Imagine Your Reality

Recently Jeremiah Owyang did an interview with Greenpeace about their social media activism and how they had used social media to get companies to change their policies and activities, while also raising public awareness about what the companies are doing. As Jeremiah explains, activist groups such as Greenpeace have been using technology for a long time to aid in their activist work, and social media is no exception. In fact, I would suggest that businesses should study such activist groups and learn what they are doing right. Then businesses can co-opt what the activists are doing to develop closer relationships with the clients they serve.

I think businesses should study how other types of organizations are using social media to communicate with their constituents, donaters, supporters, or whatever you want to call the people that these organizations are communicating with. Its clear that some of these organizations get results in their activities, and its worth studying what they do, and then reverse engineering it. For example, what would have happened if Nestle had been transparent about their activities and actually solicited advice from their fans about what to do? They might’ve gotten the public support and been able to leverage it with Greenpeace. Instead Greenpeace leveraged their response against them and forced Nestle to pledge to make changes. Clearly Greenpeace understood the social psychology involved a lot better than Nestle did.

Ideological movements will trump corporate cultures in a public setting, because if everyone can learn about the effect that corporate policies are having, and those people start to care, corporate culture won’t be able to justify their continued actions or lack thereof. Consequently social media activism comes down to leveraging social influence…finding the opportunity and people who will take up the cause, raise public awareness and effect the bottom line of the company. And it’s very important to understand that its the bottom line that matters the most to a company, often to the detriment of that company because people can rightly accuse the company of only thinking about the money.

If a company were to re-orient themselves in terms of thinking not only about the bottom line, but also the social implications of the activities they use to feed the bottom line, that company might find that the long term cost of focusing just on the bottom line would be a lot more expensive than the short term gain justifies. And this is why if companies study how organizations such as Greenpeace are using social media to raise awareness, they can start asking some tough critical questions about their own practices and how they can be socially transparent with their clientele. The result is that they can then leverage that social influence to get client support for the changes they are making. It’s a different approach, but if companies were to employ social media activism to themselves, there’d be a lot less upset, because they’d be using what the activists were trying to use to promote socially responsible change.

What do you think? How should companies learn from Greenpeace and other organizations that are using social media to raise awareness and public outcry for change?

Interview with Amber Case, Cyborg Anthropologist

Social Media coach show: Why social is important in social media

Something I’ve noted with fascination is how many people have commented in person on the post I wrote about how to write Linkedin introductions. I’ve only gotten one negative critique, where the person accused me of overthinking the writing of introductions. And what that tells me is that people do want social context, when it comes to introductions, or for that matter, any conversation that occurs via social media. In fact, one person I spoke with mentioned that he didn’t accept generic invitations most of the time, precisely because there was no social context to justify making a connection.

The title of this post is: Is being social on social media overrated? My answer is no it isn’t overrated, and if anything it’s underrated, because many businesses and people aren’t thinking about being social while on social media, which means they aren’t working to provide a social context or participating in one when having conversations. It might seem picky to focus on how to write good Linkedin introductions, but is it actually picky, if doing so provides context for not only accepting an invitation, but actually trying to develop and offline relationship as well an online one?

To be truly successful in social media involves more than just being on sites and participating on them. While that can be a good first step, if your only interactions are limited to social media, you aren’t making full use of the social aspect of social media. Social context counts in social media because it provides people the opportunity to determine the value of the communication. More than that however, social context provides you the means to actually take a conversation that starts online into a more personal space, where you can learn more about what a person needs.

The value I find in social media is that lets me make a connection with each person I follow, but to really make that connection be more than a number means actually doing your best to set up social context and interest in having further conversation not only via social media, but other mediums. Social media is social, but to really utilize it as a social medium means actually recognizing that you’re not just using technology or analyzing who clicked what, but also looking at the actual relationships developing on social media and asking yourself how you can also develop those relationships beyond just having a follower or occasionally commenting on news. By establishing social context and making an effort to be social via social media you can actually form relationships that turn into business…but remember not all the conversation will happen on social media. At some point it needs to move offline to take it to the level where you bring in business.

Yesterday, at the lunch 2.o meeting, I met one of the attendees, who recognized me because I post to the Linkedin forum he moderates. We chatted for a bit about the forum and a weird linkedin bug that’s moved some discussions into jobs. This isn’t the only time I’ve met someone in person who also recognized me from online interactions.

