the hurricane inside my brain

photo: digitalART2

I was reading this blog post recently, and in the comment section was a something that caught my eye from Dash Chang. His comments are about technology and the Internet and future predictions, and are thought-provoking enough that I posted them all (with permission) below. But there’s one bit in particular I’d like to expand upon and talk about as it relates to social media for business.

Dash wrote: “Think blind men and the elephant.”

Have you ever gotten a group of clients in a room who are a bit naive about Social Media? Everyone there has a little bit of personal social  media experience. Five of the people are on Facebook, and three are on Twitter. One or two have a blog, and some use Flckr, and maybe they’ve heard about Ning, or StumbleUpon, or Tumblr. They are hanging out where their friends hang out, and they know enough to be excited about the one little corner of social media that works for them.

But none of them can see the elephant.

I believe it’s my job as a creative strategist in social media to help clients see the elephant. How?

Start by solving a problem. Start with clear-cut business objectives, not tactics. Before starting any social media program, I always ask: “What are your most pressing business problems? Do you want to expand your target audience? Get more conversions at that deep, dark end of the sales cycle? Do your customers make one purchase but then forget about you?  Is your largest competitor making a lot of noise, drowning you out? Do customers not understand your USP?  Let’s see if we can solve those problems using social media.”

Understand brand strategy. A brand is the story about your company that you want the world to remember. Branding should be based on a company’s values. The values should impact 1.) the way the company acts. 2.) what they say about themselves. And what better way than Social Media to show people your values, day in and day out, in real time, in the real world? What better place than social media to develop your story, understand what’s important and relevant, discover how people see you? Do consumers see your bigger brand story? Do they remember you in the way you want to be remembered?

Think big picture. Branding works best when you have a cohesive brand story tied together in surprising ways across a variety of different platforms and media. Social media works best when you have a cohesive brand story tied together in surprising ways across a variety of different platforms and…oh, hey, is that an *elephant* I see!?

How do you look at brands and social media from a big-picture, strategic level? Can you see the elephant?

photo houseofsims

Dash Chang had written these five things in the comment section of this blog post. I asked if I could use what he said on my own blog, because every one of them got me thinking about the future of digital. Yes, it’s all shifting fast. Yes, it’s impossible to predict where things are going. But does that mean we shouldn’t try?  What does the future hold? I’m up for the challenge of trying to figure it out. Anyone want to join me?

The five things:

1. The web is morphing faster than anyone pundit can comprehend. Think blind men and the elephant. The Software Platforms supersite crowd-sources and tracks over 200 platforms like Google Apps, AJAXAPI, MapAPI, etc. That’s probably 10% of the available platforms on the web.

2. User attention is shifting fast. One report shows that social networks, with all its variations like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, disqus, etc has passed email for user time and frequency.

3. Analytics quickly lose relevance. If you can’t see the whole, how can you program the algorithms to track what’s relevant?

4. Without relevant data, how do pundits forecast the future?

5. Intuition rules in this state of chaos. But with millions forecasting the future state of the web, the chances for anyone to be right declines. As a past econometrician, we had a saying. If you don’t know the answer, forecast often. If you’re right, tell the world. If you’re wrong, forecast again.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

photo: CoreBurn

I’m on the phone with someone in Social Media this morning. And he’s talking a mile a minute, jumping from one thing to another, when suddenly he pauses, says “you know the title of your blog? The hurricane inside my brain? That’s EXACTLY the way I feel all the time now!”

Welcome to my world. There’s a lot going on.

These are topics that I hope to be blogging about over the next few weeks. I’m asking a lot of questions. I see no easy answers, but I’d like to at least start the conversation. Please, please, please, jump in with comments if you have any thoughts about any of them.

Here are 7 things in Social Media I find fascinating:

1.) I’ve heard it said that in the future “employees will be judged on the strength of their social networks”. Do you believe this to be so? Should corporations be able to leverage the social networks of their employees? How?

2.) As more and more people jump into Social Media, “mistakes will be made”. Will the tolerance level for mistakes go up for companies, individuals, organizations? What are some worst-case scenarios?

