First topic of the show was our Social App of the week. With location-based apps and functionality becoming more than just a personal novelty, making their way into the advertising space, marketing campaigns and creating more biz partnerships, it’s a very hot topic right now. This week we chose location-based app Whrrl. This app has been around for a few years and while it is not new and they offer some of the standard features of the other loc-based apps, one of the things that sticks out is their “Societies” feature, making it easier for you to virtually group together with others that share your specific interests and passions. Giving users an option to either join a “Society” or create their own if they haven’t found one that serves a need or specific interest they’re looking for, is a great way to foster new relationships virtually and meet new friends in a way that is more meaningful online. Really cool.

Next was our featured guest, Winnie Hsia. Many of us can vouch for the fact that it’s always a challenge bringing social media into an older company. While she started out doing some part-time stuff on Twitter/Facebook for Whole Foods, Winnie was able to create value for Whole Foods quickly within the social media landscape and has since turned it into a full time job. From answering questions from headquarters via various social media channels, to encouraging and educating individual store managers on how to leverage SM to increase sales and customer involvement, she has really helped paved the way for a company based on everything organic, gracefully transition into the digital lives of it’s customers without missing a beat. She has found a way to utilize her passion for food, community and technology to connect and engage with customers on Twitter, Facebook and beyond. Her closing tweetable thought was so awesome I had to make it the title of this blog post: “Be interesting and be interested.”

Finally, our Twitterer of the week was none other than Jo Garfein (@JOpinionated). After reading through her tweets, credentials and various projects that she is part of, I assure you that if you at all think you are truly in the know when it comes to pop-culture, you have more than met your match with Jo. She is a pop culture content machine and an unparalleled Lost fan. You can check out her various projects at JOpinionated.com. Jo, we love your tweets!

Last but not least, for our point/counterpoint segment, Aaron & Jennifer went on to discuss businesses being able to attach a dollar value to a fan or follower. This to me is the Holy Grail of data in social media, data that if at least 85%+ accurately established and forecasted, will finally allow businesses to fully harness SM for revenue purposes as well as help those of us in running the  SM show to be more iron clad in our pitches to executives and both internal/external clients in business. The discussion was sparked by Q’n'D after discovering and reading a recent article posted at GigaOM. They do a terrific job discussing some of the challenges and discoveries covered in a recent report developed by Syncapse, a social media measurement firm.

Here are some of the more insightful takeaways from the study:

• On average, fans spend an extra $71.84 they would not otherwise spend on products they describe themselves as fans of, compared to those who are not fans.
• Fans are 28 percent more likely than non-fans to continue using a specific brand.
• Fans are 41 percent more likely than non-fans to recommend a product they are a fan of to their friends.

This information is definitely helpful and was finally presented in a way that most of us in business can make sense of. It also reinforces how marketing will always be, to some extent or another, a series of moving targets that will evade our business objectives if we don’t make research a huge part of the equation.

Next week we’ll talk to Bob Knorpp, of The BeanCast. Please join us next Thursday live at noon PT / 3 ET in the Blog Talk Radio chat room or feel free to listen anytime on iTunes. Have a great weekend!

Onward.

47Project: So who are you and what do you do for Second Harvest Food Bank?

DK: My name is Danny Keith, I founded Grind Out Hunger with Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County and I am most recently the Development Officer for Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County.

47Project: How are you using social media to help the SHFB raise awareness?

DK: In my day job the realization of becoming the voice for your brands so your community can drive your message and support or alter it based on how they see your brand. I applied these same principals when I launched http://www.grindouthunger.org and I found that the laws of social apply universally across all aspects. After an extremely successful year with Grind Out Hunger in 2009 and the subsequent traditional and social media it received, I then begin to analyze the existence of of TheFoodBank.org’s website and realized it needed a voice. They already had started a Facebook Fan Page and were using YouTube, Twitter and Vimeo moderately. I came in and syndicated all to cross pollinate each other and create a circle of social. We then branded and begin to implement the push, while bringing the social items directly to the front page of the website. At this point the creation of a WordPress Multi-User platform to set the stage for Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County to become their own media channel through http://www.thefoodbank.org all while tying in the social activity to tell the story.

