The Call Out @Esquiremag

In this series of posts I’m going to call out Twitter account holders of brands (probably mostly media) who could be doing it a whole lot better than they really are. I am not going to be calling out people just for sucking. I’m calling out some of my favorite or some likeable brands for not doing social media better. Not because I hate them, but, because… I care… sniff. I care! Like my Jewish Mother always says, “I only criticize because I care.”

First up on my list: @Esquiremag

One of my favorite magazines a decade ago, I’ll admit I haven’t read much of it lately. Is it because I don’t work for Hearst Publications anymore and I don’t get that cool employee discount? Probably. Every once in a while I long to pick up a copy and I don’t. For me, Esquire has a history and appeal that is a cut above the others. While, the men’s magazine marketplace has been totally Maxim-ized since the launch of that successful title years ago, Esquire still resonated for me. What in the world could make me start to pick up the magazine again? Probably a good Social Media strategy. Clearly, they don’t have one.

This is focusing on Twitter but I should mention that out of a good Twitter account could come the seeds of an entire campaign. Twitter is easy to pick up, there’s very little you have to do to get yourself going. From Twitter you can then segue into Facebook. I happen to think that there are plenty of the Esquire demographic on both Facebook and Twitter, so these are natural extensions of their brand. For now, I’ll just stick to Twitter, but keep in mind that I also think they could be doing good stuff on Facebook as well.

Remember the below is a quick list, like my mental note taking rather than an in depth analysis. Just want to get out there the major points that come to mind.

What they have going for them/what they’re doing right.

First of all, Esquire has a rich journalistic history and the time is ripe for them to join the countless conversations ongoing on Twitter. I have only been able to find one account attributed to Esquire on Twitter but many (most) news organizations embracing Social Media have multiple editors and staff writers dedicated to tweeting regularly for them. Esquire needs to open the stable a little bit more.

Next, they do know how to write a tweet. Some brand write tweets that get truncated and trail off into ellipsis. To me that shows a lazy Twitter user or an RSS Feed robot. That’s fine for a strict breaking news Twitter account. Actually I’d prefer it. But the best tweeters use the 140-characters well and I expect good conversation from Esquire. They already write a good. tight, tweet. Now they need to add some Esquire personality to it.

Third, they have a cool background picture. Seriously, they have one of the best Twitter background images I’ve seen yet. It perfectly conveys their sense of style, humor and sensibility. Plus the logo seems to translate perfectly to a Twitter avatar. (Personally, I have no problem with businesses and brand tweeting under a logo.) It’s exactly what I’d expect to see in the design of a Twitter account from Esquire. So while it’s not wild and different, really it doesn’t matter. It works. Besides it’s the content on Twitter that really counts because most people get their feed through some third party app anyway.

Lastly, Esquire has great content. The magazine pages have always been loaded with succinct little tidbits like their “rules” and the “answer fella” sections. They translate perfectly to Twitter – except I see too little of that.

What can they do better?

Loosen up. The tweeting is very stiff, almost like it’s being done by an intern or a junior editor at the magazine. I seem to think of Esquire as a magazine that not only has style and integrity but takes risks once in a while. This doesn’t translate at all to the Twitter account. As a matter of fact, the style is very robotic and conservative. What Esquire excelled at (at least IMVHO and from what I remember) was taking a sophisticated look at a very different angle. Believe it or not their long form pieces would make great commentary through twitter. Pick a quote from a good story and post it with a link. Tempt us and tantalize us. Make us remember why Esquire still sticks in our minds.

Socialize more with people through Social Media. A great way to let us know you’re out there is to talk to us. I see at that time I’m writing this post that Esquire only has 2,900 followers or so. I can’t believe that with a very little effort they couldn’t double or triple that number organically. As I mentioned, loosening up with interactions, getting involved in the right conversations, and adding a little more original content through the Twitter account can help. I can’t believe that the editors can’t come up with a few 140-charatcers teasers from an upcoming interview or expose to make us interested. I also kind of think of Esquire as a very socially oriented magazine, meaning if I met Esquire at a party, I’d probably want to talk to it and ask it questions. Well, here is the ultimate cocktail party, Esquire. What are you waiting for?

More photos of celebrities doing cool stuff. Seems that Esquire could share more “unpublished” photos from their shoots through Twitpic or something. Or perhaps a live video or two on YouTube linked to on Twitter of an interview. Esquire doesn’t only do celebrities. They interview everyone from politics to musicians. Can’t you give a little insight into the Q&A?

No balance of snark and information. I’ve read plenty of Esquire articles to know that they have a balance of taking them selves too seriously and not taking them selves too seriously. They used to do irony very well. On Social Media, sometimes snarky works well and sometimes it just looks like you’re making fun of a media the people there really believe in. Once you do that, you loose them. Be snarky and ironic, if that’s the voice that works but not condescending. You have to pick a side and stick to it.

