Tag: twitter

Like A Population of Over-Stimulated Newborns

Posted by Rich Harris – June 10, 2010

Recently, a friend of mine, Bill Pennington (@blazing_b on Twitter) shared an amazing reminder of an article called “The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People.” I really got to thinking a lot about this, and all the really creative people I know that have been successful in flourishing within the confines of their right-brain (the more complex, amorphous and sometimes torrential, side of our intellect – my opinion of course).

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]

Social Media: The Agriculture & Farming Industry

Posted by Rich Harris – June 2, 2010

Jeff Fowle (@JeffFowle on Twitter) and I met at a Twitter conference in Seattle back in early March of this year. He’s a mellow dude and one of the nicest guys I’ve met in a long time. He’s a farmer, Agvocate, family man and a social media guy. After chatting with him in Seattle, I was interested in knowing more about how an industry as organic as his could proliferate an era as digital as the current one. Jeff has been instrumental in doing just that.

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.



Leech Marketing: Stop The Algorithmic Madness

Posted by Rich Harris – May 31, 2010

Like most social media peeps, I sit around all day and watch Twitter as a part of my job. I watch several keyword/phrase streams like everyone else, to keep my thumb on the pulse of the business, various industries, market segments and influencers. Lately I’ve been surprised (and a little dissappointed) to see what some of the fairly notable and medium to large companies have been doing, some of which are publicly traded. I’ve covered this and similar observations in a recent rant “Twitter Auto-DM’s: Perpetuating Our Inner Lemming?” which more of a Twitter-specific bitchfest but still lends itself to a bigger issue I’m seeing that is not platform, industry, or era-specific. I don’t think this issue will ever really go away because there will always be a layer of misguided marketers and businesses doing things that are just lame, hoping to capitalize on customers that haven’t been trained to think for themselves as consumers (yet).

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.

How not to use Twitter: HabitatUK as a case study
Why Hashtag Hijacking Is Bad for Everyone
Onward.

Twitter Auto-DM’s: Perpetuating Our Inner Lemming?

Posted by Rich Harris – May 10, 2010

[Rant Alert]

This post is a rant. Normally almost any auto-DM I see makes me angsty due to their “hey look at me me me!” nature. I’m also ashamed of their blatant attempt to shape our brains into “realizing” that as customers, we are none other than weak-willed bafoons lacking the ability to think for ourselves, incapable of doing research before committing to an action or purchase.

The Hollow Influencer

I started following some people that seemed prolific an insightful on their blog or website, had decent inbound link traffic and showed up in search fairly high in the list in a relevant way. I got a flurry of DM’s when I followed a certain group of these tweeps based on the fact that they had Social Media in their Twitter bio. I was following them just to get an updated lay of the land when it comes to the latest influencers/trending business topics on Twitter.

These auto-DM’s poured in and I was laughing at some of them but also kind of appalled by others from a business perspective. I’ll list the tweets below but will hide the author names to protect the misguided folks that meant well, even if they did miss the mark by a longshot. It’s not surprising, yet still ludicrous and sad, that this layer of the business world, the empty useless stagnant one, still existed and functioned in the background like an old kitchen appliance, louder than ever.

Harvesting The Lemming Long-Tail

The DM’s…..these are all real Auto-DM’s from people that, based on some very minimal research, appeared to possibly be legit influential marketers.

“I REALLY appreciate the follow and I’m always interested in real estate resources if you know any.”

…..okay cool cause I want you to rope me into voluntarily telling you about my real estate resources of choice, so that you can feel justified replying back and saying, “good idea, however I have a better solution, check this link out….

“I do value your follow. Hope you find my tweets helpful. Look forward to yours. A gift:”

(They provided a link here to a promo video for some dude’s “Build an Online Business” DVD.) The guy seems nice enough but calling your own DVD with you talking and it costing me over a hundo to own your DVD series, a ‘gift’ to a human being, to me is like getting ‘the gift’ of a barely working ’84 Buick from a used car salesman. “Thanks buddy, can’t wait until this heap breaks down a block down the road after allowing myself to be sold on the car when it was actually missing it’s engine and steering wheel.”

“Want To Learn How Twitter Could Pay Your Bills Every Month? Look…”

(They provided a link to a network marketing training video.) Twitter can’t pay my bills every month, only I can. Your poorly produced DVD isn’t helping.

“Thanks so much for following me! If you need any help feel free to let me know!”

Help with what??? Anything? Rad! Come wash my car, pay my bills and hook me up with dry cleaning!

“Want to see how I built a twitter list of 40,000 on autopilot?”

This one by far is the best example of everything that is jacked up about social media. Do you raise your kids on autopilot? Do you maintain your closest friendships on autopilot? Does your marriage run on autopilot? Do you keep your biggest customer relationships and accounts running on autopilot? Great job buddy. Thanks for reminding us how there are still a bunch of ‘takers’ trying to exploit peeps for revenue instead of putting some value in the fact that they’ve chosen to invest in your company, you, and your potential success. NEWSFLASH: You OWE them for that.

