I’m sitting here this morning waiting for the New Media Atlanta conference to start — it looks like it’s going to be absolutely fabulous.

Earlier, I had the pleasure of chatting with Desiree Scales, who is the CEO of Bella Web Design, an Atlanta-based web design and social media firm.

Desiree was the first one to point out to me that you can’t do social media in 30 minutes a day. That all seems so obvious right now, but she was the first person I knew to draw attention to the fact that social media is about having an ongoing conversation with your customers and prospects. An ongoing conversation can’t happen over a morning cup of coffee — it has to take place in little bursts throughout the day.

No sooner had I thanked Desiree for providing me that insight than she thanked me for pointing out a framework for thinking about social media. “You were the first person to point out to me that Facebook is like a pub and LinkedIn is like a trade show,” she said.

This insight came from a speech I gave in San Francisco about 9 months ago. While working up the slides, it hit me that the problem with social media is that, for some people, it’s relatively new. Given its newness, people don’t know how to think about it — they need to put it into a framework so they can understand it and wrap their minds around it.

So I developed a neat little way to frame various social media tools. It put Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace into categories that seemed to resonate with people.

Here they are again, in case you missed them when we talked about them a few months ago.

The 60 Second Marketer Social Media Framework:

Facebook is like a Pub — an informal place to talk casually with people and get to know people on a more personal 
basis. It’s okay to tell a joke in a pub. You can also talk about what you did over the weekend.

LinkedIn is like a Trade Show — a slightly more formal place to meet other business professionals and connect with them primarily for business purposes. You don’t tell dirty jokes at a Trade Show. Nor would you do that on LinkedIn.

Twitter is like a Cocktail Party — an energetic place where there are many conversations going on at once. If you like the conversation going on in one group, you might share the information with people in the next conversation you have.

YouTube is like Times Square on New Year’s Eve — a place where it’s hard to break through, but if you do, millions of people will see you.

MySpace is like Woodstock — wild, crazy and perfect for the younger generation or cause-oriented marketing.

I’m told that people have really gravitated to this framework — apparently, it helps people wrap their minds around social media. For that, I’m very, very grateful.

If you’d like to download this and other good information about social media, visit 60SecondMarketer.com/pdf where you’ll be able to download a presentation called “How to Set Up, Run and Manage a Social Media Campaign.” It’s packed with good information on social media and how to use it for your business.

Enjoy!

Friday, September 25th, 2009, 10:14 am   |   Social Media  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback