Social Media Interview – Justin Kownacki
Justin Kownacki has been creating and exploring web media for nearly a decade. In 2003, he created Something to Be Desired (or STBD), a web sitcom about life after college. STBD ran from 2003-2009, and was nominated for a 2008 Yahoo! Video Award for Best Web Series. In 2006, Kownacki launched PodCamp Pittsburgh, a social media “un-conference” whose 5th annual event takes place on September 18-19, 2010. Since 2007 Kownacki has served as a social media strategist for agencies and independent clients alike. And in 2011, Kownacki will launch The Baristas, an STBD spin-off that’s currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter.
What excites you most about being a social media strategist?
Social media as a career field doesn’t excite me. It’s what I can learn and experience through social media that keeps my interest. At heart, I’m a storyteller and a problem solver. From a business standpoint, being a social media strategist means every day is a new challenge because I get to solve a new problem for a new client, and that’s rewarding on a financial level. But it’s the stories we share, and the original content people create — and which becomes part of the global pop culture fabric, even if only for a moment — that makes social media worth exploring.
You are very much so improvisational speaker, have you always been that way? Do you find public speaking easy?
Public speaking is easy. It’s the moments immediately before I step onstage that are terrifying, because that’s when I come face to face with the great unknown of What Might Go Wrong. But once I’m in the flow of a presentation or a discussion, it’s just a matter of finding the tone and temperature of the room, establishing some common ground and adapting my anecdotes to suit the needs of that particular audience. I never want to feel like I’m wasting people’s time by talking to them. Because there are so many other things they could be doing at that moment, I’d like to think that what I’m saying is worth their attention. (Having previously been a college radio DJ was immensely helpful in preparing me for a lifetime of finding interesting things to say off the top of my head.)
Without naming names, what has been the biggest mistake you have seen made by a company in social media marketing?
It’s not what you’d think. It’s not mishandling a situation (like Nestle vs. Greenpeace), or acting inappropriately, or even making the audience doubt your intentions. The truth is, the public forgets. BP was vilified for months, but I guarantee you the average American won’t think twice about them by Christmas.
The biggest mistake I see any company make is wasting the opportunity to improve their business by engaging their customers in social media. Forget the marketing angle, forget sales, forget everything else that looks like the defensible reason to invest in social media. The real reason any company SHOULD be using these tools is to learn what their customers think about them, identify the problems their customers are having, and then use their available resources to solve those problems and make their company better. To do that, your company needs to be interested in improving, not just in profiting, and it needs to view the customers as partners in a larger mutual success, rather than as enemies or as faceless revenue streams. Social media makes business personal, and not every company is prepared to utilize this potential, so they squander it.
Where do you see the future of location based services going following the recent launch of Facebook Places?
I’ll believe in the value of location-based services when they enable me to do anything in my life that matters, in a manner that’s easier, more rewarding and more intuitive than the current alternatives. I used FourSquare for months, and the entire time I was asking myself, “Why the hell am I doing this?” Wanting to be an early adopter so that you can say you were there before a service actually became relevant is a horrible way to spend your day.
That said, there’s a wealth of possibilities in LBS for businesses and casual users alike. I just haven’t seen any use of them that makes me say, I need to use “X to accomplish Y instead of what I’m already using.” Yet.
Is Twitter perfect? If not, what change would you like to see them bring in?
Twitter is as imperfect as a massively popular web service can be. But they’re getting better. I find the new “Who to Follow” feature to be far more useful on Twitter than it is on Facebook, because (for me) Facebook is a personal network while Twitter is a social / business / culture network. That means when Facebook suggests people to me, it’s because we have mutual friends or live in the same city. When Twitter suggests people to me, it’s because we have common interests — and I find the web to be much better for the exchange of new information to be far more vital than the sustaining of pre-existing relationships.
What I’ve been hoping Twitter would institute for years now is a context relevancy rating system, in which the users could do more than just “Favorite” a tweet. I should be able to increase or decrease the frequency with which other users appear in my tweetstream based on how relevant or interesting I find them to be, rather than how often they choose to post. As it is, it’s too easy for people with nothing to say to dominate the conversation. (And yes, I could unfollow them, but then I’d miss their lone gem of wisdom each day, seeded among the tripe.)
What are your thoughts on Seth Godin’s announcement to stop publishing traditional books?
Congratulations to Seth, but it doesn’t impact me or the publishing industry (yet). I’m always amused by the rush to declare a means of distribution “dead.” If we believe every luminary, we’d have to conclude that the music, book, TV, film and news engine as a whole is irreparably damaged, and the only way forward is digital. I can’t even begin to explain how asinine that POV is, but if someone wants to show me where all the money from those old methods is being funneled into digital, I’d like to see it.
Books are not the web. Magazines are not the web. Newspapers are not the web. Every human uses different methods to engage with and intake information, and we use different means for different purposes. I can’t read anything longer than 2 pages online without breaking into a sweat because I feel like I’m missing something in a different tab. And yet, if I’m drawn into a well-written book, I’ll sit and read 50 pages at a time — which I’d never do for the same book online. Just because it’s inconvenient for us to produce media in one format, that doesn’t mean it’s inconvenient to receive information in that format.
You are from Pittsburgh but live in Baltimore – where does your football allegiance lie? Ravens or Steelers?
My sporting allegiance always lies with people, not the teams. I root for players and coaches whose public character I can get behind. I’ve never understood the mentality of cheering for a player until he leaves your team, at which point he becomes “the enemy.” Why? That discounts any understanding of economics, marketing, competitive advantage or the vagaries of age. It’s pure tribalism, and it’s pathetic. And it’s why rooting for the Steelers when the character of their roster is so obviously damaged is much harder these days.
I’m visiting Baltimore at the end of September, where can I get the best buffalo wings?
Probably 6 hours north in Buffalo, NY. But if you want “the nation’s best crab cakes,” you’re coming to the right town — as every menu will attest.
