<mom> What do you say? </mom>

Date: September 9, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 11 Replies

When we were little kids, my little brother and I heard this all the time. When Mrs Kennedy (not that one, the one on 138th street in the Bronx) gave us an ice pop, when grandma gave us a quarter, when someone told us we looked great in our leisure suits (if i ever find the photos, I will scan and add to flickr). Mom used that phrase because we were little, didn’t know any better, were too busy trying to scarf down the ice pop and because we were learning the social customs that (some) grownups already knew: when someone gives you a compliment or a gift, you say thank you.

How does this all relate to Social Interactions on the Web? Any decent Social Media effort will have some kind of Outreach program:

1. Identifying bloggers, podcasters, videobloggers, forums, communities, social spaces that have something in common with the Social Media Effort
2. Joining the spaces and conversations in a forward, transparent manner
3. Add value to the discussions and attention without expectation or demand of reciprocity (pay it forward slick ad guy)
4. Make good stuff, not marketing taglines or “socialized” press releases
5. Keep the effort going – this is more about bringing big corporations down to eye level with the user than “eyeballs” or “share” or “Audience”

So now a Social Media Effort is doing outreach the right way, is adding something to the conversation, is getting people talking. Users start talking. 2-way dialog meets the 2-way web:

Users start leaving comments on the Social Media Effort’s YouTube videos
Users start threads in a forum dedicated to some topic or subject that the Social Media Effort is engaged in
Users start twittering about it (thanks Pistachio!)
Users start blogging about it
Users start mentioning it in their podcasts, videoblogs, screencasts
Users start participating, giving you their clicks, their eyeballs, their intention, and their voices

Did you remember to say thank you?

In the “little kid” example, it starts in direct personal interactions and continues in the dreaded process of writing thank you notes for birthday and Christmas presents. In this Social Media world of ours, when a user leaves a comment on your blog do you look to see where they are coming from? Do you respond to their comment? Do you check out their blog? Do you look and see what they are writing, what they are into? Do you leave a comment on their blog? Do you add them to your blogroll? When they mention you in a forum like Videoblogging do you respond on-list or leave them a note or tweet? Do you have the processes and procedures in place to listen AND respond?

Not all users will have something to say that is profound or game changing or even nice. Sometimes it will be mean, or bitchy, or completely negative. Sometimes it will be missing the point entirely. Sometimes it will be a simple, anonymous “thanks guys” – and thats it. Its on their terms.

The point is, you are becoming a neighbor, joining a community, being part of something that is smaller and bigger than yourself. Scoble and Godin can’t answer every comment and no one expects a Social Media Effort to mean “direct, personal, immediate, one-to-one communication”. But they do expect that you are listening and they expect you to show it. Demonstrative examples of “hey, we aren’t asleep at the switch or using this Social Media stuff to scam you”.

Are YOU actively participating in the architectures of participation you are spending so much time and money and effort on? Are you showing the community you are trying to engage that you are both interesting AND interested? Social Media Efforts ache over how many ways they can engage the user and get them to hit the SUBMIT button, register, leave a comment or write a wiki entry. If you are spending all this time creating “feedback loops”: platforms, code and process to get users to interact and participate and join in, are you closing the loop?

Some Social Media Efforts spend a fortune (things like Radian6, BuzzMetrics, employees, PR/Ad/Social Media agency personnel) on listening to the places and spaces where users are talking about them. Some more grassroots or startup Social Media Efforts utilize Technorati/Google Alerts/Summize/TweetScan/Etc. and brute-force (human capital) to see where they are being mentioned.

Do:

  • Have a blogroll – it is an outward, persistent sign of the sites, people and voices you believe in.
  • Linklove – be “linky” – link to the users, call it out when they add something to the conversation, send the attention of the conversation at your door to their door
  • Celebrate the things happening OUTSIDE your four walls – if your entire conversation is “me, me, me” the conversation will become a monologue. Call out the wins and ideas of the community, show you are participating by checking out their flickr feed, their blog, their tweets, their Second Life island. Spend a % (make it a hard rule if you have to – “one story every day or week or hour will be dedicated to THEM”) of your time and blog space and twitter feed and flickr experience on the community
  • Participate – in the comments, forum, NING ring on your platforms AND the platforms where your users live. Don’t be radio-silent. Show them someone is there and her/his name is Susan or Fred not ADMIN or MODERATOR. Humans don’t have conversations with MODERATORS. In the same way that you call out what users are doing outside your four walls also participate on the user’s sites/platforms. Leave a comment on their blog or Flickr feed. Reply to their tweets. Show you are listening AND visiting
  • Don’t trust one person to be the “community manager” and be responsible for all the commenting and listening and responding – it is everyone’s job. Find ways to get individuals inside the company or org interested in participating. Give them small things to do, get their opinion on what they can do/interested in/would be willing to try. Not everyone wants to be on camera or a blogger – and they all have day-jobs. Make it as frictionless and as fun as possible. I would rather interact with someone inside than some hired blogger or agency wonk

When a user paid you a compliment with their attention, did you remember to write a thank you note?

