Feature: Spartans Thrive in Social Media
Many MSU alumni have emerged as players in the newly emerging social media, a phenomenon that is revolutionizing traditional notions of marketing, communication and social relationships.
You could say that Erik Qualman, ’94, a former MSU basketball player, had a long reach.
But his wingspan on the court doesn’t compare to his current reach as author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business (Wiley, 2009), a continuing best-seller on Amazon.com. Qualman’s book, blogs and lectures around the globe have thrust him into the limelight as an evangelist for social media; he boasts more than 31,395 followers on Twitter and more than 1.8 million views on YouTube, two of the most popular social media sites on the web.
Qualman is one of many MSU alumni who are making their presence felt in social media—a rapidly evolving world where you can download Cliff-style notes of Pride and Prejudice to your iPhone while reading an update about a relative who’s just had surgery at a hospital hundreds of miles away and, in mere seconds, let umpteen friends know the outcome of the operation as well as your review of Jane Austen.
One example of how rapidly things can evolve is TextsFromLastNight.com, a Web site created just 15 months ago by Lauren Leto and Ben Bator, two recent MSU graduates. The site is a repository of nocturnal activities as shared by friends via texting. Before you say, “Whoa, way too much information,” know that the site receives 5 million hits per day. Wikipedia calls it “a living document of twentysomething life."
To use another example, consider the word “hashtag.” Not that long ago, you might have thought it was a game played by people smoking cannabis. The term refers to an identification mark used by Twitterers—microbloggers on Twitter—to make their 140-character-limited blogs more easily findable by others. Twitter users who wish to find tweets related to MSU Alumni Association activities, for example, can search the hashtag “#msuaa.”
One alumnus who has learned to leverage the hashtag is Bob Fish, ’80, CEO and co-founder of Biggby Coffee, a fast-growing coffee franchise operation. On any given day, as #biggbybob, Fish might be tweeting about the glories of a coffee high, a butterscotch bear, the frogs on a Biggby Cup or something with just as much of a kick, or a consumer complaint about service at a Biggby outlet.
Fish says he was slow to adopt social media. But today he boasts 1,830 friends on Facebook and 3,724 followers on Twitter.
It’s not unusual for an alumnus of MSU’s The School of Hospitality Business to focus on customer service, but Biggby Bob views social media as an extension of the corporate culture that he has established at 125 franchise locations.
Across the globe, MSU graduates and students have pioneered the use of social media and its applications. They are leading the changes in how we learn about world events, events around the corner or even events in our own family. They are staking out clear voices in an emerging world that also brings new jobs and new business opportunities. They are reminiscent of the garage mechanics who were the forerunners of the automobile industry; today’s social media innovators are the new tinkerers of the 21st century.
Many social media startups, like the auto tinkerers, began in garages or out-of-the-way places. Take, for example, Texts From Last Night (TFLN), the social media platform where millions of young people share their activities. The world headquarters for this iconic site is the basement of Lauren’s parents’ home in suburban Detroit.
“It’s hard to explain what we do to those who aren’t Web savvy,” says Leto, who is delaying law school because of her site’s success. “If you don’t have a building with a big sign with your name on it you aren’t seen as a legitimate business.”
That is hardly the case with TFLN. Each day users post some 15,000 new texts, some of which appear in a book, Texts From Last Night (Gotham, 2010), the two entrepreneurs published earlier this year. (“Lowbrow and brilliant,” describes New York Magazine.) The company started with only $400 in capital; now it boasts 800,000 followers on Twitter, more than 200,000 fans on Facebook, and a best-selling phone app. It also sells custom T-shirts of popular texts. Leto reports that a television show based on their Web site is set to air this fall.
Leto, who graduated from MSU in 2008, began using social media in earnest in high school but remains unsure how it will evolved. “Social media has given me the ability to express myself in ways I couldn’t before,” she says, adding that she foresees a future where every business is connected to social media in some way. But she also predicts that social media could wane as some users back off for privacy reasons. That is why in TFLN, posters are identified by area code only.
