I’ve read Jay’s Convince and Convert blog for quite a while, where he shows how to integrate social media into your overall strategy. His book The Now Revolution (which he co-wrote with Amber Naslund) provides a seven point plan to harness the power of Social Media. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in using the social web for their organization.

This time around for Social Pros Jay teamed up with Eric Boggs of Argyle Social. Together they bring a boatload of experience and practical knowledge to this podcast. I like the way they break up each episode into regular segments (and I hope they keep this format).

Journey to the center of the mind…

Each week we get to crack open Jay’s head and take a peek inside (figuratively though, otherwise this would be a very messy podcast and I suspect the quality and coherence might drop on each subsequent cracking.)

Jay’s “Thought of the Week” is where he shares insights and opinions on a current topic. For example, in Episode 1 he talked about Twitter’s upcoming brand pages and how they sound awfully similar to Facebook.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics…

Eric then takes a turn with his “Social Media Stat of the week”. Since Eric is a data-driven guy, not unlike me, he takes an in-depth look at the meaning behind the numbers. In episode one he looked into the Edelman Trust Barometer.

Heeeere’s Johnny!

Each episode’s guest will be someone actually using social media in the real world, a “social pro” if you will. Ah, now I get it!

If the first episode’s guest is any indication these should be some heavy hitters! (Episode’s 2 scheduled guest is Ford’s head of social media Scott Monty).

The inaugural guest was Taulbee Jackson of Raidious, who responsible for what is probably one of the biggest social media monitoring projects ever, the 2012 Super Bowl Social Media Command Center.

The numbers of this project are pretty impressive: 2000 square foot facility, 50 staff members and volunteers, 100 square feet of monitor wall, and even 300 square feet of whiteboard alone!

I-I-I-I Work Out…

They finish off the episode with the “Work It Out” segment, which has Jay, Eric and guest taking a request from a listener about a specific social media problem they are facing. I think it’ll be nice to hear the different viewpoints.

The podcast is available via RSS Feed or iTunes. As a nice bonus, a full transcription of each episode will also be available.

I think you should definitely carve out a half hour a week to listen to this one!

If you’ve ever been moved or inspired by any of the freely available TED videos you might be surprised that you can attend a TED style event near you. Based on TED’s “ideas worth spreading” concept, the TEDx program gives communities and organizations a way to host their own TED formatted event.

The presentations are a mix of talks, demonstrations, performances, and at least two TEDTalks videos. All free of any commercial, religious or political agendas. There’s also a great chance for networking with the other attendees.

TEDxNaperville was hosted by Arthur Zards and was held at the Grounds for Hope Cafe. This was the perfect venue for an an event like this with a great sound system and huge video screens on each wall.

Overall the presentations were informative and inspiring, with a just a couple weak spots. This was the first TEDx even I’ve attended so I shut off the cell phone and tried to just take it all in.

Here is my take on each of the presentations:

Justin Ahrens – See Different, Do Different

(@justinahrens) Justin shared details of his rough childhood and how a grade school teacher took the time to reach him through his desire to just draw during class. When he reconnected with his old teacher as an adult, he realized he wasn’t the only one that made an impact. After exchanging addresses teh teacher sent some drawing of Justin’s he had kept over all those years.

Later in life, Justin toured some of the poorest areas in Africa and showed some amazing pictures of his trips. He made a disctinction between “looking” at the world and really “seeing” what is going on around you.

Todd Kelsey – Nonprofit Exchange

Todd has worked with several notable charity organizations like One Laptop Per Child and Teachers Without Borders. He spoke about the possibilities of a Nonprofit “stock” exchange and how organizations would be valued and invested in.

Tracey Hosey – Foximus Prime

(@Giftedgal4kids) When Tracey’s son was in school she realized that he was a gifted child (as in actually gifted, not just “my kid is so smart”). After a lot of hard days and crying she discovered that there were painfully few programs for gifted students. She then took it upon herself to learn all she could about how to educate a gifted child.

