Practical Conversations

There’s a ton of advice out there that you ignore social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) at your own peril.  I’m having a difficult time finding best practices on when you may need to use ignoring as an approach — or is it something you should never do?

I’d love to know how you feel on this.  Is it ok?  If yes, when? Feel free to comment below, send me a tweet (@kevinmic), or email me directly.

Thanks!

-k

Communicating your organization’s message, whether that message pertains to a sales, marketing or support function should always take your audiences needs into consideration. The problem tends to be that professionals write professionally. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a place for technical jargon, buzzwords and catch phrases – but unless your message is specific to a technical or niche market, your audience may be more inclined to walk away and choose other options. This has the potential to damage your brand image and bottom line.

Clearly defining your goals and understanding that your audience’s goals and your organization’s goals need to be in tune with one another is very important, yet the needs of your audience are more than just ‘widget A’ or ‘concept B’, they are driven by issues of belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization.

Creating a sense of belonging makes your audience feel valued.

Enabling deeper and more personal relationships with your audience has the potential to make them active participants in the defining and creative processes of products, services and solutions. Setting clear standards for your ‘Brand Personality’ and simple directions for your employees and co-workers, if done with your audience’s perspective in mind, allows your organization to develop brand trust and customers to develop brand affinity.

When your audience is looking for assistance with finding a solution or resolving an issue, the last thing that they need is someone communicating in language that is technical or using language that implies a lack of knowledge or experience. Though this tends to go both ways, using language your customers don’t understand may turn them off to your brand, but simplifying the language too much may wind up insulting them. Conversational language beats jargon any day!

Creating avenues for your audience to respond and communicate in a perceived real-time way develops a sense of ownership and true brand trust. This empowers your audience to:

• understand and embrace the realities of your products, services and brand
• spontaneously contribute to conversations with the organization and other potential audience members
• proactively find answers to problems and openly share their stories and experiences about your brand

In the end, your audience is depending on you. They are looking to you for solutions, support and recognition – yet they are also looking to find a home for their personal fulfillment, even if only on a professional level.

When I was studying interpersonal communication at Ithaca College in the early 90s, one of the concepts we looked at was whether your environment encouraged or discouraged communication.  The terms I learned were: sociopetal (environment encourages communication) and sociofugal (environment discourages communication.)

Sociofugal Environment

Sociopedal Environment

Determining if a physical environment encourages or discourages communication is a pretty straightforward process.  You may look at how the chairs are arranged in a room or where the food stations are placed at a party.  Evaluating how we’re encouraging/discouraging communication online can be more challenging.  It’s obvious that a blog post with comments closed discourages communication.  But what if your goal is for blog commenters to interact with each other?  Does it make more sense to have threaded comments so it’s clear which comment someone is replying to?

When designing your blog/community/site/app, you need to know your goals to determine if you’re getting what you need.  Are you looking to encourage discussion among your customers?  To encourage conversation directly with you?

A form to rate content and submit comments that doesn’t show previous ratings or comments like in Microsoft support articles (at bottom of article) will encourage communication with you directly, but not among customers.  While an approach like Amazon customer reviews, encourages some interaction among customers.

It’s worth stepping back (or getting someone with fresh eyes) to look at how you’ve designed your blog/community/site/app.  Are you encouraging or discouraging communication?

For the September, 2009 Social Media Breakfast NH (#smbnh) at the Manchester, NH Public Library I gave this talk about my rules for community.  I call it ‘Kev’s Rules for Community’.

I try to live these rules every day--whether I’m engaging online via twitter, blogs, or any other tools.  The rules are simple:

1. Be Real (don’t be a bot)
2. Address the Need (not just the explicit ones)
3. Be the Gatekeeper (never be the roadblock)

These rules are part of a project I’m working on to get the Dimdim support team on Twitter, directly engaging with customers.  My goal was to go beyond just teaching the tools.  Anyone can create a Twitter account and jump into the conversation.  I wanted to make sure we are consistent in our approach.

I personally have a hard time following rules if there are too many to remember.  What are your rules?  Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter (@kevinmic)

-k

[Special thanks to Matt Turner (@onmatt, www.onmatt.com) for helping to pull all the examples together for this talk, and Leslie Poston (@geechee_girl, www.uptownuncorked.com) for the opportunity to speak.  I do so love to talk.]

As someone reviewing resumes for a Social Media & Web Marketing Specialist position, I’d like to share some tips.  In the first 48 hours I had about 100 people email me.  I’m guessing other employers are having similar experiences.  Some of these tips really aren’t social media specific, but take my advice:

Everyone wants to stand out, but if you create more work for the person reviewing resumes, chances are you won’t be considered.

I’m doing my best to review every applicant who has contacted me, but if it takes me more than a few minutes to get an impression, I’ll admit you go on the “no thank you” pile.