I just can’t stand this stuff and I don’t bitch that often…so here’s my rant and whining for the quarter. My point here is you can’t squeeze an organically built business relationship out of some cheese-0-matic of a DM so don’t try and sell people that way. It just looks cheap and self-absorbed.

There are of course selfless/harmless versions of these but I just believe that if you want the smartest customers as your loyal customers, don’t treat them like they’re idiots with your messaging.

Onward.

Your Social Media Stereo EQ

Posted by Rich Harris – April 29, 2010

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.

A Couple Social Media Observations

Posted by Rich Harris – April 28, 2010

This post might come off as a little bitchy but it’s not intended to be that way. Nor is it intended to make me sound like I know everything, because I absolutely do not. I’ve just been spending a lot of time watching the behavior of the SM streams, the waves of info that continue to flush and wipe away that other trending topic that just happened 60 seconds ago.

Apples vs. Oranges

Twitter vs. Facebook, Facebook vs. LinkedIn, Twitter vs. Mr. Coffee. Everyone is trying too hard to pigeon-hole the social media approach, and which tool is THE “best”, instead of focusing on the fluid open-minded nature of using social to meet your overall objective(s). Please stop.

Social media is a gigantic toolbox full of applications, sites, approaches, and mindsets. All, none, or some of which can be used individually or in combination to varying degrees depending on what you want to accomplish. There are no werewolves in the social media landscape so there’s no demand for a silver bullet. Kapeesh? If you somehow find that silver bullet, let me know so I can make millions in nanoseconds and retire.

Don’t Drink Anyone’s Kool-Aid. Make Your Own.

I’m on RT overload right now. I’m all about sharing. Sharing is caring. I’ve learned a lot from content that I share with others, lots of content that was not created by me. It’s a big part of the info dissemination unicorn that makes social media tools and the information age great for business, people and content in general.

However…….I think the current ratio of forwarded content to original content is WAYYY out of whack. I would like to see a little less retweets/forwards/shares and more original blog posts/content from more brilliant people. I also think that while we are all learning and constantly fine-tuning our own voice, make sure that it is your top priority if you are a social marketer to not just augment useful things that others are saying, but more importantly, come up with some new concepts and opinions that you haven’t seen published yet. We need more Brogans, more Solis’, more Godins.

I know you are out there, don’t be afraid to take the “individual unique thought-leader content creation” leap alongside those that you look up to. You MIGHT be short-changing yourself and your potential if you don’t at least explore it.

Onward.

The Ethics of Sponsored Outreach

Posted by Rich Harris – April 6, 2010

The Truth

Today’s web audience can smell bullshit a mile away. And I thank them for it. Companies are lucky to have them for so many reasons outside of being paying customers. Their low attention span and ability to talk to their trusted friends before making a purchasing decision can squeeze the accountability out of companies like a ripe grapefruit in a vice. They help make our world and the companies that run it, a better place. My opinion of course.

At the core, my philosophy on social media/marketing (and in life really) has always been: “Be unapologetically genuine, truthful and transparent.” I’ve really tried to stay true to this my whole life, in all my business endeavors and I try to keep those traits as mainstays in everything else I do.

The challenge with social media is that it’s so vast and enormous and noisy. Because it’s so huge, we need to get more calculated and efficient. As we grow our efforts and things start to take off, new opportunities and scenarios are unearthed.

I’m sure this scenario sounds familiar: You are trying to maximize your ROI with a big campaign push. You are trying to pull out all the stops by seeding relevant key influencers, implementing a solid social media strategy relying on the most extensive outreach and syndication plan possible with the budget and manpower you were given. You realize you are ready to go bigger. You are ready to step up your game and numbers on a grander scale. Unfortunately, the size of your golden revolutionary game-changing campaign vision is WAY bigger than your allocated tangible means.

So how do you go big with way less headcount and budget than your vision requires? There are a number of ‘services’ that exist out there now that would like to help you. But while their technical abilities are sound, I’m concerned that the needle between real and ‘payola’ will get pushed too far in the wrong direction.

Here’s what I’m talking about……

The Proposition

I was approached recently by an agency recently about hiring them to do ‘targeted, sponsored outreach’ utilizing paid blog posts, tweets, et al. The process is pretty simple. You have a kick off meeting with them to discuss the following:

  • Your product or service and brand
  • Your business objective with the particular campaign or initiative you are hiring them for
  • The demographic(s)/market segments you’re trying to proliferate
  • Known subject/demographic (and very specific) key influencers (so they can research all of their conversations, posts, etc.)

Once you establish some of these basics with them, they then move forward with profiling bloggers, tweeps, and others from a pool of hundreds of thousands (so they say) of authorized content creators that have gone through a review process. This process interviews bloggers to find out what they normally write about, their hobbies, their focus, knowledge level, etc.