47Project: Has it been a challenge trying get online communities to follow SH F B and it’s initiatives? If so, why do you think?

DK: Actually it has been well received, and honestly taken off virally allot quicker than some of my for profit ventures. Non-profits in general are doing such great things at a frequency that creates the need for social even more. Non-profits really are their own best media outlet.

47Project: What have been some of your biggest social media successes so far?

DK: With Second Harvest Food Bank it was the rapid acquisition of fans through our Facebook Fan Page http://www.facebook.com/secondharvestsantacruz from 300 users to over 1000 within 5 weeks.

47Project: What is the end result you are hoping for after all is said and done?

DK: To tell the story loud and proud…Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County has been on the forefront in the non-profit sector distributing half of its monthly distribution as fresh fruits and vegetables (one of the few food banks in the Nation to lay such claim) while also working with agencies to simplify the processes to get help within the community (On staff WIC and Food Stamp agents help with the process) and educating the recipients of the food around the importance of nutrition. All while servicing over 180 different food distribution agencies within Santa Cruz County. Alarmingly allot of this great work was under exposed mainly due to lack of a social channel to promote it to the community that it services.  Raising money is aˇlways the focus at Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County, the “ask” is happening differently now. What used to be a mail in donation or a face to face has become electronic, anonymous and instant. My goal is to increase the micro ask (individuals donating $1 to $10) electronically to support the expanding need Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County is experiencing.

47Project: Are there any SHFB events or announcements you’d like to mention?

DK: Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County has divided its year in two. 1st half of year is scheduled Food For Children and then second half of the year is Holiday Food Drive. I would just implore people to take a moment and reflect on the hardships others are experiencing, especially around food insecurity. Please donate if you can whether it be food, money or your time…it all makes a difference.

For More Information:

Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz on Facebook

GrindOutHunger.org

FeedingAmerica.org

The honor of being a father is filled with the most extreme rewards and challenges. Before you are a parent and are in the stage of thinking about being one, you are concentrating on all the joys and trials that are written about in parenting magazines, books, and articles. You are juggling all the scenarios of love and strain that you’ve witnessed with other family members or close friends that have kids when you are visiting each other. You have a list of ideals you hold onto based on how you were raised and all the things you plan on instilling in your children, or not instilling in them.

When they enter the world though, something starts to happen that we fathers aren’t prepared for. It’s the biggest gift that my boys have given me thus far. It’s a gift that can’t be taught in a class, written in a book, or learned and prospered from by any other means than to actually experience it for yourself.

Raising my 3 boys has taught me what unconditional love really is. During my time as a father I’ve been not only blessed with the opportunity to raise my sons to be humble, respectful men, but also to have these 3 young people in my life that love me in a way that no one other than God could. That is something that continues to blow my mind, break down emotional struggles from my own childhood, and allow me the opportunity to reconstruct who I am as a man from the ground up, the opportunity to aspire to be at least close to what I know they are gonna be. No advice, counselor, good friend, or other family member could do that for me like my own sons have. For that I’m eternally grateful and humbled. I love you Simon, Ethan and Liam and look forward to a long life with you guys.

Happy Father’s Day to all you involved fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers and anyone else that has stepped up to the plate to take a father figure role in someone’s life. You have one of the most rewarding jobs on the planet. Your impact on future generations is huge.

Onward.

Because profitability for any business comes from human beings making the decision to invest in you or your company, I believe that the old school is now officially backwards and can almost be hurtful to your cause. In the last year or so, the concept unearthed, thanks in large part by the social aspect of the web, is that companies need to spend more time using their market research and user group studies to construct a strategy around presenting their offering as an integral part of someone’s life, rather than as a “great product or service at a great price.”  The “Hey look at me! Look at me!” syndrome that so many companies and business people fall into when they don’t know what else to do with their time and budgets and feel like nothing else was working, is no bueno.