Tip 1: Resumes are still used

It’s great you have a LinkedIn profile or that you keep information about yourself on your web site.  If 99% of other candidates are still sending a resume, having to go find information about you creates more work. Not good.  It may be a personal preference, but I try to stay organized and my inbox expands by several hundred a day, for me it’s easier if you send your resume as an attachment.  No need to attach your cover letter, your email can say the same thing.

Tip 2: If your resume doesn’t include links to you & your work, you aren’t presenting yourself as a social media pro

I hate to be harsh about this one, but if I’m looking to hire someone it’s because I need help.  (Meaning I’m already overloaded.)  If I have to lookup your information to know you have a professional online presence, you haven’t made it easy for me.  I’m not saying you should provide a laundry list of all your sites, just the ones you feel are key.  You want the links to point to you and your work.  It’s your portfolio, not the kitchen sink, just include the best.

Tip 3: Be easy to find

It should be a given, but just in case you’re new to this, if you make it past an initial review of applicants, expect the next step will be that someone Googles you.  Are the links that come up ones you would want a prospective employer to see?  Do you come up in the results at all?

When I get so many files, I typically save them all off into a folder.  Naming your resume ‘resume2.doc’ makes it that much harder for me to find you again later.  At a minimum, make sure your name is in the file name.

I’m sure there are many things I’m not thinking of, but I have to get back to finding the right person for this role.  Any other suggestions?  Leave a comment.

-k

Background

One of the first people I met at my first tweetup in August 2008 was Alexa Scordato (@alexa). She was just moving to the Boston area to work for Barry Libert at Mzinga. Alexa and I spoke for less than a minute, but I made sure to follow her on Twitter. Since then, I’ve had more opportunities to talk with Alexa at events in the Boston area and even joined her a few weeks ago at an “Apple Pickin” tweetup in Stow, MA she helped organize. Alexa has a passion for social media and technology. She’s active in the blog community, working with some of the industry’s A-list bloggers, and has been working on “bridging the gap between Microsoft gurus and MySpace addicts.”

Tools

Alexa uses a relatively basic set tools for managing her online conversations.

• Twitter (following 414 with 1063 following her)
• Facebook (490 friends)
• LinkedIn (39 connections)
• Twitterific for following Twitter conversations on the go.

When it comes to blogs, Alexa remains very active in the blogosphere, but doesn’t rely on any feed/rss readers or Google alerts.

Usage

Alexa follows conversations on Twitter primarily using the Twitter site and Twitter Search . Her approach is a bit different from others I’ve talked to. She is very comfortable joining existing conversations and starting new ones, but views the Twitter stream as an ongoing conversation.

For the blogs she follows, she doesn’t read every single blog post. She picks up on the current conversation when she can. Alexa knows many bloggers and will often call a blogger to discuss what’s being discussed on their blog. She’d rather have an hour conversation by phone to better understand the timeline. She keeps a strong focus on the personal relationships, with the understanding that you can’t keep up with everything.

Alexa grew up with technology (as with most millenials). She has a more native use of technology, not working to follow any specific “best practices.” As an early beta tester for Facebook and early Twitter adopter, the technology is just a new platform for the same type of conversations.

On Twitter, Alexa will typically check someone’s profile to see if they are in the Boston area. As someone new to the area, she is using the platform to help her meet more people. With Facebook, she typically connects to people she knows well or meets in non-social media contexts. For Alexa, the quality of the connections is more important than the number. She goes for higher quality connections.

When I asked her about how much time she spends a day on social media, Alexa asked a great question. “Was I including interactive sites like the NY Times?” I wasn’t — though I’ll need to give that more thought for future interviews. If she just focuses on the “social media/social network” sites she uses, she is currently at around 2-3 hours per day. Before taking on her new job, she used to spend 12-14 hours per day.

Insights

The way you conduct yourself in real life should apply online.

As I mentioned already, for Alexa it’s about higher quality connections and natural conversations. To help maintain this, she keeps her use organic and doesn’t try to force connections with tools. She uses a great metaphor, “If you were at a party would you want to know what everyone in the party is saying?”

Alexa feels you lose the “connectedness” the more people you follow. It’s about understanding what people need and “give so you can get.” She brought up the example of the teenage girls who are creating wildly successful MySpace fan pages. It’s clear they understand what people need and they are willing to let it grow organically.

Alexa believes that social media as it stands isn’t scalable if you are going for quality connections and natural conversations. In real life, who has 1,000+ good friends? She defines good meaning the type of person who would drop everything if you were in need.

Advice

personal is the new professional

Alexa sees the need for more “personal” with the “professional.” She’s found there is “no shortcut” when building your relationships. It needs to be organic and we need to catch ourselves so we don’t end up being socially inept in our attempts to communicate on the web.

For those getting started, Alexa recommends Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn . Facebook because it is a more living breathing social space. Twitter because it’s hot. It’s where the cool kids are. And LinkedIn because it is your digital resume. She’s even heard that some companies are only allowing their employees to have LinkedIn profiles.