The majority of articles I’ve seen out there (and a fair amount I’ve written), focus on social media, but don’t necessarily touch on social networking as much. But the reality is that social networking is more than just a buzz phrase. Participating on sites is a form of networking that does have real world applications. One of the reasons I post articles to linkedin forums that are local is so that if I do meet people in person and they recognize me from those forums, we have talking points, beyond “What do you do?”

Networking on social networks involves actively connecting with people you know and also don’t know. On Linkedin, for me, it involves posting to discussion forums, answering questions and making a point to personalize responses to invitations or actual invitations I send. All of these activities fall under networking and all of them can help you connect meaningfully with people that you interact with on these sites.

Remember that networking is about connection and follow through. The same applies to social networking. There are always ways to follow through on your social networking. consistency of posts, for example, can help a lot, but also making a point to write responses to people who comment on your posts. You connect by posting, and you follow through by responding. This can lead you to build relationships with people, that sometimes turn into offline relationships as well.

What do you think? How do you actually network on social networks?

I’ve discussed social influence before, which is basically the influence a given person has on a social networking site. There aren’t too many tools or applications that allow you to measure the social influence of a given person, but of the applications that are out there, my favorite for measuring social influence on Twitter is Twitalyzer and recently they improved it to a whole new level.

Twitalyzer measures a number of different activities ranging from retweets you do and retweets other people do of your posts to the level of replies and generosity that is present within your tweets. The measurements are used to determine the level of social influence you have as well as offer you suggestions on how you can improve the level of social influence you have. Twitalyzer will tell you what kind of impact you have on your network as well as what kind of label fits your profile your interactions. In my case, I’m an influencer with a Group, which means I have some influence on a relatively small scale in the overall twitterverse (see picture below).

Twitalyzer also allows you to see key twitalyzer metrics such as influence, engagement, and clout and show whether its gone up or down See picture below). They’ll even provide an explanation of what each metric type means as well, so you can understand how it applies to your social influence.

One of the more invaluable features that you have access to is the ability to set goals to improve your twitter presence. Whenever you do a new report, twitalyzer will show you if you have met your goals. In the picture below, I’ve met some of my goals, but still have some work to do, to meet the other goals.

My favorite feature of Twitalyzer is the personality feature, where they graphically show you your social personality. I think it really provides you a good idea of how you are showing up, and what you can do to improve. You can compare yourself to other people in your industry to get an idea of what they are doing, vs what you are doing.

Twitalyzer also provides recommendations for what you can do to improve your twitter presence. While you don’t have to follow those recommendations they are handy to refer to, in terms of helping you get more out of your twitter presence.

Twitalyzer is free, but they also offer some benefits that you need to pay for. Personally I think Twitalyzer is worth paying for, plus I like supporting a small business that in turn can help me improve my social influence on Twitter.

Social comes first in social media, before technology or business platform.

When I first got really involved with social media, I used the event features on Linkedin and Facebook. I would create an event and then invite people to the event. Occasionally I’d get RSVPs, on Linkedin or Facebook, but no one would actually RSVP on my website, and when I contacted people there was no follow through. I suspect they mainly indicated they’d go to the event to show support. I also received occasional messages where people asked me not to put them on my list of invitations, because they said they felt they were getting spammed. And, when I considered that, I also realized that every time I got an event invitation, I also felt that I was being spammed.

The problem with inviting people to events is that when you use the invite feature for events, you are violating the number one social norm of social media: Social media is opt-in, not opt-out. By using the invite feature for events, you force people to opt-out, instead of choosing to opt-in. Consequently event invites end up becoming advertisements, which most people prefer to avoid, because they don’t feel engaged.

I no longer use the invite feature. I still put events onto Linkedin and Facebook, but now treat it as more of a passive page. In fact, I’ve found better results by handing out flyers at events I speak at or sending an email to my e-newsletter list, because in both of those cases, people have opted in and as such my announcement of upcoming workshops isn’t something they are receiving that they haven’t agreed to. I  also post status updates with a link to workshops, particularly on my fan-page, which helps when it comes to promoting events, but I’ve found that not using the invite feature has actually been a better choice than using it.

What do you think? Do you find invitations to events to be spam or useful?

I recently got into a debate  with someone because I retweeted a link to an article. This person debated that because I retweeted the article, I automatically agreed with it. I actually didn’t agree with the article, but thought it was worth retweeting because it made an interesting statement. I realized the central issue of the debate wasn’t the article itself, but rather a social belief about what retweeting really means.

