Ok, so the previous post was about our new project for Twitter. Hashtagsocialmedia.com, which revolves around targeted conversations-in this case, social media. Well here is the off-shoot of that project that bubbled up from those conversations with Jason Breed of Neighborhood America. The Unpanel.
One of the great things about collaboration, social media, and the power of truly thinking outside the box, is that when you put words into action the finished product can be oh so cool. That is the case with Hashtagsocialmedia.com.
The idea for this came out of roughly 2-3 meetings with Jason Breed of Neighborhood America. It bubbled up over a desire to really try and extend the social media conversation beyond the boundaries it was currently taking place in, and do it in a collaborative and open environment.
6 weeks later, here we are.
The premise is simple. Using the #journchat theme of a hosted discussion we’ve decided to structure 1 hour per week (Tuesdays at 12pm eastern) around hot topics and issues that concern #socialmedia. With a guest host/moderator to keep the discussion moving forward, we hope to create some unique perspectives and POV’s on social media business issues.
So our first guest host is none other than Beth Harte Beth brings a tremendous amount of passion, experience and tell it like it is attitude to everything that she talks about, writes about and does as it pertains to social media and marketing. She is the perfect first choice.
We hope you can join us every Tuesday at 12 noon est. To help us take the business of social media into new directions
So the big stink of late is Guy Kawasaki and his sudden called on the carpet transparency in Dave Fleets blog. Real quickly, Guy Kawasaki admitted that he has a few people that help him Tweet out his Alltop spam Tweets, and he only admitted it after being asked.
On the one hand, Guy is free to do what he wants. He even admits as much. I think the outrage stems as much from a sense that a lot of people thought that Guy was coming down from the castle to be with the common folk.
Well he does and he has. It just turns out, we don’t know when.
Case in point. Guy was in my town, Naples, Florida. Relatively small town by most standards. I sent a few tweets that we should meet up. Then I DM’d him a number of times, to cover my bases. I’m guessing or thought he never got them; give the volume he may receive. Now I have to think perhaps his other “tweeters” got the tweets? I don’t know.
However, it turns out he hosted a little Tweetup (4 people) and I missed it. There were some other issues involved in me missing it, not the least being if he @’s me and doesn’t DM me, I’m not going to get that on my phone.
So He didn’t DM back but I did get an apology 2 days later about missing each other. Fair enough!
I think in essence, more (or is it most?) people are just dissapointed that “Guy” isn’t tweeting as much as they thought. Look, I have a hard enough time managing 800/1500 let alone 101,000/93,000 so expecting an A lister to hit you back might be unrealistic but…
This is not a my friend is better than your friend example, but Rober Scoble whose numbers are 82,000/75,000 regularly tweets me back at the times I have tweeted him. This is both DM and regular @’s. As I’ll tell you if asked, there are good, bad and indifferent ways to use Twitter. It’s up to you to figure it out. So there you go. Run with it
I’ve noticed that the noise to signal ratio is increasing on Twitter, how about you? Note: This is my opinion and how it’s represented below. 🙂
One of things I love so much about what I do is how fluid it is. Not only personally, but as a whole, the industry and space I swim in, is very fluid. But within that fluidity are small pockets of conversations, networks and silos of brewing relationships that enhance one’s ability to “be fluid”. As of late, I have noticed a lot of really interesting discussions that have bubbled up based on these principles of micro-networks and our ability to flow in and out of them.
David Armano who is all about micro-interactions, adds to his growing volume of work, which I respect very much, with this preso titled, “The Micro-Sociology of Networks.”
Slide#36 struck a nerve for me in which David says that Micro-social economics are Niche. For me, I picture the relationships I have in social networks, the relationships I have offline and the one’s I might have in a large stadium, Each has it’s own dynamic and niche quality.
Valeria Maltoni, another person who brings fresh thinking to everything that she touches, did the following post a while back titled Micro Interactions in PR In which she states that:
Public relations is the discipline that gets to the single interactions, the relationships, more closely.
The single interactions and or the relationships. It’s as simple as this-Is it easier to develop a more intimate relationship with one person or 2 or 3 or 40? Every time you add another person to the conversation, divide the conversation, the relationships and the signal exponentially.
This exponential division reminded me of a tweeted conversation I had awhile back with Robert Scoble, in which I asked him, “Now that you have 70,000 followers, what is the percentage of “actual” conversations you have with your followers/or those he followed?” His answer? When he was only being followed by 20,000, he spoke to 25-35% of them-meaning more than one tweet. Conversations. As the number has risen, it is now less than 10%. In Scoble’s case, I believe it’s always been more of a macro-interaction, but it works for him. But I think he would be the first to admit, that any value that he derives from Twitter, would still be on a personal micro-interactive level.
Recently, I was reading a post by Bernie Borges titled… The Lifecycle of Interaction in Social Media in which he discusses the collective wisdom and influence of communities, and I started to think about the “microcosm of a community” no matter how large or small.
On the one hand one might not think of a community as a microcosm, yet niche communities are in essence, reflections of larger less fluid communities, aren’t they? There is the chance that you are in this or that niche community, because of the rigidity of the larger network. You are, in a sense, a microcosm of a larger group. And because of the possible lack of micro-interactions, you chose to find one that met your needs.