Example

If you were selling a new camera for instance, they would work with the bloggers they’ve profiled that are photographers, or are at least enthusiasts on some level. Then, they would orchestrate a blog post idea/concept by each of these bloggers that would all go out at the same time (roughly), mentioning your product, your company, with all positive commentary when the launch happens. There would be a HUGE amount of link love, exclusive content, and thousands of people that were advocates of your company and this new camera……………at least algorithmically. :-)

The Concerns

If you were to go down the path of basically the modern day payola version of social media, and savvy consumers saw or recognized the pattern and sudden onslaught of blog posts/tweets about you that came in at a volume that was NOT part of your track record, would they lambaste you for it? Would they start to write their own blog posts about your company paying for synthetic blog posts instead of ones that were written organically by people that actually do know/follow/buy your company’s products or services? Would it turn into a PR nightmare and make your company look shady?

Would you be the coveted winner of the “Social Media Used Car Salesman” award?

The Questions

I’m curious to know what others’ experiences have been with sponsored outreach, blogs posts in particular. Maybe hundreds of companies are doing this and no one notices, or even cares for that matter. I already know why it *works* from a technical and human behavior level, but is it the right thing to do or is it better to just continue to grow everything organically….or a combination of both? Did I leave the iron on?

Onward.

The Tweditorial Calendar

Posted by Rich Harris – April 2, 2010

There Is So Much To Do

Ok so I’m kinda burnt out on the “Tw” words myself but today I’ve been a glutton for cliché. Let’s face it, if you are running the social media show for any medium to large business, there is an enormous, ever growing list of initiatives, ideas, objectives, strategies, metrics, and executions. Even the most organized person can’t herd all the social media cats 100% of the time. When you have product launches, contests, campaigns, big company announcements, and partnerships, it can get pretty gnarly trying to keep track of it all.

Fertilize Your Twitter Growth, Get Organized

If you’ve been in the marketing/PR game for awhile, the editorial calendar has been your bible for content/campaign planning, organization, and delivery. If you are managing the social side of marketing campaigns that have complex schedules, several moving parts, Twitter is no exception. As you scale and fine tune your marketing efforts, your Twitter footprint might grow into multiple accounts representing global regions, multiple market segments and sub-segments, or it might be one account leveraging several partner content pieces that adhere to a multi-prong timeline to engage customers. Either way you slice it, at some point your Twitter execution, if done right and is showing success and growth, is gonna need it’s own prominent real estate on your calendar next to everything else. There are three primary types of tweets that I use that need a spot on my calendar. I’ll cover them below.

Maintenance

Millions of people see millions of tweets each day. Millions of people also miss millions of tweets each day, some of which they would’ve probably like to have seen (pre-sale concert tix, plane tix, hotel one day only pricing, other promos, etc.). I used to consider duplicate tweets from the same company’s account to be spammy so I avoided doing that on behalf of my current company. However, now that noise reduction is a requirement for businesses on Twitter, whether they are sifting through the noise for leads and prospects or they are responsible for contributing to the noise, hoping that the right person is noticing, 1 promotional tweet gets lost in less than a nanosecond. The issue with that is that there might be someone following your company that really would like to have seen that tweet if you just gave them a second (or third) chance to know about it. With that said, not only have I decided that it’s ok to duplicate a tweet here and there, I’ve also seen long time followers respond to the third duplicate of a tweet — proof that prior tweets had just passed them by. So much info, so few characters, so many tweets, so little attention span and time.

What I’m getting at with this is that it’s ok to have a cautious set of scheduled duplicate regular tweets that go out to let new and old followers know that you are on Facebook, or that there’s a contest running, or that this product just launched, or that you’d like to hear their opinion on something pertaining to your company. Due to the sheer volume of retweets when news hits or when great content pops up and everyone wants to share, we’re all getting a little more patient with the ebb and flow of duplicate content and most tweeps really know now when a company is a truly spammy misguided automated entity or not, by the track record with their engagement and content type/frequency. So get your weekly, bi-weekly or monthly maintenance tweets on your calendar where it makes sense. An example of types of tweets that fall into this category are: “Be sure to check us out on LinkedIn for small business talk <LINK>” or “How are we doing on Twitter? Contact us here <LINK>” .

Events

An event can be anything for a company – a product/site launch, a new service, a customer story, breaking news, quarterly financial results call, leadership change or an acquisition, to name a few. I don’t need to explain why this need to be on your calendar. Events can feel easy. There’s a nice hard date associated with it (usually) so you can wrap everything you do around it. From a social media perspective though, I try to look at events as a set of waves (maybe ’cause I’m in Cali). Your first ‘wave’ could be some teaser tweets that are mysterious. The second wave can be more teasers with more revealing content. Then you got the biggest wave of the set (official news/announcement breaks). It doesn’t stop there though. Surfers don’t just stop after the biggest wave of the set passes by. There are still smaller rideable waves to follow and the peeps in the water aren’t stop riding them until the set is done. Treat your Twitter execution in a similar fashion and plot it on your calendar.  One week of teaser tweets, tweet the launch, 2 weeks of follow on tweets and retweets of any partner/media coverage (third party blog posts, press, etc.).

When you have multiple events going on at once, plotting these on your calendar is key to not only make sure you are on time but to make sure that you aren’t hyping too many things at once, confusing your followers. Don’t make them ‘choose’ from five+ campaigns/contests to be excited about. Keep them focused as much as you can can within your control. Treat/give each event as much exclusive focus as the company roadmap allows to maximized your return.

