Where’s the Conversation in Tech Comm? (Poll)

Webinars, Posts and Announcements

Twiitter #techcomm is mosly Webinars, Posts and Announcements

Updated: July 16 – Added embed for Nestify Twitter Community (experiment)

This week’s poll question was supposed to be a follow-up to last week’s question on Customer Experience Management but we’re calling an audible and going a different direction this week. That little debate is running around 60 / 40 by the way – yes, my company is provides great CXM is in the lead right now – feel free to jump in and add your vote.

Today’s poll question came about innocently enough. During our work on last week’s Tech Writer This Week we decided to make it more chatty by adding some conversational Tweets / Facebook / insert favorite social media posts along with our normal links to popular articles. This should be fairly simple (we thought) so we entered #techcomm, the dominant hashtag for the industry, into Storify to see what the world was talking about only to find that the list of tweets, posts and discussions all focusing on new stories (guilty), webinars and product announcements. We then searched some other popular combos with similar success.

What in the name of Microsoft Manual of Style is going on here? Where’s the chatter? The dialog? The virtual Cheers where everyone can find an answer or share an experience? It’s got to be out there, but it certainly wasn’t on Twitter last week. Or the week before. Or, the week before that. The chatter occasionally happens but that’s normally around conference time.

For the record, we’re not being critical of the promote your post-webinar-product announcements industrial complex. At least the hashtag has a brand, and frankly TechWhirl might become a personal journal without it. But, where are the conversations really happening?

We’ve found some good choices and now need your feedback. Our top candidates are our own email discussion list TECHWR-L, LinkedIn Groups, Technical Writing World, Yahoo! Groups, Individual Emails, mySTC, Google+ Communities, Blog Comments (Scriptorium, I’d Rather Be Writing, The Content Wrangler, Every Page is Page One) or the always popular other.

This list isn’t scientific or an endorsement. It was created by looking at the #techomm stream and roughly 10 minutes of deep thinking on a Sunday afternoon. If we’ve missed one please let us know in the comments and we’ll add it. Also in the comments – why are you using (or not using) your selections.

Where do you chat about Content Management or Tech Comm?

View Results

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Colum McAndrew

11 years ago

This is an interesting topic that I haven’t really thought long and hard about. Now that I have stood back, well for about five minutes anyway, I can see why you’ve picked up on this. Personally I think a lot of my chat is on LinkedIn, people’s blogs (including my own) and at industry events / conferences. Perhaps the issue here is that to have a dialog, requires people the option to talk / type more than short messages. Whilst there are Twitter Chats that use different hash tags and can provide a useful forum, most do not. Media like LinkedIn do not suffer from these restrictions.

Nolwenn

11 years ago

Let’s face it: a lot of social networking is broadcasting, not discussion.
People tend not to express themselves, sometimes for fear of misinterpretation (or judgment on their writing). Commenting on LinkedIN “Open groups” means your discussions, points of view, and, yes, sometimes your mistakes will be publicly available to the entire industry and putative employers. Twitter is seemingly more volatile and friendlier, but it’s still difficult to engage in discussions on the media. However, it is a good lead to deeper discussions… I came to this post from Twitter!

Larry Kunz

11 years ago

10 minutes? That’s a lot of deep thinking for a Sunday afternoon. I hope you had a nice long nap afterward.

Although many of us do it now and again, it’s very hard to have a meaningful discussion on Twitter given its 140-character limit. But as Nolwenn says, Twitter often leads me to where the good discussions are taking place. In fact, along with emails from my LinkedIn groups, Twitter is one of the two primary means by which I stay tuned in to the action.

TechWhirl

11 years ago

What about a tool like Nestify – http://techwritertoday.nestivity.com/public – it looks like a forum for Twitter

Danielle Villegas

11 years ago

I’ve tried to start conversations with some of my blog posts on TechCommGeekMom, but I don’t often get any bites! Granted, I give my opinion, but I often ask if others would like to have a discussion about a given topic, and as long as they do it respectfully, I’m good. Alas…I guess I have to encourage participation more.

Additionally, it’s summer right now…most people are on vacation or busy these days, so it could be that it’s just bad timing to be participating. Nonetheless, you do outline some excellent forums, so it’s not like they don’t exist!

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