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Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone, Or Else

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Everyone lives in a bubble to a certain degree. Maybe you call it a comfort zone. Perhaps you don’t call it anything but stay locked in, blinders on, to your industry, company or job. The social media world is very much a bubble. And too much of one in my opinion. Consultants, practitioners, bloggers and enthusiastic agency types sit around in a big circle jerk telling each other how much they love each other’s blogs and hash-tagging the crap out of useless drivel on Twitter all day. For every one practitioner who actually offers up useful insight that shows they live in reality, not righteousness, there are 25 more who expose their inexperience like a streaker in church. I feel bad for them, though I don’t condemn them. Good ideas have been known to come from people not wearing pants. (For the record, there are still others who don’t have the interest or the capacity to work with clients and carry on a hyperactive social media front, so they choose to be good professionals rather than show offs. Then there are a couple of us who are expedient and efficient enough to do both.) Two encounters last week continued to solidify my opinion that the social media echo chamber is so far detached from the real world that it may very well be headed for a bubble-busting. At last week’s Louisville Free Public Library Author Series event with Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick , the question-answer period featured these (paraphrased) ditties: “Isn’t social search a violation of your privacy?” “Can’t someone provide some sort of protection for age-appropriate material on Facebook?” “You say Facebook is a conduit for all this good. Isn’t it also a conduit for baseless hatred?” After the presentation, an older gentleman (library author event crowds typically bring out a demographic more advanced in years) approached me and said he didn’t want to be on Facebook because he didn’t care what the guy down the street was doing. When I explained to him that A) He didn’t have to be that guy’s friend on Facebook and wouldn’t see he was doing or that B) He could friend him but filter out his activity to ignore what he was doing, the man almost declared he’d go sign up for an account right then. The other encounter was one that really floored me. I had my aunt, an admitted computer and Internet novice, review a new website I’ve launched for people just like her. She spent several hours on the site and called me with feedback. She then spent 40 minutes giving me all the things that confused or bothered her, not about the site, but about the home page. It is my belief that there’s the social media and even Internet marketing echo chamber and then there’s the other 95 percent of the world (or more). And unfortunately, ne’er the two shall meet these days. Social media enthusiasts are too busy polishing each other’s knobs to teach anymore. Try to find some good, 101-level social media content on the web these days — fresh content — and let me know how long it takes you to get frustrated. There’s a whole world of people out there that need our help, gang. Some of them want to embrace the tools and technology and get smarter. Others don’t even know there’s smarter to be had. And then there’s the cybernazi-fearing gentleman from the library event who wouldn’t piss on social media if it was on fire. Get outside your comfort zone. Leave the bubble. Hold out a hand and say, “let me show you a trick that will make that easier,” to someone who could use it. If we don’t bring more people into the fold, we’re all going to be out of work soon. What are you going to do today to teach someone something? The comments are yours. IMAGE : From Shutterstock by Hart Photography.

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Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone, Or Else

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Tags: aunt, David Kirkpatrick, facebook, facebook-effect, image, internet, learning social media, opinion, public-library, social, Social Media, social media education, street, teaching social media