Like It Or Not, Warm Fuzzies = Revenue

I’m not saying the quality of the products or services aren’t a priority. Hell, they have to be if they’re are to successfully become a part of someone’s life, solidifying their purchase decision to make that initial investment in their relationship with you, ensure customer loyalty and retention, and increase the frequency of word of mouth (now more valuable than ever). I’m just saying that assuming quality is already there, the next step is to make sure you are a part of your customer, not just someone they handed over money to for products or services.

If you want to know what I’m talking about, just watch Apple. Love them or hate them, Apple knows how to create the notion that their technology products are seamlessly already part of who you are as a person. The concept of the iPad, and the iPad itself, is a perfect example. It doesn’t matter if you are selling car insurance, lamp shades, financial advice or skateboards, make sure that the presentation layer of your marketing plan does the following:

• Think about a meaningful situation or experience that is most common among your market segment.
• Assess which vehicle (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs) they use most to consume information about your product/service type.
• Storyboard a campaign that revolves around said meaningful situation/experience.
• Keep your product (and even sometimes your brand in certain cases) as a background focus of your campaign, the whole time.

The above is how I would handle marketing/campaign methodology in this day and age. Catering to people’s emotions is nothing new in Marketing. Catering to segmented human emotion in a way where they can also interact with you and quickly, followed by easily doing business with you immediately, is new, thanks to the technology and tools. Pull your weight in the relationship with your customer and they’ll stick it out with you, even when your industry or company hit some rough spots.

Onward.

Check Your Motivation

True philanthropy only comes from helping others for the sake of helping others, with no internal quest for personal credit, no expectation of social capital gain amongst your peers. I believe that the credit you “expect” to get for helping others is equal to the amount of credit you don’t deserve, on the mere premise that an expectation exists on your behalf.

If your philanthropic work brings you personal monetary gain, directly or intrinsically, and instead of said monetary gain being 100% passed onto another charitable cause or effort, then you have poisoned the well. I would go as far as saying that you are not truly aligned with the purity of “real” philanthropy.

Lastly, helping others out of guilt is not philanthropy as you are only helping to pacify and feed your own demons. This is still “taking.”

A great quote I heard in a very cheesy action movie once was, “A true philanthropist will never put themself in a position where they are taking or personally gaining from those around them.” [Paraphrased]

Little Efforts Make Big Waves

Every day, somewhere, sometime, somehow, there are miniscule opportunities to make a difference in someone’s life, which inturn makes a difference in the lives of others, almost immediately. Little opportunities like these can create a real chain reaction that, while you may never physically see the full result, I guarantee happens on some level, at some percentage. Whether it brightens up someone’s shitty weekday morning, taking that edge off of their workday, or pushes someone else back a few feet from the proverbial edge they may have been on after a slough of things that have gone wrong lately in their life, a menial and quick selfless act on your part can really help tip the scales in a positive direction.

Here are some of the types of things even the busiest people in the universe can carve out time for, supporting a positive paradigm shift in humanity:

1. Offer to buy a stranger a cup of coffee in the morning.

2. Ask or call someone you know randomly and ask them how they are doing and then just listen and validate what they are saying.

3. Anonymously donate $5 to a charity of your choice.

4. Volunteer one hour of your time at a retirement center, home or hospice enviroment and keep an elderly person company for a little bit. Those places are lonely and dismal and our country tends to treat seniors as an annoyance as opposed to respected elders in our communities. It’s a shame.

5. Sponsor a low income or disadvantaged family one holiday season. You’d be surprised what $5 in cheap or donated toys does for a child’s spirit when times are tough. That spirit is contagious enough to lighten even the darkest of households.