Background

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Christine Major of PerkettPR. I first met Christine in August at a Tweetup in Cambridge, MA organized by author, blogger, and Forrester Online Community Manager John Cass. Since then I’ve been following her on Twitter (@CMajor). Through her I’ve learned of several events in the Boston area I would have otherwise missed and have had the opportunity to connect with more interesting professionals.

Tools

Christine uses social media both personally and professionally. She’s quite active on Twitter with more than 500+ followers and uses it to track for news, maintain professional connections, and some personal interaction. As a PR professional, Twitter has been a great tool to help her connect with reporters and influencers. She uploads photos to Twitter using twitpic and recently joined the twitter moms group. She keeps up with friends on Facebook with 150+ friends and maintains professional connections using LinkedIn with 92 connections. To help her keep up with the conversations on Twitter, both for herself and for clients, she uses Twitter Search (formerly Summize).

Usage

Christine has been on Twitter for a year now. Initially she was resistant to jump into the dynamic Twitter conversation, but quickly started realizing its value and became more active. Through Twitter, she’s found a great blend of online and real life connecting unlike any other social networking tool.

She spends about an hour each day directly engaged with social media. Just like email is a part of everyone’s daily lives, Twitter is now part of hers to check for messages and monitor and participate in conversations. For general Twitter discussions and any replies directed towards her (called @replies), she checks them using the Twitter web site and Twitter search. This system lets her work during the day without being interrupted by the general stream of “tweets”. Any private, direct messages to her go directly to her email inbox. On the go, Christine checks Twitter on her iPhone using Twitterific (sometimes a little too often.)

With her personal connections on Facebook she uses a more passive approach, relying on the Facebook generated emails for comments and messages. Occasionally she will go to the Facebook site to check the statuses of her friends. Facebook has been good for catching up with old friends. She had tried MySpace, but wasn’t thrilled with it’s interface and ultimately found she made much better connections on Facebook and canceled her account.

She is being selective about what tools to use to keep things manageable.

Insights

Christine has found success using social media tools by investing time in helping others. Recently she was chosen to be a panel liaison for SXSW . When she tweeted about it to share the news, another Twitter user contacted her to ask how she went about it. She helped get them connected with the appropriate person to get involved. Christine has also witnessed the impact of the medium more directly. A few weeks ago, she tweeted about going for a run. She received a response that it had inspired one of her followers to go out for a run too. The tools have been great in helping her manage connections and make friends.

Using social media has helped her grow personally and push “out of her shell.” To help keep a balance, she has been careful about who she follows back on Twitter. If someone follows her, she looks to see who they are by checking out their bio and reading what they are tweeting about before she decides to follow them back. When she follows someone on Twitter, she’ll take the time to look them up on LinkedIn and Facebook to learn a bit more about them. People she has met in person are more likely to get connected with her across all her social media tools.

Using Twitter was a strategic move by her company. Once she began using it she grew to like it. Meeting people in person and connecting with them on Twitter has been very exciting. She is now working with her clients to introduce them to the space. Some of her clients are hesitant to jump on board, but know they need to do it. In Christine’s view, successful social interaction online needs to come from the client.

Advice

You can’t just feed news – you have to add value or people are going to ignore you.

• Remember it’s public. Be careful what you are putting on there. People are going to check online for you. Show your personality, don’t stifle it.
• It takes time to build up your following and your community. It takes effort to cultivate. Be patient. Grow it organically, don’t force it.
• If you are starting on Twitter, follow friends and ask them to follow you. Ask your friends to suggest to their followers that they follow you. Again, don’t force it.
• Put information about yourself in your bio so people know who you are. You are likely to receive a follow back if you seem like a real person with real interests.
• Be consistent, don’t just tweet once a week and expect a following.
• Get involved. Get engaged. Network. Meet. The best success comes from a combination of meeting people in person and extending that relationship online. It takes time and effort, but the benefits are so rewarding.

Author’s note : I want to thank Christine for allowing her interview to be the first posted to Practical Conversations. Not everyone is willing to blaze trails. It’s my hope that more interviews like this, with people sharing their experiences, will help us all to improve our personal processes for managing online conversations. Thanks Christine! -k

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, very gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’ -- The King, Alice In Wonderland

If only.  Unfortunately, most things in life are not that simple, including social media and online conversations.  There are so many possibilities.

Let’s start at the beginning with some basics.  I recommend these two videos to get a quick understanding:

Social Media in Plain English, from Common Craft

Social Networking in Plain English, from Common Craft

If you’re ready, now dig into these:

• Blogs in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• Podcasting in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• Twitter in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• Wikis in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• Online Photo Sharing in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• Social Bookmarking in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• RSS in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• Trackback in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• Google Reader in Plain English, from Common Craft (video)
• LinkedIn, from Common Craft (video)
• Categorizing Social Media, from MarketingProfs

More to follow soon.  If you are engaging in online conversations and have a system that works, please let me know, I’d like to interview you.

-k