Conversation

I know you are probably thinking to yourself, “Dude this is Twitter, it’s all about the conversation, What else is there?” While we’ve all kicked the crap out of the dead but still kicking horse that is now ’join the conversation’, I have to respectfully disagree. Twitter is about engagement. Twitter is just one of many mediums to achieve engagment. Engagement is multi-faceted. Engagement isn’t new, it’s older than you. Engagement is WAY bigger than social media. Engagement is only successful when it is allowed to be adaptable and amorphous for the sake of the relationship with your customers.

The randomness and unpredictability of the nature of human conversation on Twitter begs the question: “How the hell do you schedule the random conversational tweet and put them on a calendar?” The way that you approach getting the conversational tweet into some sort of schedule isn’t so much like the event driven tweet with a hard timeline as much as it is like a quota. Make sure that you participate in at least XX amount of relevant, genuine conversation streams per week. Putting a quota on human conversation is not contrived if it’s relevant and you care. If those two elements exist, then a quota just helps to ensure you are maintaining your investment in other people – which is the key to success.

Also Check Out…..

EmediaVitals: Use a Twitter editorial calendar to help lessen impact of ‘tweet’ duty

Onward.

My First Seattle: A #140tc Recap

Posted by Rich Harris – March 10, 2010

What an amazing experience.

Yesterday I returned from Seattle, WA. I had only been to this city’s airport a couple times but I had never had an opportunity to hang out, meet some people, shoot some photos and eat 800 pounds of salmon. Well I did get to do that but that’s not why I was there.

I was there to attend the 140 Twitter Conference put on by @TweetHouse and the Parnassus Group. Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter) introduced me to Jason Preston (@jasonp107), the man running the show. Jason was gracious enough to give me the opportunity to be involved and share a panel with some super smart and seasoned tweeps that anyone can learn from and should absolutely follow – Jesse Engle @engle (CoTweet), Shauna Causey @shaunacausey (Comcast), H.B. Siegel @twhb (IMDb.com), and Brad Nelson @bradnelson (Starbucks).

I won’t go into a boatload of detail about everything in this post but thought I’d mention some takeaways and things that I had learned that I thought were either useful, funny, or both.

New Things I Learned

During the Media Panel session we were given some great things to ponder and think about when it comes to doing media and news coverage using Twitter. I had never really thought about what the effect of Twitter would be on broadcasting and doing the news. In a world where people use Twitter to not necessarily double check their emotions before posting, Linda Thomas (@TheNewsChick) deserves kudos for being anti-spin and ensuring her facts are straight before tweeting. Major news media outlets would be doing the public a huge favor by employing more people like her.

Ayush Agarwal (@yush) did a killer job moderating the Dev/Biz Panel. Brilliant developers like the ones on the this panel have to keep all of us emo marketing people in check by ensuring that data, and the tools used to gather that data, makes sense and help support our business objectives methodically. Sites like Twitter and Facebook would not exist with these brilliant minds.

On the Brand Panel Shauna Causey and Brad Nelson both reminded all of us that when you are dealing with customers that are frustrated with your brand, spouting off on Twitter because of a bad experience they had, always approach them with positivity and a focus on treating them with respect. Treat them like you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes.

One of the most educational moments for me was the opportunity I had to learn about an industry that I’ve never known anything about. Even more intriguing was how these two guys I just met were using social media in an industry that I had no idea would have a use for it. I had the chance at the tweetup hosted at Seattle’s Hotel Andra (@HotelAndra) to learn how the farming industry needed social media. With some tasty local wine in hand, Greg Guenther (@greg_guenther) and I sat down with cattle rancher Jeff Fowle (@JeffFowle) and dairy farmer Ray Prock Jr. (@RayLinDairy). These guys are definitely visionary in their approach to use social media as a channel for educating people on the science and process behind where much of our store bought food comes from, how it’s marketed, what we don’t know as Joe Food Consumer, how it’s bought and sold, and the process for monitoring, maintaining and growing a lot of it – meat and greens alike. Great stuff.

Things That Made Me Laugh

Damon Cortese (@dacort) – “People like to click on shit.” and of course DBI, the Douchebag Index. That will be my next t-shirt purchase.

Dom Sagolla (@dom) – His late night red wine-infused Entourage story.

Johnathon Fitzpatrick (@jjtweets) – For his ability to get all “Mike Singletary” on the HootSuite Owl Mascot at 1:00AM.

….and the Magical Unicorn Story of the Night award goes to David Dennison (@DavidDennison) for his mace story. The first, second and third rule of David’s mace story is: “Don’t talk about David’s mace story.” If I told you, I’d have to….well you know.

Onward.

Social Media & The Responsibility of Thought Leadership

Posted by Rich Harris – March 7, 2010

It’s so easy to get buried in information nowadays if you aren’t methodical about channeling, funneling, and organizing your incoming tweets, feeds, and messages. Even when you get organized, you have only made it to zero. How can you and your clients or company get above zero? How do you propel your company in a way that makes them visible above the others without looking like just another news regurgitating spammer junkie? For the sake of spewing at least one social media and business cliché in this post: How do you rise above the noise?

