Advice for CAD corporations on understanding social media

A CAD editor told me last week that he is working on figuring out how best to use Twitter. "The stuff just disappears, unlike a blog," he moaned. I suggested that we need to tailor the content to suit the medium. For example:

- News by the minute: Twitter is good for brief, disposable announcements of breaking news items.
- News by the day: Blogs are good for longer-length, real-time news stories, and is archivable (has staying power).
- News by the week or month: Newsletters are good for summing up events and reactions; it is also archivable.

CAD vendors have difficulty adapting to these news technologies due to their need to keep on a happy face. They could take John Gruber as their style guide in how he is positive and negative about Apple as well as other companies.

Here's another resource, one that I first learned of through a tweet from Randall Newton:

http://www.everycompanyisamediacompany.com

This is quote from the EC=MC blog that continues the theme from last week's upFront.eZine (Open is Relative):

In addition to the traditional means of publishing, such as white papers, news releases, etc, companies must now also master the 'social media' technologies that allow anyone, their customers, their competitors, to publish also.

It is no longer a one-way broadcast medium, everyone now has access to an online printing press that can potentially reach tens of millions of people.

Comments

[Rande Robinson]

Thanks for the timely info. Currently putting together a presentation I'm giving next week in Austria. It will be on social media in DOTs. This article is both timely and applicable. If only people and corporations would figure out it is all about communication.

[Randall Newton]

Thanks for the mention, Ralph. When I tweet an event, I use the tweets as the outline notes for writing afterwards. If anybody would like to follow me on Twitter, please use @VEKTORRUM, my Twitter feed for CAD and etc. I also have a personal Twitter feed (@randallnewton) which DOES NOT discuss the design engineering software industry.