The Post-Event Crash Phenomenon

I’ve finally recognized a pattern that’s emerged after months of heavy travel to events across the country. Part of my job – and a part I dearly love – is to be on the road, participating in all kinds of social media, marketing, PR and new media events to meet and connect with the Radian6 community.

I love it because I enjoy meeting people, and I don’t think the internet can replace the intimacy of meeting people in person. And the proof of that to me has become the crash that happens after the event, a crash I’m now understanding is actually quite common amongst people who frequent the event circuit.

When you’re at a conference, you’re surrounded by people nearly all the time. From the moment sessions start early in the morning (or even breakfast meetings before) to the social events afterward, you’re continually chatting, mingling, socializing and connecting with people.  And by the time you’re finished, you’re usually too exhausted to do anything but fall face down in your puffy hotel room bed, wake up bleary eyed, and do it all over again for a day or two more.

There’s an adrenaline rush that comes with moving at that pace. Your brain is constantly engaged, you’re either listening or being listened to, and relationships are being forged at every turn. You’re “on” more often than not, and cramming lots of activity into a short timeframe.

Then the event ends. You pack up, scramble to the airport, and at long last sink into the airplane seat or car on your way home. For me, I tend to come home to a relatively quiet house with my dogs and, eventually, my toddler. And something strange happens. I get sad.

The abrupt change of pace – from frenetic to normal or even relaxed – can be jarring. For me, I get a bit of withdrawal and find myself searching for connections with people all over again from the remoteness of my office. Jumping on Twitter to say hello to friends I just left, relishing emails from people for ideas we had on the road to move them along. It’s almost as if I need reassurance that people haven’t forgotten about me now that there’s geographic distance between us.

Strange, huh? (Or maybe not).

What it’s reinforcing for me is the reason I do all this travel in the first place: there is NO substitute for in person, face-to-face human interaction. None. All the online profiles, tweets, and facebook messages in the world cannot replicate the subtleties and nuances of chatting with someone in person. And when it comes down to it, the social web may give us a pile of online icebreakers and head starts into real world relationships, but we as humans need – even crave -  interaction in the same physical space.

I enjoy  my quiet moments like anyone else, even relish the peace of my back deck on a sunny afternoon when there’s not a soul around. But I’m encouraged to know that for as digital as my world has become, I still want and need to see your faces, hear your voices, and know that the connections we’ve made are as real in the flesh as they are on the interwebs.

So thanks for reading this introspective, personal post that’s a bit of a departure from my norm. But know that it tells me just how important you all are, and how much I’ll look forward to the next time – or first time – our paths will cross in a new city very soon.

Why Messages Aren’t Enough

Core messages. Key messages. Messages, messages. We really put a lot of stock in that word, don’t we?

Messages are built to be heard, and we feel like we’ve been successful if our message reaches someone’s ears. But that’s not enough anymore. And if you think your endgame in all this social stuff is to deliver a message, you’re going to lose.

Messages aren’t tangible. And as much as we marketers would like them to be, they’re not retainable for very long. Something will always come and replace them in our minds – something more timely, relevant, or momentarily interesting.

What people cling to are experiences. They don’t always have to be earth shattering, but they matter. I don’t remember your tagline *unless* I can relate that tagline to an experience I’ve had with you (or in spite of you). I don’t hear your “core values” because you labored over them in a board room. I *understand* your core values because you demonstrate them to me through the way you do business with me.

Social media isn’t just a message delivery mechanism. (Actually, I’ll submit that marketing, advertising, and all the other communication disciplines aren’t either, but that’s for another post perhaps). You can argue with me until the cows come home that awareness matters, and I’ll grant you that.

But awareness only translates – only *matters* – when that awareness makes me want to have an experience of some kind. With your company. With the people at your company. With your product, your service, your blog, all the cool content on your site. An experience that will ultimately drive home all those messages you so badly want me to hear.

But hear this trick: it won’t be because you gave the message to me in your words. It will be because the experience gave *me* the inspiration to create messaging of my own. It might be what you intended, but it might not. And it’ll never, ever be because you scripted it, or told me what to think. It’ll be because you gave me something worth talking about.

So if you think your end game is to get me to hear a message, I challenge you to think otherwise. Maybe your end game is to get me to create the message and find my own ways of communicating it. Maybe?

How many languages do you speak?

Once again, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post from Twitter friend and savvy social communicator, Arik Hanson. I love shining the spotlight on smart, compelling people and Arik certainly fits that bill. Do take the time to check out Arik’s blog at Communications Conversations, and be sure to connect with him on Twitter to say hello.

In high school, I took French. I know, I know, Spanish is more practical. But I took French because there was this gorgeous girl—we’ll call her Sarah, to protect the innocent—that I was just dying to talk to. French class gave me an excuse. But, turned out, learning the French language also gave me a way to connect and converse with a whole bunch of other folks across the world.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve never actually used my French-speaking abilities to communicate with another living soul, but the opportunity is certainly there. C’est la vie.

The point: Learning a different language gave me the chance to communicate with a different population that I previously didn’t understand.