How To Make LinkedIn Answers Part Of Your Routine

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Using LinkedIn Answers is probably one of the most effective, yet under-used ways to build credibility and generate qualified leads using social media. I’m even guilty of focusing my efforts on other social networks, despite the fact that what I do, by definition, is B2B. I work with companies, not consumers. And LinkedIn is a more natural environment for B2B lead generation. Why? LinkedIn is business in the front and back. No party here. Sorry, Billy Ray. I recently sat down and created a simple mechanism to ensure building leads and credibility on LinkedIn was baked in to my daily routine. Since I start my day with my feed reader, I went to LinkedIn and subscribed to the RSS feeds of five or six categories of questions. When I start my day, I read content, share the good stuff and now take a moment to answer one or two questions on LinkedIn. It adds about five minutes to my morning routine. There’s no rocket surgery here, kids. But I figured I’d share some visuals to help you figure it out if you need it. Follow these steps and get past the noise to start building a strong signal on a social network that can connect you with people in need of your services: Step One Find a category of LinkedIn Answers you have a degree of expertise in. A screen shot of the Answers page for Internet Marketing is below. At the bottom of the right column of the page you should see the orange RSS feed button. Click that to subscribe to the feed via email or your favorite feed reader. Repeat the process for any number of other topics that make sense for your business. Step Two Now go to your feed reader and put all those new feeds into a folder. Mine is called LinkedIn Answers. It contains all five or six feeds and I check it now as part of my morning reading. As I browse through the various feeds, I find a question or two I have a reasonable opinion or perspective on, click through to the post on LinkedIn and offer my answer. (I guess that’s Step Three.) Here’s the cool thing: I’ve been doing this for about a week now and already have one qualified lead from a person who reached out to me based on one of my answers. Your traction may vary, but offering up a smart opinion and being helpful will at least build your credibility on LinkedIn if not deliver potential customers right to you. I’m sure there are folks with more LinkedIn-specific expertise out there who can give you more advice on other activities on LinkedIn to help. I’m also sure proactive follow-up with those answering the questions can lead to some potential business relationships, too. But for now, I’m happy to just participate and see what happens. For five minutes a day, it can’t hurt. What do you think? Have you been interacting on LinkedIn for a while? Let us know how your experience has been. The comments are yours. Related articles by Zemanta 5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog with LinkedIn (johnchow.com) Developing Leads for Your Sales Pipeline (bettercloser.com) Use LinkedIn For Public Relations (ricksrss.com) How To Use LinkedIn For Marketing (ricksrss.com) 8 Ways to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile (kylelacy.com)

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Here’s A Little English To Doctor The Spin

Monday, June 7th, 2010

It’s amazing what good public relations can do. And by “good” I mean fair and honest. Fortunately, the power-to-the-people shift brought about by corporate scandals, economic uncertainty and social media is forcing more and more public relations firms, professionals and departments to be that or be embarrassed … or finished. Unfortunately, the education most public relations professionals received, coupled with the company-first doctrine of the business world means most public relations, by nature, isn’t good. It’s spin. The bothersome notion in all this is that many well-intended people, companies, organizations and political movements have not just fallen victim to good spin, but have exacerbated the problem by repeating it. When my friend and noble public relations professional Geoff Livingston recently told us (or more likely repeated an assertion that) fried chicken causes breast cancer, I shook my head at another unfortunate and unsuspecting victim of good spin doctoring. For the record, obesity is frequently a predictive factor in breast cancer, not eating fried chicken. If someone eats too much fried chicken, they may very well become obese, but the person’s inability to eat in moderation is to blame, not the chicken. Geoff’s assertion is akin to saying Apple, Microsoft, Cisco and Dell cause Internet porn. And we all know Internet porn was invented by Tipper Gore. (Sorry. Too easy.) Image by Guy Fawkes via Flickr Another example of a noble cause skewed by spin has duped a fair number of intelligent, well-intended people in my home community of Louisville. The Ohio River Bridges Project , a Federal