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Fate and Twitter: Deeply meaningful Twitter experience

Fate and Twitter? Fate’s a mighty big thing to claim and I rarely use it but that’s the only word I can use to describe this thing that happened last week. Through Twitter, I was connected to two deeply meaningful people/content. Or maybe it’s a higher power - lately things have fallen into place in ways that are just too ironic and right. So you be the judge. And be patient, the story needs set up. It’s also more on the personal side - not business focused, but it seems appropriate given the Twitter angle. Hope you find it as fascinating as I have.

Twitter is useful for a lot of things. I love it and get tremendous value out of it professionally and socially. That said, this is the most powerful experience I’ve had on Twitter, maybe even online ever.

Context: As you know, I’m currently off from work to deal with a cancer health issue. I just finished treatments on Thursday and I am now working on healing from the radiation. So I have some time on my hands which is really hard for me. I’m type-A, over achiever, over scheduler. I like to keep myself very busy. And now I find myself needing to just relax, slow down and heal. Very, very hard for me.

Once I started treatments, I decided after I was doing better I wanted to volunteer for 1:1 support for young adults with cancer because it’s not very common and I’ve had a hard time finding support services out there for people like me - you know, other people who can understand what it’s like to have to deal with this when you’re at the prime of your life, all the worries that someone my age would have getting this, and just someone my age who’s experienced what I have. My kind of cancer is typically with male smokers over 50 - so it’s hard for me to feel like I can relate. I have been researching for a group to get involved with since I made the decision with no luck.

Now on to Twitter…

Mid-last year I was followed on my twitter alias, @ErikaBitzer, by @jeremymeyers. I didn’t know Jeremy. I checked out what his tweets and his blog and saw he did social media for Sony. I thought he seemed like someone I’d be interested in following and so I followed back. A few weeks later, I see he took at job at my former agency, which I’d just left like 6 months before. Since then, we’ve chatted informally over twitter about music and random stuff here and there.

Fast forward to this month. @ScottMeis starts following me. I didn’t know him either. I check out his stuff and see he just took a job at my former agency and he has a blog on social media so I thought I’d follow him back.

Ok, so we get to Thursday last week. I am reading up on Twitter and see @ScottMeis recent blog post on influence and skim it. While reading it I come across a reference to Jonny Imerman and Imerman Angels who pairs cancer patients and survivors up for peer support. I think hmmm, this could be a group to volunteer with.

That same night, Jeremy and I are DMing about random stuff. I mention that I’m off from work right now going through cancer treatments and having a hard time because I’m getting bored sitting at home trying to recover. He suggests I volunteer and suggests I look for the group through change.gov. I go out do a search and the only site that comes up that fits my criteria is a group called I’m too Young for This  - i[2]y - or otherwise referred to as Stupid Cancer. I go to the site and check out all the stuff they have. In their other resources section, Imerman Angels (the group @ScottMeis had blogged about) was in there. I think this must be a good fit and go to that site too.

That night, I signed up for Imerman Angels and started following them on Twitter, Facebook etc. I figured it would take a few weeks to get going with them and by then I could start to maybe help someone else. I also started following @stupidcancer and told them how happy I was to find them.

I head off to bed and the Twitter fairies stop by that night…

The next day, the founder of i[2]y, Matthew Zachary through @stupidcancer has DMed me thanking me for the note and we chit chat a bit and we exchange email info so I can get involved once I’m doing a bit better. I want to see how I can help using my PR talents and also at doing stuff for the Seattle area. I also get a call from Imerman Angels - they already paired me up with someone to help me (not what I’d thought would happen given I was just finishing). By that night, the person they’d paired me with, Sarah, had emailed me. She’s a few years older than me and just finished the exact same treatment schedule 2.5 months ago. Our experience was almost identical.

In one day, I went from being completely disconnected and supported from a group perspective to having 1:1 support, non-profit support, and connections for deeper involvement down the road for something that is so important and critical for me right now. I just couldn’t believe how quickly and neatly it all fit together. This is such a powerful experience and I’m so thankful for it.I felt a huge emotional void filled.

So was it fate? I don’t know, but I think if @JeremyMeyers and @ScottMeis hadn’t found me, I don’t know if I ever would have found these groups. And it’s just random that it happened the same day that this came together from their resources.

I’m reading Shel Israel’s Twitterville right now and there’s lots of stories of how Twitter helps people and business and I decided that this is one of those stories that was too weird and interesting to not share. 

