Conversation

I started the class by talking about conversations. I told them that I was not there to lecture, but that I was a consultant and that I am used to having dialogues with my clients where they challenge my thinking. I assured them that I am not a social media expert by any means, but that I have some experience using social media that they could possibly benefit from. I then swallowed hard – half expecting that they would end up teaching me a thing or two. They did not disappoint me.

Poll

I started by polling them.

Who is using Facebook? 100% of the class raised their hands including Marcia and I.
MySpace? No one was willing to admit they own an account.
Foursquare? Huh?
Gowalla? Gowhatta?

The surprise was when I asked: Who is using Twitter?

Not more than 5 people. I expected 30-40%. I was off base. I bit my lip, fighting the urge to tell them why I thought that twitter was a necessity for them, and asked them why they weren’t using the platform. Here’s what they said:

• I’m already on Facebook. Twitter is just another platform. Why should I bother?
• It’s yet another distraction from school and real life.
• My friends don’t have anything interesting to say on Twitter.
• It’s tough to get started on Twitter. I don’t really get it.
• I don’t give a ______.
• You need to constantly leave Twitter to consume content.
• One person sighted a cost in Europe for cell phone bandwidth.

I told them that their reasons for avoiding twitter were fascinating. I encouraged them to join twitter because it would open doors for them that they might not otherwise be able open. I told them that it would give them the ability to find like-minded individuals that they would like to get to know, network with or do business with. It would also give them a platform to build an interested niche audience.

I think I got them thinking about using free tools to build relationships, promote themselves and potentially establish themselves as opinion leaders in subjects for which they are passionate.

Thanks Rebecca Sullivan for making it happen.

Mr Movember from Schneider Mike on Vimeo.

Shaving my goatee so that I can grow the perfect Mo. I hate cancer.

Help me crush cancer by donating to my #Movember team. http://bit.ly/killcancer

You can also join my team: bit.ly/jointeamBOS

If you want to tweet or Facebook this link or either of the other 2, I would be grateful.

Walt Disney World Epcot Food and Wine Fest 2009 from Schneider Mike on Vimeo.

I eat and drink my way around the (Walt Disney) world. Watch my big fat head take you through the festival. I get more and more lucid as the video goes on. “The wine is not lime flavored.”

Steve Garfield invites us up to the stage to make media during his presentation on the simplicity of video creation.

• Be transparent
• Do not attempt to control the conversation
• Engage

Each of these is riddled with theory versus practice, but the focus for now is engagement.

Photo by Mashley Morgan Used Under Creative Commons License

How do you decide where to engage?

Deciding where to engage should come from two angles. First, you need to decide how you want to represent your brand in social spaces and therefore you should have an idea of how you want to align with conversations that you deem important to you and your success. Important: you need to be willing to allow this to evolve.

offline your band is what you say, in online spaces, your brand is what the crowd says about you

The second angle is listening to the crowd. At #mitxsm, we established that in online spaces, your brand is what the crowd says about you. That means you need to listen to the crowd. They are going to dictate the conversation whether the brand likes it or not. A brand can choose not to participate, but there are consequences to ignoring a conversation with significant participation. Significant participation is not always number of people, it has everything to do with who is participating. Pissing off one influential individual can have a serious ripple effect.

What are the 2 Rules of Engagement?

Respond
A brand needs to speak to the people who are engaging. When someone addresses the brand, it should respond in kind with an honest answer. This is not always pretty. Even brands who are known for engagement like @Jetblue and @SouthwestAir get the occasional hater. [aside: @JetBlue seems to be ignoring a couple of haters. I am talking to them to see why they hate and if the brand has enaged them via DM versus openly]. It’s how you handle the feedback that counts. You can win the haters over or at the very least you can show how you graciously accept them and incorporate their feedback. Both win you points. Your brand may be late to the game because the crowd has already kicked off the conversation on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc, but it’s never too late to join.

Provoke
The conversations that you care about may not exist the way you envision them. That does not necessarily mean that the crowd does not care or want to have that conversation. Brands need to be willing to provoke, instigate, antagonize or tease out a conversation. The best way to start conversations is to seek out individuals who would be likely to participate.