So does retweeting denote agreement with what is retweeted? I don’t believe it does. In fact, if anything, a lot of times I retweet what I don’t agree with, because I want to share it with others. I recognize that disagreement can get me to do some thinking and I hope it does the same for others. The whole concept of retweeting is based on the idea that people want to share information they find interesting with each other, and sometimes it might be information that a person agrees with, but it doesn’t always have to be.

What I think is important to recognize is that different people will have different ideas about what the social norms are for specific activities such as retweeting. The person I was debating with clearly had a different idea about what retweeting, as a social activity, really meant. And to be fair that person isn’t incorrect, but then I’m also not incorrect in my own approach to retweeting. But I think it is important to recognize that not everyone will agree with any person’s given social norms about social media. And even if we someday have a social media etiquette book come out, it won’t mean the rules are correct, so much as they are suggested guidelines.

Regardless, I stick by my own social norm for retweeting. Just because I retweet it, doesn’t mean I agree with it. What do you think?

I think what makes social media so compelling sometimes isn’t the numbers, but the stories. Specifically, it’s the stories people tell each other about their lives, about their interactions with companies, about everything else they do, and while many people will say that too much information gets passed around when it comes to cats, what’s being eaten etc., there is nonetheless something compelling about the details that are shared, and the desire to connect with people through even the most banal of details.

In general, stories are powerful. There’s a saying I heard recently: “Facts tell, stories sell.” And there’s some real truth to that. People like to read stories, like to watch them, etc., which is why the entertainment industry does so well, but it’s also how a business can grab people’s attention, because a business can tell a story as well about how it was founded, what the struggles were, how they help people. And they can use social media to do this, via blog, video, or social networking profiles.

And stories extend past that to situations where businesses helped clients. Recently, I saw a commercial for Les Schwab the tire company. The story in the commercial is of a client who saves some money, because Les Schwab finds a small rock between the calipers of her brakes and removes it for free. You can bet that story has helped boost some business, because people can identify with saving money and being taken care of by a business that wants to help its clients.

Let me tell you another story. Recently I joined Third Tribe Marketing. It’s a forum site focused on internet marketing. I’ve been slowly scaling my participation up, as I get used to the site, and what I’ve found really helpful is that it’s significantly changed my approach to internet marketing, because I’m learning what other people, many of them more successful than I, are doing with their own internet marketing. It’s actually helped me overcome some resistance I had to monetizing my blog, because I am learning how people can do it without being offensive about it, which was an initial concern I had. But I’m also learning more about the power of stories, because so many of these people use stories to create compelling interest in what they are doing, and in the services and products they offer.

Stories are important in social media, because with so much text, what will really stand out is not how much information you pout out, but how you make it interesting enough that people will read it.

Stories sell, facts tell. Are you using stories in your business? Are you using stories on your social media sites?

I recently came across the story of a disabled person’s recent customer service nightmare with United Airlines. While the initial experience was a nightmare, she was able to leverage social media and her network of connections to get a response from United Air. Since then it appears that United Air is talking with her about not only the bad customer service experience, but also what they can do to improve their disabled person’s policy. And what does this illustrate?

It illustrates that more than ever companies need to monitor social media so that they can act on situations such as the one I mentioned above and resolve it, while also taking time to listen to the customer so they can improve their services. At the same time, such an example also shows that companies need to improve customer service, specifically making it more oriented toward helping the customer and less about helping a business evade responsibility.

This example also illustrates that insensitivity to a person’s health status is something which can and will haunt companies, because people are much more likely to take the side of a person than a company. In fact, loyal customers can suddenly, on finding out such details, realize that they don’t want to be customers of a company. Now this isn’t to say every customer will leave, but certainly many will, if only because a person’s story resonates and speaks to how that person feels.

It’s good that United Air, once they were aware of the situation, made an effort to contact the person and handle this situation in as proactive a manner as they could. It shows an increased awareness of the need for sensitivity with customers and also will hopefully lead to better training of employees. Certainly the passenger who complained had every right to be unhappy with the level of service she received, and while a company can apologize and do their best to rectify a situation, it’s even better if they can train their employees to handle situations with an eye toward recognizing how their own actions can effect the company. People, after all, will remember one negative experience over ten positive experiences, so it becomes very important to think of that and be proactive from the beginning.