Reflections after Three Years of Being on Twitter

August 30, 2011

Three years ago today my Twitter handle @duanehallock was born.

First hearing of Twitter only four months earlier, I was proud to consider myself an early adopter of a new social media tool. Although I did not see the real value of microblogging, I welcomed the new opportunity and embraced the new media platform before any of my friends or immediate co-workers followed suit.

Three years hence, I have nearly 1,000 followers. While that’s not particularly impressive by Twitter standards, I am surprised that so many people have chosen to follow my erratic stream of tweets.

I’ll admit that, like many, I am still trying to figure out where Twitter is going. In an attempt to assess Twitter’s relevance in my ever-changing world, I came up with these two lists:

Five things I like about Twitter

  1. Brevity is paramount.  I once heard a great 15-minute sermon delivered in 45 minutes. I hope that speaker has since discovered Twitter and learned the sacred art of being succinct. I hate verbosity and think it’s a great discipline for someone to say something of value in 140 characters or less.
  2. Information flows in real time.  In recent days I’ve tracked others’ tweets to get real-time information on the devastation of Hurricane Irene. I’m writing this blog post while on disaster assignment for the American Red Cross. Ironically, I created my Twitter profile on this date three years ago on the same day I participated in a planning session for Hurricane Gustav.
  3. Hashtags and searches add value. At first, the Twitter stream can appear chaotic, random and cluttered. All that information can be filtered and organized, though, to make Twitter meaningful and relevant.
  4. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Duane Hallock

Two Years, 124 Posts and 10 Observations

August 18, 2011

Two years ago today I launched this blog. I began much like I did when I was a kid learning to ride a bike—having no particular destination in mind but somehow trusting that the ride itself would be the ultimate reward.

Now, two years into this journey, it’s time to take a moment and 1) celebrate the distance I’ve traveled, 2) recall the scenery I’ve enjoyed along the way and 3) reflect on life’s lessons learned.

Here are a few random thoughts and observations about my blogging journey:

  1. This is actually fun. I enjoy writing and I like being a blogger. I give myself enough editorial freedom to have fun, and I’ve never seriously considered monetizing this effort, though some bloggers make good money from their writing.
  2. This is also hard work. Like riding a bike, the fun comes only with the exertion of energy. I’ve mentored several wanna-be bloggers who started and then, for a variety of reasons, never continued. Maintaining a blog for two years is a worthy accomplishment.
  3. I blog best when I follow my own rules. I’ve read countless blogs and books about blogging. They all contain rules I’ve mostly chosen to ignore. For example, they say that success comes with frequency of postings. Well, I decided long ago to publish only when I had something to say and I refuse to be bound by an arbitrary, self-imposed quota. Last year, for example, I let several guilt-free weeks slide by without posting. Read the rest of this entry »

7 Comments | Life in General, Marketing & Strategy, Social Media Strategy | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Duane Hallock

Marketing OR Communications? If You Had to Choose, Which Would You Pick?

August 8, 2011

For years I have been amused when a nonprofit organization would label one of its key departments “Marketing AND Communications.” To me, that always seemed redundant. After all, you never hear a CFO claim responsibility for the Department of Finance, Accounting and Accounts Payable.

A university president once talked with me about leading his marketing and communications team. When I asked if he would consider shortening the title for simplicity, he emphatically declined. For that and other reasons, neither of us seriously considered forming a working partnership.

Later, when I taught marketing at another university, I spent considerable time talking about the relationship between marketing and communications. I never believed the two terms were synonymous or interchangeable, and I drilled into my students the concept that communications comes at the end of the marketing process.

Five years ago I left my position as Vice President of Marketing at United Way. Although communications was part of my portfolio, it always grated on me when my CEO referred to my department as “marketing and communications.” Although I appreciated his thorough description of my team’s role, I also thought he was being unnecessarily redundant.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Duane Hallock