I want to yell at you about social media. I want to say things like, “Have you played your ukulele with an astronaut? No? Well, shut up then.”
That’s not very polite, is it, and there’s no reason for you to listen to me if I talk to you like that, none at all. But it’s what I want to say to so many people who are strategizing and programming and scheduling interactions that are, at their heart, meant to be social. I want to say, “Look. Social media is social. That’s how it works best.” Some will tell me I’m wrong, that I’m not optimizing my reach or some other jargon, perhaps they will show me some statistics that indicate wild success in numbers that are, well, numbers.
Whatever. I would like to tell you a story.
- I started following Commander Hadfield on social media. When he released “Is Somebody Singing” with Ed Robertson from the Bare Naked Ladies, I sort of imploded and posted to social media about my massive space crush.
- The editor for AOL/Skye — Jim Benning (who I know from writing for World Hum) — called me and asked if I’d be interested in sharing my — uh — enthusiasm by writing a series of letters to Commander Hadfield. Of course I said yes and we did a series of six letters, published here.
- One morning, I woke up to an email from Jim saying, “You might want to check your Twitter feed.” Commander Hadfield had responded. My feed — and my inbox — were crazy for weeks with email from friends and strangers alike, genuinely excited on my behalf.
- Fast forward. Commander Hadfield releases his book. Right about the time the publicity is hitting, I walk into the Book Passage store in Marin County to teach a workshop with Jim, yep, that aforementioned editor. As I’m walking in, Karen, the woman who books the events, says, “Guess who we just booked! You need to come back.” Over the course of the conference, Karen moved from “You need to come back” to “You’re going to do the interview.” Of course I said yes. And I packed my ukulele.
- There’s a guitar in the office at Book Passage. I tried to tune it because what I wanted, more than anything, was to play music with Commander Hadfield. I broke a string when I wound it too tight. I was bummed. The one thing I really wanted to do was play music with Commander Hadfield, but I thought, well, I’m still here, this is still happening.
- Commander Hadfield appeared, with his publicist and his lovely wife Helene. We started talking about music, and I mentioned how much I had hoped we could play together, but I’d snapped a string. “Oh, I have my guitar in the car,” he said.
- We did the interview for a standing room only house. In my prepared questions, I had one about music. And Commander Hadfield told us the story of his first guitar and how healthy it is for space travelers to have music in their lives, I said, “That seems like a good segue. Commander Hadfield has said he’ll play for us. He gave me a pick, but it doesn’t float, I think it’s broken.”
- And then, I got to play Rocket Man with the man one audience member called “The Best Astronaut Ever.”
I was delighted when one of the questions that came from the audience was about social media — it was on my list, but I didn’t have time to get to it. Commander Hadfield (“Just call me Chris”) said, “Social media is social. You let people know you’re doing cool things that you’re excited about, and you invite them to join you.” It was nice to hear a guy who’s become nothing short of a social media phenomenon, an actual rock star from space, take the stance that social media should be organic. (Skip to 42.24 in the video for Commander Hadfield on social media.)
I can’t tell you what the ROI is on getting to play Rocket Man with a rocket man, I can’t tell you what that’s worth. I can’t give you engagement metrics or monitization strategies. After I interviewed Commander Hadfield, an editor friend of mine asked me this: “If someone had told you a year ago that you’d be playing music with an astronaut in a packed room, what would you have said?”
“I’m gonna go with “No.””
It’s possible to see, in retrospect, the way the dots connected to make this happen. But there was also a tremendous amount of serendipity, and of social media just being social. The way I like it.
There’s a great interview by Jim Benning with Chris Hadfield here and in it, he talks about how he thinks Rocket Man isn’t really about space. When I first read this, my heart dipped a little, I thought, “Oh, he doesn’t love that song like I do.”
But two things. One, read the book because there’s a bit in there about this tune. And two, when you hear this amazing astronaut talk about there being nothing between you and the endlessness of space, well… Rocket Man is really a great song. Plus, as one of my friends said in an email to me after seeing the video, “I JUST CAN’T EVEN….”
A few days after I got back from California, bits of a small aircraft fell out of the sky on to my house. No one was hurt, but it was newsworthy and two camera crews came to talk with us. I opened the door to see the second crew in their Channel 4 jackets. Still in my jammies at noon (as one does) I said, “Oh, you’re here to ask about the space junk, aren’t you? Please keep the jammies out of the shot.”
“Yeah, but since you said space junk, have you heard of that Canadian astronaut? He was in our studio yesterday.”
I just started to laugh.
Pam,
I loved this post. You articulated my exact feelings about social media and how the best part of is about, well, being social.
I don’t have a gazillion followers on Twitter. That’s okay. Same for my two blogs. Staggering amounts of followers isn’t why I do any of it. But this is what I love about it:
ONE: You and I know each other through social media and that’s cool. You don’t follow me, but that doesn’t keep me up at night. I know you know how to reach me if you ever needed to get, say, bird advice. And I know how to reach you and I love what you put out there. How else would we have connected? Yeah, at TBEX maybe, but that was fleeting. But through social media I think you know who I am and I have sort of a good picture of you. Done.