When she found out about the US First Robotics program she went to the school board and got permission to create a robotics team. A few members of her team rolled out their Foximus Prime Robot that took fourth in their class at a national competition. The best part was the first team had 17 students, the next year over 60 kids applied to be part of the team.

A real negative about her talk was pointed out by attendee Eric Danley. Her presentation borrowed a little too heavily from the Did You Know 3.0 video including some bogus “facts” such as the top 10 jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.

Mark Mattas – Architech the Future

(@mhattas) Geneca chairman Mark Hattas spoke about his Architect the Future movement. He shared a very personal story about his battles with bi-polar disorder and how the lessons he learned from that episode could be applied to the problems facing the world today.

If you’ve done public speaking you know how nerve-wracking this can be, and Mark got off to a very rocky start. I started to think we were about to witness a train wreck but he threw out his “speech” and definitely pulled it off after that.

Othar Lawrence – Redefining Risk

(@othar_lawrence) Othar is a member of the Red Bull Air Force Team and spoke about risk management or taking risks or insurance or underwriting… or something. Honestly, the guy with one of the most exciting jobs in the world (jumping off things) gave a pretty boring talk. He finished with a few minutes of pictures of his base-jumping. If they had been a part of his talk it would have been a lot more interesting.

Richard Hill – Consecrate the Madness

The Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, is challenging enough, but imagine running it with a broken big toe. That is exactly what Richard did. He recounted how he learned to listen to the “four narratives” we all have ongoing in our heads: Mind, Body, Emotion and Spirit.

His talk was titled after a lyric from Christine Kane’s “Overjoyed”.

It used to be a race to see
Just who’d get there the fastest
But this frozen night it’s only right
To consecrate the madness

His point was to that we can find clarity, even in the face of chaos, by “consecrating the madness”. When his body told him to quit, his mind told him about the danger, and his emotions told him to be afraid, he focused on his calm spirit, enjoyed the scenery and finished within his target time.

Thomas Negovan – By Popular Demand

(@ThomasNegovan) The highlight of the entire day for me, by far, was a performance and demonstration by musician Thomas Negovan. He recorded an album without the aid of any computer. He used a wax phonograph cylinder.

I’ve always been interested in musical nostalgia and bizarre outsider music. Seeing a wax cylinder being recorded onstage, and hearing it played back in all its tinny, crackly goodness is something you have to experience to believe!

Since this method of recording hasn’t been done in about 90 years, you can’t just go out and find wax cylinder blanks. Luckily, Thomas found a modern day mad scientist to recreate them for him. It can take up to an hour to prepare for a two minute recording, and you only get one take. Once the wax cylinders were recorded they were transferred to tape and pressed to vinyl.

This was a big hit too with the other attendees judging by the swarm around the recording machine on display in the lobby afterwards.

Jill Salzman – Entrepreneurial Mothership

(@foundingmom) Jill is a very well known “mompreneur” that started Founding Moms.  She gave a very entertaining talk, starting with the story of how she faked press credentials with the hope of meeting Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder (which she did) to how she serendipitously met Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman.

Richard Godwin – The Next Space Journey

(@GRSG) As the son of a self-proclaimed “space nut” I’ve been around NASA and space travel stuff my entire life. Richard and my dad would definitely get along!

Richard spoke about today’s space program, and how despite what some people may say it is anything but dead. Projects like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and others will make commercial space travel possible in the future. This is an “only in America” moment where we have the desire, funds, and ability to make this possible.

Elizabeth Lombardo – The Skill of Happiness

(@DrELombardo) The day ended with Dr. Lombardo’s presentation on happiness. Money and material things won’t make us truly happy unless we practice the skills required for being happy. Her talk was very polished, but to me, a little too polished and seemed a better fit for a self-help seminar.

My TEDxNaperville Experience

Overall I was very impressed and entertained by the speakers and met some interesting people during the breaks. A broad range of ages and personalities made up the crowd. It was great to be at an event that wasn’t focused on technical topics or with a heavy commercial push either.

If you get a chance to attend, or even better, have something to talk about at a TEDx event I’d highly recommend it. I may not have left feeling inspired to great things, but I got thought provoking takeaways and a new sense of enthusiasm.

