Andrew Burnett Interview – Social Media

At North South Media we have been popping in and out of various search marketing niches to arm, not only ourselves, but also our readership, with a far better understanding on how the various fragments function. Our latest offering is Social Media and for this interview we got together with one of Scotland’s best and highly vocal social profiles online today : Andrew Burnett. We thoroughly enjoyed our talk and hope you do as well, here’s how it went …

Me : Andrew, myself, and an abundant users of Twitter, Digg et al. Feel we know you well – but for those that are just tuning in for the first time ever to Andrew Burnett, care to fill them in ?

Andrew : Well, if that’s not a tough question to start with! I’m active on most of the bigger social media sites. Wherever possible my username is andrewburnett, but where that is already taken I can be found under the guise of emecks (a throwback from my days at Macromedia – emecks being inspired by MX). For me social media has two great benefits, meeting great people and finding great links. I do my best to look at any link I am sent and will vote on any of them that inform, amuse or entertain me. There are a wide variety of links that interest me, from typographic through wordpress to environmental issues.

Me : Ok, this interview is about social media, and there is sooo much to talk about, but im going to start with Digg, its new toolbar, and the monopilisation of its front page.

• Having quickly used the toolbar, I like it, but I know its not a good thing on the whole, can you expand on this?
• And also how do Digg, release their front page from the iron grip it finds itself within or can’t/won’t they?

Andrew : I think you mean the new diggbar (as opposed to the Firefox plugin diggtoolbar). In general I am not a fan of the current resurgence of iframes, it’s the reason I stopped using hootsuite for twitter. That said I actually find some benefits in the diggbar – the number of page views are there for all to see, favourite, facebook, tweet, email and shout options are all there directly on the page.

I’m not sure that I agree about the digg front page being monopolised. There certainly are a number of sites which seem to always be there, but these sites are pumping out great content. Once a site has had a number of digg front pages diggers will subscribe to its RSS feed to be the first to digg its latest content. Some see this as a vicious circle, I prefer to look at it as confirmation that great content is the holy-grail for all websites!

Me : Looking around the social media sphere it seems the full environment is pitted with changes, now I don’t mind change, as long as its for good, hence my sucking-of-breath noises over the diggbar. But one place I used to love hanging out at was StumbleUpon (SU), now I barely give it a fleeting glance. Do you feel that SU has taken a turn for the worse via its changes?

Andrew : Embracing change is a necessity in all internet disciplines, but possibly more so in social media than anywhere else. StumbleUpon’s recent changes initially frustrated me as I found my email inbox filling up with shares (SU now allows you to share stumbles with all of your friends in one click). Once I found out how to disable the email notifications I actually really like the feature, I rarely share things via StumbleUpon but when I do it is usually something that I think is great for all my friends so being able to reach all of them so easily makes for a much nicer experience! On a side note I have met some of my best social media buddies through StumbleUpon’s share bar, after say 10 or 20 messages there we’ve shared Skype names and actually talked to each other.

Me : What’s your honest thoughts on Facebook, LinkedIn & Plurk ?

Andrew : They are all very different services, all useful for different things. Personally I use Facebook to get back in touch with people I’ve lost contact with over the years (leaving Scotland for Switzerland and then the same in reverse has that effect). Also I’ve got all of my twitter updates spamming Facebook in the vain hope that my Facebook friends will start to tweet. LinkedIn is one that I’m more passive on, it seems most people I know ask me to join their LinkedIn networks. I’ve never had any interaction on the site though and to be honest don’t see benefit in it for myself, though I know many people who have had great successes using it.

Plurk deserves a mention from me all of its own. Plurk was the first microblogging site that I got totally addicted to, it was the site that underlined what social media is to me. It has its flaws and despite very rarely visiting it anymore it will always have a special place in my browser.

Me : Twitter! Where do we start. Now, we know its not a fad, but we also know it takes 2 or 3 attempts to actually get it. We’ll I suppose the first thing to ask is how would you improve the service? Secondly, should all businesses have a Twitter account? Thirdly, I know you use Twitter as a platform to go out and network with people face-to-face (more power to you, I say) however, would you not prefer spending your Twitter time blogging more than retweeting someone else’s work?

Andrew : The only thing I would change about twitter is to make the service more solid, ie. to ensure the “failwhale” appears monthly as opposed to daily. It is a truly phenomenal service with really very little need for improvement. Should all businesses be on Twitter? Not all businesses should be, but there are very few who definitely shouldn’t – many who think they don’t need to could benefit from it. Zappos is an exceptional example – if a shoe company can benefit from being on twitter anyone can, it’s all about how you do it.

The blogging point you bring up is an interesting one, from my perspective twitter has brought enormous benefit to those who publish great posts on their blogs. People tweet about great blog posts and raise the visibility of them, others create great blog posts – both parts are essential for success. So I suppose my personal take on it is let the bloggers write ever better posts and let the twitterers expose those posts to ever increasing numbers of twitterers. That way everyone benefits!

Me : There has been a massive upsurge in Social Media experts and Gurus recently. Now, I know that labelling yourself as an expert etc… is something you don’t participate in. What is it you feel that a person wanting to break into social media should bring to the table i.e. what netiquette should a social media participant strive for?

Andrew : One of the biggest (and best) lessons I’ve learned is to avoid conflict. Social media is simply not an arena for one-upmanship, it is much rather an opportunity to find and interact with peers. That may sound very vague but it is ultimately just an extension of offline reality. There are people whose opinions you respect just as there are people who respect your opinion. The important word here is respect. The one great advantage that social media offers over the offline world is that you can find many people whose opinion and knowledge you respect and can simply ignore those who you don’t respect.

Me : What other benefits are there of being involved with social media that people may not have considered?

Andrew : Free beer! Seriously though, free beer. Consider this mini case study: I got sent 12 bottles of beer to sample before it got launched to the public, obviously the hope was that I would like it and say good things about it. The beer was exceptionally good and I did indeed tell a lot of people about it. As I had 12 bottles I tweeted that people were welcome to come to my house and pick up a couple of bottles, through which I met a great local guy who in turn invited me to his business launch the next evening. The knock on effect of doing something genuinely good is amazing!

That only worked because the beer was great though. Had it been mediocre or bad I’d not have said a peep and would have left it at the next party I got invited to. Honesty and transparency are two massive benefits of social media. This is why advertising a poor product or service on social media is doomed to failure and ridicule, and quite rightly so.

Me : Finally, Andrew, where do you see social media in a few years time?

Andrew : My own hopes are quite utopian, I would love to see social media making the world smaller and generating more respect for each and every individual in the world. I would love to see a reduction in conflict as we embrace what makes us similar and as we reach out to our brothers and sisters across the globe. That is what I personally hope for and I truly believe we have only just scratched the surface of social media’s potential.

Recent events on twitter with every celebrity and their dog feeling the need to collect a million followers disappoints me in the extreme – this has nothing to do with being social. Collecting any arbitrary number of followers by definition ignores the value that the individual has and that is what makes social media social.

Cheers Andrew for your time towards this interview. I know you have been busy as of late getting Design Build Promote off the ground. If anybody wants to connect with Andrew you can follow him on Twitter @andrewburnett and be prepared for a highly insightful experience.