The ‘Most Social City In The World’ Award Goes To…Cincinnati!

07 Jul 2011, Posted by Samantha in technology, 1 Comments

I got to sit down with Mashable’s contest winner and social media guru, Blair Ward, to talk about how he brought home the bacon for Cincinnati.

For those not actively engaged in reading and/or following Mashable.com (you should start!), it is a leading source of all news pertaining to social and digital media, web culture, and technology. In honor of  Mashable’s Social Media Day, a day where cities around the world celebrated their enthusiasm for social media, Mashable recently held a contest with one question: Which city is the most social city in the world?

And ever so deservingly, Blair Ward, a Cincinnati dweller, fellow Bucknellian, and friend of yours truly, submitted a fantastic video showcasing Cinci’s social media savvy and, in doing so, snagged himself (and his city) the winning title! Luckily for me, he agreed to sit down with me to chat about the contest and his thoughts on where social media is, and where it’s definitely going.

S: So this obviously isn’t your first rodeo. When did social media become a part of your life, and how has it evolved since then?

B: I started using social media somewhere around 2004.  I remember I joined Facebook back when there was still a separate site for high school students (hs.facebook.com). So that was in 2004 and now it’s 2011. I mean, I guess 7 years of experience will make you pretty good at anything.  Since I started, I have always really enjoyed social media and everything it had to offer.  Through lots of playing, exploring, and self-teaching I’ve learned so much. It’s also kind of the nature of the beast; social media’s dynamism kind of promotes a lasting and evolving interest, and that’s what’s kept me current and up to date on every new service as it comes about.

S: What made you enter the Mashable competition?

B: I read Mashable on a daily basis – it’s a fantastic resource on the subject of technology and social media.  When I first saw the article calling for submissions, it didn’t immediately strike me to enter.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much Cincinnati had to offer in the area of social media.  I’ve had some experience in the past creating some interesting projects using Apple’s iMovie, and thought it’d be a fun idea to make a short clip for Mashable and the rest of the country to represent Cincinnati. It was more for fun. I never thought my video would end up as publicized as it was, which was a big surprise but obviously very exciting.

S: Obviously Cinci and social media have become very intertwined. Has social media, in a way, helped to give Cincinnati a brand/identity, even prior to the contest? Where do you see some evidence of this?

B: Cincinnati is definitely not known for being a front runner in this area – it’s a pretty common joke that Cincinnati is “behind the times.”  That’s why it’s so nice to see the city receive some well-deserved recognition for the effort that its people are putting into the area of social media.  One of the biggest areas by which Cincinnati is represented in this way is with its public figures, the most well-known example being Chad Ochocinco, wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals.  Chad has done an amazing job at marketing himself as a personal brand.  Between his loud, in your face attitude, creation of, and appearance in, multiple reality television shows and obvious skill on the football field, Ochocinco has become a relatively household name.  One of the biggest ways Chad has influenced his branding is through his use of Twitter.  With over 2.2 million people reading his almost 29,000 tweets, he has become one of the biggest names in social media and has definitely helped put Cincinnati on the map.

S: On a larger scope, how do you think cities and social media are connected? Can one exist successfully without the other anymore?

B: I’ve always agreed with the notion that “you’re most alone in the cities with the highest population.”  Nowhere is there more anonymity than in a place like New York City.  However, what I think is amazing about social media is that it’s starting to change that, in two distinct ways.  First, it is connecting the individual with the city itself.  With a smartphone in your hand, you’re no longer just a single dot in the middle of a city with the whole world flying past you – you have access to the inside information of everyone else around you.  Reviews, recommendations, tips & tricks, check-ins, photos, specials and deals all in the palm of your hand and continually updating, give anyone the power to be completely in the know no matter who they are, or how much they know.

Secondly, it is connecting individuals to each other.  From sharing content like photos and videos with friends you’ve had forever all the way to meeting completely new people through common interests and ideas, social media is bringing people together and starting to really break through that wall of close proximity anonymity.  Nightlife and entertainment, public opinion, and sub communities of all kinds flourish using social media.  It’s bringing new people together and making friends even closer.