If you’ve attended a TEDx event or have a favorite TEDtalks video, share it in the comments!

As part of the F8 push, Facebook is hosting Open Graph Road Show events in several cities starting with Chicago, which I attended last week. These events are geared to Facebook developers looking to implement the new Open Graph into their applications and talks are given by the engineers that work on the platform itself.

The event was held at the Sofitel Hotel in Chicago, a luxury hotel which was a great venue. Elegant, clean, and most importantly had great food for lunch. What surprised me was the number of empty seats. My unofficial headcount had less than 75 people in attendance.

Nick Grudin of the Platform Partnership Team started things off talking about how they are opening up the social graph to outside applications, allowing Facebook developers more options of how their users’ actions are shared on Facebook.

He made a good point about the evolution of web information, separating it into three “chapters”.

Chapter One: Portals
Site like Yahoo and MSN gathered large amounts of information and presented it in an organized fashion for their users. You could select topics you wanted to see and these portals would gather the info and display it for you. The biggest drawback was results could be limited only to content providers the portals were partnered with.

Chapter Two: Search
Google changed the game with their search algorithms. People could now find the information they were looking for much easier than the other search engines of the day. Google spawned Bing, and even Yahoo refocused its efforts on paid search.

Chapter Three: Social
People don’t have to search for new content, it is shared by their friends and people in their social networks. Obviously Google search isn’t going away anytime soon, but more and more people discover content by seeing what other people are looking at.

This creates a “people centric web” putting YOU at the center. Your common interests with your social networks makes it easier to find relevant content that you are interested in.

Social sharing and connecting powers applications as well. A great example was Photos. While existing photo sharing apps battled over feature lists such as red-eye correction, cropping, color correction and the like, Photos launched with one singular stand-out feature: Tagging the people in your pictures. This helped Facebook photos quickly become the largest photo sharing site.

The first games didn’t compete with existing games on graphics, or storylines, but simply let you challenge, and hopefully beat your friends, then gave you a way to publicly humiliate them for losing!

Facebook’s new Open Graph provides several ways to share information:

The Ticker
The (somewhat annoying) feed in the upper right that shares “low-level” events from your network in real-time.

Newsfeed
Facebook uses an algorithm to determine if the item is newsworthy or considers it “engaging” so not every one of your friends’ activities will be seen on your wall unless you have subscribed to “All Updates” from the user.

The New Timeline:
Currently only available to Facebook developers, users can select the events they want on their timeline to share their online identity. It is the curated content of the users own life.

Open Graph applications can use the Facebook API to publish information each of these ways as well. These apps now become “Lifestyle applications”. Rather than simply saying a user liked your fancy new birdwatching application, they can share that “Mike Spotted a Swainson’s Thrush”.

Facebook Developers can define the action/object combinations for each individual app, and how the details and groupings are displayed for the user. There is a manual approval process required before the apps can go live, that shouldn’t take longer than a week. I’m assuming this is so they can keep out sexual or offensive and inappropriate actions from appearing in the timeline.

The rest of the event was deep-dives into different areas of integration, such as Open Graph for Games, Marketing APIs, and mobile facebook apps.

The new Open Graph is a huge step forward from the “Like” button. I think we’ll quickly begin to see Facebook integrated in lots of cool new ways with the apps we use everyday. Facebook has already partnered with companies like Hulu and Spotify to integrate into the Open Graph.

I plan to follow this post up with a more technical look and example of sharing customized Open Graph events.

The book has been a big hit in the short time its been out, debuting at #2 on the New York Times Best Seller List (Advice & How-To, where business books fall). His launch tour included a sold out event of 400+ people at the Chicago Lean Startup Circle’s September meeting held at the Thorne  Auditorium in the Northwestern University School of Law Chicago campus.

Book signing and discussion (and a few hiccups)

The Chicago Lean Startup Circle is a Meetup group 1500 members strong. This was their biggest event so far, and it showed from the disorganization and delays when trying to check in at the event (which included a copy of the book). I wasn’t even aware that Eric was signing copied until I happened to walk past the table he was sitting at.

