the hurricane inside my brain

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?