TWO: I one time lamented in a tweet about a ginormous field guide of the Birds of Ecuador that had just arrived in the mail and some famous birder, @BirdChick saw my hashtag on birding and sent me a tweet back with advice on a really cool and gorgeous Birds of Ecuador iPad app. THAT’S WHY I LOVE TWITTER!
THREE: There are some über cool mavens out there, like Ms. Marilyn Terrell (@Marilyn_Res) at NatGeo Traveler who I love to follow. I’m a bit mavenish myself and so social media has satisfied my appetite to share and I’m glad to have so many great examples like Marilyn out there.
FOUR: I’m one-by-one converting people who never saw themselves as birders to the world of birding. Take for instance, @_nctaylor (formerly @nearafar) who has ventured off to Costa Rica at this moment and via Twitter and Instagram is asking me to give her a list of birds to find.
I once heard someone say, “Facebook is for people you know and Twitter is for people you should know.” I totally agree with that.
Sure, my stats creep along, but who cares? Numbers don’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Interactions and engagements with people do.
Great post and a refreshing perspective. True power through social only happens when it’s organic and authentic.
That is exactly what it is – serendipity, which is our motto when we travel. Things happen, who knows why but sometimes they are really very good like your ‘rocket man experience’ (I have to say it, “you go girlfriend!, now thats done, but see how things happen. Through twitter, and like the previous commenter, I am new to this ‘scene’ but i already have met a lovely man in England who is trying to baby me along, a lady in Switzerland who we will have coffee with next year, and a family who will be skiing in Nozawa Onsen when we are there next year too. So thats all nice … but, I am trying to make a name for myself and this is like pulling teeth.i like the interactions but until I have street cred, ‘significant’ people don’t take notice of you. Ergo no sponsored reviews etc, So as you no doubt know this is hard, albeit very enjoyable work. I wonder who you should ‘meet’ next? Take care, Paula
“i like the interactions but until I have street cred, ‘significant’ people don’t take notice of you. Ergo no sponsored reviews etc, So as you no doubt know this is hard, albeit very enjoyable work.”
I don’t do sponsored reviews, plus they’re paid media, which is exactly the opposite of organic media. They indicate the ability to sell, they don’t indicate any kind of cred. YMMV.
Understand, this is a very very very long game. I’ve known that editor for (ack, can this be true) over ten years now. I’ve taught at the conference for three years in a row. This particular connection took about six months to make, and required a staggering amount of good luck.
I disagree that it’s hard work — while it can be tiring, it’s fun to go places, take pictures, write things down, and share about how that happened. Marine welding is hard work. Roofing. Working as a developer in a high pressure software company. That’s hard work. Writing a blog? Meh. Now, making money at it while maintaining strict editorial integrity, that’s challenging, and getting recognition (though I would ask this: Why do you need recognition?) is challenging too.
You can apply a strategy and it is possible that good things will come of that. It may accelerate your game. But if you’re not, at the heart of it, making and sharing work you love, it will always be like pulling teeth.
I read this book by an astronaut where he talks about how as much as he always wanted to go to space, he engineered his path so at any point, should he have to stop, he would consider himself a success. If he’d NEVER made it to space, he’d have thought that was good enough — no, not just good enough, but actually pretty freaking great. It’s solid advice as you eye the molars. Plus, you need your teeth for chewing.
Thank you for your constructive criticism, which I will take on board. I love to travel and to share the sights, sounds and smells of where I visit. That is is what I love and that the easy part. The ‘hard work’ that i was referring to is this back end stuff that until this year I kew nothing about. Like building a website, google analytics, back links, guest posts, and for that matter twitter and Facebook, that is the why i put the dental reference. As I said it is a steep learning curve, but I love it. I like to be challenged and this is challenging, it is left field for me but that is again a good thing. Never too old to learn, make mistakes and continue growing. PS, am going to the dentist tomorrow – seriously for an extraction. Karma!
I’ve got dental work on deck too, so solidarity.
And I’m serious about the “Why?”
I’ve spent no time actively building backlinks, working on my SEO, I just don’t do that stuff. I’m on Twitter because for me, it’s FUN.
We hear all this noise about what we “have” to do, but we don’t “have” to do any of it — that’s entirely determined by our goals. And if your goals are audacious — and I’d argue that they should be — following a well trod path is like to land you in someone else’s front yard. Plus, if we’re doing it because we “have” to, well, better to just get paid to do it for the man, at least that way, we’re putting money in our pockets.
But it’s so not how I roll. I write about things I really like when I feel like writing about them. Dooce did not set out to become an internet phenom, she just told her story. That makes more sense as a strategy than anything I’ve heard because it’s sustainable, it’s honest, and it doesn’t rely on the whimsy of external forces like the Googlemonster.
None of it is — yeah, I went there — rocket science.
Gosh, my heart grew three sizes while reading this – what a lovely post and story. And you make a great point about emphasis-on-the-social media.
I have no words… this is a great story and I’m watching the interview video now…I’m entranced. He “decided” to be an astronaut when he was nine. You asked great questions and I’m loving this! Thanks for your insight and sense of humor. 🙂