Blowing my Mind

This is a short post because I’m just blown away at being alive to experience how the Internet is evolving as it is. Facebook’s new integration of the ‘Like’ button across the Internet is changing the online experience as we know it. In some ways this kind of experience has been happening over time - you could start to Digg things, share out with Twitter with your friends -  but the new implementation lays the whole internet (or those who choose to implement, which I expect most will) across the largest graph of relationships. It’s like a giant mash up of content and relationships not just in one location but reciprocally. Having that info where you are in the content site is huge and brings relevance and context to things in a much more natural way.

I just think where we were with basic email and web search or linear experiences to one where content and relationships inter-relate. It BLOWS MY MIND. And it gets me excited to get to be watching this and experiencing it as it happens.

I get excited to think where we’ll be in 5 years and even 1 year - the innovation is happening so fast.

A blogger’s dilemma

Some friends and I have talked about doing a broader blog on the focus of this one and one of the dilemma’s that’s come up is that we all work at agency’s and represent major tech clients. So there’s a weird line there becuase at times we’d need to write on stuff our clietns are doing becuae it’s relevant, but we’re biased. And on top of that, we’re biased against our clients main competitors too. AObviously, we’d nee to be transparent in who our clients are when we blog, but does that start to make things difficult for our cleints? We think it does.

So for now, until we solve this conundrum, that’s why you see me not covering Microsoft much, or MySpace, for Facebook, etc. I try to steer clear of the areas that are a conflict of interest for me. Obviously, in that I’m writing about tech I wont’ be able to 100% because with my clients and competitors, it’s essentially everyone. :) But I do commit to being transparent about conflicts or avoiding those that fall really close to the work I do.

Do other bloggers at agencies have similar issues? How do you deal with it? I’d love to hear advice.

Naked Conversations - Great read but outdated on PR approach

My final thoughts on Robert Scoble’s and Shel Israel’s “Naked Conversations.” The book is well worth the read and as I noted here and here there is a ton of great content even though the book is a few years old.

My only critique comes right at the end. It’s clear, and maybe the guys thoughts on this have changed since the book came out, that they think public relations is all about command and control. They use this phrase a lot. Sure, we like to be in command and control of the message at all times but that’s not really what PR is or how successful PR programs are run especially today. Blogging for coprorations is a PR tactic or strategy (depending) and a command and control appraoch to PR is just one appraoch. That’s it. All PR teams run differently and some adapt to coroporate blogging really well. It’s the command and control PR teams that will have a hard time with this and have had a hard time with it.

They sort of address that blogging is part of the corp marketing mix and I’d agree with that, but it’s definitely an important role in PR that should be evaluated for every company.

Comments and more

I think comments still aren’t working on this blog right. And swingaway left a response in the answers and that didn’t show up publically. Hmm. I’ll need to look into this. For now, I’ll post her response here. She commented on good crises managment:

“I think SeaWorld is one recent excellent example, specifically with the trainer who was killed by the whale. Their PR team acted instantly.”

Swingaway, they did act quickly, but they there were a lot of contradictory reports. They didn’t do a very good job of managing the story or influencing it and in general I think SeaWorld came out looking worse than they needed to. I think partially since there were rumors that this whale had attacked some one before. I hate saying that because I grew up going to SeaWorld and want them to succeed, but I think they needed to be more transparent than they were. I didn’t follow that crisis very closely so would love to hear more from people on this.

UPDATE: I fixed comments. I was an idiot and didn’t have the right shortname in Disqus. Please comment away!!!

Blogging not always a ‘go’ during a crisis

I’m still reading “Naked Conversations” and I’m on the part about how staying out of the “blogosphere” or conversations on blogs about your company when there is a crisis is a huge mistake. This is true in theory, but this chapter makes a blanket approach that you must engage or else.

The problem with this is in reality, shit happens and half the time the company isn’t ready (if they saw it coming, they probably wouldn’t have made the mistake in the first place). The real test is what you do when the company doesn’t have a good response or reason for the problem. You can apologize, but there’s so much more that has to happen in order to help the customer. And sometimes, engaging in it will only open up pandora’s box when the company isn’t yet prepared or capable of handling it. Sometimes really bad stuff happens with companies and blogging and engaging with blogs is the least of your problems - clients and companies are going to have to be prepared to take the lumps. And the blogging approach isn’t black and white - you have to really think about what the right engagement approach is.

PR people deal with this dilemma CONSTANTLY and for me is probably one of the most stressful parts of the job. You know what you need to do, but you are also aware of what’s actually possible based on the circumstances.  I have one situtation I can think of now (I can’t disclose for confidentiality reasons), but it weighs on me constantly because the client needs to be engaging on the topic and unfortunately they aren’t ready to. Decisions haven’t been made and therefore progress can’t be made with the partners or customers.

What are some recent “crises” that you’ve seen that were handled good or bad in the blogs? Thoughts?