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Don’t Ask, Do Twitter
While the military is struggling to deal with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of discriminating against gay service members, the generals apparently have had time to make other important decisions about the safety of the nation. Namely, our men and women in uniform are now officially allowed to tweet. According to an article from Reuters, the Pentagon has announced that soldiers can go ahead and use social media sites because the benefits outweigh security concerns. Just as long as they don’t tweet anything about cute members of the same sex!
What makes Twitter so powerful? Dating and relationship blogger Nando Rodriguez points out this week that while A-list celebrities can get away with tweeting about themselves non-stop, the rest of us need a different strategy. Engaging with people means actually taking time to respond to what others are tweeting about, and creating a conversation instead of a monologue. There are truly ways in which Twitter can change people’s lives. In fact, in his blog this week he links to a video where he and others jumped to the aid of a suicidal gay teen. Just don’t tell the Pentagon!
When social media aficionados start talking, you’d be excused for thinking that for them, the entire universe revolves around tapping out short messages on a keyboard. But the greatest proof of the medium’s power is when all those messages cause something to happen. For example, take the launch of the Madison Social Media Club this week. The MSMC got its start when a group of thought leaders started connecting with one another online to create a support network for professionals who want to learn more about social media. Their message was so effective that when they decided it was time to have a “live event” they packed a room with over 125 interested people - on their very first try. (Full disclosure — I’m one of their bloggers. Still, I had a blast meeting people in person).
For a long time, the forwarding of tweet messages has been a badge of respectability for many would-be Twitter experts. The idea being that when you RT (retweet) a link or message from another person, you’re “sharing and caring.” But as will happen with these new media, far too often people are getting it wrong. In their eagerness to come up with enough forwardable material, they aren’t always vetting the links that they’re sending out to their fans. Which is why this week I had a message from New MediaScape about Twitter best practices whose RT link ended up sending me to a spam site. Oh the irony.. |
Learning to Share - February 19th, 2010
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Learning to Share It shouldn’t take much reflection to realize that sharing and searching are two different activities. Much like shopping and cooking. They might lead to the same ultimate end (landing on a web site in the first instance, or eating something in the second), but the activities themselves are not interchangeable. So while much was made of the report by “Compete” that showed Facebook as the “top source” of web links, that really doesn’t impact what’s going on with google. If you’re looking for a new dentist, or trying to find that book you’ve been meaning to read, you could definitely try out a social networking site to find your answers. But a simple web search will be faster and more immediate. At least for now! It’s often stated that the pace of innovation is always increasing; that technology is evolving at an ever faster rate. For example, comparing the power and functionality of a suite of office software from ten years ago and from today, you’d find tremendous advances in terms of graphics, storage, interconnectivity, etc. In fact, in many cases, ten year old software wouldn’t even work on a new computer. But televisions, toothbrushes, and even automobiles have remained consistently “backwards compatible” as have many other daily aspects of life such as health care, restaurants, and shelter. So while your friends might be spending increasing amounts of time in online social media pursuits like Farmville and Mafia Wars, chances are you’ll still be running into them at the gas station or the supermarket. Home Invasion is not usually associated with social media, although this week the hot topic has been all about the sarcastic website “Pleaserobme.com” which points out that anyone online talking about their whereabouts is exposing the emptiness of their house. While I share a lot of concerns about the reduced value of privacy and personal information in the 21st Century, I have to wonder whether the crime statistics would bear this out. After all, are your typical burglars the type of people who would stalk you on line? Personally, I’m more worried about some gang in Russia stealing my identity online than I am about one of my neighbors making off with my television. Anyone can START a social network, but make no mistake about it — big businesses are the ones that are succeeding at it. The issue, of course, is the “network effect.” In order for a site to be of social value, lots and lots of people have to participate (and no matter the platform, it’s expensive and time-consuming to run). This is even true for a Facebook fan page — my friend Nate Towne says it takes about 3,000 fans before users start generating enough content to get things going on their own. That’s why it’s a VERY big deal that Google just jumped into the game this week. Launching the new “Buzz” platform, they’re probably the only company out there that could waltz into the marketplace and throw down a ready-made social network. And it’s not because they have the money, it’s because they have the gazillion current users of their e-mail system to tap into. In fact, they’re already being compared to such established juggernauts as Twitter and Facebook. |
