Adam Schweigert - Latest Comments

Re: Why I Unfriended You On Facebook

Adam Schweigert — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:36:51 -0000

Well, first of all, thanks for reading the post.

For brands what I would say is...it's complicated.

To date most brands (it seems to me) have been focused on achieving the widest reach possible (and often paying handsomely for it) but in my opinion that's a bit short-sighted. They're mapping a traditional mass media fallacy onto a new media reality.

People "like" photos? We'll post more photos! To get more "engagement"

But what does that mean?

Our fans like coupons and deals! ...

...like they always have...so what's new here?

To me the most interesting (and potentially useful) uses of social media for brands are:

a) listening to current and prospective customers and using that to inform business strategy and
b) the network effects created by your fans sharing your message

If you're still focusing on getting a lot of fans and followers instead...I would say you're potentially (likely?) missing the boat.

Re: Why I Unfriended You On Facebook

Annalisa Hilliard — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:43:15 -0000

Adam, thanks for this post!

When I first starting reading your post, I felt like you were losing out on networking & branding opportunities by "unfriending" people. But, as I continued reading I became more and more convinced of your perspective. Afterall, I don't actually use FB for those purposes. My networks of choice for those activities are Twitter and LinkedIn.

I relate to your feeling of burnout and needing to take a break from FB (and other social networks) for the important things in life. I've also taken breaks from time-to-time. I loved your paragraph about being intentional about why we do what we do, and who we make connections with in all aspects of our lives.

So, I relate and agree with what you're saying across the board with social media on a personal level. But how about for brands? How do they use social media to connect with their audience, and build relationships? They also must be intentional, right? This is an important understanding for a brand to have.

Thanks again!

Re: Why I Unfriended You On Facebook

Kate Bower — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 02:58:14 -0000

I'm not sure if I made the cut due to #1 or #2, but I think you took a wise approach. Expect my criteria would be fairly similar!

Re: Exciting Career News, Investigative Journalism Edition

jmproffitt — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:59:13 -0000

Exciting indeed! Great news, Adam. Congratulations and go get 'em!

Re: Tweets and Longreads: The Long and Short of the Future of News Consumption

biztag — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 00:11:56 -0000

Yea, I.m guilty of short read's, but if I had time I would read every stimulating post 'long or short' I could get my eyes on! lets keep our fingers crossed, for now! *biztag

Re: Tweets and Longreads: The Long and Short of the Future of News Consumption

Adam Schweigert — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 23:55:54 -0000

It's true, the time of day does also matter a lot. During the day I think most people are just information grazing. Reading of long-form stuff is best left for the evenings and weekends (and more and more publications are starting to get this and tailor their publishing schedule and cadence appropriately).

Re: Tweets and Longreads: The Long and Short of the Future of News Consumption

biztag — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 23:53:17 -0000

I am really enjoying the PowerTweet from Twylah for just these reasons.. Problem is, 'big' content reading has to be done in time of leisure, give your audience a heads up, you will be providing a long winded post at X time and date.. And it's relevant because..! Use short crumb tweets, then a power tweet as a tease just before you drop the big one!! Jus saying... *biztag - Your World Mobile!

Re: Towards a Better Definition of Curation in Journalism

digidave — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:43:43 -0000

Holy crap Adam. I was literally having this exact conversation yesterday with a cohort at Circa. Aggregation and curation are often used interchangeably but I think conflating the two is a mistake. Curation means something different - with more care. The aim is to create an experience.

I find the comment from @VM to be interesting. I agree - that curation has some connotations with 'gatekeeper' but I think that might be misplaced and we should find a way to re-invigorate the word 'curator' so that it is distinct from aggregation and doesn't have an overly 'gatekeeped' ethos.

Re: Towards a Better Definition of Curation in Journalism

heuristocrat — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 07:24:32 -0000

Unfortunately the word and the practice have become overused and too often seem to mean just selective aggregation. There's some value in that but it starts to look more like an echo chamber than a place for improved understanding.

I like some of the ideas here but they are actually quite old and I expect they exist under different terms in many industries. For example the client sales and support role often consists of a great deal of selecting content, services, people, meetings, etc. to fit the needs, interests and tastes of a client. Imagine how a good Gartner or IBM rep sifts through myriad options to surface what would be especially useful to their client.

Institutional sales people on Wall Street to the same thing. They review masses of information for not just content but also quality, veracity of the source, true newness and share only what they know will be meaningful and valuable to them.

It does mean taking an active role and doing more than simple selection and aggregation.

Good post!

Re: Towards a Better Definition of Curation in Journalism

Rachel — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 04:02:11 -0000

Some really interesting points raised in this article and I appreciate how you've suggested meaningful ways in which 'curator' can be redefined to fit within journalistic paradigms.

Coming from an art history background, the frequent misappropriation of 'curator/curation' in the digital world is one of my biggest pet peeves. There may be people who can accurately claim the term for the work they do, but I think that's a small number compared to those who use it without knowing or caring about what it really means.

Re: Towards a Better Definition of Curation in Journalism

WM — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:51:53 -0000

I like the discussion, but am somewhat concerned by the image evoked by the word "curator," at least to someone of my generation. "Curator" has the implication of "gatekeeper," often in a dusty, glass-cased world. And in the current environment, rhizomic and amoeba-like, boundaries tend to blur. So I like the notion of context, meaning, and engagement that "curation" brings with it, but somehow I want to break down the walls that separate "curator," "information," and listener/patron/consumer/person.

Re: Car Talk Ends Its 25 Year Run: Here’s The Silver Lining

Carey Sullivan — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:35:39 -0000

I'm disappointed to hear Car Talk is ending. Between the retirements Click and Clack and Garrison Keillor, this an opportunity to change (somewhat) the tone and style of public radio. Perhaps they'll add a couple of up and coming programs to the line up.