Movie Game on Twitter

Date: September 2, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 1 Reply

A long time ago I worked as a bar bouncer in the Bronx and Manhattan. Except for the nights where I was the only one working, we usually had between 4 and 6 guys standing at the door until it got crowded (which in NYC, where bars don’t close until 4am is usually around 10-11pm). This means we had between 2-3 hours a night to make fun of the customers, confiscate fake IDs, discuss politics, economics, chicks and entertain ourselves before “prime time” hit.

A favorite form of entertainment (thanks Big Rich) was the Movie Game. The game is usually better with an odd number of players (you will see why in a second), requires some understanding of pop culture and some kinda love of the movies. The rules are simple, and a lot like tag (without the running – remember, we couldnt leave the door when we were working):

1. Player A Says the Name of a Movie
2. Player B says the Name of an Actor in Player A’s Movie
3. Player C says the Name of another Movie Player B’s Actor was in
4. Rinse and repeat until someone can’t name a movie or an actor and get bounced out

How does this work with Twitter?

you @ someone on your follow/following list with the hashtag #moviegame and the movie name/actor – the tweet would look something like this:

ME:
@chrisbrogan #moviegame Movie: Full Metal Jacket

who would then tweet to Britt

@britter #moviegame Actor: Vincent D’Onofrio

who would then tweet to Micah

@micah #moviegame Movie: My Bodyguard

who would then…

Now due to the asynchronous nature of twitter there are a couple of problems – anyone can hit IMDB as they answer, there is no guarantee Britter is at her machine when her round starts, there is no “Out” as we aren’t all standing at the door of a bar freezing our you-know-whats off. But it would be interesting to see how many answers, at what time hit with twitter (by following the hashtag).

And everyone would need to use the honor system 🙂

so who wants to play?

Social Media Best Practices

Date: August 28, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 4 Replies

Thanks Chris – Here are my Social Media Best Practices… YMMV, 1. Commitment
This is not a campaign. It is not an event. It is not a fixed period in time when effort will be thrown against X product or idea. It is an ongoing effort, a conversation, a multi-faceted dialog. If you go into a Social Media project and think there is an end-state you are painfully missing the point. The users want to engage. They want to play with you. And they want to do it on their terms. They will connect when it is convenient for them. They might not come back for months, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love ya – they will be telling everyone they know. A Social Media effort will never be Cap-Ex – it is ongoing, evergreen, committed.

Imagine being in a bar, talking to someone and halfway through the conversation they go silent and walk away, mid-sentence. Thats a real-world example of what happens when a social media effort ends… It isnt supposed to. The party can move to another bar, apartment, social media platform but you dont want to leave the users mid-conversation.

At Gnomedex recently, a friend told me about a client of his who really wanted to blog like their competitor. And he took them through what this meant – commitment, honesty, authenticity, being real and talking back to the users. At the end of the day, the client admitted they weren’t ready to be that transparent, authentic, or committed. They admitted that they weren’t ready and had a ways to go and needed to take their time to get there. As someone who has done a LOT of client work this is a huge moment and I applaud the agency and the client for getting to the point of not doing something because the other kids are doing it.

Not committing to doing something halfway is committing to a real respect for the user.

2. WHO (at the beginning)?
Spend some effort, not a brainstorm session, not an afternoon, but some serious sleeves-rolled-up, sweating, chugging coffee, fingers stained with dry-erase marker time to get an understanding of the user you want to meet. Try more time than it takes to get to 90% on your LinkedIn or Match.com profile. You want to reach people, communicate WITH them, get them interested – it kinda pays off if you actually make the attempt to understand them upfront.

3. Outreach
I will spend a bigger blog post on this because it is so important (and I have mentioned it in lots ‘o places) but Outreach needs to be a part of whatever you do in Social Media. No one ever woke up and had 100s of friends. You need to reach out to them, listen to what they are into, what is ticking them off or getting them excited.

Dive in, get engaged, participate with them, get active, listen, talk, be humble, ask questions, PM people, contact the leaders of the tribe or community. If you want to connect with tribesmen in a remote civilization in the South Pacific, using a megaphone from a chopper is a bad idea. You need to get in there, show you want to be a part of something OTHER than yourself (or company). Give a little to get a little. Pay it forward with your attention to (hopefully) get their attention.

