To understand the needs of social media, it’s important to understand the social media platforms used by our families, friends, clients and customers. Like the highway system, social media platforms are different roads that take you different places. It’s good to know who you’re traveling with and what you’ll be doing once you arrive at your destination.

When we looked at social media use at Go East and the platforms preferred by our colleagues, we discovered some interesting things: More than half of us use five social media platforms. A quarter of us use at least seven. We lean toward using the most popular platforms to find each other and stay connected to our industry, clients, family and friends. Year after year, our adoption of social media is in alignment with similar demographics and adoption is higher among iPhone users. In fact, there’s not a BlackBerry in sight.

While everyone at Go East uses Yammer for our internal microblogging platform (How else would we know where to go for lunch?), slightly more than half of us use Twitter as an external microblogging network.

Work and personal life find their way to social media. Ninety-four percent of us are on Facebook (it’s good to know what we’re all doing the few hours we’re not together at the office). LinkedIn has 79 percent of our work histories listed in case we forget what we did before joining Go East. Mobile apps like Instagram and location-based apps such as Foursquare and Yelp are used by a core group of iPhone users. Posting to Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr is clearly popular, and we’ve started our own YouTube channel. This is the mashup of our lives: friend and follower, colleague and buddy, online and offline converge. Social media makes the boundaries less opaque.

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I am currently engaged in a battle on Foursquare for the mayorship of the Chef Shack at Kingfield Market in Minneapolis.

Hotly contested Foursquare mayorships are indicative of success in social media and prowess in the digital space. Chef Shack, the Twin Cities premier street food vendor, has successfully used multiple social spaces like Foursquare to engage their  fans, gain new followers who become new customers and develop buzz for their brand. I’m sure they are following the Foursquare battle with glee.

On the street and in the social space

Street food is hot right now. It is an exciting trend that is creative, local and entrepreneurial and leverages strong brand personality and excellent food. Street food is made for social media and vice versa. Chefs promote today’s specials on Twitter. Seasonal local ingredients are promoted and used to expand local palates. Trending scenes are noted at check-in and lure others to stop by. User reviews rule.

Carrie Summer and Lisa Carlson are talented chefs with deep experience in the Twin Cities restaurant scene. Their food is amazing and they have a great understanding of what is needed to build a brand and engage users when you don’t have a bricks-and-mortar location. Because their business is mobile, their customers follow them on Twitter to learn if tongue tacos are on the menu and friend them on Facebook to find out if they will be parked at SurlyFest. Fans post imagery of their favorite dishes on Flickr and the local media sources photos there. Chef Shack integrates social media into its operations and hence, connects directly with its customers.

My first social media engagement with the Chef Shack was my review on Yelp. Yelp is a very popular review site that builds community and has a strong social media presence. Carrie contacted me after my review was selected for “Review of the Day” and I began interacting with them on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Flickr (and at the truck). The ability for a chef to communicate directly with customers and turn them into fans is one of social media’s most important features. When a chef responds to a Tweet or posts photos of fans on Facebook, it builds strong connections and develops loyalty.

Chef Shack is also outstanding at using social media to invite their customers to act on their behalf, help build their brand, grow their business and even change legislation. Last spring, when Minneapolis was considering changing ordinances to allow street food vendors on public streets, Carrie and Lisa were in India researching the street food scene. Obviously, they could not be at the public hearings on the ordinances so they invited their fans, via Facebook and Twitter, to attend and lobby on their behalf. The hearing ended up being standing room only and a third of the speakers mentioned Chef Shack. The legislation was eventually passed and Mayor Ryback was an early customer of Chef Shack’s downtown lunch location.

Using social media to build a brand requires a deep understanding of trend, marketing and branding and Chef Shack’s ability to leverage the unique interactions of social media to listen and engage their fans is noteworthy. This month, they invited their fans to vote for them in the Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race contest to compete in season two of the series. We’ll learn soon if they successfully used social media this season to make them darlings of traditional media next season.

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What would an ad for Facebook look like if it was created in the 1950s? Moma, a Sao Paulo ad agency, took a stab at creating four fake vintage ads called, “The Everything Ages Fast” ad campaign. Love them and I want to see more! Maybe iPhone and Netflix?

Thanks Unplggd for the images.