We Are All The Same (Still)

There is an energy that exudes from humans every day across the globe, an energy that is constantly trying to synergize and be compatible with itself so that we can all just “get along.” I think in some cases we’ve become so fearful and complacent with one another that our personal insecurities have gotten the best of us. This fear and complacence has gotten us to the point where only physical co-existence is becoming the new “getting along.” What a bummer.

I do believe though that there is more hope in small doses than we are ambitious enough to acknowledge, small things that we, over time, inadvertently take for granted thanks to a perpetually imbalanced “work culture” that drives us full speed on the road to nowhere.

I encourage everyone to randomly and anonymously do something nice for one or more people every once in awhile. It’s easy, cheap, and will start to change you from the inside in a way that, if you aren’t used to it, will surprise you, shock you, make you uncomfortable if you aren’t used to feeling vulnerable, and will possibly break you down in a constructive way emotionally that only a few people have been strong enough to accept and experience….and those that have, see the world differently than most of us.

Onward.

Our Culture

The average American adult spends 8 1/2 hours a day staring into screens. We have gotten down on our knees and ripped the faucet off the water main of information with mouths and hands wide open. By majority, we are a culture of people in a constant state of waiting for the next thing to do, the next thing to react to, to eat, to drink, to socialize, to attend, to take care of, to engage on whatever level enough to prompt us to feel like we know what we’re supposed to do next while we are awake. I truly believe it’s NOT human nature that we are control freaks with how much idle time we allow. I believe we are taught by our environment how to, and why we should limit our solitude, deviate from it, stay misinformed on how to leverage it for personal growth. We do this out of fear. To us I think deep down we know that solitude is the ultimate place of vulnerability, where we are forced to face the truth, ourselves, with no distraction, and it’s uncomfortable.

I think our full tilt culture lacks balance in a way that creates more unnecessary stress, turmoil, and bad decision-making than we give it credit for. We are feeding our brains a TON of info without allowing them enough time to process what we’re taking in, apply it to our psyche the way it’s meant to be physiologically and emotionally applied, and then purge the excess “noise” from our short-term memories so that we can move onto the next thing.

Our Brains

The Similarity Between Mental & Physical Process

The average American eats about 1,800 pounds of food per year, or about five pounds per day.

Our brains are the digestive systems of information. Our actual digestive systems are a process, a series of required steps to do their job correctly, only beneficial if all steps are allowed to happen. Just like when we consume food and beverages, we chew it, swallow it, digest it – methodically processing and getting all required nutrients where possible and then disposing of the unnecessary.

Now if, relatively speaking of course, we ate 100 times the amount of food we normally do, for one day (500 pounds vs. 5 pounds), but only allowing our bodies to only process and dispose of it at the same frequency we do on an average day when we ate only 5 pounds of food, what would happen? Would our body adjust and allow more throughput to accomodate the massive increase in regular input (food)? Would our stomach eventually learn to produce a 100 times more acid to break down food faster? Would our intestines eventually adjust, able to work 100 times harder to absorb nutrients? Would our bodies eventually be able exploit and take advantage of 100 times the intake of vitamins from those nutrients? Would we be able to eventually expel 100 times more waste after processing? I know that’s a little graphic but you get my point.

My Answer: Hell NO it wouldn’t.

Our bodies would shut down. Heart attacks, strokes, bursting organs, and aneurisms would dominate the mortality charts of the U.S. Department of Health within 48 hours. The reason for this is that our bodies are designed for a certain amount of input within a range, a range whose boundaries guarantee the survival of our species. It is to this point, I believe that our brains have their own set of limitations as well when it comes to input. The Information Age has really put humanity’s processing power to the test. [I went into more detail on my opinion about this test in this post.]

