Oh, and I’m quoted near the bottom…

Replace “company” with “campaign” and I think you’ll see that Kory Kredit at MediaPost makes a compelling argument against outsourced social networking for candidates and organizations moving message online.

Obviously necessity dictates that social media interaction be outsourced when no other resources are available, but when they are, perhaps social media advisors should be more focused on training and empowering our political clients to communicate what they know best in the social media space, while they guide them with strategy and help them evaluate results via monitoring and metrics.

Ultimately, I think Facebook is still primarily about your friends, while Twitter is more about content discovery (and, increasingly, brands and celebrities). I have no doubt this will change as Facebook continues to grow and tweaks its model further. But for now the nature of Twitter makes it a better driver of traffic than Facebook, at least in my experience.

Does Facebook Drive as much Traffic as Twitter?

Twitter has already distinguished itself as being more relevant to its users than Facebook has, and with a fraction of the audience is driving more traffic to at least some websites. As the Time article points out, Twitter is actually enhancing the covnersation:

Websites that once saw their traffic dominated by Google search queries are seeing a growing number of new visitors coming from “passed links” at social networks like Twitter and Facebook. This is what the naysayers fail to understand: it’s just as easy to use Twitter to spread the word about a brilliant 10,000-word New Yorker article as it is to spread the word about your Lucky Charms habit.

What Todd refers to as “content discovery” really goes to the heart of Twitter’s value: it’s not about what your friends had for breakfast — it’s about what your peers think is important right now. People who get that and follow intelligently get value out of Twitter.

“Announcing your candidacy through a multimedia assault has very quickly become the new normal. Today’s example: John Kasich, who announced for Ohio governor yesterday via an integrated blend of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, blog, and more.”

Clearing the Cache: The Outside White House | techPresident

Newsflash: I will never send you money by mail. Ever.

I could (and have) opened a mail piece, been blown away by the message, been moved to tears by the imagery, and totally agreed with everything the organization stands for and is trying to convey, and still will NEVER GIVE BY MAIL.

This should not come as a surprise. Given the socioeconomic demographic information about me plastered all over the Internet, credit bureaus, and countless “public information” depots that smart organizations match their housefiles against, the fact that I’ll never send a paper check through the mail to anyone should be as plain as the nose on a direct mail vendor’s face.

It’s not that I don’t care. I do. But I haven’t physically touched a checkbook in almost a decade. I don’t write checks. I barely open my snail mail, and then only if it looks like something that came from a government entity that is trying to levy some kind of fee against me. Frequently I get junk mail that tries to look like these notices. This only makes me angrier.

Second newsflash: I give online. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s ridiculously more secure than sending sensitive information through the United States Postal Service.

And best of all, how much does it cost my favorite organizations to proposition me for more money via my favorite means of communication? Almost nothing.

Direct mail is not dead. Far from it. They make all kinds of money. But not on me. And many others I suspect.

So, in summation: fire your direct mail firm if they are sending your fundraising pieces to me. Find one that can actually save you money by not wasting dollars propositioning people who obviously will never engage with them in that channel. Send me an email. Better yet, create something online that is so compelling that friends and peers will actually send it to me on your behalf because they recognize a) how compelling it is, and b) that I will also find it compelling. Then your communication comes to me from a trusted source with a high degree of relevancy.

Then I will give. Generously, and instantly.

Major Ad Campaign for Starbucks to Focus on Quality – NYTimes.com: “The idea for the Starbucks photo contest came from watching what people already do on Facebook and Twitter, said Chris Bruzzo, vice president for brand, content and online at Starbucks. Each year, people race to post the first photos of Starbucks shops decorated in red for the holidays, he said, and on Flickr, people vie to post photos that include multiple Starbucks stores in the same shot.”

“The reality is Twitter’s got all sorts of business models available to it,” said Todd Chaffee, general partner at Institutional Venture Partners and a Twitter investor. “We’re putting together monetization framework, things like features for commercial accounts, which could be for global companies all the way down to local companies.” He said the business model will be largely driven by the creativity and needs of the businesses using it.

Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses – Advertising Age – Digital