Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

Of all the social media tool and channel options that bombard us daily, the most indispensable, cannot-live-without ones for me are my blogs….and Twitter.

An early tweet from BL Ochman that the “suits” don’t get social media. A lot of them still don’t.

My good friend (since 1978!) and tech mentor Dwight Silverman, editor at the Houston Chronicle and author of TechBlog, encouraged me to start blogging, get on Twitter and get a smartphone, all of which have been game-changers for me. Thank you for all of it, Dwight.

The blogs are the linchpin of most of my writing and publishing efforts; they would be the last URL standing for me in case of a social media neutron bomb, because I own them and control them.

Twitter is not something that I can own or control, but my passion for it is almost as strong as my love of hitting that Publish button on a blog post.

There is simply no other social media channel that works as well for business development, research, worldwide networking, professional development and good old friendships. Layer over all that the ability to easily connect with my entire network while on the move, via a mobile device….well, Facebook and the others can’t really touch it.

How social media has changed how we interact with content – a Mike Driehorst tweet

Today marks my 5th year on Twitter (I started the @SheilaS account on September 25, 2007) and while most tweets “age out” and disappear after a week or two, there is one way that you can still find them – hit that gold star and Favorite the tweet.

David Armano tweets updates and insights from 2008 SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive.) Love the Yahoo! reference, the urging to start a Facebook profile and the lack of budgets for the social media “fad.”

I’m very sporadic about Favoriting, but fortunately I did it a lot in my early Twitter days. This morning I scrolled all the way back through my Favorites, reading them with plenty of chuckles, amazement at some of the more prescient tweets and with an overwhelming feeling of affection toward all of the now-familiar people and friends I’ve followed (and eventually met in person, including my business partner of three years, Becky McCray.)

Originally I’d planned for this post to feature select Favorited tweets from across all five years, but I couldn’t get out of the stack past April 2008.  I love all of these little windows into people’s thoughts or I wouldn’t have Favorited them in the first place.

These are the earliest of my Favorited tweets that I could find. Particularly like the Knol observation from danah boyd (years later we’re looking at a moribund Google+ and Knol is long dead) and the still-accurate comments from Mack Collier about community and Twitter as an RSS replacement.

These screenshots of tweets show the diversity of discussion topics, viewpoints, useful links and occasional silliness; it’s no different than being in an online chat room or IM group, but one that is full of hand-picked interesting people (because you pick who to follow.) As the saying goes, if Twitter is boring for you, it’s because you’re following boring people.

Across 3 January days; Google search tip, insights from 08 Presidential campaign, Apple smack talk and @technosailor very accurate assessment of Twitter as communications method.

I was struck by how many of these tweeps I still follow – some of the very first ones, found mostly by following people who I recognized from their writer bylines, or from a conference or on the recommendation of people I trust: “Oh, you HAVE to follow so-and-so; they are so smart/funny/interesting/helpful.”

Podcasts, what is really King, widgets, WTF is your job and @LPT having Dell meetings in Second Life. Yes, I miss Second Life. Don’t knock it till you try it.

There IS the problem of disengaging with a group of such intriguing people….

Stop being interesting, Twitter! Tim Walker tries to resist.

And this is so true….

It’s not called the World Wide Web for nothing; many’s the time I’ve known I’m up too late as the Aussies on Twitter begin to say Good Morning.

Then there’s the random bit of unexpected humor in a tweet stream that totally brightens my day….

The original Wonkette on the 08 elections, sesame-seeded deodorant, Brogan, dissing press releases. Gawd I love Twitter.

Who knew that there would be actual, paying jobs doing this stuff? Well, there are. It’s simple relationship-building and communications by other means. Thanks to the web, a good communicator can be an asset to any company, anywhere in the world, and that person doesn’t have to even be located with the company. It’s what they call working “anywhere, anywhen” in Small Town Rules.

Corvida is smart, smart, smart. Plus, she’s always had amazing hair.