So, can a city exist without social media? I mean, sure. But it won’t thrive to its full potential. And with so many cities embracing technology and using it in every way possible to further the goals and aspirations of their community, any city not fully implementing social media will soon be left behind.

S: Can the same be said for businesses? For a social life? In other words, has social media shifted from an opportunistic tool to a necessary tool in these realms?

B: I saw a statistic the other day that over 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook.  The same medium described a small business owner that used social media to grow his business over 400% in just a few years.  I don’t believe the use of social media in business promotion has quite reached the point of absolutely necessary.  But the availability, ease and outstandingly high return on investment are impossible to ignore.

As for social life, I certainly wouldn’t say that it is necessary, especially within older generations who didn’t grow up and form their social life using social media.  However I would definitely say, in my experience, that within the demographic of 18-30 year olds, especially those who are in college, not having a Facebook account would be seen as very strange.

More and more often, as well, using social media (or at least having active accounts) makes it easier to participate in other online publications.  For instance, in order to register or sign up for certain sites, they allow (and some even require that) you “Connect through Facebook” or “Connect through Twitter” – essentially using your social media persona and information as the starting point of creating an account with their service.  Others, like Mashable for instance, require individuals to connect their Facebook accounts in order to leave comments on articles or posts – thereby eliminating the usually-anonymous comments and cutting down on people “trolling” by putting a name and face to their words.

S: We talked before about Cincinnati and even Chad Ochocinco as their own “brands,” and how social media has helped to define their identities. Have you seen any other evidence of social media bolstering brand identity?

B: Brands entering the arena of social media is one of the biggest new sectors of the market.  In fact, Facebook fairly recently did a complete overhaul of their “Pages” function (the service for companies, brands and celebrities that are formatted differently than normal user profiles) to give those users more complete control and feedback on their brand.  Companies are embracing these changes full force, using the available functions to make their brand more interactive and engaging to their audience.  Social media is also a great way to make people feel more in tune with a brand by showing that there is a human behind the name.  Messages on Facebook and Twitter from brands and companies that seem like they were written by a person rather than an automated computer are more welcoming and engaging to the user.  Facebook also provides detailed analytics to the brands using these pages to allow them to evaluate exactly who their message is being seen by and how those people are seeing it.  The relationship between brand and consumer has developed into a completely two-way street.  Instead of mere advertisements being thrown in the face of the consumer at every possible time, brands are engaging the consumer, interacting with them, and using the consumer to promote themselves. Social media has allowed brands to get through the “clutter” in strong and most unique ways. This area of social media is only beginning to expand and I’m very curious to see what kinds of ideas both the social media services and the companies come up with in the future.

S: Well, obviously  one way social media has expanded in a big way is into mobile devices. What are the implications of this on future social media platforms?

B: The mobile platform is absolutely one of the biggest influences in the sudden rise of social media.  The idea behind social media is to get faster and faster – people want to know what is happening right this second.  And the large majority of the time, if there’s something interesting that needs to be shared, you’re not at your computer and vice versa.  People want to be able to update their Facebook status, share photos and tweet from right where they are, and the rapid development of smartphones allows them to do that.

Nothing shows how important mobile social media is than the recent trend of implementation of social media directly into the mobile operating system.  Apple’s recent announcement of iOS 5 revealed that Twitter would be directly integrated into the operating system of the iPhone.  HTC Sense (HTC’s custom version of Google’s Android OS) integrates both Facebook and Twitter directly into the OS and your phones’ contacts (HTC Sense is just one example – social media is highly integrated into Android software across the board).

Instagram, an extremely popular photo sharing application for iPhone, is gaining on 2 million registered users and was seeing a photo upload rate of 2 -3 per second over six months ago.  More and more websites have created “mobile versions” of their site, formatted specifically for viewing and handling on mobile devices.  Facebook even has two different mobile versions of their site, depending on whether or not you are using a touch-screen phone.