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What if the Easter Bunny were on Twitter? This might be his tweet feed:

TwitterBunny It’s closing in on midnight. A stop at Walgreens for those prefab, shrink-wrapped beauties, a delivery at Go East and I’m done!
11:47 PM April 11 from TwitterFon

TwitterBunnyThe Easter Bunny is not an ATM. Discuss.
11:35 PM April 11 from TwitterFon 

TwitterBunnyTraditionalists :heart: plastic eggs – it’s ironic/chic, right?
10:29 PM April 11 from TwitterFon 

TwitterBunnyIs it me or is the toy-to-candy ratio CRAZY?! I can’t even lift a flat screen, let alone find a basket it fits in.
9:44 PM April 11 from TwitterFon

TwitterBunnyTwitter went down today … I got a lot done. Sadly, I still don’t know what Ashton Kutcher had for lunch.
5:36 PM April 11 from the web

TwitterBunnyAgave candy is so hard 2 find. Harshing my mellow. Buy more Peeps!
7:11 PM April 10 from the web 

TwitterBunnyI’m tired. Where R my @!#-ing elves?!
7:10 PM April 10 from the web 

TwitterBunnyCashed in my clunker – Woot! w/that & product placement $ (buy Peeps!) I’ll get a sweet ride!
10:02 AM April 10 from TwitterFon

TwitterBunnyBrown eggs don’t take dye?! @#$!!
4:24 PM April 9 from the web 

TwitterBunny38 splinters and counting.
3:00 PM April 9 from the web 

TwitterBunnyBeen reading Michael Pollan — going all out this year. Cage-free eggs, organic agave candy & handmade baskets!
10:21 PM April 8 from the web

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Springwise posted about a company in Australia, StickyTwits.com,  that will print stickers with one’s Twitter URL on them. This is my new favorite guerrilla marketing technique. I want some so I can just stick them on all my friends’ iPhones. Or on all invoices. Or any other paper products. StickyTwits are strangely annoying yet enticing, just like Twitter. 

Image courtesy of StickyTwits.com

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Think Twitter is just for Teens and Socialites? Think again. Next time you visit your doctor, ask them if they’re twittering — during a procedure! Doctors at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital are using Twitter as a way to teach and to allow colleagues to observe operations as they are happening. This article from CNN tells the story of this cool and unexpected use of new technology.

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When looking to leverage mobile messaging services and microblogging platforms such as Twitter, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul media serves up some examples worth checking out:

Twitter feeds from Fox 9 News and the Star Tribune are fully automatic streams of almost every news story they publish. I personally don’t think most people want that kind of a stream in Twitter, but it works for some. WCCO posts breaking news stories on Twitter almost exclusively, which is similar to CNN’s Twitter feed. Minnesota Independent, The UpTake and MinnPost post to their own stories, but also maintain a news dialog with others. The Saint Paul Pioneer Press’ feed is very conversational.

There are Twitter accounts for individual reporters, journalists and other media professionals as well. The advantage for the news consumer is being able to listen to what reporters are talking about before it’s reported, but the disadvantage is hearing everything else they may be doing or talking about that’s unrelated to the news. MinnPost’s David Brauer, Minnesota Independent’s Paul Schmelzer, Pioneer Press’ Julio Ojeda-Zapata, WCCO’s Jason DeRusha and MPR’s Bob Collins frequently converse about news as it happens and before their respective organizations publish about it. MPR has a number of Twitter users including Tim Post, Julia Schrenkler, Tom Scheck and Michael Caputo. WCCO’s Terri Gruca will sometimes poll Twitter for help on stories and American Public Media’s Jon Gordon uses Twitter to ask his followers for help on “Future Tense” segments.

The media’s Twitter use runs the gamut from straight news feeds to news conversation to stalking journalists, so it isn’t easy to figure out what’s the most effective to implement Twitter for your business or organization.

Do you want to communicate with a straight feed of your press releases or do you want to engage people with conversation? Do you want to respond to people that Twitter about you or do you think subscribers will be bothered by conversations involving your organization on their mobile phones? Does it make sense to have an individual representing you or an account named after your business?

Point being, figuring out if using Twitter is right for your business or organization isn’t as simple as signing up for an account and using it, it’s finding the right Twitter “voice” and usage that augments your brand. Either way, you’re no one if you’re not on Twitter:

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I never thought I would be a Twitter advocate, but in recent weeks I have become a true fan. The bare bones essence of tweets keeps me tapped in just enough to know when and where Gustav was hitting land or which vice presidential candidates was just announced, without having to slog through my normal channels of info. Since I was especially interested in the protests that happened in Saint Paul during the RNC, I followed most of the action in realtime on Twitter. It was the perfect feed of updates and links to make me feel like I was actually in the middle of the action. The raw energy was exciting. And when it was over, so were the tweets. 

Interestingly enough, it seems that big biz feels the same way. Business Week’s recent article, “How Companies Use Twitter” shows how effective a 140-character press release can be.

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