Social Media Lessons from the “Open Source” Movement

Chris Moody, Senior Marketing Manager at Red Hat, joins the Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss “open source” as the original social media on the internet, why Red Hat is the #3 place to work according to Glass Door, and (shockingly) why Google+ is a better platform for his business purposes than Twitter.
Read on for some of the highlights and tweetable moments, or listen to the full podcast.

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Tweetable Moments

(click to tweet)
“If you have a problem, it may not be a social media problem; it may be a hiring problem.” -@cnmoody
“This whole notion of collaboration and open source, it feels like social media before social media was cool.” -@jaybaer
“Here is a company that is actually saying that Google+ is outperforming Twitter.” -@jaybaer

Why Chris Uses Google+

Red Hat is the world’s open source leader, specializing in community-powered approaches to cloud and Linux solutions at the enterprise level, among other things. Jay points out that open source solutions are kind of the original form of “social” on the internet because they are so focused on collaboration.
Chris, working in the cloud business unit of the company, uses social media to publicize industry thought leader blog posts. That way he is cultivating a place where people come to learn and stay up to date, and then Red Hat can help influence the way they make decisions. The important thing is to shy away from being too promotional.

Interestingly, Chris shares that Google+ is his division’s social network of choice. The cloud business unit’s audience is mostly information architects, and apparently Google+ is where those people are engaging with Red Hat.
“It’s such a good lesson,” Jay says, “for everybody to realize that it’s not about what you want to use; it’s about what your customers use.”
ExactTarget has a research series called Subscribers, Fans, and Followers and recently published a report called Marketers from Mars. This report’s main focus is that, as a marketer, you are not an average consumer so you can’t assume that the average consumer behaves like you. It’s an important lesson to keep in mind.
Since Red Hat is an open source company, some of its core principles are “community, openness, transparency, and sharing.” This means that the company empowers its happy employees to use social media instead of placing restricting guidelines. Sandy Carter talked on the podcast about a similar culture at IBM: “If you have a social media problem,” Chris says “it may not be a social media problem, it could be a hiring problem.”

Social Media Stat of the Week: 46% of TV viewers say they picked up the show due to Facebook influence

Jeff brings us stats about American television-watching habits related to social media. According to a recent report by eMarketer, 46% of people say that they began watching a show because they saw something about it on Facebook. It’s interesting to note that Facebook is also the top-performing social network for people discussing television shows, ranking just behind talking to people on the phone about the show.

What should show producers do with this information? Many are becoming more creative with their hashtag creations, like the show Fringe creating different hashtags for each episode. But “social TV” doesn’t have to equal Twitter, eMarketer’s report makes clear. And with rising consumption of television in on-demand settings, be it on cable or on Netflix and Hulu, social TV is something to keep an eye on.

Social Pros Shoutouts

Chris: I like the folks that really give me a kick in the pants and get me motivated to do something great. There are two that really do that for me. One is Ze Frank, which I think everyone knows.
Jay: It’s never been mentioned on the podcast, so good one.
Chris: Ze Frank’s “An Invocation for Beginnings” is one of the best videos I’ve ever seen in my life. I have the poster. I just don’t have a place to put it yet, so I’m looking for a bigger place where I can put it. It’s a large poster.
Another that I really love is, “Kid President”, from SoulPancake. It’s a video that’s going viral right now, and it’s adorable, it’s also funny, but it’s just got this message that I resonate with. For me, as a marketer, I think it’s very difficult to create content that anyone can resonate with and that it makes them want to do something at the end. It’s the call to action.
Both of those folks, almost every video I watch from them, it relates to me in some way where it feels like it was meant for me. There’s something that’s really powerful about that. I wanted to add them to the list of Social Pros and try to give them some more credit, even though they’re already insanely popular.
Jay: Excellent. Coming up on the show next week, we’re going to have a new segment from our friend, Zena Weist. Zena’s going to do a segment every other week on the show called “Holy Social!”. Holy Social is going to spotlight something really amazing and transcendent, and crazy and fantastic in the world of social media. Those videos that Chris just mentioned will be great candidates for that segment.
Zena is from Expion, who’s also a new sponsor of this show this year. They’re a centralized platform that empowers global brands and agencies and retailers to manage their social marketing efforts.
See you next week!