Comment on their blog posts. Thank them for their comments. Give the links to things you have found that are relevant (NOT CORP SPAM – but real valuable pointers). Spend more time pointing out the cool things that are happening OUTSIDE your four walls. Be a human being that is interesting BECAUSE he/she is INTERESTING.

We all laugh when we see another Tweet or Blog Post where “clueless huge PR Firm XXX pitched me and NEVER read my blog!”. BUT WE DO THIS TO USERS ALL THE TIME. We either don’t give them a payoff for their attention, take them for granted, think our ideas were so precious-“how could they not love us” or we make some cultural gaffe that signals we didn’t do our homework/didn’t try hard enough. It all rolls up to research and respect and humility and EMPATHY – if we can’t relate to them, how can we communicate with them.

Don’t be another half-assed ad campaign.

4. WHO? (in-progress)
So we spent the time, did the research, looked at the places and spaces these users live, we joined them at their jamboree, hoe-down, gathering of the pack, etc. We begin to scratch the surface…

And then we execute the plan according to the messaging guidelines and creative brief, making sure the touchpoints and brand impressions are expressed.

= EPIC FAIL

Once you start listening, once you begin engagement, once you take a minute to try to understand the user it doesn’t stop there. You need to keep listening, keep connecting, keep trying to understand them and how they are changing (and they are changing). Users aren’t static. They don’t live on a timeline or production calendar or release cycle. If we commit to the long term risks and benefits of a conversation then we need to live with them long term and LISTEN long term.

5. GOALS
Nail down the goals on a segment by segment basis. One size fits most sucks, and on the web the suckage is even more pronounced. Don’t start with an end-state in mind, rather start with an opening state (100 users adding comments, enough activity for a full-time moderator, 1000 subscribers to the newsletter) and a bunch of empty bullet points to fill in as you learn and grow the effort.

6. Tactics
Identify, based on the work you have done to engage and understand the user what are the best ways to reach them – Blogging? Wiki? Virtual World?, In-Game efforts? Meetups? Twebinars? Twitter? Video? Widgets? Facebook?

In the 80s, when Desktop Publishing exploded (thanks Apple) you could use multiple fonts on a document – AND EVERYONE DID. It was painful, company newsletter started looking like ransom notes – bad news. Just because you can use every platform, mashup, codebase, meme and tactic in the world doesn’t mean you should. Put the user in the center of your efforts, identify the touchpoints they are in, make smart bets and ASK THE USERS ABOUT OTHER CHANNELS to connect to them.

7. The User Is The Platform
Map to their needs, their devices and their ideas. Don’t make them come to you. Put lots of lines in the water and breadcrumbs on the path… if what you are doing connects with them they will follow back (and bring their friends). Remember the “WTF? Rule” – if you are doing something and say to yourself “WTF?” then you should probably reconsider.

The user makes choices and commitments without you in the decision. They are a Photobucket guy or a Flickr kid. They live on MySpace or FB or LinkedIn. If you want to reach them you need to be where they are (and again – not everywhere, but focused, relevant, & humble)

Video? Don’t just host it on your site, make it shareable, embeddable, linkable and even indexable (at least have a transcript or use a service like http://www.DotSub.com). Share it with YouTube, get it on iTunes, post it to Facebook, make it shareable via RSS, email, AIM, etc. Let your users leave comments via Seesmic or Eyejot, create a channel for them to engage.

8. Soylent Green Social Media Is People
Pesky humans. They tend to recognize their own, have insanely honed BS detectors, can sense marketing at 100 paces and aren’t afraid to bitch and moan until someone pays attention to them.

Then again, the coolest stories inside a company, organization, table tennis team, etc. are from the people there. Not the spokesman. Not the media-trained, brightsmiled, finely manicured spokesman/pitchman/flimflam man. The 60-year old guy who has given up every weekend for the last 20 years to Habitat for Humanity AND is the number one engineer in the company is a heckuva lot more interesting than the Troy McClure (simpsons) wannabe who will be selling/telling us all the wonderful ideas behind the product. For the longest time, the only people inside a BIG company we could see where the C-Suite kids who made their quarterly appearance on CNBC. Users are getting a taste of the real people inside companies and they want more – not for inside secrets or war stories or gossip – but because they are giving a little bit of themselves (money, attention, fan-boy-hood) and want a little something human in return.