Some of the most well known thought leaders currently in the social media spotlight [@BrianSolis, @SethGodin, @ChrisBrogan, @Britopian, @Mediaphyter, @AaronStrout and many many many many more] did not get where they are by doing only what has been known to work. They’ve always focused on pushing us outside of the traditional approach, existing marketing patterns, and evolving the marketing status quo, focusing on the understanding of human behavior, it’s place in business. If there’s a calculated risk opportunity presenting itself that maybe others haven’t seen yet, they’ll try it and discuss it publicly. These folks know that business won’t get better and advance closer to that streamlined revenue utopia we all strive for unless they go ‘this way’ while everyone else is going ‘that way’.

Succeed and Expand

While being a copycat can be traditionally considered the purest form of flattery, I think it’s important for social marketers to realize that in the online marketing world, imitation is only imitation and offers no real value to what we are all trying to do if that’s all you do. News comes and goes fast and the competition for something fresh is fierce.

So You Have A Mountain…

…of data at your finger tips that you’ve accumulated. After lots of trial and error, say you’ve learned how to target and cultivate a niche market. What now? How can you aggressively capitalize on that market and get even more niche, dissecting it into more detail so that you can execute even more effective campaigns and conversations? You will need to get creative in the way that scientists had to when they worked towards dwindling physical matter down to molecules and eventually atoms. In some cases where there’s a mountain, there is a mountain range. After going to the top of one and slamming your flag into the dirt, set up a functional camp of explorers to delve deeper on said mountain, and then you should start heading down hill and start your next climb on the adjacent peaks to see what lies ahead (figuratively speaking of course). :-)

Be The Modern Day Lewis & Clark of Marketing

Social media for me has really been more of an expedition than it has been a job. I think it’s really easy to get mired down in the day to day, pulling the same old story of coming into work, checking out industry specific news and influencers, retweeting some cool stuff, having some convos with relevant and meaningful people on Twitter and Facebook, and then heading home to throw down a Guinness and do it for another hour or so before bed. While it’s important to recognize, acknowledge and maintain all the things you’ve discovered over the last quarter and even the last week, the successes should only make you hungrier for more ideas, new territories and new markets. Never stop.

The Personal Brand: The Balance of Give and Take

Lastly, social media is un-ending monster-sized manufacturer of the personal brand. It has given those of us that know how to promote ourselves, our talents, our hobbies, our lives and everything we do, as a brand. While I’d be an idiot that should be slapped if I produced “Rich Harris the T-shirt”, I’ve always had some inkling of narcissism in my hat. I acknowledge it. I roll with it. I embrace it. However, I am also very aware that not only does the world not revolve around me and everything I have going on, more importantly there is an amazing amount of value in what thousands of other people are doing around me. Their marketing and business ideas, their ambitions, are all extremely important to the big picture and the greater good of successful business and networking.

It’s a great thing for me to simply acknowledge that there are others around me, but as someone who is trying to shine in his own little bubble, it’s more important that I extend myself and elevate those folks around me who also have great (and hopefully even better) ideas than me as well as great ideals. Not to cater to my hippie side too much here, but it’s important that you pay very close to attention to the balance between 1. Giving back to social media, business and marketing and 2. Building your own legion of followers. In my opinion, your value is absolutely and ONLY equal to the amount of value you place on others and how much you lift them and their social capital up. In this life, you get what you give and I believe that couldn’t be more true in marketing and business. The social information age is the perfect time and place to do it.

Part of your priority menu as a social marketer should always be finding people that are smarter and better at what you do than you are……and sharing their thoughts and leadership with others.

Other sources…

Digital Marketing Today: Leverage Social Media to turn your Thought Leaders into Sales people

Redmond Channel Partner Online: Become A Thought Leader

Thought Leadership Times [blog]

[Image Credit: Paige's Arting & Scribbling Blog]

Onward.

Open API’s: Good for Syndication. Bad for Safety?

Posted by Rich Harris – February 18, 2010

Unearthing Another Reality

I’m usually not focused on writing about breaking news but being a regular user of Foursquare and then watching all the press and online noise yesterday about PleaseRobMe.com, I really started to think about open API’s, their possibilities, the good, the bad, and the bigger picture. While I’m not necessarily offended by what the PleaseRobMe.com guys have done (after all, we all have access to that data), it does remind us how a little creativity + ingenuity + behavioral data = influence. Regardless of how truthful or how it’s spun, we can essentially do whatever we want. I think the PleaseRobMe.com dudes used humor to reveal how ridiculous our assumptions are that we can just use all these tools so lackadaisically and believe that nothing bad could come of it.

It’s Just Data, Right?

There is a data collection procedure that they have done with small children when it comes to their exploratory behavior. I saw it on Discovery Channel years ago but I haven’t found a photo, video or article on it online yet. I will link out to it when I find it, or better yet if you know, send it to me and I’ll append it to this blog post and credit you with the find.