Quick definition here from dictionary.com
human beings, humanity, society, or the like, viewed as an epitome or miniature of the world or universe
The fluidness of online networks now allows us to be a part of many networks and create many realtionships. Sounds very reflective of the offline world doesn’t it? So it begs the question: Aren’t all online social networks, microcosm’s? Subsets of society played out online?
In conclusion, as I’ve said, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and the thoughts might be disjointed but as my friend Mack Collier mentions, I’m removing the perfect filter from this post and throwing it up.
In part deux of my series on social media best practices for Ari Herzog’s blog Ariwriter, I had planned on talking about elaborating on the need to “experiment with effort” or “experiment with engagement”. By that I mean don’t just sign up or register on a lot of different social sites and expect the relationships to bubble up from there. Put forth some effort.
But in lieu of expounding on that I give you the second part in the series which covers hiding behind the brand. See what you think and let me know your thoughts.
As a follow up. I want to add that from the conversation that I did have with “the brand”, a dialogue did evolve, and a relationship with the person behind that brand was created. And you know what? That person turned out to be very engaging, enlightening, and earnest. And that would not have happened prior to our discussion about “People versus Brands”.
This post is inspired my Mother who is in declining health. She told me she was asked by her doctor, Where are you on the mountain, if your life is the mountain? Was she going up? Was she at the top? Going down? My Mom answered that she was on the backside of the mountain, but she had her heels dug in. Good answer Mom.
But this led me to a broader question about what we all do and how we do it, and it is this.
If you’re career is a mountain, where are you? On the way up? In a holding pattern? Trying to find an alternate route? Or have you given up and turned back, satisfied by how far you’ve gotten. Satisfied that you at least tried. Or are you going to recharge the batteries, reinvent, re-plan, and give it another go?
If you are a marketer, where do you guage your level of experience on the mountain? You are a social media marketer, how well do you know the space if your map is the mountain? Do you forge on? Do you try and follow the path? The road less taken? Do you do what the Sherpa tells you? Are you a team player? Or are you in it for yourself?How much do you help people tethered to you? Are you pulling them? Are they pulling you? Or are you pulling your own weight?
It’s funny but when you get to the top, you really can’t stay there too long. But some like going to the top so much, they do it over and over, and they are successful a majority of the time. However, sometimes, there are things that are out of their control that prevent them from reaching the summit. But it doesn’t stop them from trying again. Why is that? How does this reflect on you, and what you are doing now? Where are you on the mountain?
Yes they should. But they’re not and that gets them in trouble. remember the old saying, Measure twice cut once? That means you’ve only got one shot at cutting the piece of wood. The point being “make sure” you have the right measurement. Be sure about your post, before you hit publish.
Back in September I remember asking Brian Solis the exact same question at Web 2.0 expo in New York, “Should Bloggers be held to journalistic standards?” and he answered yes. Bloggers need to be held to some type of standard.Why did I ask Brian? Because he has a unique perspective, he’s a content creating machine and he cranks out volumes of noteworthy and spot on commentary about the social media and PR space and he is accutely aware of what he writes and says.
But a larger point is this.
Bloggers need to hold THEMSELVES to some sort of standard.
Why? Because when they start writing about people and companies and events- and if they have any type of influence, and they get it wrong-the backlash can be brutal for all parties involved.
Which leads me to the reason I’m writing this post. Yesterday Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang wrote a post about the social media company, Mzinga. It did not go over very well. Suffice it to say that regardless of whether Jeremiah was correct in what he asserted or speculated, what happened next was nothing short of a shit storm.
Yes the mob mentality reared it’s ugly head again and yes Jeremiah was wrong in his approach. But at some point, 2 things need to occur. One, the Mob mentality needs to back off. and Two, Jeremiah needs to apologize.
After comment #19 Jeremiah realized he screwed up and he ultimately apologized and posted a retraction of sorts. However the mob continues to vent some 60 comments later. At last count there were 2 posts that were sympathetic.
So what do we learn from this?
Interestigly enough, even a Forrester analyst has room for improvement. It’s a simple as this for Jeremiah and actually speaks to a vlog I did prior to this post. One of the things we must do, as hard as it is, we must:
Practice a sense of patience.
Instead of rushing to break a story, perhaps it might make better sense to feel the situation out or better yet..”Measure twice, cut once”.
Ultimately, since we do not want to be policed by the mob mentality, we have to police ourselves, and hold ourselves to some type of journalistic standard. No one else will-unless of course you count the blog mob and twitterati.
Lastly, for the mob mentality. Ok so you’re pissed. And you let Jeremiah know about it. Ok he got that. I get that. But reiterating over and over again, virtually the same thing, gets tiresome, boring and lacks any type of originality or constructive criticism. Maybe the mob needs realize that pitchforks and torches never really worked that well anyway.
Awhile back, Ari Herzog who writes a wonderful blog over at AriWriter.com asked me to do a guest post on his blog for a series he’s doing on social media best practices. Rather than give him the usual written 500 words on the 7 things, 5 tips, or 4 factors that you absolutely must do in social media, I decided to mail it in and do a 3 part V-log instead. I hope he doesn’t mind! I’d also be curious as to what you might think of my 2 assertions here as well.
This is a word cloud generated from the bios of my Twitter followers brought to you by Twittersheep
Check out the underlying themes of the word cloud. It’s pretty obvious what my followers and I focus on wouldn’t you say? What does yours say about you and your followers?
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