3.) How exactly do ideas spread across networks?

4.) Think about a chorus. Would you have been able to come up with that concept of having different voices sing in unison if you had never seen one before? Do you think corporations will be able to have hundreds of different individual spokespeople – all blogging, twittering, having conversations — who will be in harmony with a brand message? Or will it become a messaging free for all?

5.) What is an implied endorsement these days? What happens when you associate with celebrities, influencers, the press – are they potentially seen as endorsing you? Where is the line in the sand?

6.) There’s a lot of content out there. Saturation point? Is there a fundamentally different way content could improve that we just haven’t thought of yet?

7.) The very nature of friendships is changing. Brands get mixed into people’s social networks. Could a brand ever be your “friend”? Or, if not the actual word, “friend”, at least someone you turned to for help, insight, entertainment, advice, interacted with, depended upon? Or is that the way you see some brands already?

Do any of these interest you? Start a conversation, or if you blog about any of these things, please let me know!

Dear Ev,

On Thursday, March 19th, my Twitter account, @lisahickey got suspended.

I immediately wrote to Twitter Support as suggested in the TOS and told them I thought I had been mistakenly suspended.

I have yet to hear back from Twitter anything about my account. I  tried to find out through other channels (@spam, @crystal) exactly what the problem is but no one responded to me. I understand you do not have many employees and have a whole lot of people with problems. I apologize for being one of them.

At the time of my suspension I had over 8,000 followers on Twitter. I had gotten them over the course of 3 months, which is fairly quick, even in Twitter time. Is that the reason why? I have no idea, because no one at Twitter will have a conversation with me.

The reason I would like my account back is that Twitter, quite frankly, changed my life. I have been telling this to people wherever I can, including the following:

–I am speaking with Ad agencies, College/Universities and Business Organizations about how to build a personal brand using Social Media, and in particular, Twitter. Every time I speak somewhere, new followers pop up on Twitter.

–I am talking to HR departments about the possibility of a program they can put in place where I will teach employees about how to use Social Media and Twitter to build their networks *before* layoffs occur. This idea came directly from something someone said on Twitter: “The problem with most people’s networks is that so much of them are a part of the corporation that just let them go.”

–I am consulting with three businesses on how they can use Social Media and Twitter for the following very specific business problems:
1.) For a manufacturing company, how it can expand it’s distribution into Russia, Mexico, France and Australia.
2.) For a consumer/b2b client, how it can use Social media for greater content distribution, awareness and information.
3.) For three different ad agencies, how they can use Social Media (including Twitter) for themselves and for their clients.

– And finally, I am consulting with a country on how they might use Twitter for benefits every bit as powerful as those I have experienced as an individual.

Today, the people of Twitter came out in full force to help me try to get my account unsuspended. I can’t thank them enough. What I saw today was exactly what I love about Twitter. People get together. Share ideas. And good things happen.

Thank you everyone, who put in a good word on my behalf.

Twitter has been life-changing for me because it lets me meet new people, share ideas with them and create action in ways I never before thought possible.

In this time of an economic downturn greater than we have seen in recent history, I am doing all this because Social Media and Twitter, more than anything I have seen before, gives me hope.

And I would gladly give away my learning, give away my skills, give away my ideas, give away just about everything I deem valuable, for others to see the hope and potential that I see with such a powerful new medium.

Ev, I am doing all this because I believe in Twitter.

The only question I have left is “Does Twitter believe in me?”

I’ve been following Mike Aruaz’s blog as he has discussed the fascinating topic of “spreadable media.” Mike got a lot of his initial thinking from the brilliant piece: “If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead”, by Henry Jenkins and his team at MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium. Mike took what was said, “curated it”, added his own ideas and insights, and made a 100 word presentation that I can’t wait to share.

Why can’t I wait to share it?
1.) Because it feels new. I feel like I am the first to share these insights with my audience.
2.) Because it feels relevant. I know that the readers of my blog have at least a passing interest in Social Media. We have some shared values, and thus the information is valuable to them.
3.) Because I am hoping that by sharing this information I am both giving and receiving: giving Mike’s brilliance, giving my own insights and in return receiving attention, credibility, admiration for finding it, or perhaps just the chance not to be forgotten.

