I mean– definitely revisit yours).

Twitter Chat Advice:
Kami Huyse has a nice post on how to participate in Twitter chat. The advice is common sense, but still worth reading. More important to me was that she listed a bunch of existing regular chats that take place on Twitter. Here are the ones Kami listed:

• BLOGCHAT: On Sunday nights at 8-9 CT there is #blogchat with (the aforementioned) @MackCollier, author of the Viral Garden blog
• HEALTHCARE COMMUNICATION: or if you are into health care you can chat with #hcsm with @danamlewis also on Sunday nights from 8-9 CT
• JOURNCHAT: Monday nights is #journchat from 8-10CT with @PRsarahevans, author of a blog by the same name, PRSarahEvans. (As a media junkie and PR flack, I am a semi-regular participant in this, as family time and Jack Bauer permit)
• PR 2.0 CHAT: On Wednesday nights is #pr20chat with @BethHarte from 7-8 CT, she is author of the Harte of Marketing blog (I actually had not heard of this until I saw Kami’s post, and had a great time taking part on May 27).

More chats? Certainly, feel free to tell me about them in comments

Brian Solis Gives Me a Headache. Again:

His image of the “Twitterverse,” showing (almost) all the applications and services, is a nice visualization of the universe created by one of the dumbest, simplest online conversation tools out there.

PR Students on Learning About Twitter:

One of my favorite PR professors (ok they;re all my favorite), Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu of Clemson, posted these reactions by her students after they were asked to learn about and use Twitter.

I won;t recap here, just go read it– but I was struck by the number of students who say they “get it.” I was hoping for some more “What the *** is this” reactions, though I guess the students wouldn’t say this to their professor- would they? Some students did admit to “semi-getting it” or simply taking a while to cotton to Twitter as an effective communications tool. I will continue to be fascinated by what and how students are learning about social media as it gets introduced into the curricula more and more.