Think about the role of a community manager or social media strategist. They not only need to be able to “speak” social media (the easy part), but they most certainly need to be able to understand basic PR, marketing and communications principles.

Wait—we’re not stopping there.

There’s definitely an IT element to social media, right? Gotta be able to talk to those folks—using their terms and jargon. What about sales? They have a stake in the game, right? OK, I’ll give you that one. It’s pretty easy to talk to a salesperson—but you still need to understand what motivates them (hint: it rhymes with “stash”). Leadership? What, you thought you were you going to start engaging customers one-on-one online and not talk with senior leadership? You most definitely need to be able to communicate effectively with the C-suite. In fact, you need a whole heck of a lot more than just “effective” communication skills to talk to this crowd. You need to be able to build an argument. Make a case. And back it up. Big time. Oh, and they’re probably going to want metrics and measurable results, too. Don’t forget that little nugget.

Community builders need to be bilingual—multi-lingual really. You need to be able to step into an IT meeting and talk about firewalls, CSS and HMTL. Then, 10 minutes later, walk into a meeting with the CEO and tell him why you think it’s a good idea that he start engaging customers on Twitter.

You need to be able to sit in a room full of world-class marketers, savvy PR pros, IT staff and Wharton-trained leaders and talk intelligently about how you’re going to integrate social media tools into the existing marketing and communications mix.

You not only need to be able to speak different languages, but you also need to understand the worlds these vastly different groups live in. What makes them tick? What are their goals? What do they really care about? And how can you take all the information, make sense out of it and tie it together and put a big bow on it and deliver results for the organization?

But, that’s your job. You’re a community builder. It’s not a 9-5 job people. It’s 24/7/365. It’s thinking on your feet. It is, as Amber has said many times, “bridge building.” But before you build the bridges, you need the foundational elements. Like understanding the languages.

Parlez vous des médias sociaux? Technologie de l’information? Ventes?

People Watching in a World of Avatars

For as digital as my life is, I’m a self-confessed people watcher. I revel in observing people, to the point where sometimes I find myself darn near staring at someone.

Today, I was fascinated by my flight attendant, Doris. She was older than the average flight attendant – I’d put her somewhere in her sixities. She had a gentle, soothing voice and for once I almost *wanted* to listen to the overview of the safety features of this aircraft.

It was a tiny plane so I got to watch her intently for most of the short flight. Her John Sandford book, the way she carefully picked out the cashews from her trail mix to eat first with her black coffee. The colorful yarn bracelet on her well-tanned and toned arms (seriously, for a mature woman, her arms were amazing). The bright pink lipstick she wore and the comfy-yet-funky black shoes she had on her feet.

I find myself doing this more and more; immersing myself in someone’s microworld for a little while, in whatever brief period during which they happen to cross my path (anonymously or not).

And I notice that I find myself missing those subtleties sometimes in the online world.

I can’t hear the intonation in your voice (and I’m big into the sound of voices; I have several favorites even among the people you know, but I won’t embarrass them here by saying who). I can’t see all of your mannerisms, your gestures, or hear the dry and witty way you tell a joke.

So for all the times I get asked why I hop on planes and shuttle around the country to visit events even though my job is driven by the interwebs, I’ll say this.

The very best moments of my job, and often the most lucrative business-wise (even if not immediately), are at events or over drinks or a meal. The way Shawn Morton tells his story about the Man Orgy (you’ll have to ask him about that) and I laugh until I cry. How I can laugh with Brendan Jackson about whether a pink shirt would have been appropriate for dinner.

It’s about when Greg Matthews invites me into Humana’s Innovation Center to see the amazing (!!) things they’re doing like B-Cycle and the experiments they’re doing to tie wellness into video games. And when we can laugh together about something completely other later on.

It’s about when Chris Barger lets me hang out and drive fun cars, learn about the challenges GM is facing, and how then I can feel like every time he sends me a Tweet, our conversation has a definitively more personal dynamic.

People watching is about observing subtle humanity. And it never ceases to amaze me how compellingly different, unique, and interesting some people are. How energized I am each time I get the chance to connect with more people, in analog space.

Is it about some kind of immediate ROI? Does there always have to be an instant and relevant business context to these conversations and interactions? Heck no. Because someday, when and if I do business with the people I meet, we’ll have already laid the groundwork. The relationship is first. The rest fits in where and when (and if) it should.

And no matter how digitally driven my business is, no matter how new the media gets, I will always relish the human and interpersonal connections that are at its very core.

photo credit: Matti Mattilla

There Is No Social Media Kit

The dreaded “It Depends” answer is the bane of existence for a lot of corporate communicators trying to get involved in social media.

We want shortcuts. We want a kit of parts, turn-key, that we can plug and play. (We did love the Chia Pet after all. Just add water.)

We’re accustomed to standards and rules of engagement and largely accepted practices that someone has captured in a textbook somewhere. We look to “best practices” and the road that someone has safely paved before us. It’s reassurance for us that we’re “doing it right”.

