I’m Thinking.

This isn’t a “I’m sorry I haven’t blogged in a while” post. I’ve definitely been a little slow, but that’s entirely deliberate. I’m thinking.

I’m thinking about how to take this conversation a step beyond where it’s been. I’ve never been much for having the same old discussions everyone else is having, and I’m not about to start now.

I want to focus a lot more on the practical application of a lot of this stuff, but I want to do it with you in mind. That means that I know not everyone is a social media crazy person, which means that some fundamental information is still really valuable, so long as it has HOW as well as WHY. But I also know we need to move past the circular discussions and questions, and get to some solutions, even if they’re a little rough hewn yet. We need to try stuff. Hypothesize about what works, and try it.

I spend a lot of time with companies that are trying to figure this stuff out, and I want to be helpful and a guide for those with the right intent and attitude but perhaps not all the pieces they need. I don’t want to keep beating dead horses (and I know that as much as I’ve tried, I’ve fallen into that trap once in a while) and I don’t want to waste oxygen preaching to the converted or the obstinate.

So, I’m asking you dear friends. Those that have been such active, participatory members of my community from the start, and those of you new faces that are just finding this blog and hoping it can help you. If you’ve ever stopped lurking for a few minutes to pipe up, let today be the day.

Tell me what conversations you don’t need to hear anymore. Tell me which ones don’t get enough attention. Dig out the niggling issues that you can’t seem to make headway on, and let’s make this some proving ground for ideas and practical stuff.

I’m sure I’ll still throw in a bit of pontificating and musing on occasion, because that’s what I do. I think. And my thinking is always better with your input.

So, I’m being deliberately a little slow and contemplative. I’m contemplating next moves and figuring out how Altitude can be different, be the blog where you get social and community stuff that you can’t get somewhere else. Will you please share your thoughts with me? This isn’t just a forum for me. It’s meant to be a resource to you. Let’s make it one. Sound off.

image courtesy of Shutterstock

Social Media and The Reality of Control

Hokey dokey. Let’s talk for a minute about this whole “control” thing.

We social media nerds are fond of talking about not “controlling” the message. And companies are freaking out about the idea of “losing control” of their brands and their stuff because the rolling tide that is the social media whateveritis is going to come and take that away from them somehow.

My friend and trusted colleague, Olivier Blanchard, spoke to this sassily, but correctly this week:

Will customers suddenly crash your strategy meetings via Seesmic? Will their Facebook updates derail your media buying? Will they somehow use Twitter to intercept and rewrite your press releases? Will they hack Seesmic to replace your next ad campaigns with their own? Will they use MySpace to brainwash your empoyees into acting like jerks?

There are a few different things we need to talk about in context of the idea of control.

1. How You Present Yourself

You’ve always held the keys to how you put your business out into the world, or how you educate your employees about your purpose and values. Everything from your logo to your collateral to how your customer service department behaves is under the umbrella of your presentation as a company. You get to decide how you do this part. You make the rules about what you put out there in terms of sanctioned image, content, or message. That’s always been true, and that hasn’t changed. You have every bit the control over the presentation of your company as you always have.

2. How You Are Perceived and How People React

This is the bit where we’re talking about businesses never really having control. You can’t dictate how people think, period. You couldn’t do it before the world of social technologies, and you can’t do it now. You can present yourself and hope to influence that perception, but you cannot control it.

The difference is that today, with the prevalence and ubiquity of the internet, there are lots of places for people to share those perceptions with their friends and the world at large (including your customers, prospects, employees, and people not connected to you at all). So you haven’t lost any control. People are still reacting to your business the way they always have. Now, they’ve got more tools with which to share those viewpoints, and they’re more visible and sharable.

Worried that the danger is in your own house? That employees are going to misrepresent you if you give them tools to do so? Hint: they already have them. They’re called the phone on their desk, and the email account with your domain on it, and their own voice and personal lives. You trust them as representatives of your business in every other communication channel. If you don’t trust them here, you have a hiring problem or an education problem, but not a control problem. The tools are not the issue.

3. What You Do With What You Learn

Ultimately, you decide how you’re going to absorb and assimilate #2 into #1. As a business, if you’re listening and paying attention to how people are articulating those perceptions, you still have the choice as to what you’re going to do with that information. You can change everything. You can change nothing at all.

The reason social media advocates get up in your grill is because they’re afraid that #2 is happening, but that it’s not informing #1, and that the two may even be working at cross purposes. They (we) also believe that there’s probably some insights that your customers and community can give to you that might actually help make your business better, whether it’s reinforcement of what you’re doing well, criticism intended to point out potential weaknesses, or a way of looking at your business or describing your value in a way you may never have thought of.

The truth is that, with the rare trollish exception, people aren’t expressing their opinions about your company because they don’t care. They’re not trying to wrest your brand from you and create some brand alter-ego doppleganger thing, and they’re not using YouTube or Facebook or their blog to try and overthrow you as the masters of your brand domain. In fact, most people don’t want that kind of responsibility.

They’re trying to tell you what matters to them and what would make your business more useful and helpful to them (read: what makes them spend money on you), in whatever medium they think you’ll notice. They’re not trying to control your brand. They’re trying to get your attention.