Finally, I think that Esquire can do more to start the conversation rather than follow it. I don’t blame them for trying to jump on a trend here or there and possibly extending or adding to a conversation but one tweet I saw just recently actually inspired me finally to write this post. It’s link to an article “Originally published in the August 2002 issue” titled, “What It Feels Like… to Be Bitten by a Shark.” Great. Repurpose old content and reposition it for a new meme, Shark Week, which is always very popular but this seems to be the apex of what Esquire’s Twitter account adds to the conversation, a seven year-old article. It’s not a bad thing, but when this is typical of the tweets we see, it’s not good.

Time to blow the dust off, Esquire. I only critique because I love. If Esquire magazine’s Twitter account was more, how shall I say, savvy, I might really want to pick up an issue, or even subscribe to the magazine again. But the way they’re handling it, I feel their just going through the motions, very robotically. Yes, I’ve put the Esquire magazine brand on a pedestal. I used to read it from cover to cover, so I really want them to embrace Social Media fully.

P.S. I really don’t like the way their website is structured either. Too clunky for my tastes. I expected, I don’t know… better.

TechCrunch On The New New York Times?

On TechCrunch, Mike Arrington wrote an interesting article where he postulates the possibility of a “New” New York Times. You can read the article here.

In summary he asks what if the top reporters of the New York Times walked out and started their own venture with less overhead. After you read the article and some of the interesting commentary come back here for my response.

I don’t usually agree with Michael Arrington but I think he’s on to something there about the “New” New York Times that might work. Best part, reporters are well paid.

But I think that there doesn’t have to be total Armageddon for this to happen. The real New York Times can do this too, except I think they have a bunch of refinanced mortgages on that beautiful building in midtown. I expect that for the near future there will be some more turbulence but the NYT has been on the right track for a little while in my opinion. It just needs more slicing and dicing.

I like the idea of getting rid of delivery and printing of the weekday editions of the paper as it might help segue in to a more digital hybrid. Besides I only really read the Sunday paper anyway and even that I read maybe a quarter to a third if I even have the time. The Sunday edition is more comfort than substance for me nowadays.

No one I know or ever heard of reads the New York Times for the coverage of school boards and the like. I think it’s the cache of New York and the quality journalism and writing that is the essence of the paper and that can be retained when they give up paper altogether.

And seriously, they can make up a little of the advertising online when the NYT paper edition goes away b/c the options are becoming more limited for advertisers and they have to eventually accept that people are reading online and they’ll have to pay a little more for those eyeballs. More creative technology and advertising will be developed out of necessity; it’s only a matter of time because when papers go away there will be no other options for advertisers.

The rest of the NYT I read exclusively online and usually through two channels: Twitter links and my email notifications of headline and breaking news from the paper.

The New York Times can come to this Arrington-type of conclusion if and only if and when and only when they give up some of the legacy of being the Grey Lady and plunge fully into digital adoption. They can retain the power and fame of the brand AND their best and brightest reporters as well as their up and coming writers.

I see a New York Times enterprise 2.0 endeavor exclusive to reporters, editors, staff and interns that replaces the big buildings, meeting rooms and water coolers. Expenses cut. Staff and reputation saved.

Twitter Becomes Mainstream – Bad For Geeks, Good For The World?

By Lon S. Cohen

Hillary Clinton said she didn’t know a “Twitter from a tweeter, but apparently, it is very important” when the State Department asked Twitter to postpone a planned maintenance outage so they could stay online throughout the Iranian protesters could continue to tweet out their ire and plight to the world. It occurred to me when I heard this that something amazing happened: Twitter jumped over the proverbial jumping of the shark.

When @AplusK went on @oprah to explain Twitter to her everyone in the United States (plus some people abroad I assume) with a living room, a television and a reason to be sitting home on a weekday (which is apparently a little over 9% of eligible U.S. workers as of May, 2009) went to their laptops and opened an account. Twitter had reached mainstream. Some claimed that this was the end of their beloved mini blogging service. Others said that the fun was just starting. Judging by the ever increasing population of accounts opened and then immediately abandoned or the most obvious trailing indicator, by the number of porn spammers signing up, it seemed that Twitter had indeed jumped the shark – or was close to becoming too mainstream for the digiterati. But Twitter seems to have a life of its own and for a service of such simplicity, it’s really quite complex. Despite headlines that read “Twitter Close To Completely Useless” claiming that the old 80/20 rule (in this case 90/10 but who’s counting?) was something brand new and made the service a passing fad (consider that the entire internet probably conforms to the 80/20 rule and we might as well toss the whole system into the trash heap) Twitter actually was becoming more useful, more important. At least that’s what the U.S. Government thinks along with hundreds of Iranian protesters and the people who are following them.