This grouping below ends with a rather plaintive tweet about how Twitter is as “freeing as blogging used to be.” I think back in the early days of social media, some felt that new platforms would by default replace others, but over time we’ve seen that there’s room for a lot of different places to gather on the web. There are plenty of people whose only social media interaction is on mobile photo-sharing sites like Instagram or Foodspotting – does that mean that “Facebook is DEAD?!”  No, of course not.

Music tech advice pre-Spotify, discovery of the power of online work to impact offline opportunities like speaking gigs and excitement over Twitter when it was new and shiny.

So, what’s the ROI for me and my livelihood of five years of tweets?

Let’s see….a successful social media training business, quicker access to the news as it happens and faster, better news analysis, travel to China on a blogger trip that laid important groundwork for me professionally, plus a diverse network all over the planet that has helped me with everything from where the transportation engineers hang out on social media (for a speaking gig that I landed through Twitter) to business connections and friendships out the wazoo.

Also, laughs when I needed them the most, from fabulous people like this who share my love of bourbon and distaste for BS….

Jason Falls back when 666 worried him; as of today he has 58,694 followers.

(Hat tip for my post title to the real internet Wayback Machine.)

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I hear this a lot: “My organization/association/industry doesn’t really use social media, but maybe we should. Can you come speak to our group about it?”

When I hear that, it’s akin to waving a red cape in front of a bull, because that is like saying to me:

“My organization/association/industry doesn’t really do any networking, or professional development, or lead generation, or marketing, or training, or Search Engine Optimization but maybe we should….what do you think?”

AAAGGHH.

OK, I’m back. I’m over it.

First, semantics. The term “social media” is too limiting – I’d rather use “social communications” or “the social web” – but then no one would know what I’m talking about.

So, if I can’t change the phrase, I want to change the perception of it.

Social media is a tool (only one of many tools!) that can help tremendously with basic business and organizational functions like networking, communications, professional development, etc.

Strategy – Planning – Execution

When I prepare one of these presentations, I start at the top by talking about how to set up a broad-brush social media / social communications strategy, which for me boils down to asking four very basic questions:

1) Who is the market, or who are the customers/members?

2) What sort of people are those customers or members? (Sometimes it helps to create a composite person, a persona, to represent a typical customer.  For a tourism organization, it’s identifying your ideal visitor.)

3) Where is that market active right now on the social web (and where might they go in the near future?)

4)  How can your particular organization or business best engage with them where they are right now?

That’s it. Really. No magic beans.

Once you’ve nailed that down, then do four more things to implement that strategy:

1)  Go where your market is, and observe/listen to what they’re talking about.

2)  Based on where they are active and what they’re talking about, set up your system to engage. If your market is only really busy on LinkedIn, then fine, decide how you wish to incorporate LinkedIn activities into your overall communications strategy. When you set up your system, do not forget to establish goals. What do you want to get out of this engagement?

3)  Now, engage. Answer questions. Provide resources. Be helpful. Leave comments. Do not broadcast the usual corporate gobbledygook - it doesn’t work in social media. ENGAGE.

4)  Monitor and measure the effectiveness of your efforts. This is how you determine the ROI (Return on Investment) of your time, energy and any money you spend. Remember how you set goals two steps ago? When you set a goal, you must decide the metrics you’ll use to measure whether you’re achieving the goal or not.

I know, DUH, right?  Well, I wouldn’t lay it all out like this if I didn’t see so many who don’t do some or all of it.

Overcoming Skepticism

Now that the audience is (hopefully) convinced that even social media requires some basic strategizing and thought, I then try to “make it real” for their particular industry.

For me to be believable to audiences who think that social media is something that other industries do, but oh no, not their industry, I need to show them real examples of real people in their industry getting real value out of social media.

To do that, I go off and find the online places where their industry peers are hanging out.

**  Blogs. I go to Alltop.com and type in some industry keywords. For a recent presentation to the Austin chapter of the SMPS (Society of Marketing Professional Services) I wanted blogs relating to their clientele in A/E/C (Architecture/Engineering/Construction) so I tried “construction,” “building,” “civil engineering” and “architecture.”