Basically, they would put a toddler in a big playroom full of toys. There would be a camera overhead in the center of the room. The child would also have a small concentrated red light affixed comfortably and safely to the child’s back on his/her shirt or overalls. For about an hour or so, as the child ran back and forth doing things, playing with different toys, hitting several different areas of the room every minute, the camera would capture the patterns of the child’s movements over a specified amount of time, drawing it’s movement patterns for the camera. Child psychologists would then analyze this crazy light pattern of movement to better understand attention spans and other developmental characteristics during playtime.

I think apps/sites like Foursquare are collecting the same type of data about adults and probably tech savvy teens too. I have two teenagers that are under my guidance with their data-enabled phones but it’s a little unnerving to think about how much easier it is now for the underbelly of society to learn about them. I’m not much of a conspiracy guy but there are some evil (and intelligent) mofos out there that see this kind of data as the framework for their silver platter of chaos that they can feast on to their heart’s content. API = Open book.

We Are A Giant Research Project

Think about all the sites and online tools that we love. Think about all those sites and online tools that we love and interact with often through multiple means that have open API’s. Think about the amount of data we are giving them about ourselves, friends and family. Just like when an MRI creates a 3D image scan of your noggin by collecting data, these types of sites are doing the same with your behavioral patterns and those you associate with. The funny (or odd) part about all of it is that we are voluntarily (and excitedly in some cases) providing this information to whoever wants access to it for whatever reason. More interesting is the fact that we are connecting apps like Foursquare to our Twitter accounts, which we sometimes connect to our Facebook accounts and other publicly available accounts like Tumblr, Identi.ca, etc.

Foursquare was designed to be a fun way for us to keep track of where are friends are (hopefully only the ones we truly trust), incorporating the fun/reward factor with badges, mayorship, etc. If you are diligent about using the app, it also is giving people an idea of what your daily routines are, good, bad, ugly and indifferent.

This behavioral data collection phenomenon is not just limited to Foursquare either. Think about all the areas now in which people make available data about themselves. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the fairly recent wider opening of LinkedIn’s API channels can you give you all the info you need, a 95% heuristic view of a person’s life, just shy of physically hanging out with them in their own living room. If you are a social/tech guy like me using all these services, people can now know your name, your aliases/monikers used (47project for instance), your work history, your hobbies, your music interests, what you look like, your schedule, social and business affiliations and the convos you have within those circles…..all of this is pretty much excessible through API’s. They can also, after finding all that out about you, wormhole into your friend’s lists and find out all of those exact same details about them if they’ve posted it anywhere online. This is a really gnarly concept. The gnarliest part about it is that we are feeding it by choice. It’s not all bad but there’s awareness and responsibility that comes with the use of all these cool apps and sites.

Mindfulness

If you are like me at all, waiting hungrily on pins and needles for the next new social app phenomenon to grace your news feeds, so you can be the first to slam it onto your Blackberry, iPhone, or Android, plugging in your login creds, getting on yet another grid, remember that the more of these sites and apps you use, and the more info you choose to reveal about yourself publicly online, should be kept proportionately equal to the amount of vigilance and proactive awareness you should have about the possibilities of your data being used and/or misused.

Other Great Articles on The Subject

ZDNet: Please Rob Me: Ethical or not? [poll]

Mashable: Are We All Asking to Be Robbed?

CNET: The dark side of geo: PleaseRobMe.com

Information Week: PleaseRobMe.com Solicits Social Theft

Onward.

Social Media Brushfires: Know When to Hold ‘em…

Posted by Rich Harris – February 3, 2010

…Know when to walk away….

OK…please excuse the tasteless implementation of the Kenny Rogers reference but I think it’s very fitting for this particular post. We should all know the importance and priority of managing bad PR, whether you are a huge publicly traded company, or an up and coming startup, trying to make a good first impression in your respective market. With this comes the responsibility of knowing how to manage and pick your battles through all the noise.

If you are on Twitter/Facebook representing your company, you have a few different responsibilities:

  1. Syndicate meaningful, relevant and useful content (whether it’s your own or an outside party’s)
  2. Monitor tone.
  3. Respond to valid inquiries.
  4. Research new potential prospects/markets.
  5. Damage control.

Damage Control

For this post I’ll be focusing on #5 from the above list. One of the most important PR aspects of your job is watching out for bad media coverage, misconstrued news, inaccurate information/statements, manipulation of content for malicious purposes, and the inevitable “brushfire” that can take off like a flaming bullet-train constructed entirely of retweets, moving faster than the speed of Twitter’s API read/write count per second. (Holy run-on sentence Batman.)

As most seasoned PR professionals (which I am not) know, you need to have a damage control strategy and process in place for when the proverbial thorn comes out of nowhere and sticks your company in the ribs until you can find the right tools to extract it. Social media is obviously no exception and needs to be part of that overall process/strategy.

One question I’m asked often is, “How do I know when to respond to a problem tweet, post or person, and to what extent if at all?” While there’s no silver bullet answer because almost every situation is different in it’s subtleties, there are a few things you should think about.