As ironic as it is, the function of my phone that I use the least is the actual telephone function, by far.  I make and/or receive 1 – 2 phone calls a day, but I check, use and receive notifications from Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, Gowalla, Get Glue, and LinkedIn throughout the day.

S: So basically no one calls you? Just kidding. But let’s get personal about your social media habits, why don’t we? What have you, personally, found to be most useful about social media?

B: The thing I’ve found most useful about social media is the ease of expression.  If you really think about it, my generation expresses themselves not as much through original creation, but through the sharing of likes and dislikes of other content.  We choose specific movie posters that express what we like and who we are, we are constantly interested in what music others listen to and careful in what we claim we listen to (being into that new hipster band first is something people want their friends to know), we post song lyrics and movie quotes with no citation and wait for those who recognize them to “like” and retweet them as an indication that they know what it is and that they like it too. Social media gives the perfect platform for us to do all of these things – to express ourselves and then find people with the same interests as us.  Social media provides a lot of different services to the user, but the ability to create a social “resume” is my favorite part of all social media has to offer.

S: Now, given these many different avenues to express ourselves, some people still only know about Facebook and maybe Twitter. Can you give us some insight on some awesome social media platforms you use that are currently flying under the radar?

B: Well, where do I start? Personally, I really enjoy the new “check-in” applications used in social media.  The location-based applications like Foursquare and Gowalla are a lot of fun and, if used properly, can help a great deal socially and financially.  For instance, a lot of times my friends and I will be walking into an area of town that has several available bar choices, but with no real plan as to which one we’re going to go to.  I’ll open Foursquare, see who’s checked in to the bars that are around and use that information to help us decide where to go.

Businesses are also starting to really embrace the use of location-based services to influence people.  Certain companies and businesses will offer promotions and deals if you “check in” to their location.  For instance, I’ve seen several bars that either waive a door cover fee, or give extended happy hour prices if you check in ahead of time.  Starbucks as another example ran a promotion where the “Mayor” of any location (a title earned by being the person who checks in to that location most frequently on Foursquare) received a discount on their drink.  These kinds of deals give people incentive to use the services, which in turn uses the consumer to promote the business and bring in new customers.

It’s hard to claim that any up and coming social media service is one that a lot of people don’t use, only because a service that’s very small still has hundreds of thousands of users.  However one of my new favorites that definitely hasn’t come close to peaking its user base is Tumblr.  In my opinion, Tumblr is a service that has found a comfortable middle ground directly between the services of Facebook and Twitter.  Tumblr is formatted in a flowing, stream-like fashion, and users choose to “follow” one another, all much like Twitter.  Unlike Twitter and more like Facebook, though, there is no size limit to the content being shared.  The included text has no character limit – and the site has built-in, specific functionality for embedding different kinds of content including photos, quotes, links, chats, audio, video and basic text.  Tumblr is definitely more about the sharing of media and content and is quickly becoming the go-to blogging service, recently surpassing WordPress in number of registered users.  It’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

[My Tumblr: http://teddyblair.tumblr.com]

As an additional side note, Google just recently released their new social media platform, Google+.  While it is still in its testing phase, and public access has not been granted, I have been reading some very good reviews from those who have had a chance to experience it.  While I haven’t had a chance to explore it myself, and the real test will be once access to the service is opened to the public at large, it’s definitely something to look out for as an up and coming, Facebook-competing service.

S: A lot of people would find all of the technology you just mentioned to be a little scary (see: my parents), so how would you encourage someone who isn’t adept at social media or even computers to begin using it? What would they gain from it?

B: One of the biggest difficulties that new social media services face is the obvious vicious circle: these services are only interesting and worth something if other people are using them, and people only want to use them if they are interesting and worth something.  It’s the classic chicken and egg concept for gaining new members.  When I signed up for Twitter, I had no idea what it was.  A friend of mine was trying to explain it to me, “You just kind of give updates on stuff – I mostly just use it to update my Facebook status.” That last comment addressing the sentiment that updating your status via mobile was something that wasn’t immediately easy available.  I used the service for over a year before I really started to see a tipping point in my friends joining.  And now more recently, I think most of my social circle updates and communicates via Twitter more frequently than Facebook.