At our startup, the users are clamoring for the professionals within the company to engage them. They want to see and hear from the Pros and get sometimes a little unhappy when the guys can’t participate in the forums fast enough or often enough. Its a learning curve for the Digital team, and it means we are doing something right (and need to do it more and with more people to spread out the work).
\
I will probably think up 100 more as I drive home

Looks like Brogan got me blogging again.

Chris Israel, Rest In Peace

Date: August 3, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 4 Replies

Last weekend I received news from the Stork that our roommate, Chris Israel (Izzy) had died. To say this was a shock would be the understatement of the century – it was more like a mule kick to the chest.

Chris Israel, you will be missed

Chris was a character, a madman, a drinking buddy, a party animal, a good guy, a great husband and an amazing dad. I first met Chris in the early 1990s when we worked together at a bar on the Upper East side. He would talk about any subject, loved to have a good time, introduced me to the Grateful Dead (he used to talk the DJ into playing the Dead before closing), and was one of the few people in this world I would want at my back in a fight. As bad as things got, Chris never lost his cool, his head or his sense of humor. He was one of the funniest people I have ever met.

In later years we became roommates (along with the Stork and Ross). Between watching the Jets win some and lose more I got to watch Chris plot his ideas for film and video (Emporer’s Delight, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the most original, disgusting, funny ideas I have ever heard). When I was at pretty much one of the lowest points in my life he gave me a gig at the Gingerman.

Chris was both interesting and interested. He could talk to ANYONE. Drunkards and spent characters LOVED to talk to him… and while they always entertained him, he was never mean. After 9/11, when Izzy was one of the managers at the Gingerman, I watched him work the room as the regulars, people still stuck in the city, folks unable to go to work in lower manhattan and those just looking for a beer streamed in. If someone was in bad shape, had too much or were visibly upset he would walk over and check on them, ask if they were alright, tell them it would be OK. He made the effort, listened, tried to understand, even as it became apparent during the days after that a number of people he knew were also lost in the attack. He had empathy. He gave a damn. He lived the example that he set.

Its been over a year since I last talked to him. It would be easy to say life and work got in the way, but since I moved up here I have been telling myself to call Chris and Ross and kept putting it off. Regret isn’t a strong enough word to express how I feel.

500+ people came out to Breezy Point to say goodbye to Chris on Friday morning. Guys and girls I haven’t seen in years, the Chowderheads, kids who worked with Chris at different bars, families, neighbors, his friends all came out to remember him. Chris’ family is amazing and close and will get through this, but I cannot imagine what they are going through. At the end of the Mass, Mr and Mrs Israel stood up to give a final eulogy. It was PERFECT and my recollection could never do it justice. His Dad said:

Everything Chris put his mind to he did well. At an early age Chris decided he wanted to have as much fun in life as possible and share that fun with as many people as he could.

He did that and so much more. He is missed but will never be forgotten.

Chris Israel was the best of us.

Twitter Updates for 2008-07-31

Date: July 31, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply
  • #mediatemple sucks #
  • thanks Mediatemple for dropping like a stone – you took all my sites down you f^ckers! #
  • Seems like the kinda day where I call up some ska from Pandora… and then bang out some more work #
  • go kick some ass @AdamBroitman #
  • @cspenn – if it’s mine, couldya mail it to me? #
  • @Schnittlich – outstanding list – thanks man – how’ve u been? #
  • what apps should I get for my iPhone? #

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Twitter Updates for 2008-07-30

Date: July 30, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply
  • missing the Pulver event near Harvard… work work work… #
  • @tracysheridan – very cool #
  • @chrisbrogan relationship b/w brands and users move away from big-to-little & move more towards peer-to-peer (outreach, vrm, lots o’ things) #
  • waiting for shannon, the only human being to ever work for ATT/CIngular, to get back to me on my iPhone #

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Twitter Updates for 2008-07-28

Date: July 28, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply
  • @micah – you are a magnificentbastard.com #
  • @khopper – “We’re new at this (in a good way)!” – not very reassuring #
  • @khopper – I think “I am going to kill you” would be a more direct promise from Nature… “you are going to die” is a little passive #
  • @THespos1 – congrats man…. kids having kids… 🙂 #
  • @jamesconnors – the ipod and the newstand are your friends 🙂 #

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Twitter Updates for 2008-07-26

Date: July 26, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply
  • @geechee_girl – your ipod has a poltergeist 🙂 #
  • brunch, apple store, Stepbrothers, dinner, DRUNKS DONT LIE @ Middle East Upstairs… its like college without the brutal hangover #
  • video planning doc at 75% – solid plan, could work really frickin well – going home now, happy #

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