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Is anyone out there listening? Even the most fervent believers in free markets need to be a little skeptical when it comes to the claims that companies make about their products and services. And that goes not only for their commercial advertisements, but also for their social media presence as well. So despite the standard advice being given to firms to “be real” and “listen to your customers,” are we really supposed to believe that they want to be our “friends”?? Even public relations firms struggle with the idea of how to create online “community” so don’t be surprised if your real-life friends turn out to be more loyal and compassionate than the company that built your car. Marketing is dead. Long live Marketing. I have to admit that as a professional communicator, I think there’s great value in the kind of work that people in my field do every day. And like the proverbial swan gliding across the pond, I think the marketing team is often the one paddling like mad out of site to keep things looking serene and beautiful up on the surface. So when I eagerly clicked on a link this week about how to respond to objections to using social media in the workplace, I was disappointed in what I found – a blog whose background colors and typeface rendered it illegible. Traditional marketing channels may disappear (newspaper, tv, etc.), but the need for clarity, beauty and legibility are here for the long run, no matter how people want to communicate. A long-trending topic in the Information Age has been how to maximize the value of the workforce in the face of huge changes in technology, the marketplace, and in the way products and services are consumed. On the one hand is the age-old survival of the fittest mentality, in which the workforce is something to be tamed, exploited, mistrusted and kept to a bare minimum. On the other is the gentler, kinder approach that advocates motivating people through empowerment, teamwork, and positive rewards. In the midst of a Great Recession is money to be made by being cruel or by being compassionate? As a young man, I kept a clipping in my dresser that explained how to tie a bow-tie, since it was something I did so rarely that I could never remember how to do. Once I lost that piece of paper, however, it was the end of bow-ties for me. With the advent of the internet, of course, it soon become possible to find instructions – which was a good thing. But now I don’t even need those. I can just pull up Youtube and watch a how-to video. Information technology is clearly changing not only the way we behave, but also the way we think and interact with the world. Is that for the better? Or should I have just switched to turtlenecks like Steve Jobs? |
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Econ 101 Meets Social Media 101 Priceless? For those of us that care about accuracy and insight, the demise of professional reporting is a sad, sad thing. This week a writer in the New York Times asserted that high prices were the “cause” of food shortages in North Korea. Then my local paper, the Wisconsin State Journal, reported the reason condos take so long to sell in Madison is that there aren’t enough buyers. So, for the record, I just want to note that there is an entire discipline –called “economics”– that explains how supply and demand affect prices in the market place. In the absence of professional reporting, you’ll have to do the heavy lifting and read up on it. The tyranny of lists was once again driven home to me this week by a social media how-to-find-a-job checklist that a colleague sent me. Not only did it contain over 10 categories of things to do, but each category also had up to a dozen individual subcategories (”Send thank-you notes!” “Let colleagues know you’re looking for a job,” etc.). And the final set of things to check off included “100 Best Blogs to Follow,” “50 Ways to Use Twitter,” and “30 Ways to Land a Job.” At what point does all of this become too overwhelming? My guess is that even an unemployed person has limits on the time and energy they have available to devote to blogging, commenting, e-mailing, calling, researching and (of course) submitting resumes. Which is why I liked this advice best of all: “Do something that has nothing to do with the world of social media.