That brought back the Construction, Masonry, Plumbing, Architecture and Engineering channels. Some had better blogs and news feeds than others, but it got SMPS started in seeing who’s exchanging what kind of information in their line of work. Here’s the Faith Technologies Electrical Contractor blog, for example.

**  LinkedIn.  I go to LinkedIn and look for Groups related to both the markets and the professional associations for my audience. For the SMPS, I showed them the A/E/C LinkedIn Group and a LinkedIn Answers construction-related discussion.

**  Facebook. I go to Facebook and a few search engines and again search industry-related keywords. For the SMPS, I liked the Sloan Valve Company Facebook Page, “Delivering pioneered products for the complete restroom solution.” Yes, toilets on Facebook. Huzzah!

….and so on, through all the major social media channels plus a few extras that I can usually find.

I love the moment when the audience’s eyes bug out at the possibilities  :)  but that’s when I remind them to only spend time and effort in a way that makes sense for their strategy and implementation plan.

Below is my slide deck for SMPS; note that many of the slide info bullets are hyperlinked. Here’s the direct link to the A/E/C marketing preso on SlideShare if you can’t see the embed box.

How do YOU convince skeptics?

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I’m not a professional meeting planner and don’t particularly want to become one, but since joining the National Board of Directors for the AWC (Association for Women in Communications) I’ve found myself on a team that is researching venues and options for a possible event.

It seems as though a lot of people I know have unexpectedly found themselves in the event planning business, pulling together conferences because it’s fun and professionally rewarding….and because sometimes, if you don’t volunteer to do it, it won’t happen.

Liz Strauss brought her blog’s online community together offline for the first SOBCon in 2007, Becky McCray organized the first State of NOW/140 Conference SmallTown in 2010 and my teacher husband Chris Fancher ran the first EdCamp Manor education unconference in 2011.

The takeaway for places that host meetings is that anyone can become a meeting planner these days, rather like anyone can be an online publisher.

People like me may not have experience in the business, but we have definite ideas of what we want and don’t want.

My Two Concerns As A Meeting Planner

Now that the planning shoe is on my foot, here’s what I’m looking for….

1)  Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.  We are steering clear of hotels and “going indie” to keep costs low.

The sense is that with hotels, you can get a good deal for rooms (conference and attendee rooms) but then you’ll fork over for every other little expense after that, including extension cords.

May not always be true, but that’s the perception among many.

The true value of a conference is the people who attend, not how fancy a hotel can get plating up a rubber chicken lunch with a green bean side.  Expensive food and beverage costs will eat us alive, so yes, we’ll take a decent box lunch in lieu of “the usual” meals.

Whenever I start freaking out about whether this meeting will come together, I tell myself that if all else fails, I will sit in a hotel room with a pitcher of margaritas and we’ll have a conference with whoever shows up.

I know that it will be great. Seriously.

2)  Free wireless internet access. Conferences these days are not only happening within the four walls of the host venue; they are being shared continuously, worldwide, through the social web via laptops and smartphones.

An entire community has formed around BlogWorld and New Media Expo, for example, and the chatter keeps going year-round. Community members both at the event and watching it from afar expect to be able to communicate continuously.

WiFi is becoming a major sticking point as more and more meetings have people live-blogging, live-tweeting and otherwise wanting to be online. Host hotels charge through the nose for it, in your room and in the conference venue, and it’s often crappy to boot.

People are tired of putting up with that – WiFi is now the number one hotel amenity that people want, and the sooner conference venues wake up to this insatiable demand, the better.

What Does a Cheapo, Connected Conference Look Like?

For our tentative event, we might….

….use available space on an urban college campus near public transportation, have at least part of the event be an unconference in barcamp/podcamp style, get a sponsor to provide some sort of simple/box lunch and have attendees get their own hotels.

We want people to be able to fly in and out easily, get to the hotel and the venue on public transportation and spend a minimal amount on food.  Get there, get settled and get on with communicating and connecting.

We want attendees to walk away saying, “Wow, I met so many interesting people and learned a lot, plus it didn’t cost me much, either. No frills, but who cares – it was great!”