Our Capacity for Input, The Natural Limitations

SMS, Facebook, IM, Email, RSS, Breaking News from 100 sources at within seconds via web, smartphone, and now iPads and other tablet computers, is now becoming a normal way of life. To boot, that is all information that blasts us in the side of the skull OUTSIDE the face-to-face part of our daily lives (raising children, having significant others, working in an office with other professionals, talking to friends, doing dishes and laundry, et al.).

I do believe that we’ve been able to adjust quite well to the amount of information now instantly available via computer and phone. But I still think that we have limits that we are inadvertently overlooking. The implementation of boundaries supporting these limitations is our responsibility and is only possible with balance.

Solitude & Balance

The sister post to the one about Creativity on ZenHabits.net was called “The Lost Art of Solitude.“ What an amazing post this was. And until I applied it to my life over the last year or so, I had no idea how important this was for our daily existence.

I’m a single dad with 3 sons that I have half the week. I have a challenging and busy (sometimes more than full time) corporate job that I spend at least 45-50 hours a week on, sometimes more depending on what’s going on, and I’m in a band (95% fun, 5% work). Whether it’s fun or work, it’s all activity, input requiring a response or some tending to from me.

When I started carving out one day a week for solitude, it was a dramatic visceral experience at first. I equate it with me freeing up a traffic jam of information, a gridlock made of of millions of cars filled with frustrated drivers and passengers waiting to get through to reach their final destination. When I allowed myself to be alone for a day, letting some of these proverbial cars through, I was not only able to start processing what I had experienced during the week, I was also freeing up issues and thoughts, good and bad, in my brain that had been buried for a LONG time, issues that were long overdue for some TLC.

I found that the most significant shifts in development as a person, both personally and professionally, happen when I’m alone, giving myself some time to process life’s input. I end up more inspired, more grounded, more clear-headed, more patient, and more thoughtful in everything I do, even if I just give myself one day, or even one evening a week.

I highly recommend to anyone that they schedule some time for themselves if they don’t already. I don’t believe people should always be alone and not socialize. Just make sure to balance them. The better you balance socializing and solitude, the more you’ll get out of both.

Onward.

[image borrowed humbly from distractible.org]

I think his bio says it all: “Jeff Fowle is a third generation family farmer and rancher from Etna, California. He and his wife Erin and son Kyle raise registered Angus cattle, Percheron draft horses, warmbloods, alfalfa and alfalfa-grass hay and grain as a rotation. They also start and train horses for riding, jumping, and driving. Their family run ranch has incorporated many environmentally beneficial and water efficient technologies and management strategies.”

NOTE: Jeff was also the Twitterer of the week on last week’s episode of The Quick’n'Dirty Podcast. You can listen to the episode or read the recap.

Here’s the quick interview we did over email.

So who are you and what do you do?

I’m a 4th generation rancher & farmer, raising the 5th. We raise Angus and Hereford cattle, Percheron Draft horses, Warmbloods, Thoroughbreds, Quarterhorses, alfalfa hay, wheat & pasture.

Jeff, you and I met at 140tc in Seattle and your good friend Ray Prock (@RayLinDairy on Twitter) was explaining to me some of the complexities of farming. I had no idea. Do you get the sense that most consumers don’t know much about where their food comes from and how it got onto their dinner table?

Over 90% of Americans are at least 2 generations removed from the farm or ranch. This generational gap presents a situation where the average person no longer understands what is involved in order to get that food to their table, let alone a clear idea of where it came from.

What is the most common misconception about the farming industry and those that work in it?

I think the most common misconception is that “farmers don’t care.” Main stream media carries a few negative stories and assumption by the public is that “all of ag” is like that. Reality is that farmers & ranchers are great stewards of the land and livestock. It is in our best interest to keep the land healthy & productive for future generations and diverse wildlife. Also, livestock that is low stress & happy is healthier and produces more consistently.

How are you using social media to help the farming industry? Educational? Marketing?

I’m using SM for several purposes.

1. To reach out to people who have questions about where their food comes from & how it is produced.
2. Address mis-information being spread by those opposing agriculture.
3. Learn what the perceptions are by the public.
4. Learn from fellow producers across the country.
5. Market my own products.

Has it been a challenge trying get the farming community to learn, use, and embrace tools like Twitter and Facebook?

The biggest challenge is overcoming the technology issues. Many farmers & ranchers are still on dial-up which makes most SM applications a challenge.  For those who do have access, its a matter of building confidence & helping them realize that there are folks who are interested in their story and learning how, what and why they do what they do.

What is Agvocacy and what is it about?

Agvocacy is simply the act of promoting agriculture. I believe that we need all types of production in order to meet the future needs of the people. Conventional, organic, natural, farmers markets all will play an important role in continuing to provide safe, wholesome and healthy food for future generations.

What kinds of changes have you seen in the farming industry’s communication culture since you started your social media push?

The biggest learning curve has been in relating to people. Due to mis-information and incorrect assumptions, many people have formed opinions about what we do. We must first listen to their concerns and understand why they believe what they do. Once we understand their perspective we can then discuss their questions rationally and eliminate or at least reduce the likelihood of a confrontation occurring. It is paramount to remain professional and civil in all conversations. Farmers and ranchers have become very cautious and almost numb to attacks, so this is a sign of progress, being able to engage with the public, share the story and have mutual respect.

Any events or announcements you’d like to mention?

The AgChat Foundation will be having some announcements of upcoming events in the next couple of weeks. They will be announced on Twitter, Facebook & also on our website agchat.org.



In this world there are three types of people:

1. Givers
2. Takers
3. Those that know the importance of balancing being both.

In business it’s no different.

What is Leech Marketing?

In the social media/web world, to me leech marketing is basically the effort behind leveraging search algorithms to make quick money from uninformed customers with no concern for the real long-tail value of one’s business or industry. The unfortunate effect of this behavior is that it brings down the social capital value of those businesses that are doing social the right way for the right reasons. So to explain what the hell I’m really talking about here, these are a few (of many) leech methods, sucking the value out of social media by muddying the waters of our intended target audiences.

Irrelevant Hashtagging

This definitely can make trying to do business on Twitter (the right way) more time consuming as you watch keyword/phrase streams, trying to follow current market segment-specific conversations as well as unearthing new potential markets. People are hashtagging business-related tweets by top ten Twitter trending topics rather than relevancy to one’s target audience in an effort expose a ‘conversation’ to new randoms, more shotgunning.

Unfortunately (and statistically) your ROI will not only suck, but you are actually hurting other businesses that aren’t even in your space. This will NOT give you a competitive edge and additionally makes you (personal brand) or your company look desperate and clueless. You want to be the company that looks like you are smarter and wiser than everyone else, that you’ve risen above it all, focusing on what’s really important. Here’s what I’m talking about.

Examples:

Say you want to sell your Canon point-and-shoot camera on Craigslist……

• Good: “Selling my point-and-shoot camera. DM me if interested. LINKTOCRAIGSLISTPOST #photography #pointandshoot #photographer #forsale”
• Bad: “Selling my point-and-shoot camera. DM me if interested. LINKTOCRAIGSLISTPOST #socialmedia #justinbieber #oilspill”

Irrelevant Categorizing/Tagging of Blog Posts is Clutter

Similar to tweet construction, categorizing/tagging blog posts is an art. It’s probably safe to say that since search engines give preference to blogs, I believe that category/tag spam and it’s content irrelevance is responsible for probably a surprising percentage of lost business, wasted bandwidth, wasted time, and overall confusion for customers.

I understand that one way to help proliferate or unearth new customers and markets is to tag posts with keywords/phrases with ‘somewhat relevant’ tags. I think that’s all smart and good, but tagging anything “Justin Bieber” alongside anything other than what’s relevant is what I’m against.

Let’s take the same concept, selling a used Canon point-and-shoot camera on Craigslist, except this time, you write a blog post about it with info about the camera and then linking to your Craigslist entry.

