Mike Spear's slide deck on social media tools and a bit of theory behind it, presented to the ALI Social Media & Government workshop in Washington DC, September 2013.

1. Mike Spear
Director of Communications
Genome Alberta
Navigating the Social
Media Minefield

2. • Former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
journalist with CBC President's Award and Peer
Awards, Farm Writers' Award, and RTNDA awards for
my programs or newsrooms.
• SysOp with CompuServe of Columbus, Ohio in the 90’s
• Published in peer-reviewed journals
• One of the founders of ScienceBorealis.ca
• Part of our National genetics, ethics, and society team
• Owned a Newton, Palm, Psion, iPAQ, and numerous
chainsaws

3. • Genome Alberta is a not-for-profit research funding
organization
• Funded by 2 levels of government, academic institutions
and industry
• Our communications goals centre on:
• Visibility across stakeholders & demographics
• Acceptance
• Leverage
• Position ourselves for later
• Be seen as an information source

7. “There is nothing more
deceptive than an
obvious fact.”
Sherlock Holmes

8. And that is all you need to know ……
http://explodingdog.com/title/iwasthinking.html

9. “I‟m sorry it‟s really not that hard. Common
sense, creativity and an understanding of your
business and your audience will get you up and
running quickly. Insights are important but you
don‟t need a PhD.”
Tom Murphy, Director of Corporate Communications for
Citizenship at Microsoft. http://tpemurphy.com/blog/?p=910

10. The web is less than 25 years old so is far
from mature, or stable. Social Media even
less so.
Only 1 in 3 people are using it
globally, Sweden tops the world in the new
Web Index http://thewebindex.org/data/index/
, U.S. next, the UK, and Canada in 4th.
In a recent BBC Radio interview Tim
Berners-Lee wonder how much of the „Net
is breadth and how much is depth

11. Byte
Magazine, 1983

12. Social Networks are not new:
“Highway of thought”
NY Times, Sept.14, 1852

13. “ A slender wire has become the highway of thought.
Messages follow each other in quick succession. Joy
spreads on the tracks of sorrow.
The arrival of a ship, news of a revolution, or a
battle, the price of pork, state of foreign and domestic
markets, missives of love, the progress of courts, the
success or discomfiture of disease, the result of
elections, and an innumerable host of
social, political, and commercial details … “
The article appeared 9 years after Morse’s first commercial telegraph line
and it ended with, “A great Future awaits us”.

14. Technology has changed but human
nature has not
“Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph",
James Carey

15. When the first issue of Life appeared on Nov.
23, 1936, the 200,000 newsstand copies sold out within 24
hours, leaving disappointed customers and vendors
clamoring for more. Defying expectations in the midst of
the Depression, the magazine‟s circulation rapidly soared
to nearly two million readers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/books/review/75-years-the-very-
best-of-life-illustrated-224-pp-life-books-36-95-book-review.html?_r=1

16. Genomics: The Power and the Promise November 27th and
28th in Ottawa
At the end of day 1 Tweetreach stats:
• 298 tweets
• 134,927 impressions
• 29,115 followers
Planning the social media for the event started well in advance
but was separate from the media plan

17. “Social Media is not a fad – it is a fundamental
shift in the way we communicate”
The technology is new with better speed, reach, and
scope
The how, where, when, what, and to whom has not
changed
Social media and online activities and tools are a
reflection of us - not a 'new us'

18. Choosing the tools:
You Must Enter the Tiger's
Den to Catch the Cubs
Madison Avenue has always
known to enter the culture
where you want to compete

19. I share my genome

20. “All speech, written or spoken, is a
dead language, until it finds a willing
and prepared hearer. ”
- Robert Louis Stevenson
And I will of course add in the online and
social media language, videos, and mp3s

21. So many companies are chasing the social media hype,
thinking it is a great way to connect with customers when
they haven't even gotten their telephone interactions with
customers' right."
- Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO
"Better deployment of the wrong subject won't fix the
problem..."
- Conrad Wolfram of Wolfram Alpha

22. Go back to the basics to find your
audience

23. Social media services seem torn between
protecting their users, empowering their
users, selling out their users, and annoying
everyone."
-Baratunde Thurston of The Onion, writing at Fast Company
online
.

24. Knowledge is only one factor among
many influences that are likely to guide
how individuals reach judgements, with
ideology, social identity and trust often
having stronger impacts”
Bubela, Nisbet et al. (2009) Nature Biotech

25. Psychometrics Work Research Group at the Manchester
Business School peer reviewed study of social media users
As always there are ways to interpret data but:
• The way we use SoMe changes as more people adopt
it, so we'll see more changes.
• Our emotional attachments to media tools changes as the
tools‟ capabilities change.
• 'Net statistics, more than many other media statistics are
about a moment in time.
• Stats more important at the engagement level

26. Government & non-profits tend to
polarize.
“A politician's job is never to inform
you, it's to persuade you. Public debate
is about mitigating risk.”
Clay Johnson at MESH 2012 in Toronto. Author of the Information Diet
http://www.informationdiet.com/

27. “Moral
incentives need
to replace
material
incentives.”
Che Guevara

28. "Strengthening ( Internet) network culture
construction and management," ..... "will help
extend the battlefront of propaganda and
ideological work. It is good for increasing the
radiant power and infectiousness of socialist
spiritual growth."
Hu Jintao
past President of China

29. We chose SM route because:
• Cheap
• Easy
• Intuitive
• Replaces other tools
• Risk free

30. Planning
Social Media Research 8-25 hours
Social Media Planning 10-20 hours
Blog
Creation 10-15 hours
Development 40 hours
Maintenance 5 hours/week
LinkedIn
Creation 1 hour
Development 5-15 hours
Maintenance 3-10 hours/week
Facebook (Fan or Group Page)
Creation 3-12 hours
Development 10-50 hours
Maintenance 7-15 hours/week
Twitter
Creation 1 hour
Development 15-40 hours
Maintenance 3-7 hours/week
YouTube (branded channel)
Creation 3 hours
Development 5-20 hours
Maintenance 2-7 hours/week
One and a half staff
needed to look after social
media channels
from a blog post by James
Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum
Also see: Social Media Budget –
How Much Should You Invest?
http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/social
-business/social-media-marketing-
budget/

31. • Integrate, Integrate, Integrate
• Reuse, Recycle, Reduce

32. Yoza.mobi – Now in limbo land but was great cell phone stories site
Ushahidi.com an open source project to facilitate information collection,
mapping, and interpretation
iCOW http://www.icow.co.ke/ is an ag platform, developed for small scale
farmers, accessible by mobile phone and web
TERA (Trilogy Emergency Response Application) allows two way
communication via SMS text messaging
OCEARCH: Global Shark Tracker: http://sharks-ocearch.verite.com/
Crowdsource research and awareness
B4RN - A project to find new technology, business models, and financing to
bring high speed internet to rural England. http://b4rn.org.uk/
Deep Thunder Project – an IBM community sourced hyper local weather
forecasting initiative. Gaining momentum in Brazil leading up to Olympics

33. David & Goliath

34. mspear@genomealberta.ca
@mikesgene or @GenomeAlberta
http://genomicsnews.ca
http://www.genomealberta.ca/blogs
http://www.slideshare.net/mspear