Check-in troubles aside, once Eric sat down with the evening’s host and organizer Bernhard Kappe he quickly won over the audience with a humorous look at his background, how he became an “expert” and how often his lean approach was scoffed at. One company even saying the approach Ries used with his company IMVU, an online chat community using 3D avatars) would wouldn’t work with their 2D avatar chat application!

Thoughts on Lean Startups

I won’t rehash the Lean Startup methodology here, or give a review of the book (since I haven’t finished reading it yet), but Ries gave a good overview of the approach along with his insights.

One comment that struck me is that Entrepreneurship is usually portrayed as too sexy or exciting, and that it should be more boring. For every one “Social Network” there’s a million other dorm-room startups that go nowhere. Entrepreneur should be a title at every company, not just startups.

Ries also said that if you want to be right on most occasions, be a cynic. Saying something will never work is usually right, but “do you want to be right or do you want to change the world?”

That’s where the lean startup methodology shines. By taking the scientific approach of creating a hypothesis, experimenting and validating the results you’ll know what your customers really need faster and adjust your business accordingly.

Put people in a behavioural situation that will test your hypothesis. Establish a baseline, then tune your engine as needed or pivot the business. (And yes, Eric Ries is often credited with coining the now over-used term “pivot”)

Vanity metrics, things like total user counts, aren’t as important as actionable metrics that help you find sustainable customers. Ones that bring you new business, either through repeat orders or by brand advocacy bringing in new customers.

The Lean Startup Challenge

If you’re thinking of trying a lean startup now is a great time. The Chicago Lean Startup Circle is kicking off a Lean Startup Challenge, a six week program with $50,000 in prizes to accelerate your new venture. (Deadline for signup is Oct. 1st). A recent survey showed that Chicago Lean Startup Circle member companies have created over 7000 jobs already.

How willing you are to open up and get personal is entirely up to you and how you want to relate to your audience. Getting too personal can put some people off. It can also draw people in and make your current audience even more dedicated.

I’m glad the following authors did. Here’s who they are, what they said, and how I can relate.

Erika Napolitano

(@redheadwriting)

Erika is a bold and brash writer and not always for the faint of heart. I’ve never gotten the feeling she writes this way deliberately to be shocking. She’s just brutally open and honest, and she pulls it off. Anyone who has a section of their blog titled “The Bitch Slap” is good in my book.

Her blog post What Makes Us recounts her feelings of fears and awkwardness as a high-schooler.

I’ve never been a teenage girl, but I can definitely relate to what she’s saying! In my ridiculously small high school I was one of two people that played guitar. The other was one year below me and also my best friend. For the record, I was a slightly better player, and at the time I lorded it over him without mercy. I feel bad about it now, but that was the one thing I had.

I had long hair, torn jeans and a leather jacket (the one with fringe *shudder*) and got lumped into the “stoner” crowd. This was funny not only because I didn’t do drugs, but no one in the so-called stoner crowd did. We were just the metalheads. We’d rather share a new band with each other than all just get drunk until we puked in someone’s bedroom (which was the favorite weekend activity of the popular kids).

Had I gone to HS with Erika, I think we would have been friends (ok, I’d probably have had a crush on her, I did always like smart girls.. and redheads, but she’d just want to keep it friends).

Daniel Rothamel

(@drothamel)

Daniel made a name for himself in the Real Estate/Tech community as the “Real Estate Zebra” (taken from his days as a basketball referee or “Zebra”) only to ultimately find himself on the unfortunate end of a trademark lawsuit.

There was a great show of support from Daniel’s social media friends and followers (#SaveTheZebra). In the end Daniel made the choice to settle the lawsuit and rebrand himself.

He discussed what I’m sure was a difficult decision for him on his On Endings and Beginnings blog post and also opens up on the  how he’s gotten to where he is today.

I already relate to Daniel as a REALTOR and techie, and someone who loves to combine the two. I also personally know the impact of the words “flare up” having a related medical condition. I also have a very supportive wife named Kari!