Examples:

• Good Tagging: “For sale, camera, canon, point and shoot, photography, photographer, used camera, craigslist, beginner camera”
• Bad Tagging: “canon, camera, photography, oil spill, bp gas, justin bieber, lost, social media”

Above I’m not saying it’s “bad” because it won’t work, however I am saying that you are creating more clutter for the rest of us and hurting online business flow by doing it. This method of tagging reduces the value of search and other social media tools for the business and personal web experience.

Search rankings don’t mean squat without a real conversion that supports the business objective(s).

“Mannequin” Blog Posts, Keyword-Based Post Aggregators – Automated or Manual

A “mannequin” blog post basically consists of the first paragraph or so of an original post, plus the link to the source so you can link back to it. I’m not opposed to this at all as long as the mannequin’d post is relevant to your business/brand and if it only makes up a fairly miniscule portion of your content. Those that have set up websites that in a scripted fashion crawl every blog post with a certain brand name, product type, specific industry keywords/phrases, then in a scripted fashion duplicate the post, creating a blog post and publishing it, is not only wrong for search/business clutter reasons, it’s also one of the many ways the companies sell their soul if that website or process is a documented part of their business plan. It’s weak and not a good foundation for your brand….my opinion of course.

Blind Following, Friending, Liking, Retweeting

Doing any of the above without researching the person/website first to make sure it’s relevant and has intrinsic value to your business and it’s objectives is just dumb. Plain and simple.

Common Sense

On the web, especially nowadays, people and content are data points, data points whose connection and strength lies solely in their relevance. The less relevant, the less valuable. The less valuable, the bigger the reason you shouldn’t do it, but you already know that. Here’s a few other good articles on this stuff. Some old, some new.

Social Site of the Week: Postling.com

First up on the call Aaron brought his site of the week to the table, Postling.com. In a nutshell, it’s a way for you to add multiple accounts (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, WordPress, etc.) so that you can post updates/links/photos to them simultaneously. Where this app is NOT similar to sites like Ping.fm and some of the other atomic status updaters is that you have a nice dashboard and you can actually take your account posting management up a couple notches by organizing a group of accounts into a “brand” so if you are managing multiple accounts for multiple brands you can keep it all nice and organized, able to drill down into each “brand” and watch conversations, comments, etc. This is pretty cool and easy to use. Curious to see how popular something like this gets as the age of the personal brand continues. It definitely seems to have that type of thing in mind.

Featured Guest: Silvia Marino, Edmunds.com

Silvia, @SylMarino on Twitter, has been at Edmunds for quite awhile, helping the company connect with car buyers, building/managing their communities, proactively tweaking their social media strategy to meet customer needs, and ensuring that the latest social media tools are integrated into Edmunds service offering in a way that is seamless, engaging, and personal. She’s done and amazing job and was terrific to chat with. She talked to us about her background, some of the transitions from the old days of using only forums back in the mid 90′s, into the nimble age of social media, augmenting the already a successful community reputation that Edmunds.com is known for. Her closing meaningful tweet was awesome and is advice that every seasoned marketer should follow: “Explore, participate, share, measure & repeat….until dead.” Amen Sylvia. We look forward to witnessing more stellar examples of customer satisfaction through methodical and smart engagement from Sylvia and her team at Edmunds.com.

Twitterer of The Week: @JeffFowle

I met Jeff Fowle at the #140tc in Seattle in early March of this year. He’s a farmer. He’s not just any farmer though. What makes him special is his ability to leverage social media to educate people on food/agriculture. Honestly I had no idea before we met that that industry would even have a use for sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. He continues to do an amazing job educating people on how their food makes it from the farm to your dinner table, issues and the science behind agriculture and how it affects our food, and as a food consumer advocate helping to correct misconceptions about what what we *think* we’re buying at the store, and what we are actually buying. He’s heavily involved in #agchat discussions on Twitter. He’s a really nice guy and knows his stuff. You can also check out the website, KK Ranch. Check back here soon as I will be publishing a more in depth interview with Jeff about his experiences in bringing social media into the folds of the farming industry.