We want to know that our ideas are going to work before we execute them, because failure is some kind of subtle indication that we’re not very good at our jobs. We ask about ROI because faith isn’t an accepted business practice, and we’d much rather cover our asses with a case study (TM Chris Brogan) as a safety net in case we fall (“but it worked for them!”).

Here’s the thing, folks.

There is no kit of parts in social media. There are some examples of what works. There are examples of what didn’t work. The answer to “will this work for us” or “how should we get started listening” or “what’s the best way to engage our audience online” will always be this: it depends.

It depends on your business. Your goals. Your resources. Your culture, risk tolerance, openness to change, compliance and disclosure issues, industry, product, audience, management. Among other things. (And as a quick aside, there was no guarantee your dumb postcard campaign would work either. It’s just that other people did them lots, so it felt like an easier risk to take. After all, everyone else was doing it.)

What worked for them might not work for you. What failed for someone else might just be a key to your success.

The difficulty in social media is that there is no storied history yet. No decades of proven practices that are ubiquitous and consistent and infallible. And this makes us, as creatures of habit and security, painfully and remarkably uncomfortable.

But if you ask me whether or not you should have a YouTube channel, I’m going to tell you that it depends. If you ask me whether you should be on Twitter or whether you should be blogging or how to monetize this stuff or how it translates into sales, I’m going to tell you the same thing.

The best answer I can give you about your social media endeavors is actually a series of questions. The social media strategy you build will be based on your answers to a pile of smart questions about your business and your tolerance for a new approach.

So answer your own “It Depends” conundrum by trying these on for size:

Research and Groundwork

• How are our customers using our existing online properties (website, email marketing, etc?)
• Do we believe social media will have an impact? If so, in what way?
• Why is social media of interest to us?
• Is our industry ahead of the curve, behind it, or in the middle?
• Is discussion about our brand positive, negative, or neutral? Are we being talked about at all?
• Who in the organization needs this information, and what do they need to see?
• How does what you learn through listening touch each area of the company?

Auditing and Readiness Assessment

• How do we as a company feel about opening up the dialogue with our customers?
• What do we perceive as the biggest obstacles to our adoption of social media practices?
• What approaches can we take that are evolutions of our current practices (vs. complete overhauls)?
• Who on our staff is most enthusiastic and passionate about talking to customers?
• How well do we communicate internally, cross departmentally? Do we need to improve this first?

Goal Setting

• What are our measures for success? (qualitative and quantitative)
• Who do we want to reach and why? And beyond customers and prospects, how about suppliers, vendors, partners?
• What do we want from them?
• What are we giving back that has nothing to do with our product/service?
• What data do we want/need to gather during our efforts?

Resource Planning

• How much time and money are we expecting to dedicate to this?
• What are we spending for technology, development and tools vs. human resources to activate communications plan?
• Who are the point people, and what are their roles? Who are the “faces” of the organization online, and where?
• Are we ok with not seeing an immediate and direct return on the money we spend, and are we looking at this as a short term or long term investment?
• Can we afford to keep part of our allocated $ budget flexible to respond to evolving needs?
• If we’re successful with social media, can we scale our interactions to continue to meet higher expectations? How?
• Are we flexible enough within roles/responsibilities to shift them as needed to accommodate what we learn from social media?

Internal Education and Training

• Are our employees using social networks in their personal lives? What level of familiarity can/should we expect?
• Does our internal audience understand the business potential of social media, or are they skeptical?
• What are the biggest fears/hesitations that we have as a company about using social media?
• How detailed do we need to be about our communication policies?
• Are we empowering our employees to respond at the point of need, regardless of their role? Is there a “chain of command”?
• How are we going to structure the flow of information so that necessary learnings get back to the right people?

Immersion and Participation

• What practices do we see from our peers/competitors that we’d like to emulate?
• What do we see from them that we’d like to avoid at all costs?
• What unique voice can we contribute to the conversation at large?
• What is it that we want to convey to our community through our participation in social media?
• What content makes sense for us to create on a regular basis, and how/where will we post it? Why?
• Are we going to encourage community generated content? How? Where will it live? Will we moderate/edit?
• How are we ensuring that we’re providing a two-way channel for dialogue (vs. just posting information and walking away?)
• How will we respond to negative feedback/criticism when we discover it?
• Can we solve problems on the fly? Which ones? How are we empowering our team to do that?

Learning and Evaluation

• Do we need to change any of our assumptions about time/resources/workflow required to do this for the long term?
• What sites are we finding the most comfortable, responsive? Are they the ones we anticipated?
• What are we doing with the information we learn? How are we distributing it internally and acting on it?
• What new metrics should we be tracking based on what we learn?
• Were our original assumptions about social media correct? If not, what do we need to adjust as a result?
• Are we moving toward our goals, and to what do we attribute that?
• What have our customers and competitors taught us that we didn’t know before? Now what?

So now. I’ve given you a start to some of the questions you need to be asking yourself in order to build your own, custom social media approach. What other questions are you and should you be asking? What have I missed? And how are you dealing with the idea that there is no insta-grow social media?

The comments I leave to you.

photo credit: Elsie Esq.