Social media is not waning for Biggbybob, who on a recent day tweeted about a dentist visit while later in the day he was back extolling his love of coffee. “When I started my first store in 1995 it’s likely I would’ve served you coffee and had a conversation with you,” he explains. “Social media is a way to lean across the counter and talk with a customer.”
For Bob Fish, who has tweeted more than 10,680 times, social media also means listening to customers and reacting to their complaints. When one customer complained about service, Biggbybob stepped up to the virtual counter and in a public way retweeted the complaint while solving the customer’s problem.
“People like to have access to the company leadership, but you have to be true in your dialogue,” he says. “There has to be transparency in order to assure a company has a voice or persona.”
Speaking of “voice,” Taylor Benson, an MSU sophomore, has established a clear but quirky voice through her video blog (vlog) everydaybytay.wordpress.com. In what she calls “informational comedy,” Benson is just as likely to talk about the weather, her nose bleed, Sonic Burger or MSU’s recent Final Four appearance. She has followings on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in addition to Wordpress.
“Who knows, maybe this will be my job,” she muses. “It has been a huge impact for me personally.”
Many others have also staked out clear voices. For Nate Erickson, ’09, it means helping raise money for MSU Relay for Life. In honor of Tom Izzo’s sixth run to the Final Four last season, Erickson performed an acoustic version of the MSU Fight Song, which Spartans can download for $1 as a benefit to the relay. Erickson boasts some 3,000 followers on Twitter.
For MSU journalism alumna Rachel Wilkerson, ’08, her voice is a combination of humor and health. Wilkerson left Elle magazine in New York City after a year to become a social media entrepreneur. As a person who is into health and fitness (she recently finished her first marathon) it was natural for Rachel to launch a food and exercise blog at www.sheddingit.com.
As an undergraduate at MSU, Wilkerson gained considerable experience blogging as “Spartanette” for Spartanedge, a very edgy, online MSU publication. By the time she graduated, Wilkerson’s sometimes tart, daily stories of the life of a sorority girl had developed a loyal student following.
She says the more than 400 blogs she did as Spartanette helped her develop her own voice. “When it comes to blogging you have to be yourself and you need to be unafraid,” she says. “The most important thing is you have to have a point of view.”
For Wilkerson, new developments in social media have allowed her to elevate her “voice” to new levels. She recently added video and saw a huge uptick in visitors to her site. Twitter, for Wilkerson, was like a dream come true since she was able to adopt her experience as a stand-up comedian into 140 characters with ease.
“Twitter is like a punchline,” she says.
Wilkerson is busy launching new products, and working with an agent to shepherd a manuscript based on her Spartanette blog. You can bet it will be downloadable. The success of her blog has led to social media consulting and other blog assignments.
“I feel right now like I have a career that isn’t invented yet,” she says. “My voice is my niche.”
Derek Mehraban, ’96, also has found a niche for his company Ingenix Digital Marketing in Ann Arbor which designs social media platforms for corporations and small businesses. He also teaches in a special social media class, “The New Media Drivers License,” for MSU’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences. Richard Cole, chairperson of MSU’s Dept. of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing and founder of the course, says that students and professionals are handicapping themselves if they don’t have a deeper understanding of how social media is applied.
“The course is already getting traction,” Cole says, noting it has attracted more than 400 students and professionals. “Companies are trolling the course for employees.”
Mehraban says that companies have to join in the conversation of social media. “I worked with a lot of corporations that communicated one way and it became obvious they needed to change and engage,” he says. “The tools may change, Facebook and Twitter may go away, but the point is social media is not going away. Social media is a state of mind.”
Mehraban predicts a future where social media will be fueled with higher speeds of fiber to the home and mobile uses spawning a lot more instant communication. As an entrepreneur, he sees social media empowering students and providing them with skills that will give them a competitive advantage.