transportation Mega-Project that would add two Ohio River spans and reconfigure the junction of I-71, I-64 and I-65 near downtown to address immediate and long-term traffic issues for our region, has been attacked for several years now by environmental and community activist groups. While the organizations who have criticized the project are well-intended and represent ideals that I would even endorse, they’ve duped a fair number of people in to believing an untruth. Groups like 8664 and River Fields want you to think the States of Kentucky and Indiana and the Federal Highway Administration overlooked the environment and want to cover Louisville’s Waterfront Park with more highway concrete. The plans call for more lanes, but more efficient total concrete coverage; a higher traverse across the portion of the park currently under overpasses and less support columns (making that part of the park more open, bright and safe); and — oh, by the way — a potential expansion of the park by 50 acres at the project’s completion when that amount of land is turned over to the development organization that manages the park. It’s frustrating to have conversations with people who think they’re in the know about the project only to discover their “know” comes from the spin (from perfectly good people, by the way) and not from investigating facts. I’ve also recently been enlightened to my own misinformation from spin thanks to a client’s insistence on making me smarter. (Thank you, EMA !) Think for a second about companies that make paper. Now think about your perception of them or perhaps what you’ve heard in the media about paper companies. Would it surprise you to know that no North American paper manufacturer uses trees taken from unethically deforested rain forests? Would it shock you to know that the North American paper and forest product industry plants four times as many trees as it harvests? (Think about it. If they didn’t, they’d eventually go out of business.) Most of the recycling trend was started by the paper industry and they continually increase the percentage of manufactured product that comes from recycled paper, not the other way around. The paper and paper-based communications industry is probably more “green” and environmentally conscious than any other industry on earth, including the environmental lobby who wants to paint them as the bad guy. Yet all we hear these days is about how we need to move toward paperless communications and “save the earth, don’t print this email.” If the paper industry dies, kids … it won’t help the environment. Find more interesting factoids (with third-party attribution) here . For the record, I admire Geoff Livingston for millions of reasons, the least of which certainly isn’t his passion for cause marketing. I don’t have issues with people protesting KFC for making fatty foods or even those who accuse them of pink-washing with their recent Komen donation drive (though I fully support anyone wanting to raise or donate money to fight cancer, regardless of how selfish their motivations are). I don’t have issues with people who have found fault with Komen’s methods, either. I admire the ideals behind 8664 and love the fact River Fields serves as an environmental checks and balances organization for projects, public and private. In fact, I want to protect and preserve the environment, both in my community and our world in general, as much as anyone. I proudly recycle, even though I’ve heard rumors many local efforts are B.S. and your waste goes to landfills, not processing centers. I err on the side of conserving paper and gas. To my knowledge, I’ve never killed a three-toed sloth or clubbed a seal, either. But what happened to us as a society that we’re so apt and willing to believe a one-sided story? When did self-directed decision-making leave our conscious? Did “good” PR kill good PR? Is our ADD society producing droves of drones who’d rather accept the common thread rather than raise a hand and ask questions? Will the consumer-based marketplace reverse the trend or will the socially-adept extremes dictate popular belief? Our politics (at least in the U.S.) have already become so polarizing the vast majority of us are disenfranchised. Will our conversations soon follow? When it comes to public relations, this is what keeps me up at night. What about you? Disclosure : I previously worked as a public affairs account manager for the Ohio River Bridges Project while on staff at Doe-Anderson . While this certainly reveals a bias on the issue, to the best of my knowledge, all of my assertions relative to the facts of the project can be found in publicly available documents related to the project, many of which are found at http://kyinbridges.com . I currently have no vested interest or involvement in the project or its support/protest groups other than I live in Louisville and support improving inter- and intra-state travel, traffic, safety, quality of life and environmental concerns in this region.

