the hurricane inside my brain

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!

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 move 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.

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.

How friends are born

All my life, I have hated being told what to do. If someone tells me I *should* do something, I am immediately reluctant. That’s why “buy now” offers never work for me. I would rather stubbornly pay more money later on or go without, rather than feel that I was forced into buying something.

But I’m in Social Media for a very specific reason. I need people take action. You might hear some people say “it’s all about the conversation.” Weeelllll….yes and no. Conversations can predispose people to take action later, or they can drive people to take action right away. But if you don’t get people to take action sooner rather than later you are going to have a whole lot of meetings where people are shouting at you: “Social media is a waste of time!’ “There’s no ROI!” “Social media experts are no more than snake oil salesmen!” Trust me, THOSE conversations are not the ones you want to be having.

So, how can you drive people to action when there are a whole lot of people (like me) who don’t want to be told what action to take?

Here’s one way I get social media to work for me, personally. See what I posted on Twitter, above? It shows you how I move people to take action along a certain path. From stranger to friend. Or from stranger to business associate. Or from stranger to evangelist. Whatever the goal is, this sequence of steps works for me. Here’s how.

1.) Everyone starts as a stranger. (Even people I’ve known all my life were strangers once). So I follow or am followed by new people every day. Lots of them, in fact. I have a target audience of people I connect try to with, but I am open to just about anyone who wants to connect with me.

2.) Talk to people. In social media, I talk to lots of people, publicly, first. On Twitter, that means using @’s. This is so I can find people who are talking about *ideas* that interest me, or find people who think my ideas are interesting.

3.) Move the people who are discussing like-minded ideas to more private, individual conversations. The people who I’ve been sharing ideas with over time, I send them a private Direct Message (DM) saying something like “hey, I like your ideas. Let’s talk more about them.”

4.) Move those people to other social media platforms. After I’ve talked with people a bit, I ask them to also connect on Facebook or LinkedIn so we can learn more about each other. More information leads to more conversations and more ideas.

5.) Move people to more in-depth conversations. Phone calls or emails or, if possible, a meeting. Sometimes merely social, a coffee or a drink. But more often, it’s business. And if it’s business, I do have an agenda. Here it is: 1) what we both want 2) ideas on how to make that happen 3) closure and next steps

6.) Ahh, next steps. For me, the next steps are always “let me write you a proposal based on what we just talked about.” You see, I’ve just asked them what they need. I’ve discussed ideas for how together we can help make that happen. Now all I have to do is put it in writing so we can make it a business deal.

And you know what? I believe there are a whole lot of really specific business problems that can be solved by a great social media strategy. And once people see exactly how it works, they almost always agree to the proposal.

You’ll notice there isn’t an ounce of hard sell anywhere along that process. It’s all about sharing ideas that move people to action. Which is what I adore most about social media.

Oh, and yes. All those people that have moved from stranger to friend? I adore you too.

That’s my strategy, and you’re welcome to it. Do you have any ideas you’re willing to share?

photo: agaroza5

Here’s one of those completely unforeseen consequences that happens to me *all the time* now that I’ve been in social media for a while.

People ask me if they can borrow my network.

They don’t use exactly those words. They have a message they think is important. And they ask me to broadcast it to my entire network. Or they want me to tell people about their event, or their blog, or their favorite charity. They ask me to “please RT” something on Twitter. They want me to promote their work, or help them get a job, or just tell people they exist.

A few things are interesting to me about this.

One, sometimes the very same people who are asking me for help are ones who have been criticizing me for growing my network so big and so fast. Irony always makes me smile

Two. Yes, yes, yes. I want to be as helpful as I can. Always. Everyday. Anyone who has ever gotten a late night email from me with a long explanation of something they didn’t understand knows this to be true. So does everyone I’ve ever personally introduced to a contact, or written a recommendation for, or had a project done for free, or helped them work through a particularly difficult problem. I have spent my career arguing that kindness is a great business strategy, and live that mantra every day.

But here’s the thing.

I have built my network in part by being very conscious of what messages I send out to them. I take great pains not to be annoying or spammy, or intrusive or a waste of their time.

And it’s not that I think your message is annoying or spammy or intrusive or a waste of time. Especially not if it’s coming from YOU.

YOU are the one that’s engaged in your cause, or your ideas, or your life’s work, or your passion. YOU can explain it better than I can. And YOU are the one that can prove your own value, show the world how you think, be your own best advocate.

What I am more than happy to do is to help you grow your own network. To tell you everything I know about creating a community of people that is as big or as small or as active or as passive as you want. I can tell you how to engage people, message people, move them to action.

I want to help you. Just — don’t tell me HOW to help you. Have a real conversation with me, and tell me what you want to accomplish.

And now that I’ve got that off my chest, YES, you can borrow my network. That’s what I’ve created it for, to increase the amount of good things that can happen in this world. Just ask politely, work together with me on the best way to use it, and understand why if I do say no.

Thoughts? Ideas? Anyone else have this happen?

photo: nyki_m

I was chatting today with my very first boss in my advertising career, Keith Lane. And Keith started talking about something so interesting that I had to say “wait, wait, wait, slow down, I want to blog this.” :0

He said “There are three kinds of conversations in business. There’s the conversation that’s just for the sake of conversation. ‘Weather, kids, how ‘bout them Knicks?’

Then there’s the conversation about possibilities. ‘What if we did this and have you thought about that and what would happen if we approached it this way.’

Finally there’s the conversation for action. ‘Here’s what needs to get done. Let’s make it happen.’”

The reason this engaged me so much is that I really do think about these things. I worry about having too much or too little of the first kind of conversation. I love the second kind: the idea generating stage. That’s the conversation where there’s engagement, inspiration, insight. But I know that the goal is always to move the conversation to the third stage, the conversation for action.

I’ve heard it said that social media is “all about the conversation.” Yes. But. Have you thought about how those conversations work to actually accomplish your objectives? Or are you still wondering how to measure ROI when all you’re doing is talking?

Thoughts?