We’ve broken the code that “great” does NOT necessarily mean “expensive.”

What can you, the meeting venue, do for people like us?

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Yes, Facebook is bringing its new Timeline feature over to business and brand Pages. This was expected to happen sometime after Timeline came to personal Facebook profiles.

Yes, the explanatory posts are already hot-n-heavy for how to prepare for Page changes.

One change that everyone notes is that Page Admins won’t have a choice of landing tabs (for Welcome landing pages or marketing campaigns of various sorts.) Like-ers will go straight to your Wall.

I’m not convinced that much of any of this really matters (yes, I’m an Admin for many Pages) and here is why :

1)  Most activity and interaction with your community takes place on the News Feed, and hardly ever on your Wall once your new supporter presses that Like button.  Your presence on the News Feed is driven by the EdgeRank of each of your updates, which is a bit of a crapshoot similar to SEO for search engines.  Basically, the Wall is really not that important except for initial impressions.

2)  Most failures I see on Facebook Pages have everything to do with lack of interaction, no strategic planning and abandoned Pages with no updates for months, and little to do with how your Page is tricked out. Brands and businesses get on Facebook without a plan, can’t figure out how or why to build or sustain community, and then they flame out. There isn’t a Page tweak in the world that can save them.

3)  I fundamentally do not care about Facebook.  Any significant effort expended there benefits founder Mark Zuckerberg’s newly-IPO’d pockets, not mine. All of the 1,000+ lovely Like-ers on our Tourism Currents Page could go “poof!” tomorrow and we’d have no say in it. The only data and community that we have any control over are our Tourism Currents clients and our email list.  We are VERY careful to only allow double opt-in subscribers to our list, and we are super-picky about what we send to them. The fact that they’ve shared their email address means a lot to us. Growing that list – plus improving and enriching our website, online course offerings and monthly newsletter – are what we do care about, because we have complete control over all of it.

Never let your interaction with customers, visitors or guests be controlled by someone or something that is out of your hands. The day Mr. Zuckerberg’s machinations drive the success or failure of my business is the day my business partner Becky McCray should shoot me over a cliff, Thelma and Louise style.

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People may think I’m nuts, but Google+ is going to be the lever that begins prying Google away from total domination of much of our online lives.

What follows is, of course, conjecture, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that I don’t trust my instincts often enough, so here goes….

They’ve Shot Themselves Over Search, Of All Things

By using Google+ to manipulate their own search results, Google abandons the very core of their business culture – serving up unfiltered, “best” results as they attempt to organize the world’s information.

By telling Google employees who push back to get on the train or get out, they undo their organization’s credibility from the top down. A cushy work environment in Mountain View is just lipstick on a pig if your business doesn’t deliver on its promises.

I don’t know where it’s going to come from (Microsoft’s Bing search engine is not nimble enough, although I’d be happy to be proven wrong) but there will be a challenger to Google that will come out of nowhere and capture those who want to go back to basics.

FocusOnTheUser.org is one example of how that movement has already begun, with their “Don’t Be Evil” alternative search button tool. Tellingly, it was created by some engineers from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Privacy – Google Is All UP In Your Business

The privacy issues with Google are even more significant than Facebook’s.

At least with Facebook, you can just get the heck off of it, or at a minimum take draconian measures with your settings.

Google is everywhere – our email, our videos, our maps, our photos, our search habits and our Android phones – and you cannot opt out of their creepy data mining.

I’ve been told that many people don’t understand the implications of this, and/or don’t care about privacy issues. Fine, but Congress and the FTC do care.  Someone’s going to move on Google; either the consumer public or regulators or both.

Not Another Social Network!

Google+ is essentially another Facebook with some cool bells & whistles (I do like the G+ video Hangouts) but despite apparently roaring user numbers that don’t add up, I sense that in terms of true mass adoption, the regular Joe Bag o’ Donuts guy/gal is not jumping on Google+ like they are getting onto Facebook.