Re: Moving On

marko — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 13:49:16 -0000

Congrats on the big step! Definitely keep me in the loop if you start bringing in more people—sounds like a pretty awesome venture.

Re: My Hotspot’s Name is Mark

Tim Nolan — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:18:39 -0000

Adam,

Thank you for taking the time to research every angle of the program.I think the final paragraph of you post sums it up perfectly.

"We thought we’d come out of SXSW talking about the next hot app or some new trend in mobile commerce, but here we are talking about a very real problem and some of the complicated issues surrounding it."

Thanks again.
Tim Nolan, Creative Director BBH Labs / NY & Homeless Hotspots

Re: SXSW 2012: #BigBabies – Why Baby Boomers = Public Media FAIL

Javaun Moradi — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:19:25 -0000

I wasn't in Austin for SXSW and would've missed this hugely valuable discussion -- except that you took the time to curate it so well, Adam. Thank so much, I'm sharing it widely.

Re: SXSW 2012: #BigBabies – Why Baby Boomers = Public Media FAIL

jmproffitt — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:41:52 -0000

Holy crap! This one page, compiled from your panel, encapsulates my entire #pubmedia career (such as it was). GenX (which I am) is definitely the "lost generation" of public media. I couldn't get anywhere useful in the system after a few years. Boomers in the corner offices were all about the top-down and the maintenance of the old models -- experimentation and new thinking was a threat. Boomers also religiously defended their positions rather than focusing on mission in a changing media landscape. Where experiments were tried, it was done on the backs of cheap 20-something labor with no real direction, which yielded classic failure, which was punished.

I've concluded there is no hope for the current public media models, aside from guarding existing territory. There are pockets of good work where the money supports it (NPR), but broadly the system faces increasing irrelevance and collapsing funding in the years to come. The only hope is that an organization like NPR could take over public media as a whole, leading it with a clarified central mission (news) and greater efficiencies and economies of scale.

There's a future out there for the mission and principles of public media. But it won't be led by Boomers, who are just skating to retirement and taking everything for themselves along the way.

Today I'm back in healthcare technology, and lemme tell you something -- this is a fast-moving and fascinating industry comprised of multiple generations and players at all levels of government, nonprofits, and private companies. It's not as simple as public media, and there are many factions with different ideas about the future. But technology and communications and media are all part of that future and everyone knows it.

God bless you to the Millenials and GenXers still working in public media. You guys are doing great work and I hope you're not suffering too much. Just know there are places for you out there, outside public media, where you can have a community impact and don't have to be second-class citizens in your own workplaces.

Re: 7 Things Page Administrators Need To Know About Facebook Timeline For Brands

evilripper — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:03:42 -0000

I have the same problem! I want set the view as "Posts by page"! :-(

Re: 7 Things Page Administrators Need To Know About Facebook Timeline For Brands

Adam Schweigert — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 11:51:49 -0000

Hi Jamie - As far as I've seen there is no way to change that default setting (for now). If you go into your page settings, you are able to hide the box that shows the recent activity by fans and you can also limit their ability to post at all, but there does not seem to be any way to change the default view for all visitors to your page.

Re: 7 Things Page Administrators Need To Know About Facebook Timeline For Brands

Guest — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 10:15:17 -0000

Do we know how to set default page view as "Posts by page" instead of "Highlights"? If that is not an option do we know why it is not?

Re: 7 Things Page Administrators Need To Know About Facebook Timeline For Brands

Adam Schweigert — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:43:03 -0000

I've been beating the drum for niche social tools for a bit now, but I completely agree.

I'm actually wondering if Facebook may really be at their peak right now in the run up to their IPO and it's all going to be downhill from here for them.We'll see, but there is definitely something behind this movement towards tools that do one thing exceptionally well over sites like Facebook that (in my opinion) might be trying to do a bit too much.

There will still be some room for tools that connect all of the tools to one another and that's where Facebook is hoping to be, but that could still just as easily be Google or someone else.

Interesting times for sure.

Re: 7 Things Page Administrators Need To Know About Facebook Timeline For Brands

Adam Schweigert — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:39:39 -0000

Thanks Brandon. Yeah, I completely agree about the importance of images. The new layout definitely gives pages a lot of incentive to post more visual content.

Re: 7 Things Page Administrators Need To Know About Facebook Timeline For Brands

Brandon Jackson — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 13:27:38 -0000

I just converted one of my company's pages to the new timeline and I have to say I really enjoy it. Most of the things we have done as a company was something that was worth promoting on Facebook so luckily other than our launch (before we got a Facebook page) and and some logo and website updates we pretty much had our history involved.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that, like Youtube, premium pages will eventually be able to specially brand their pages. Nothing major but adding some graphic and or color changes I think are the next step.

I also feel like images are a lot more important now with the timeline, which is great if you're a company with promotions and products to sell. Nothing like a wall with big images standing out to get your customers' attention.

Re: 3 Ways Brands Are Using Pinterest And 5 Ways They Should Be

Adam Schweigert — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:34:42 -0000

Sure, just sent.

Re: 3 Ways Brands Are Using Pinterest And 5 Ways They Should Be

Peter Murphy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:28:34 -0000

Hi Adam, I run communications for the Commonwealth Games Federation
(www.thecgf.com) - we want to try out Pinterest with images from past
games. To get us off the waiting list, and as you're an existing user,
would you send me an invite?

Re: 3 Ways Brands Are Using Pinterest And 5 Ways They Should Be

Julie Carter — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:36:55 -0000

Benjamin Moore is on Pinterest
http://pinterest.com/benjam...