“ In a somewhat delicious revenge article on Thursday, former Microsoft researcher Dick Brass really stuck it to Microsoft for being an organization culturally resistant to change and innovation. Not afraid to name names, Brass identified specific people with specific personal agendas who thwarted the efforts of his own pet project, tablet computing. Unsurprisingly, Brass claimed that obstacles to progress were based on power struggles, personal opinions and miscommunication, rather than opposition to the technology itself. Microsoft did fight back; however the company’s response was fairly muted. One can only imaging the scrambling that took place behind the scenes amongst those people who must have been jockeying for position in authoring the best rebuttals to Brass’ assertions. In probably one of the worst sentences to ever leave the corporate communications office of a Fortune 50 company, Microsoft noted that “what matters is innovation at scale, not just innovation at speed.” Yeah, right. Econ 202, or “Yes, in fact, I *am* the boss of you!” In a capitalist society, organizations are highly dependent upon the rule of law to maintain profitability, particularly when it comes to intellectual property rights like trademarks, copyrights, etc. This also extends to the work performed by its employees, whether they are assembling left-handed brass widgets or creating research that impacts the stock market. Therefore, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to Forrester research analysts that their employer (that is, the company that pays them to research and write) wants to control how they blog about their work. You can’t take things from your employer without the company’s permission, whether it’s widgets or whether it’s words. As for those crying “free speech,” they need to revisit what the constitution protects, exactly. Just another case where the demise of professional reporting leaves us in the lurch. |
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I vote: Inane. When you wake up in the morning, do you want to have a dialogue with your toothbrush? A conversation with your shampoo? A discussion with your coffee maker? It’s curious to me that marketing mavens are continuing to pound the drumbeat that manufacturers and service providers need to engage their customers in a “relationship experience” if they are going to survive in the 21st Century. In SocialNetDaily this week, the Deeter Gallagher Group again trumpets that “to be effective in social media you must — engage people in two-way conversations” citing Ford Motor Company’s CEO as their role model. Yet watching his YouTube video, I was struck by how uninteresting it was. So in answer to their (likely) rhetorical question “Twitter: Inane Chatter or Powerful Conversation Channel?” I vote “inane chatter.” But perhaps that’s just because I drive a German car? A huge part of the social media revolution is the explosion in text messaging as a way to send status updates, check e-mail, or just chat with friends and coworkers. But should we be doing this behind the wheel? Research shows that just TALKING on the phone while driving is dangerous enough, but increasingly drivers are taking their hands off the wheel to punch tiny keys while navigating through rush hour traffic, down highways, or even while lost and searching for an address. Think you’re above it all…that you can multitask better than that idiot in the car next to you? Don’t be so sure! According to CommonCraft, which has put out a number of fun and practical social networking tutorials online, the best way to explain “social media” is to imagine you’re in a village of ice cream makers. Personally, I found this example to be somewhat perplexing. And as an economist, I had to laugh when at the end of their explanation, they noted that if hundreds of small entrepreneurs began making and selling their own ice cream it would have an “uplift” effect on the village’s sole ice cream factory. Seems to me that if this tutorial is correct, social media is really all about beggaring thy neighbor while we all go broke together. Forget about those pictures of grandma or your trip to Yosemite, wouldn’t you rather have a blow-by-blow record of everything that everyone you know is doing 24/7? For years there have been products like the Ceiva digital frame that allow you to electronically upload pictures to friends and family. But at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, companies like Kodak began promoting the idea that it’s not about digitally replacing classic photos. Rather, it’s about sharing a constant stream of updated pictures of your life. For example, if you just had a baby, no doubt you’ll want to ensure that every single person you know “can share in every moment of your child’s life.” I wonder, do these frames come with an “off” button? |
