Wired Causes

I'm slowly finding my way back into a blogging routine among other routines that have been disrupted by the move.   The hardest part about moving isn't the packing, the actual move, or even the unpacking and subsequent disorganization.  It's the everything is new, different, and not familiar.  Your brain can't go on automatic pilot for mundane tasks because it has had to rewire neurons.  It's like trying to get back into physical shape after you haven't been exercising for a while.  

So, as part of getting back into my blogging routine or rather establishing a new one, I'd like to reflect a little on TWT20 interview experience.   Jay Baer is a blogger and social media consultant who has been doing Twitter 20 interview series with social media.  I first discovered him when he was interviewing David Armano.

Here's how it works:

• In real time, @jaybaer sends out a series of 20 interview questions as tweets.  The questions are 140-characters long and he uses a hashtag #twt20.  
• You respond with answer that is 140 characters. 
• Other people who are monitoring the hashtag or watching the stream can add their thoughts or questions or retweet.

The mechanics of participating were fairly easy for me.  I use a couple of different Twitter clients and decided to use cotweet for this interview.  I opened up a search on the tag in one tab and in another tab the replies to me. 

Jay asked some terrific questions.  The responding required thinking and writing succintly or in headlines.   I had to sum up an answer in 140 characters.  It uses a different part of the brain.

I actually cheated a little bit ... I tweeted a 140 character answer, but I included a link to a post or resource that explained the answer in more detail.  The most time consuming part was finding the particular post on my blog, but a number of the questions were answered by some of the recent guest posts on this blog.  I tried to point to other people's blogs/examples as much as I could - and that was mostly me trying to remember and find the example!

While the interview was unfolding, Jay was doing a transcript as a blog post.  It looks like he did a cut and paste of the questions and answers - nothing fancy in terms of software tools.  You can find that here. 

I was skeptical at first.  How could you really engage in a conversation/interview with only being able to respond in 140 characters?  Would it be totally distracting?  Would it give the important topics we were discussing any justice?  And more importantly, could those who were listening or participating learn from this 20-question 140-character rapid fire Q&A?  And, would there be a resulting "product" or blog post that could document the conversations for others who not on Twitter during the interview in real time?

I'm not a skeptic any longer.   I read the transcripts from two previous interviews on Social Media Listening - one with David Alston and Amber Naslund which are filled with some useful pointers on one of my favorite topics - listening. 

Jason asked really good questions and added his two-cents.   There were a couple of questions I've never been asked. 

• NPOs have a lot of interactions w/donors & customers. It’s not perfect. Should NPOs have a social media crisis plan?

• Similar to what’s happening w/ Social CRM, do you encourage NPOs to add social media interactions to their database? How?

So, I'm curious about what your take is on those questions?  And even more importantly, what's your take on this model as an engagement strategy?  Looks like the work would take approximately 3-6 hours (figure out interview questions, conduct the interview, post the transcript) depending on your twitter literacy skills.