Kate Muth, ’99, information architect and interactive designer at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, fully embraces that social media state-of-mind. She draws the blueprints for new digital products, designs how they work and provides for the user experience on the sites. She lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, with her husband Tyler Spencer, the lead vocalist and primary songwriter for the Electric Six, a disco-punk band.
Muth says she is seeing more social media applications integrated into the products, but is careful to say that her views do not necessarily represent those of Martha Stewart Living Omnipedia. “Having our customers and readers participate with content is a big thing and every user has the opportunity to showcase their ideas,” she says.
Helping to focus the interest on social media among the MSU community, Erik Qualman, social media guru-wizard-shaman and media spokesperson, was on campus in April to talk with students, faculty and staff in an educational session organized by the MSU Alumni Association. Qualman’s bestselling book Socialnomics is one of the most sought after and talked about social media books.
In his remarks, Qualman gave a personal example of one his social media tenets: listening. He noted that Amazon allows anyone to post reviews about a book, good or bad. Qualman said he used one particularly bad review as a guide to make improvements and to update the paperback version of his book.
“You have to reach out to people who didn’t like the book,” he says. “Companies have to listen online and join the conversation. Great companies understand that negative feedback is a good thing.”
Qualman has posted a YouTube video called the “Social Media Revolution,” where he compares the growth of sites like Facebook and Twitter to the acceptance of television and radio. He points out that it took television 13 years to reach 50 million viewers, while it took Facebook just nine months to reach 100 million users.
His mantra is an amended version of James Carville’s political dictum: It’s a people-driven economy, stupid. Qualman notes the combined Facebook friends of Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres surpass the combined population of Ireland, Norway and Denmark, and that if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world.
One catchphrase Qualman uses is that “social media is nothing more than word of mouth on steroids—it’s world of mouth.” In fact, he cites research showing that increasing numbers of people are using social networks when making buying decisions. This is a trend business leaders cannot ignore, he says, citing the success of Jet Blue’s social media strategy. Jet Blue, notes Qualman, has gained 1.8 million Facebook fans versus about 60,000 each for other airlines.
“We no longer search for news,” says Qualman. “It finds us.” Lauren Leto would agree. She says she first heard of the Haiti earthquake on Twitter moments after it happened.
You can watch Qualman’s presentation on Ustream (visit msustream.com). Like much of social media, videos on the site are archived and available 24-7.
MSU Senior Tricia Bobeda, who juggles her studies with a job at the Lansing State Journal, represents the new generation of journalists who carry most everything they need to gather and report the news in a front pocket holding a 3G mobile device.
Bobeda, who considers herself a multimedia storyteller, says social media is now becoming part of a professional identity which makes her always conscious of public space. “There is less anonymity,” she says. “But it’s a good way to find interesting people.” Like many of today’s journalists and bloggers, Bobeda is constantly updating Twitter and Facebook while engaging in conversations with listeners and readers.
“(Social media) is still so new that anyone who claims to be an expert probably isn’t,” she says. “What’s relevant now may be different in three months. The beauty of the Internet is that there is so much free and democratic information. I certainly don’t know what’s next.”
Justin Sailor, ’06, might not have pulled off his plan to visit all 50 states after graduation from MSU were it not for the burgeoning social media, which he used to attract sponsors and find hosts who would let him crash on their couch. Now back in Lansing and doing social media consulting, Sailor, known online as Bugsby, has formed a breakfast club of techies in East Lansing. He also has a blog (yoopersteez.com) focusing on the culture of the Upper Peninsula, his “home state.”
Whether you call it brand, voice or casting, to many, the world is swirling with social media, and Rachel Wilkerson has this one piece of advice for undergraduates. It’s not “plastics,” as Benjamin was advised in 1967. It’s the modern equivalent—“get a blog.”
If you don’t know who Benjamin is, google “The Graduate.”
Author’s note:
Bill Castanier, ’73, writes the Michigan literary blog mittenlit.com and is co-founder of the community blogging site lansingonlinenews.com. He also consults with authors on using social media to promote their books.