See how these little similarities can create a feeling of camaraderie and connection?

Brian Clark

(@CopyBlogger)

How can you NOT click on that? In The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life Brian tells of a harrowing head vs. mountain skiing accident that could have been the end of him.

I don’t have any gnarly scars on my head, but my head did once lose a battle with an ice covered driveway resulting in an ER trip and some scrambled memories of the event. This post touches on my fear of brain injury or trauma, and how quickly things can change.

You!

I’m not suggesting you open up as a ploy to get more dedicated readers. I’m just trying to point out that from time to time, pulling back the curtains and letting people know something personal about you lets your fans and readers relate to you on a whole new level.

Take some time and read the posts I’ve included here. Let them be your inspiration to find ways you can open up more to your audience! The more personal ways your readers can relate to you the more trust you’ll build with them.

If social media is really about connecting then being human, vulnerable, and letting your guard down is a way to let people in. It’s something I intend to put into practice on this blog.

Last week I had the chance to meet Don & Lillian Stokes (Americas “First Couple” of Birding) at a meeting of the DuPage Birding Club where they presented their new Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America.

As an avid birder you need a good field guide to help you identify birds. I’ve used their Eastern Region field guide for years and was a big fan of their Stokes Birds At Home TV show which aired on PBS (and is planned to be released on DVD later this year).

Six years in the making, it covers all the birds of North America, including more than a hundred rare birds like as the Brown-Chested Martin only spotted in North America six times.

They faced the difficult task of compiling a field guide that worked for beginning birders as well as seasoned birdwatchers. They accomplish this by including the rarity of the bird, on a scale of 1 (very common) to 5 (presumed extinct). Each bird gets the full photo treatment, including immature birds and subspecies to help in identification. Over 500 of these pictures were taken by Lillian Stokes herself.

The result of the Stokes’ effort is a behemoth! Some guides focus on a specific type of bird (birds of prey, shorebirds, etc) but this one covers them all. The only real drawback of this much information is that its size makes it hard to carry out in the field.

You can take a page from the Stokes and consider writing an “Ultimate Guide to…” or “Everything you need to know about…” for your blog. This can be a resource that keeps visitors coming back to your blog.

If you want a real-world example, CopyBlogger recently posted The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Marketing which has covers everything a Twitter newbie or experienced Twitter marketer needs.

Some other examples to check out are The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn by SimplyZesty and SEOMoz’s Facebook Marketing: Ultimate Guide.

So don’t be afraid to let things get out of focus! Do some research and create your own Definitive Guide to Anything.

Autopilot bypasses human intervention altogether. Tying your tweets to an RSS feed is probably the most common. In theory this sounds harmless enough. It’s a way to regularly provide relevant content to your followers, which is good, but you’re not validating that the content is worth sharing. You just pass it along blindly.

Here is another (and more annoying) reason of why this approach fails. You aren’t the only one doing this! Take a look at this sample from my actual Twitter stream:

Each of these six people tweeted the exact same link within the same minute. It’s impossible that each of them read this article and decided to share it within seconds of each other. The exact tweet may vary a little, but only because the tool they use lets them add text to the start or end of the tweet and has an option of how much of the article to include. The fact remains, they set these options prior to this being sent. No human intervention whatsoever.

Do these people have a lot of credibility with me?  Not a chance. In fact its one of the quickest ways to get me to unfollow you!

Kristi Hines (@kikolani) blogged about why she turned off TwitterFeed. She gave good three reasons why she doesn’t use this approach anymore:

I went into Agent Reboot Chicago 2011 with a slightly different perspective than most of the other attendees. I’m a techie (or nerd, geek, whatever you want to call me) There wasn’t a lot of material covered that I didn’t have a pretty good handle on already, but you can always learn something new so I was excited to go.

The presenters included some of the top names in social media, blogging and technology, and real estate professionals who have successfully made this a part of their business. The highlight of the day for me was a discussion panel hosted by Nicole Nicolay (@nik_nik) with Brian Clark (@copyblogger) of CopyBlogger.com and Brian Gardner (@bgardner) of StudioPress.com about how to use your blog as a content marketing hub.