Rules of Engagement

As a father of 3 active boys, I’ve learned to pick my battles almost hourly and am reminded constantly to keep this thought in my arsenal when doing my job online. In SM it’s imperative that you do the same. Not every complaint is worth yours or your company’s time. Some of them are worthless, some are worth noting and others require engagement on some level. Be efficient in your choice of customer entanglement. :-) Here are a few types of posters that I’ve seen and how I responded:

  1. The Strobe – In a flash, this person will usually say something once and with much emotion and superfluous punctuation, yet no detail, and then be done with it. Example: “<yourcompanyname> SUCKS!!!!!!”. No action to be taken here. Because they’ve provided no newsworthy detail in this post and most will see them as whiners anyhow. Chances are they are not an influencer. Nothing to see here folks, keep moving.
  2. The Heckler – This is an upgraded version of The Strobe. They will post multiple times hoping that their emotional, yet information-less, rant sort of ‘takes off’ and has it’s own snowball effect. Again with this one though, most of their posts are emotional and not often substantiated with any background. You *should* keep an eye on them however because they do have the time and energy to put into it and will probably keep an eye on your company for mistakes.
  3. The Investigator – This person is as thorough in documenting their issues as they are in their delivery of information to the web for all to see. If there is an issue, they will most likely have the story and the facts to back up their claim. Watch very closely for posts by these types and take them seriously. It is highly recommended that you reach out to these people immediately, opening up some dialog to validate their claims. Many times their content and/or story are capable of unearthing weaknesses in your company and/or it’s products and services.

Be Cool, Go With Your Gut

At the end of the day, you know your company better than anyone else (or at least you should) out there when it comes to public perception and reputation because you observe it all day. Simply continue paying close attention to all the streams of information that are relevant and act accordingly. Just make sure to triple check yourself before reacting to anything, and work very closely with your PR team and management to ensure that you are all on the same page when picking your battles, because there will be many of them for you to choose from, sometimes daily.

Onward.

Social Media: Stand By Your PR Crisis

Posted by Rich Harris – February 1, 2010

Bank of America is in the trenches right now. Like most B of A customers last week, I could not access my account info while attempting to login from www or via mobile device. Of course I jumped on Twitter to follow them for status. As I watched the stream on Twitter unravel, watching everyone’s opinions and complaints about B of A fly by on TweetDeck, I was checking out what Liliana Dumitru-Steffens saw before writing her article “Online PR Crisis: Bank of America Website Down, no Explanation from the Owner“. At first my thoughts were, “cool, they’re on Twitter, they’re gonna let us know what’s up.” Instead what I saw was the online bludgeoning of the folks who were running the Twitter accounts on behalf of B of A by all the customers, but Bank of America was not effectively backing them process-wise. While the customers were snapping at them right and left, shooting first and asking questions later, I realized a couple things. First, I could tell that their Twitter reps were genuinely wanting to help. The problem was the second issue -  they were probably to some extent not getting the info they needed from their own employer to respond accordingly with some details that would’ve at least given the B of A customers a little more patience during the crisis.

A Couple Tips for a PR Crisis

  1. Before choosing Twitter as an official and legitimate support channel for your company, make sure your PR/Communications team are ready to support your Twitter reps with a process for delivering details/status on issues expeditiously so that you don’t hang your social media reps out to dry for your customers to devour and lambaste them when there is a crisis. Sending your soldiers out to battle with no weapons or gear is bad.
  2. Always stay in front of the PR crisis publicly, with a sense of urgency, and mean it. When a bad PR hit goes down for your company or client on Twitter/Facebook, especially when there are customers being effected (and in this case, they’re hooked in financially which makes them extra edgy), this is your moment to shine and wave the flag of corporate transparency to put them at ease. Customers know that websites have issues, that they get hacked, that they crash or become unavailable. Welcome to technology! However, if they can’t clearly see that you are coordinated with your internal teams with the latest updates, rolling out practical sets of expectations every half hour or so with the latest news, they will hate you quickly and easily. Let them know you are fighting for their right to have a good customer experience.

Also check out the Huffington Post article: “Bank Of America Website DOWN: 2010 Outage Affects Online Banking“. There are some good nuggets in there as well.

Onward.

Twitter Lists & Business: Perception Analysis

Posted by Rich Harris – January 15, 2010

The List Goes On…

Twitter list-making has almost turned into a sort of technological modern day scrap booking. People can now organize and categorize their interests and influencers and easily share them with others. Twitter lists have also created nice clean SEO-friendly URL’s to keep all the search engines happy and thriving. When it comes to your business on Twitter however,  there’s much more going on here…

Customers (Humans) Are Control Freaks

Businesses should pay a little attention to the plain list numbers (quantity) but really should be paying to attention to more than just how many lists they are on. The number of lists is an ok high-level metric and is always good for business/SEO. However, the quantity of lists is, in my opinion, irrelevant when it comes to the real benefit. It is irrelevant in the same way the number of followers became irrelevant on Twitter after it exploded early last year. When your company is added to a list on Twitter and eventually (and hopefully) 100′s and 1000′s of lists, you immediately get insight into what people and partners are thinking about your company, how they are categorizing you in their minds, and are essentially giving away their perception of where your company stands inside their heads. Humans need to assign categories to everything based on how they feel about it emotionally and Twitter lists are no exception. Because of this, businesses should be paying close attention to these lists as they continue to grow.