Viral vs. spreadable

The talk about viral vs. spreadable reminds me of creative meetings I’ve been in where people have shouted (SHOUTED!) at me: “BUT HOW CAN WE MAKE IT GO VIRAL?” The panic in their voices was because they themselves hadn’t a clue how to make it happen.

What Henry Jenkins’ suggests is that the whole term “go viral” has it’s flaws, because it suggest that you “let something loose”, and it then spreads of it’s own accord, without rhyme or reason or control on the part of the spreadee.

There are those of us who think otherwise.

You can’t control everything about how something spreads. And you can’t anticipate the ways that it will. But there are many, things you can do to ensure it happens in the first place.

I will be blogging about these ways in the coming days. But first,

An excerpt and a story.

In the Henry Jenkins article, he describes the phenomena of the “Crank Dat” song by Soulja Boy:

“Soulja Boy, originally an obscure amateur performer in Atlanta, produced a music video for his first song “Crank Dat”, which he uploaded to video sharing sites such as YouTube. Soulja Boy then encouraged his fans to appropriate, remix, and reperform the song, spreading it through social networks, YouTube, and the blogosphere, in the hopes of gaining greater visibility for himself and his music…People added their own steps, lyrics, themes, and images to the videos they made. As the song circulated, Soulja Boy’s reputation grew — he scored a record contract, and emerged as a top recording artist. — in part as a consequence of his understanding of the mechanisms by which cultural content circulates within a participatory culture.”

And my personal story? A few years ago, I was sitting in my car, with my daughter Allie, when Crank Dat came on the radio. And I said to Allie “I don’t much like this song.” And in a very sad voice, Allie said “You don’t like Solja boy, mom?” Pause. “But there’s a dance that goes along with it. Look.” And she taught me the dance, in a parking lot at dusk.

And you know what? Because that *shared experience* with my daughter was so wonderful my perspective of the song changed in an instant.

Mike Arauz suggests “Design your brand to be taken apart and put back together in unimagined ways by your consumers.”

I have said “social media is about the sharing of ideas that more people to action.”

Or perhaps, finding a way for them to dance.

I said to a friend of mine yesterday “Well, the good thing about being kicked off twitter is that I finally got my Flickr strategy firmly in place.”

And she said “What’s a Flickr Strategy?”

So in light of making my “private conversations public” and sharing my strategies with the world, here’s what I told her.

One thing I’m always telling my clients is this: “Social Media is not JUST about brand awareness. However, done right, that’s a huge added benefit. Happens every time.”

In fact, I keep hearing the words about my own personal brand “Lisa, you’re everywhere”, a comment which has led to more than one proposal.

So my Flickr strategy is, partly a “be everywhere” strategy. But it’s also the following:

1) It’s a way to create a collection of original imagery I can use for my other social media channels.

I love great photos. I’m not a great photographer. In fact, I never bring a camera unless it’s a wedding or graduation. But guess what I discovered? With my camera phone and Picnik, I can create cool looking web-friendly photos with only a smidge of effort.

Picnik is like “photoshop for dummies.” My kids showed me how to use it in about 10 minutes. (And yes, you design purists out there: I KNOW. I KNOW. I KNOW! It’s like telling someone it’s okay to use desktop publishing even if they don’t know the first thing about design. But. Still.). You can create all sorts of effects, fix flaws, colors, etc. Your photos are saved at the correct resolution to use on the web. And they can be stored directly to your Flckr photostream.

So now, part of my strategy is to take pix with my cell phone – “visual observations of life”, I like to call them — “picnik them”, and then store the images on Flickr. Then they are available to me – to use when appropriate in blogs, Facebook, twitter, etc.

2) It lets me share with others.