The mainstreaming of Twitter, bringing it into the public eye in such a faddish fashion actually empowered the people of Iran to use the service to communicate to the world. While foreign journalists were quarantined and forbidden by the Iranian government from reporting on the growing violence, digital cameras, smart phones and Twitterers were broadcasting the revolution in the streets, reporting for themselves on the goings on and essentially bringing a light onto this event that might have been successfully closed off by Mr. Ahmadinejad. If we didn’t have Twitter and it wasn’t so much in the public eye then we might never have heard from the people on the streets of Tehran that they were unsatisfied with the way their country’s elections turned out, or that a large, vocal group of young people were willing to risk life and limb to make their voices heard. Twitter was there for them when a totalitarian regime tried to silence their voices. A hashtag (#iranelection) to follow the events was quickly adopted and millions of people now use Twitter as a primary source of information of this phenomenon halfway across the world.

In Brian Stelter’s New York Times article “In Coverage of Iran, Amateurs Take the Lead” Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent and a native of Iran said, “You can’t keep any of this news down anymore, and that’s a huge change from the past. The process of getting the word out is totally democratized.”

While we’re at it let’s hold a mirror up to this event. Over the weekend when the Iranian elections declared Ahmadinejad the winner, people took to the streets immediately. CNN hadn’t begun covering the news. On Twitter, people began complaining about it using the hashtag #cnnfail. This most definitely got the attention of the reporters, producers and executives at the station and they quickly worked to rectify the situation. But the fact that they were trumped in news coverage by Twitter or at least the rumblings of how big this event was going to be came directly from Iranians Twittering says something about the quantification atomization of news today.

Even more important was the fact that people on Twitter were using the platform to protest to CNN that their coverage of the Iran protests was insufficient. People outside of Iran used this democratic process to get action from a mainstream media station about the protesters inside Iran using that same democratic process to get their story heard. Both sides were clamoring to be connected. People quickly realized that indeed they were connected and while following the links, tweets and videos that were coming out of Iran to piece together the full story may have been taxing even on the most plugged in user, at least a direct connection existed and it bypassed the traditional thoroughfare.

According to Stetler’s story a CNN correspondent said that even though they couldn’t independently verify the stuff coming out of Iran, “we feel it’s important that people see this, see and hear what is coming into us.” CNN even took to showing YouTube videos of “of the aftermath of an apparent raid at Tehran University” according to the Stetler. He added that the visas of many foreign journalists expire this week. “As they depart the country,” he wrote, “amateur video is expected to take on even more importance.

Why CNN? The station that cut its teeth in Tiananmen Square and became noticed during their coverage of events leading up to and during the first Iraqi war has been extremely active on Twitter even going toe-to-toe in a race to 1,000,000 followers with none other than @AplusK himself, though all in the name of charity – Ashton Kutcher promised to donate mosquito nets to people who needed them if he won. Even when CNN found out that a user was tweeting out links to their web items under their brand name on Twitter they didn’t flinch. What they did was offer the guy a job! That’s the kind of behavior I’d expect of CNN. In a recent #journchat on Twitter I commented that, “CNN was upstart news channel that proved itself with first Iraq conflict in early ’90s. Is Twitter the SM version?”

Remember when CNN was an upstart station? When they weren’t just an alternative to Fox News and cable news meant 24-hour news cycle. Yes, you can argue that the over analysis of the OJ Simpson trial and the Clinton/Lewinsky affair were low points in cable news but there is surely a need and a desire on the part of the public for a media channel to provide a constant flow of information from around the world.

Cable news was at its best with big breaking news stories, keeping us on the edge of our seats, feeding us every little detail no matter how small, not because it was important to the overall picture but because that’s what we wanted. In the case of Iran’s protesters, it’s probably more of a case of what we needed. We don’t need to know what @AplusK or @oprah thinks every moment of every day, but we do need to know that there are hundreds of young Iranians protesting an election in their own country, especially when their government tries to shut them up.

This is how the world will get its news from now on. Not through big cable news stories feeding live streams of commentary from professional reporters but in drips and drabs and 140-character sets, cell phone pictures and videos. At least that’s how it will start. We will be informed of the next event just like we got the first pictures from an iPhone photo uploaded to Twitter when a US Air flight ditched into the Hudson or when terrorists attacked in Mumbai or when Iran tried to silence its populace.

In the meantime mainstream media has some work to do. They’ve probably already figured that they need to keep their antennas tuned to services like Twitter and if they haven’t then shame on them because Twitter has proved its usefulness for signaling a breaking news story many times over. But what they really have to do is figure out how they are going to parse that information, verify it and use it in a newscast. I suggested in the same #journchat news outlets need “a front line SM fact check/reporter? Checking on Twitter stream leads. That’d be a good job for a new journo!”

So while geeks are grumbling that their Twitter has lost its exclusivity and being soiled by the unwashed masses, I have to say that this has probably been the greatest thing to happen to the service since it started. It has made Twitter not just more interesting, it’s made Twitter imperative.