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HOW TO BE A SOCIAL MEDIA MILLIONAIRE Okay, so here’s what you should do - follow these [insert random number of] easy steps and you too will reap the riches of the internet! Hope springs eternal, right? So many people play the lottery, and yet the lottery always makes money. That’s the only reason I can think of that people so eagerly provide (and follow) links to sites that make social media get-rich-quick promises. This is just me, but my advice is “don’t fire your boss just yet.” After all, the Great Recession isn’t quite over. Earlier this week I received an e-mail from a company offering me a free sample of their product and also mentioning “hope you have a good time while you are in L.A. this week visiting your cousin.” Now, I’m sure that on a marketing manager’s strategy plan, this looks like a great idea. Something along the lines of “Personalize your e-mails and create a connection with your customer.” As for me, however, I just found it to be creepy. Sure, I blogged about my trip, but I wasn’t trolling for free products. If you have a smartphone, you’ll never need to worry about finding the closest gas station. Or for that matter, the fastest way to get to the closest brand of gas station which you prefer to use, which has the lowest price. By the same token, if you’re just feeling lonely, new mobile social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla promise to help you find your nearest friends (literally). But will this lead us to become as socially dependent on technology? After all, if you’ve ever relied on a GPS service to get somewhere, you know how quickly you can become attuned to a computer that tells you what to do next. Every time I finish paying for the services of yet another home repair professional, I ponder how much wealthier I would have been had I learned a useful trade instead of wasting my time in college getting a degree in Spanish Lit. Peter Kim points out, however, that as the internet and social networking goes increasingly mobile, the real winners are those people who can design mobile web applications. So maybe the real money is to be found in creating web apps that help people find good plumbers? |
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The Bad, the Good, and the Beautiful Beware the Lords of the Clouds! Never a fan of the concept of “the wisdom of the crowd” (otherwise known as “mob rule”) I was drawn to a piece in the NYTimes this week that touched on some of the concerns that arise when pack behavior is used to enforce conformity of thought and action. One of the most pervasive cries from the self-appointed digerati leadership is that anyone can take anything they find anywhere for free and use it anytime for for any purpose. Quoting the someone frightening-in-appearance but quick-witted Jason Lanier, the article notes that individual creativity suffers from a form of “digital Maoism” when all information is free and is managed collectively. Kind of reminds me of the massive famine that occurred in China after the collectivization of agriculture - Mao and his cohorts refused to hear that the system wasn’t working, so his officials walked away with every last grain of rice while the peasants starved. The stodgy older sibling of social networks, LinkedIn can sometimes feel about as stale as conference room coffee and as relevant as last week’s meeting agenda. But it remains a place where at least some intelligent conversation can take place. This week when one member posted perhaps the one-millionth one-liner update warning to us read-my-blog-on-social-media-or-perish-in-your-old-fashioned-dinosaur-ways, another member stepped up to the plate and begged to disagree. My new hero, Mike Spear (Director of Corporate Communications at Genome Alberta) replied “Social media is far too often becoming a link hunt where I am given just enough info to perhaps whet my appetitite then have to click through to get the meat.” So folks, rather than just posting a link to your blog about social media, why not actually ENGAGE in social media? LinkedIn allows us to do this — it’s called the “Discussion” feature for a reason. As both a marketer and a public speaker, I’m well aware that creating a viable public brand means delivering an edited version of yourself, or your product, or your company that still rings true with your audience. One way of being authentic is to take the Guy Kawasaki/Chris Brogan self-assured “I’m speaking so you’d better pay attention” approach. Another way to accomplish this is to combine brilliant writing with personal passion and a strong dose of humility. My new favorite person in that regard is Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz. Proving, perhaps, the value of going beyond 140 characters, Naomi is not only very ‘real’ but she clearly knows what the hell she’s talking about. For example, check out “How to Make Unstupid Goals.” Speaking of real people, ever since “meeting” her on a webinar a month back, I’ve been fascinated by Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist. Frank, funny, forthright and occasionally foul-mouthed, Penelope is another genius-muse to watch for. Often wickedly amusing, Penelope offers matter-of-fact advice to Gen Y professionals, and through her company has created a social network that allows younger adults to control their professional identity from college and on into their careers. Whether she’s talking about leadership, ROI, blogging, or her life with Asperger’s, Penelope walks-the-walk of her firm, by creating her own seamless online identity. Which seems pretty authentic to me.