Oh right! Social media is about sharing, lest we forget. : )

So now my images are also available for other bloggers or anyone to use, as long as they link back to me. I also have a strategy (go figure!) for how I license my images through Creative Commons. Most of my images are available for anyone to use, for any purpose, even commercially. The pictures of my kids, I’m stricter about how they can be used. The licensing part is great. It spells out exactly what your intentions are. Take the time to figure out what you’re comfortable with.

Oh, and here’s a good article by Chris Brogan on how he uses Flickr as a blogger to find images for his site.

3) It reinforces the fact that I am a visual thinker.

I love design. Love love love it. I like nothing better than seeing a brand who has great design sensibilities. It makes me go “Ahhhhh…”
And the thing that took me a little while to get about Social Media is that design can and should still be an integral part of any social media strategy.

So part of my Flickr strategy is to use this as a proof point for myself. How does great design get used in Social Media? What do images say about you, as a person, as a brand?

Even to the point of having part of my design strategy be this: I write “headlines” which speak to my view of the world. Design them so they look cool. Post them on Flickr. Brand myself as a visual thinker. Ahhhhh….

Anyone else out there with other strategies? Other sites that they use for “visual social media”? Other thoughts, ideas? Would love to hear from you.

There’s a lot of talk about friends these days. What is a “real” friend, and are online friends real or not, and oh, what about brands, could they possibly be your friend?

And at one point I had tweeted “A friend is someone who would show up at my funeral.”

Which is close, but hey, my friends in Singapore and Australia got a little nervous, and I *really * don’t want to exclude them.

So here’s an even more radical thought: “You are my friend if we treat each other like friends.”

I don’t care if you’re someone I’ve known forever, or hugged in real life, or only had a couple of online conversations with. I don’t care if we have shared interests, or for the most part, even shared values. And yes, you can be a brand, and no, you don’t have to come to my funeral. You don’t even have to send virtual flowers.

How does someone treat me like a friend?

I’m pretty easy. If someone doesn’t want anything from me except for friendship and doesn’t talk badly about me behind my back, they’re in.

Think about this for a moment. One thing I’ve noticed about some online friendships is that, in the end, there are a lot of people out there who really do want something from me. They ask me for something that I just can’t give them at that moment in time and poof! They disappear. It’s not that I mind the asking. I mind the disappearing. Because, truly, I will help ANYONE if I am physically able. But I can’t help everyone, all the time, for free, and still survive. And I certainly can’t buy everything everyone wants to sell me.

And my friends know that. They simply never care if I’m unavailable at any moment in time. Because they know me enough to know I’ll be there when I can be there. Always.

My account on Twitter has “been suspended for suspicious activity.”
SIGH! We all hate spammers don’t we? And apparently, at least in Twitter’s eyes, that’s what I’ve become. If you get too many followers too fast, you are viewed suspiciously. Unless you’re @britneyspears. Of course. : )

The good news is – my plan has always been to make mistakes with my own brand *before* I make them with a client’s brand. I think it’s called “object learning” – the school of thought that says you can only *really* learn something if you make a mistake while doing it. So yes, I make mistakes. I fix them best I can. I move on.

If anyone out there does consider me spam, I’m really really really sorry. I absolutely did not mean to be annoying. I was just saying “hello”.

And thanks to everyone else who thinks that what I have to say has some value. Learn from this along with me!

Cheers!

A fascinating aspect of Social Media is how conversations that used to be private are now public. What are the implications? How will people think about which conversations to share with the world and which to keep private?

Here are some thoughts. I admit I have no answers. : ) I would love for anyone and everyone to join in the conversation around this.

Our public conversations will define our values.

As more and more conversations become more and more public, we will become defined by them. How do we treat people? With kindness, grace, helpfulness, sharing? It won’t be enough to say we are those things, we will be proving it constantly every day. Or, think about this quote from Leo Aikman: “You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.”

We will need to examine the word “trust”.

Anyone who has been on Twitter for a while has seen this phenomena: Spouses, children, boyfriends, girlfriends will say to someone who Twitters a lot: “You’re not going to put that on Twitter, are you?”

Yes, it’s funny. A sign of the times. My kids say it to me all the time. But here’s the thing: there’s a trust issue going on here.