The topics focused on areas like:

• Mobile apps
• Blogging with tools like WordPress
• Creating and using a Facebook Business (“Fan”) page
• Getting started with Video
• Widgets and tools for your website
• QR Codes
• Using an iPad for listing presentations

There was a ton of info to digest, but there were a lot of takeaways and ideas of how you can start right away. The speakers also covered how to face some of the challenges:

Start slow

Don’t try to do everything in the beginning. Create your accounts on social media sites and start posting to them. Work on creating content that your readers will get value from. Don’t just promote yourself.

Start to reach out and connect to people, then as you get more comfortable start doing more. Do the basics first. Don’t worry about things like QR Codes or mobile sites before you’ve even started on Facebook or

Get Help

There are paid sites that can do things like generating a mobile optimized version of your site. If you need help getting started there are also people out there (Hey! Like ME!) that can help. If you have trouble writing hire someone to help flesh out your ideas.

Agent Reboot in Your Town

The speakers and topics may vary slightly from city to city, but the majority of the sessions cover the same topics. It’s also a great opportunity for networking with your fellow realtors and other real estate professionals. Also be sure to visit the sponsor and exhibitor booths to find out more about their products and services.

Would I recommend you go to an Agent Reboot event in your city? Absolutely! The value you get for your $49 investment ($99 the day of the event) is tremendous, and the amount of great ideas you’ll take away is worth a heck of a lot more than that!

Find an Agent Reboot event near you

I believe that in some not-too-distant future, after the fall of society as we know it, the world will be separated into two groups of people.

The first will revert to pure animalistic tendencies, living in loose communities and feeding only on squirrels (Until the disappearance of squirrels leads to their ultimate demise).

The others will base their society on the teachings of the great ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. These people, the Yankovicians, will thrive and rebuild an advanced society living in a world of peace and love and happiness.

We don’t have to wait for all that to happen though. There’s one very important lesson we can all take from Weird Al today:

Dare to be Stupid

How many times have you told someone about your latest million dollar idea only to have them tell you its dumb, stupid and will never work? Well… Dare to be stupid!

Talk with your mouth full
Bite the hand that feeds you
Bite on more than you chew
What can you do?
Dare to be stupid

 

Take some wooden nickles
Look for Mr. Goodbar
Get your mojo working now
I’ll show you how
You can dare to be stupid

Weird Al tells us to throw conventional thinking out the window. To break all the rules. Live dangerously! To dare to be stupid.

Very few people ever found success or got rich following the rules. The trait most common to great entrepreneurs is they make their own rules. They’re not crippled by the fear of failure or looking stupid.

No matter what project you’re starting, if it’s a blog or a business, take a good hard look at the “rules” then do something stupid!

Having worked in software development for almost 15 years I’ve had quite a few “free lunches” over the years. Staffing and consulting companies have as many goodies in their swag bags as a pharma-rep with the next blockbuster drug and they’re usually more than happy to supply the team and office with a stack of pizzas.

There are a few reasons they like to do this:

• To build and strengthen the relationship with the client
• To keep their consultants happy
• To find out about the client’s upcoming projects
• To introduce themselves to other consultants for future recruitment

Aside from being free food, this is a chance for the team to kick back and talk about anything but work! The theme and tone is usually light and relaxed.

While this is a social event, it’s also a chance for the company to keep their ears peeled for opportunities to develop new business with the client. Make it all about business though and people will just clam up, grab their food and scurry back to their cubes. Instead the host should make mental notes to follow up on later directly.

Using social media to grow your business should be a lot like this. Going right for your prospective client’s jugular isn’t going to work and you’ll be wasting your time.

Introducing yourself and build a relationship should come before trying to seal the deal. As you go, collect tidbits of information along the way so when you see an opportunity you can explain how your services can help.

Just don’t forget once you’ve landed that great new client that they may have very hungry developers with a taste for pizza.