You have all the control you want over #3. Using social media strategies and tools can help you with #2, if you’re engaging with the intent to hear and the intent to consider what those folks are telling you. That builds trust. It lets people know you’re paying attention and that you value their voice.  It’s not a promise of action, but it’s a demonstration of awareness.

But control? You have as much as you always did. Now, you’ve got more accountability and expectations surrounding your business because of social media. People are watching to see how you respond to both. Ultimately, what you do with any of it is completely up to you.

See the difference? What do you think?

image courtesy of Shutterstock

The Social Media Team Ebook

A while back, I wrote a series of posts about building and organizing a social media team. They were a popular bunch, and I was asked a few times to put them into an e-book. I’m finally getting around to that for you. Just click the image, and download the PDF.

This isn’t a short read (about 30 pages) because it’s all the posts smashed into one document. But it puts them all in one place, and hopefully gives you a go-to resource – for your work, your boss, your clients.

I’m hopeful it’s helpful to you as you do some real, actionable planning in your companies. And if you have ideas about how to make it better, please share them.

As a quick recap, the book covers:

• Why you might need a team
• Assembling the team
• Sorting out some roles and responsibilities
• Listening tools and ideas
• Participation tools and ideas
• Communicating and reporting back within the team
• A case study on how Humana has built their team

I’d love it if you’d download it, share it liberally, tell your friends. It’s free. And do share your feedback or ideas for additions or improvements. What have I left out?  My email’s right in the sidebar, or you can always find me on Twitter (that’s in the sidebar too).

Happy reading!

Are We Really Just “Students”?

When I was in corporate America, I didn’t take on a new skill – say, direct mail fundraising – and say I was a “student” of fundraising. I was learning, but I was a professional. I was a professional honing a new skill, which – if we’re doing it right – we’re doing all the time. Yes?

So, I’m a bit over the notion that we’re all “students” of social media. Are the tools new? Yes they are. But communication and building relationships with people and the idea of providing value in return for someone’s attention are the oldest concepts in the book. Are we all so new at that? And if we are, should we be proud of that?

So if you want to say you’re still learning how to navigate the tech, that’s great with me. If you’re still learning how the tech applies to your business, I can be cool with that too. Because there are plenty of tools at which I’m not a pro. For instance, I’m a novice at video and podcasting. But I can still articulate their value, even if I’m not a producer.  (I have lots of people I can call that know the ins and outs of that better than I do, and that’s just fine.) But that’s the nuts and bolts.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been in communications for years (over a decade, to be exact), of varying stripes. I’ve been in fundraising, client services, business development, and marketing. I am a professional, and I carry with me certain expertise. I am NOT a novice at social media strategies because, while we’re still monkeying around with how social integrates with traditional and which tech is best for what purpose, I  have been employing the ideas of good business relationships for my entire career. I’m just adding new tools to my arsenal that help me do all of those things even better, more quickly, and with exponential power.

Am I still learning about what makes a community strong? Yes and no. Some of it is revisiting old ideas and stripping away the BS. Some of it is just figuring out the implications of information overload, preferences in technology, the flattening of information and the more prevalent voice of the customer. Some of it indeed is understanding the behaviors of folks who are more heavily invested online than ever before. But I’m not new to the idea of community. Just the execution of it in a new environment.

Business people all over the place will tell you that of course relationships matter. Of course they see the value in getting to know people personally, establishing trust, finding ways to brand loyalty and customer retention. Business people worth their salt will never argue the importance of these things. They don’t need to be sold on the idea that people matter (and if they do, social will never save them anyway, so you might as well focus elsewhere).

But they need the translation of how individual relationships scale (or how we can try), how to execute these ideas efficiently and within a budget and a larger business plan, and why these strategies will be more effective at doing all the things we mentioned above than the ones they’ve always done. They need transition plans that move them, methodically and realistically, in the right direction and don’t use “being part of the conversation” as justification for the shift. That requires work. Action. Execution. Effort. Proof. Not some lofty idea of sitting in the classroom of social media.

I feel like taking a sledgehammer to this fishbowl of ours. I have a project cooking that is ALL about execution – from culture change to internal communication to nitty-gritty tactics. Because that’s what business cares about. Because that’s what we need to legitimize social’s place among an enterprise structure. Because those are the only things that will actually affect the change that we are all so desperately clamoring for and claiming social is capable of.

I spend a lot of time – a lot of time – talking to companies and their employees.  They need to know that they can rely on people who have a solid foothold in the foundations of social media with the realities of business entrenched firmly in their minds along the way. We can learn the tools as we go. Hell, those change anyway. But we’re doing ourselves, our industry, and the business world a disservice if we all sit in wonder and awe of our role as “students” instead of looking at this as an evolution in our professional skill set – and tearing into it with practical, applicable gusto accordingly.

So can we stop excusing our ignorance and our learning curve by calling ourselves “students”? Please, yes, learn. But learn by doing. Business doesn’t need students. They need professionals actively honing new skills and putting them into practice. See the difference?

image courtesy of Shutterstock