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What’s New in 2010 Our brains This isn’t exactly “news” but the way that people of all ages are interacting online may be affecting the way we think. According to Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, this is the first time in human history where both adults and children are “playing games by themselves”. The danger, she fears, is that attention spans will become shorter and societal levels of empathy will be reduced. (Just read the comments section of any controversial blog, for that one). Personally, I recommend clicking on the link just to hear her beautiful accent. Be forewarned however, it’s a massive five minutes long. Friendship has been huge focus of attention online for a long time (remember Friendster?) but it’s also calling into question what makes human relationships meaningful. Several years ago Leisa Reichelt, a prescient London-based researcher, coined the term ambient intimacy to describe the cloud of relationship-messages that engulf people (phone calls, texts, e-mails, tweets, status updates) 24/7. But is this high level awareness of the details of the lives of others really meaningful? Back to Lady Greenfield, who opines that the true test of friendship is not how many times you’ve texted one another. Rather she recommends you ask yourself, to whom would you lend money? Talk to for an hour? Call in the middle of the night? Long gone are the days when computer geeks wore lab coats and pocket protectors working in a chilled room in the basement. Now they have polished their act and have become a ubiquitous presence online with blogs, websites, apps, and other social media channels. But sometimes highly technical folks are still a little challenged when it comes to communicating about information critical to business. That’s why I adore this new social media graphic by Elliance, which very clearly delineates for companies how online resources and responsibilities should best be divided up. Even a right-brained guy like me can understand it. An oft-cited poll last summer noted that “87% of adults said they prefer dealing with others in person instead of via computers or smartphones.” With changes in the way we think, make friends, and do business based on accommodation to social networking, will that change? Areas where we need more research – airline passenger statistics, analysis of the success of online dating services, and minutes of phone call usage compared to non-speaking communications. Sometimes I wonder, will our mobile devices themselves become our new best friends? |
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‘Twas the end of recession, or at least so we hoped our 401ks empty, jobs lost, but we coped
When I logged of Facebook and Ma closed her apps we then settled down text-less, for an overdue nap
Then out on the internet, there arose such a meme our cell phones were buzzing, we turned on our screens
Chris Brogan was preaching, the end of all print cancel the paper, switch to EVDO with Sprint
And Guy Kawasaki, pronounced with much glee “Excellence is outdated, why just look at me!”
Turn to your networks yeah, even LinkedIN Community’s waiting, are you hooked up with Ning?
Search through your tweedecks for those postings that rave About the world’s future (about… Google Wave)
There are dozens of webinars gurus promise to offer! “Top ten” ways to increase all the bucks in our coffers
The fifty top lists Of the one hundred ways on building (no effort) that fan page that pays
So we sat down to reading or, at least then, retweeting the lessons we learned that seemed worth repeating
Social media’s the answer To find colleagues and friends And to sell our junk faster in two thousand and ten. |
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Social Media for the Rest of Us This week I joined a brand new group in Madison, WI for people in the marketing and social media field. When I told the group manager I’d like to add my blog to their list, she asked what my specialty is. After thinking about it, I replied “my readers are educated, intelligent, professional and successful people who just aren’t focused on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. My goal is to sift through everything that’s happening and distill for them just what they need to know.” Let me know if that’s working for ya! Because that’s where the money is? Chances are, if you’re member of an official LinkedIn “group”, you’re getting more than your fair share of spammy notes regarding multilevel marketing schemes. So I posed the question on an open forum in LinkedIn and asked how others are handling that. Based on their responses, I wrote an e-mail to the managers for a PR group and a Madison professionals group. I explained that I was unaffiliating with them since my reasons for being on linked did not include having other networkers selling me goods and services. But my real question is, are MLMers really finding it lucrative to prey on Linkedin contacts? One Good Acronym Deserves Another A hot social media topic these days is about determining what the return on investment (ROI) should be for these networks. Given the demise of print advertising and the decreased importance of broadcasting, executives are concerned about limiting their recession-decimated marketing spending only on proven outlets. According to Lee Odden from TopRank Online Marketing, you can’t measure the medium, because it’s not a strategy. Or as he puts it “what’s the ROI of a telephone?” The answer, according to blogger Harish Kotadia, might be to look instead at key performance indicators (KPIs) like comments, fans, bookmarks, and the like which are generated from having an effective online presences. Wonder if that’ll work for the most important acronym - the CEO. Raving Reviews Last week media expert Peter Kim asked whether companies should “really be listening to these people who are telling the world their opinions” when they make comments or post online to their social networks. The way he sees it, “status updates are carefully crafted to create a particular image, perhaps with the intent of getting a new job, settling an old score, or selling social media advertising.” He forgot to mention that a lot of people are just trying to get noticed! Do you rely on reviews from Yelp or Amazon or Yahoo? How about Twitter and Facebook? Should the providers of goods and services be paying attention? |