People go where the people are who they want to connect with;  I saw this in microcosm in 2008/2009 when Plurk failed as an alternative to Twitter.  The Geekerati said that Plurk was so much better organized, easier to use, etc. etc. but the fact is, everyone already HAD networks on Twitter and when they didn’t move over en masse to Plurk, people went back to where the people were.

Does anyone out there really want one more blasted digital thing to manage?  Even a lot of techie types are feeling rather overwhelmed, and many others in the mass market are still figuring out Facebook, are puzzled by blogs and find email challenging.

Not Another Social Network! Except Maybe Pinterest

In contrast to the “no THERE there” that is Google+, I’ve been watching the recent explosion over digital bulletin boards on Pinterest. No one wants another thing to manage, unless they really like the thing, and they like this one.

Fans of Pinterest are truly crazy about it. My own line of work, tourism and hospitality, is diving into Pinterest. I can’t remember when I’ve seen such rapid adoption and wild enthusiasm, albeit still mostly among a more tech-savvy crowd than the mass market.

May I remind you of the popularity of scrapbooking?  The hordes of people who’ve jumped onto Facebook worldwide (it just knocked Google’s Orkut off as the number one social network for Brazil) are perfectly capable of figuring out how to transfer their scrapbooking skills and enjoyment to something like Pinterest.

On the other hand, I can’t see any of them lining up to laboriously sort their friends into Circles on Google+.  Actually, it wouldn’t be that laborious, because no one’s really ON Google+!

Tech journalist Omar Gallaga compared Pinterest and Google+ on his Digital Savant blog, saying:

“Despite the growth of Google+, I have yet to hear a single person say she loves it. The people I see posting more often there are marketers, photographers, social media experts and a handful of media people like me sharing the same kinds of links and jokes they also post to Twitter and Facebook. Google+ otherwise feels like a weirdly active ghost town….”

My geek crowd is saying that they love the visual organizing, inspiration and connections on Pinterest, but most see Google+ as a somewhat bothersome “I have to do it because it’s Google” chore.

A privacy-invading chore is not a recipe for mass adoption.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

We’ve been here before with AOL and Yahoo! and other behemoths who are now pygmies. No one stays on top forever.

Google has self-immolated their corporate values by embracing search manipulation and calling it “social.”  Update: Farhad Manjoo on Slate – “Google just broke its search engine.”

They’ve created something that is mostly a marketing obligation for many, a chance to write a quick how-to book for others and a genuine place of enjoyment for specific niches like photographers, who do seem to like G+.

That’s not much of an endorsement for what will be yet another Google failure at building a social network, and will also lead to the beginning of the end because it is not part of the business culture or values that made their company great.

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How do you keep up (or even better, stay ahead) in a fast-moving environment?

You pay attention to the important things, while everyone else gets sucked into a noise vortex and wastes time on the unimportant.

BusinessWeek had a cover story in April 2005 – yes, 2005 – called “Blogs Will Change Your Business.”

Then they did a follow-up social media report in May 2008, titled “Beyond Blogs.”

Yet, even today in 2011 (almost 2012) there are still plenty of professional communicators who seem rather gobsmacked by what’s happened to their world.

They would not pay attention, roll up their sleeves and do their homework even a year ago, and now they wonder how they got so far behind.

You fall behind by not keeping up.

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I’m working on a book, and it’s NOT about travel or social media!

Seems as though every time I turn around these days, someone I know is cranking out a book. For speakers like me, it’s almost a rite of passage.

I spent a lot of time wrestling with the idea, and trying to figure out why my portfolio of print articles and blog posts since early 2006 wasn’t enough to give me the credibility that can apparently – even today – only come from a book.

Honestly, it seems a bit silly that all of my tech and blogging buddies consider a book, made of paper, to be a pinnacle of geek achievement. Does anyone else find that a bit, well, ODD?

So I did what I do….I stewed and pouted and tried to find reasons to say No, and ultimately it ended up the way it always does for me….I decided that it was worth my time and effort to write a book, but not the one that people might expect.

A travel guidebook is a pain in the rear to compile and write, there’s no real money in it and it’s often outdated very quickly.