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Here’s A Little English To Doctor The Spin

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Tags: development, good public relations, industry, internet, organizations, park, power, pr spin, project, recycling

Social media, tech & marketing events: June

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

H ere’s our roundup of social media, tech and marketing conferences and events scheduled for the month of June. For the full year, see our Calendar of 2010 social media, tech and marketing conferences . It’s another busy month, and I’ll be kicking it off by flying to New York today for the Mobilize Your Cause Bootcamp (today’s the last day to register) and Personal Democracy Forum (follow the proceedings with the #pdf10 hashtag on Twitter). Note that we’ve published a roundup of social change conferences and events for June on our sister site, Socialbrite . We’ll publish a list of noteworthy conferences and events on the first of each month during the year. Hope to see you at some of these! If you know of other must-attend events, please add them by posting in the comments at the bottom and I’ll add them as I can. Conference Date Place June D Conference June 1–3 Palos Verdes, Calif. The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference has been breaking news, highlighting innovation and bringing you straight-up, unvarnished conversations with the most influential figures in technology since 2003. D is different from other conferences: no canned speeches, no marketing pitches — just content. PLATO @ 50 June 2–3 Mountain View, Calif. The first-ever conference on the history of the amazing PLATO system. Come find out what social software, e-learning, online community and multiplayer games were like long before the Internet took off. Learn how the lessons of the PLATO era are still abundantly applicable today. Try out one of the fully restored original PLATO plasma-panel terminals. Personal Democracy Forum * June 2–5 New York City The annual gathering of political activists, government reform advocates and techies, with a Change Makers Bootcamp on June 2 (I’ll be co-presenting with Katrin Verclas) and an unconference for the Saturday after the formal conference ends. IABC World Conference June 6–9 Toronto The World Conference of the International Association of Business Communicators brings together 1,400 communication practitioners from 40 countries for four days of learning, camaraderie and inspiration.. RailsConf June 7–10 Baltimore, Md. RailsConf, the largest official conference dedicated to everything Rails, brings together the most innovative and successful Rails experts and companies. Learn useful information, ideas and techniques you can put to work immediately with a program designed for all levels of expertise. Internet Week NYC June 7–14 New York City Internet Week New York is a weeklong festival of events saluting NYC’s thriving Internet industry and the companies, organizations and innovators creating the future of online media. SMX Advanced June 8–9 Seattle Search Marketing Expo Advanced is the only search marketing conference designed exclusively for experienced internet marketers. Sessions are fast-paced, Q&A-packed, frequently controversial and quite informative. Connections June 8–10 Santa Clara, Calif. Connections: The Digital Living Conference and Showcase, hosted by research firm Parks Associates with support from the Consumer Electronics Association, is the executive event focused on market developments for advanced digital lifestyle solutions. Online Community Unconference June 9 Mountain View, Calif. The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community managers, developers, business people, tool providers and investors to discuss how to develop and grow online communities. Advertising 2.0 June 7–8 New York City The annual gathering of advertising, marketing and media execs covering global brands, marketing, mobile and media. It’s put on by Barry Diller’s IAC and Digital Hollywood. Innovation Journalism 7 June 7–9 Palo Alto, Calif. IJ-7 is a meeting place to discuss how journalism and innovation come together: How journalism affects innovation, how innovation affects journalism, how journalism covers innovation and the market for it. The conference welcomes all journalism and innovation stakeholders: journalists, industry, policy-makers in media and innovation, PR, academic researchers, faculty and students in related areas of study, other professionals connected to the news industry, as well as individuals with a special interest in journalism and innovation. VON Conference & Expo June 9–11 Washington, D.C. VON: The Voice of Network Convergence showcases the best of the global IP communications world for service providers and large enterprises. Turning Ideas Into Business June 13–16 Banff, Canada The Banff World Television Festival (BANFF) and nextMEDIA have announced an innovative strategic partnership that will see these two popular industry events run concurrently. Tabula Rasa DC June 14 McLean, VA Tabula Rasa DC assembles a master cast of innovators, developers and visionaries for hands-on guidance, creative inspiration and how-to maps for apps on the iPad and the wave of mobile, high-concept, high-touch personal computers. TWTRCON NY June 14 New York TWTRCON NY is a one-day conference focused entirely on the business use of Twitter where you’ll see case studies and learn best practices from leading organizations that are using the real-time Web to deliver bottom-line results. Enterprise 2.0 June 14–17 Boston E2 takes a strategic perspective, emphasizing the bigger picture implications of the technology and the exploration of what is at stake for organizations trying to change not only tools, but also culture and process. Social Networking Conference June 16–18 Beverly Hills, Calif. The annual event is for social networking executives who have an interest in learning about new technologies, business social networking, marketing strategies, business management, venture capital, networks and mobile telecom. Experts in management, software, mobile technology, venture capital and marketing for social networking with experience with both the mobile/wireless market and the enterprise social networking market will present. SIME Barcelona June 16–17 Barcelona, Spain SIME is northern Europe’s largest conference about the Internet and digital opportunities with events in Helsinki, Stockholm, Barcelona and now for the first time in San Francisco. SIME brings together top executives, marketing professionals, aficionados and members of the press. SIME is about how digital opportunities can convert to new business and a better world. Velocity June 22–24 Santa Clara, Calif. Now in its third year, Velocity — the Web Performance and Operations Conference from O’Reilly Media — is dedicated to helping people build a better Internet that is fast by default. Join hundreds of web developers and experts under one roof at the premier conference dedicated to building industrial strength sites at Internet speed Inbound Marketing Summit — Chicago June 23–24 Chicago Chris Brogan presents the second in a series of social influence marketing conferences for 2010. Cloud Computing World Forum June 29–30 London In this 2-day conference and exhibition, you’ll hear leading case studies about how businesses have integrated cloud computing and Enterprise 2.0 into their working practices. JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile , contact JD or leave a comment. Tweet It! Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Reddit Stumble This Post This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported . Related posts: Social media, tech, marketing events: April Social media, tech, marketing events: March Social media, tech & marketing events: May

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Social media, tech & marketing events: June

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Be open to social media’s benefits to your business – MiamiHerald.com

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Dancer Universe (blog) Be open to social media's benefits to your business MiamiHerald.com For many individuals and organizations, social media remains a nebulous dimension of marketing . Finding the right path to pursue and … Facebook vs. Twitter For Business Social Media Marketing Strategy Analysis Online PR News (press release) Brisbane Internet Marketing and Social Media Course – Full Day Practical, June … PRWire Super Social Media Activity Kicks Off South Africa's World Cup Inventorspot Manila Bulletin

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