I discuss these issues with my children constantly because I think they are important issues: What is private? What is public? What is safe to share and what is not? How careful should people be about what they say? How do their public conversations shape the way people think about them? How trustworthy are they with other people’s information? Who can *they* trust?

We talk a lot out “transparency” – for ourselves, for corporations, for governments. But conversations are by nature two-sided. What one side wants to be transparent but the other doesn’t? Who wins?

We will get used to things that make us uncomfortable.

Remember Facebook before the Newsfeeds went public? No? Neither can I. But here’s a description from Clive Thompson’s Digital Intimacy article:

“When students woke up that September morning and saw News Feed, the first reaction, generally, was one of panic. Just about every little thing you changed on your page was now instantly blasted out to hundreds of friends, including potentially mortifying bits of news — Tim and Lisa broke up; Persaud is no longer friends with Matthew — and drunken photos someone snapped, then uploaded and tagged with names. Facebook had lost its vestigial bit of privacy. For students, it was now like being at a giant, open party filled with everyone you know, able to eavesdrop on what everyone else was saying, all the time.”

Panic? Hah. And how long did it take people to get used to the idea of Public Conversations on the newsfeeds? About a week. : )

Semi-private conversations will become more interesting.

Semi-private conversations are those which will be shared by a select group but not the rest of the world. It will be interesting to see how quickly groups develop their own “shared languages” to differentiate themselves from the rest of the world.

Also, conversations will become more than words. Think the sharing of images, videos, symbols as conversations, especially between members of groups who understand the symbolism.

Let’s talk blackmail.

Years ago, I read a novel by Dick Francis. In the story, main character is about to be blackmailed for having an affair. He realizes that the only way to diffuse the blackmailer is to actually tell his wife what happened.

True, most people won’t need to worry about actual blackmail. But you know that *feeling* of being afraid someone else will reveal your secrets? That’s pretty universal.

If you take charge of what information you will share with the world, other people will not be able to control you with that information.

A large number of people will need to be taught how to have public conversations.

If you are reading this blog, you are probably already using social media and are comfortable with the idea of public conversations. But an awful lot of people out there aren’t. Believe it or not, there are still a lot of people out there who are scared of Facebook. We run the risk of Social Media being “the great equalizer”, but *only for some of us*.

Let’s not forget that not everyone is comfortable with this. Let’s teach and guide and help all those who can’t quite keep up with this ever-changing world.

I could have written 10 more things I’m thinking about around this topic. But really, I’d love it to be a conversation. I’d love your thoughts.

Thank you.

photo: malias

Back ten years ago, when I was starting my own advertising agency, I read a book called “The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber. Terrible name, but great book, one whose proposition was that any company you start you should start AS IF it were going to be franchised. Make it turnkey right from the start. That way, you get the systems down pat and the process so it can be duplicated day in and day out. You also get the branding right. You are able to duplicate the *experience* for the consumer whenever and wherever they encounter you.

The author gave an example of how he once went to a hairdresser. The first time he went in, the place was neat as a pin. Everything was lined up, organized. His hair was cut with precision, exactness. Not much chitchat, he was in and out. Got a great haircut, felt good about himself and the place. The second time he went, his experience was much mellower. There was music in the background. He was served a cup of tea. It was more conversational, took a while longer. His hair was cut slowly, with painstaking attention to detail. Again, he got a great haircut. In fact, both experiences were good.

But because there was such a disconnect between the two experiences, it completely shook him up. He never went back to that hairdresser again. He didn’t know what to expect.

Fast forward ten years. Companies have a digital “presence” all over the web. They are interacting with people everywhere. But are the experiences that customers are having with brands as they encounter them all across the vast array of networks similar enough so that the customer is not confused? When you have multiple contact points, multiple bloggers writing stuff, multiple twitterers, bunches of videos and pictures and hundreds of conversations a week, thousands of conversations a year, is the brand story still being told in a cohesive, easy-to-understand way? Or are brands just getting out there and talking to people, without understanding what they really are communicating? Thoughts and ideas anyone?