As you expand your Twitter footprint, continue the ongoing perception analysis as the social media expert for your company and clients, I highly recommend including Twitter list analysis into your overall marketing/social media dashboard.

Onward.

Facebook: Are You A Stalker or Researcher?

Posted by Rich Harris – November 18, 2009

Stalking-TwitterSoooo…..Are You?

The general public is full of crazies. This validates our assumption that the online world is full of crazier crazies because now people can be more anonymous, and anonymity is the main survival tool of any genuine weirdo, allowing him or her to carry on. Of course, there’s the serious issue of stalkers on Facebook and MySpace, which is not to be taken lightly. There’s also the harmless stuff, the running joke of, “Hey, I’m glad we got to meet face to face finally, I’ve been stalking you on Facebook (tee hee). Let’s go hang out,” and all turns out friendly and good and you gain some new friends.

I was thinking about this the other day about how many people I’ve connected with online as acquaintances after meeting them through friends, or at business-related mixers or events. You know the routine…you go to a trade show while on a business trip, or a party somewhere, or even just a local watering hole and strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger. After you meet someone that doesn’t seem like Jeffrey Dahmer’s illegitimate love child, you ask if they’re on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. You get back to your hotel room or home base and get online, find them, and add them. They accept your request and you are now “connected” or “friends.”

Presumptuousness Is The Bastard Child Of Fear.

So it’s no mystery that the human majority takes a look at someone they don’t know and absorbs what microscopic sliver of information about that person they can get their senses on (hair color, their interaction in a restaurant they just witnessed, the wedding ring on their finger). Then their next step is to make massive detailed assumptions about how/who/what that person really is about, their background, their personality, their life history, and so on. It’s human nature. We’re all (to various degrees) innately uncomfortable with not knowing everything there is to know about the people we see around us. Where there are informational gaps, our hearts and minds do their damnedest to fill all those gaps as fast as we possibly can with whatever so that we can comfortably continue to deny some of our own insecurities and the reason we are drumming up all this bullshit.

I understand that there are situations where your common sense forces you to observe a situation so that you can genuinely protect yourself. For example, going into a dark alley in the wrong neighborhood where you’ve just seen a drug deal or “transaction” go down, lends itself to some safe assumptions, the main one being: “I’m probably sacrificing my personal physical safety by taking that particular path to the grocery store.” I think those assumptions are warranted and backed by sanity.

However, for the rest of the non-criminally active portion of the population, think about how exhausting it is that we do that, walking around pigeon-holing everyone. Think about how much energy we spend latching our own neuroses onto something so silly and intangible. I think that tools like Facebook and MySpace and the social sites in general may be providing a positive spin on how we meet new people and form our positive and negative opinions about them moving forward.

Deconstruct. Reconstruct.

Over recent months I’ve had the opportunity to actually go hang out with people face to face that I had initially met on Facebook. Before we even got together I made the effort to comb through their photo albums, check out their status history, take a gander at content they had posted, and read about them on the info section of their profile. Since I’ve started to make a general practice of doing that with random people I’m connected with on Facebook, a couple of interesting things have happened for me.

  • First and foremost, it was a reminder that I don’t even know a fraction of what I thought I knew about people that I’m connected with online. This immediately set off the process of deconstructing my assumptions, pre-conceived opinions/notions, and heaps of information that I had assembled about these people. In an effort to protect oneself, these assumptions (more often than not) never give people the benefit of the doubt….especially if you are a skeptical, cynical bastard like me.
  • The next step is that I began to build up or construct a new picture of this person in my head based on the content that they provided about themselves online. Unless they’re all pathological liars, I felt like I had more valid info now and was able to fill in the gaps with data that was probably much closer to the truth about who they were than all the crap I had concocted in my head prior without any of their content.

The End Result.

So as I was starting to go through this exercise of researching someone before actually hanging out with them, I realized a message was being heavily reiterated to me. My experience when meeting this person for the first time, with me focusing on a more informed opinion about this person, made the get together way more interesting and smooth. I knew what topics would be better to avoid, which ones might spark really good conversation, etc. It’s funny too because people are almost surprised (and probably uncomfortable) that I went and crawled all their info beforehand. The sad thing is that the concept of me wanting to research them first so that I was better prepared socially to interact with them means that being unprepared and uncomfortable is a social standard for many. This to some extent means that it’s probably more comfortable to them if you just make the status quo assumptions because then I’d be going in blind, squirming to find our common ground right there on the fly, which always sucks.

I’m not the first to come to these conclusions by any means but my recent experiences with Facebook in particular have illuminated a lot when it comes to human interaction patterns and reminded me that, as a whole, when it comes to socializing, people have some serious work to do, myself included.