Point/Counterpoint: Is the iPad Bitchin’ or Just a Gluttonized iPhone?

This part of the show didn’t last that long but Aaron made the mistake of allowing me to talk first after I had just consumed my quad tall cappuccino. It ended up being more of a Point/Point instead as we are both kind of on the same page. At first both of us had wondered if this thing was kind of silly. I particularly thought Job’s portion of the launch keynote for this thing as a little silly. After I started reading about how universities were handing them out to newly registered students, seeing people use them for presos, and in one case, actually embedding one into a kitchen cabinet (check out the video), I started to get it. I can see how non-smartphone owners who don’t want to pony up for a Macbook but would still like to be able to send email, view videos, and enjoy Facebooking and surfing the web while en route to wherever would make sense. Plus, to Aaron’s point, it has a battery life that makes the iPhone seem like it’s running on hamsters. What do you think?

[Giant iPhone image borrowed humbly from an old Gizmodo post.]

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The Conversation

I have to credit a tweet from Adam Cohen (@AdamCohen on Twitter, His blog: http://adamhcohen.com/) as the genesis for this post. He was attending the Social Business Summit 2010 in Austin I believe (assumed based on his hashtag). While attending a keynote/panel of some sort he had said the following:

@adamcohen “Social applies in product dev, marketing, sales, customer svc, lines of business, Ops/IT/back office, but some more than others #sbs2010″

I then responded with:

@47project: “@adamcohen Yep…like adjusting a stereo EQ for business, depending on the business needs.”

I just kinda said it quickly without fully visualizing it and then moved on but I started to really think about it and, maybe because I’ve been a musician all my life, the above image immediately materialized in my noggin. So I exercised some of my below average Photoshop skills to demonstrate how I believe social marketers that deal with medium to large companies need to approach social media.

Silver Bullets

I kind of mentioned this in my last post “A Couple Social Media Observations“, yammering on about werewolves and such. In the same way that there is no silver bullet measuring tool for social media, no silver bullet platform or website that would perfectly serve every customer or market segment for every type or size of company, NOR is there a silver bullet approach or equation as to what tools you should use, in what combination, and to what extent, for your engagement efforts. You can only make an educated guess based on some initial critieria/research.

Everything you do in social media is a combination, an equation full of multiple variables that need tweaking every month, tweaking that is influenced by ongoing metric/data collection and analysis (obviously). While you may eventually find that yes, Twitter is the best tool for that campaign or LinkedIn is the best solution for this initiative, you should never go into it initially with some preconceived notion of what THE best anything is, honestly…

One of the main reasons why so many seasoned professionals struggle so much with the assessment of social media and it’s value or place is that it’s natural state is fairly amorphous because you are dealing with humans. Social media has finally helped translate the gray area in business into something valuable and palpable with the interwebs and all the popular tools. Now it’s up to us to embrace it for what it is.

The Art of Fine Tuning

Even though there is no, and will probably never be, a piece of rack-mounted hardware like the one I created above where you can just simply turn a dial to crank up the Twitter juice for PR, or turn down the Facebook juice in sales, by now you understand the approach I’m talking about. If you run into any blog posts where someone is trying to get the readers to pigeon hole their efforts into one particular app, website or tool, I recommend you move on.

Social media is an ocean full of wildlife and ever changing temperatures and currents, and extreme weather conditions. While you are at the helm of your ship, equipped with senstive navigational instruments (Insights, Radian6, web analytics) to make your way through everything, you know it makes no sense to just set all of them to one setting and “hope it all works out”. You need to make adjustments along the way based on all kinds of changing variables, sometimes frequently. Social media is no different.

Onward.