A social media book would be a rather naked bid to catch this year’s hot marketing topic. An offline entity doesn’t seem like the best medium to convey thoughts about online topics – especially when this blog works just fine for that, thanks.

I wanted something evergreen; something that could be picked up at a bookstore or ordered online five years from now, and would still be relevant, engaging and helpful.  When in doubt, I turn to my own experiences because I know them best, and thus was born The Elastic Waist Entrepreneur (or here is the book’s Facebook Page, if that’s your thing.) It’s about launching an online business for older women, especially when you really don’t know what the hell you’re doing, like me.

Since I have this project on the brain, I submitted a speaking proposal with serial entrepreneur Wendy Piersall to the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference, held every March in Austin, Texas.  It’s right down the road from me, and I’d be an idiot not to attend one of the world’s biggest tech events when it’s a 30 minute drive away.

As part of the unique Panel Picker process at SXSW, you can vote for and comment on proposals, so here is my shameless plug for you to add your vote and voice to the comments about the proposal, if you’d like.

Our proposal page: Elastic Waist Entrepreneurship for Women 40+

Why elastic waists? Because as a comfort-seeking old lady of 50, that’s what I was wearing when I came up with the book idea.

No matter how it ends up, thanks for your support, and see you in Austin in March 2012!

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Getting a bit tired of people offering to buy you coffee and “pick your brain?”

I have to tell you, this sort of request was a lot less bothersome when I had a salaried position than it is now, when I’m an entrepreneur and a freelance writer/speaker/consultant, and my time is quite literally how I make a living.

Sure, some people don’t mean anything by it, some have read networking advice that says I’ll be flattered to be asked, and others really ARE moochers.

How can you tell the difference, and how can you turn those people who are fishing for information into possible paying customers of your work?

I have some answers for you.

There’s a live webinar on the topic coming up tomorrow (April 26, 3 pm CST) with me and my Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray, plus we’re including a toolkit with a workbook and role-playing audio, all in a package we’re calling How To Draw the Line Between Free and Paid.

The live version of our webinar will only be offered this one time; anyone who signs up after Tuesday will have to settle for the recording. During the webinar, we’re going to add some valuable tips:

• The advantages (yes, there are a few) and disadvantages of sometimes working for no pay.
• How to tell the difference between predatory brain-picking and friendly questioning.
• Why social media tends to cause us to be overly casual about the value of our work.

All the details are here: http://is.gd/DrawTheLine

If you’re ready to jump right in and sign up, go straight to the registration page here: http://is.gd/DrawTheLineSignUp

Nope, it’s not free; it’s $37. We’re charging because we want you to take it seriously, and actually do the work required to set up a system to change brain-pickers into customers.

Plus, we’ve gotta stand by our own words, and no, you may not pick our brains for free!

We promise, though, that it will be worth every penny.

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At a recent  gathering for some Chamber of Commerce staff, I heard one of them say that his boss is rather dismissive of any time spent on the Chamber’s Facebook Page, yet if the Chamber is not successful on Facebook, that is seen as a failure.

Rock, meet Hard Place.

I’d love to tell that boss that if Facebook is part of an organization’s communications strategy, then interacting with customers or prospects on Facebook is work. It is not “goofing off.”

Welcome to the modern world – Facebook for business is work. It is part of that Chamber communicator’s job to connect with not only Chamber members, but also people in the community who might become members, including hardworking entrepreneurs who may have never considered the Chamber as an asset for growing their business.

The Chamber should be the hub of business development and economic growth in a community, and one way to interact with the community is through social media channels like Facebook.

The boss needs to get a clue, and if he or she isn’t careful, they’re going to see brain drain by staff members who understand the social Web.

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Not having a website in 2010 is akin to not having a telephone number.

Why would you make it hard for customers to find you?

Why would you cede your online presence to TripAdvisor, UrbanSpoon, Yelp or Merchant Circle? That’s what I find when I Google you and you don’t have a website.

Yelp is your website? Awesome.

That is bad business, and it is unworthy of you.

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