It’s hard to get someone to try social media if they just don’t want to.  I try to encourage people by showing them how easy it is to keep in touch, communicate, share content, and learn.  It takes them actually experiencing the service and, most importantly, having someone interact with them via the service to really get them to stick.  Even today, I have friends who have signed up for Twitter, sent a tweet or two and then never checked it again, claiming they “don’t get it.”

S: Along those lines, what do you think is a big misconception that people have about social media?

B: One of the biggest misconceptions people have about social media is that the only people using it are anti-social “nerds” who don’t know how to communicate in the “real world.”  Quite frankly, this notion is completely false.  In fact, recently there have been several studies that have specifically shown that people who are more connected and more social online are also very much more social offline.  To put it simply, people who utilize social media have more friends, colleagues, etc.  Despite the running public joke to the contrary, it seems like pretty obvious logic.  Social media allows people to stay in touch more easily, communicate with more people more quickly – it’s the perfect medium for making new friends and keeping old ones closer.

S: Do you see a specific area of social media that is screaming for further development? Is something missing somewhere?

B: A lot of social media is what the user makes of it.  It’s hard to say what could be improved in the services, because there’s no way to keep the variable of the user as a constant.  There is already unlimited potential for people, places and businesses to use social media for promotion, exploration, discovery and communication. If I could pinpoint something missing, implementing that missing element would create a new platform of use.  There’s a give and a take with a lot of the features of social media platforms as well – it’d be hard to find something that has it all.  People wanted something like Myspace to be for formal, formatted and user friendly, and Facebook took over, but lost some of the “openness”.  Then people wanted speed and up-to-date, quick information and Twitter became heavily popular, but there was a lost in some of the ability to host content and the idea of a formal user “profile.”  Now Tumblr, as I mentioned, is attempting to fall within the gap in the middle of those two, but still has limitations on both sides.  These qualities aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but there is definitely an obvious need to lose some of the functionality of element A in order to gain in functionality of element B.  It’s then up to the user to decide where they want to fall, or how to use them all together, to represent themselves through social media.

S: Along the lines of what’s missing, do you have any ideas of your own that you’d like to implement as a social media platform?

B: I wish! But I really don’t.  A lot of times as I am using a particular service, I come up with small ideas on how I think they might improve.  Even more often I have critiques of how different clients handle the services (i.e. apps created specifically for using Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc.) could improve.  However, I don’t really have an idea for a new service.  If I did, I would already be working on getting it started.  It’s the people with the original idea that reap the real benefits.  There’s no telling when the new hot service will hit the market.

S: Well I’m sure if you did, you wouldn’t be sharing it in an interview anyway. But looking at the future, is this something you want to continue being engaged in recreationally and/or professionally?

B: Social media is absolutely something I will be involved in for the rest of my life, especially recreationally.  I think it’s only starting to expand and as we grow older, it’s going to become better and better, with new uses and ways for us to communicate and improve our lives.  Not to mention, I just think it’s all pretty cool and would be involved for pure entertainment and enjoyment if nothing else.

Right now I am in law school, with an expected graduation of 2013.  While I don’t have a specific area of law determined yet, it’s quite obvious to me that social media is doing nothing but expanding.  And as more and more companies enter the arena with new and different mediums of communication, things are only going to move faster.  One of the biggest flaws of our legal system, which I have no ideas on how to correct, is its difficulty in keeping up with new technologies.  The law is always behind when it comes to technology and social media.  And it’s for this reason, because there’s really no precedent to base anything on, that lawyers sometimes get scared when dealing with new social media related endeavors.  For a company to be able to hire an attorney that not only understands the law as it is written, but also understands the social media product that they are working with well enough to apply those laws to it properly, will be an invaluable asset and give that company an outstanding advantage moving forward.  If my career took me in a direction where I could combine my experience and interest in social media with practicing law, and be that coveted asset, I would be all for it!

Watch Blair’s winning video on Social Savvy Cinci HERE and follow Blair on Twitter @TeddyJuris for even more gems of social media knowledge.