What? Well, if your product is adventure oriented, you might seek out people in the extreme sports, mountain climbing, hiking, mountain biking, kite surfing and shark tossing crowds. Then kick off a conversation. If you want to be known as the fertilizer expert, then talk about fertilizer with people who like to talk about landscaping, lawn care and gardening. Do not worry about whether you know people. Jump in. Discuss your views. Push out content that your audience cares about. Debate the merits of your ideas and the merits of the ideas of others in the crowd. Eventually you will make new friends. You will even get to a point where you are meeting people “offline” and while you may start your conversation with a “nice to meet you” handshake, your conversation will pick up where you left off online because you already have a relationship.

Brand can be complex because companies and people are complex. Remember, when these rules apply to both personal and corporate brands. Mine is about social media, measurement, emerging technology, burrito enthusiasm, events, beer (which i channel through an alternate persona) and a little about style. I outwardly do not take myself too seriously but I do take my brand seriously.

@Direct_Tire engaged me today when I was talking about walking to work after dropping my car off for repairs. They got me to respond, but missed a chance to have a real conversation with them after I responded.

If you are a band, engage your fans or engage fans of music that you are paired with in the music genome project (Pandora), but find out what they like beyond your music. Analyze and choose the commonalities and have the conversation stem from there.

Remember, you are now building relationships, not just pushing out content. You can sponsor user generated content to get conversations going as well.

You can create campaigns using outreach programs that give people who like your products resources to create content for you, like Ford did with the #Fiestamovement. Oh and you thought I was just going to dog Ford in this article. Nah. They have made some good moves. And If you’re really feeling bold, engage your competition. That’s a sure fire way to get people talking.

The bottom line is that social media is not for the meek. What brand do you know that has a tenet of meekness? None. Is your brand engaging? What is holding you back?

I like clothes. I like colors. I like designs. I think the clothes a person wears tells a story about the person, so I try to make the things I wear represent who I want people to think I am. Gary Greenberg, Executive Creative Director at Allen & Gerritsen (my employer) and clothing afficionado and I often compare notes about our favorite designers. The other thing we like? Bargains. We both want to change it up a lot so we are looking to make our resources go as far as possible. These are two extremely disparate philosophies for guys who like designers like John Varvatos, Hugo Boss, Robert Graham, Ted Baker, Paul Smith and (angelic music) Barker Black.

So sure. I have passion for clothing. I like brand names. I know what colors match and I have an eye for shoes, but I also know what I don’t know.

I’m not always sure what fits. I don’t know squat about knits. I am not that strong in accessorizing or making sure that the stuff I buy is mix and match. So when I was approached to participate in the Men of Social Media Makeover, I didn’t look at it as an insult, I looked at it as a chance to learn a thing or two and hopefully kick my game up a notch.

Here’s video of me shopping with Emmi.

Shopping with a Style Consultant from Schneider Mike on Vimeo.

My thoughts on Zara

Enter Emmi Sorokin whose passion is fashion- or so I thought. Emmi actually is about putting men in clothes that make them feel comfortable. She believes that clothing is important, but she also wants to make sure that she understands your needs, your budget and your life objectives. OK, this is making it sound like Emmi is all business. She has a lot of energy and she knows the stores she will take you to cold. That means when you go in, she has already seen just about everything in the store – or, in my case, has pulled a good deal of the clothing in advance so you can just dive right in. I think part of the reason we got along was that I was upfront about my objectives.

Talk about your goals and your budget

Be frank about what your goals are in life and in business. Letting Emmi know a little about my lifestyle made it easier for her to recommend clothes that are not only cool, but make the statement that I want to make. I also told her that I was not willing to break the bank and that as much as I would like to buy a ton of clothes, I had to stick to a certain amount. Emmi knew how to make the most of the money I was comfortable parting with. That said, be realistic. Don’t expect Emmi to be able to clothe you for the season on $50

If you don’t like it, don’t buy it, but be open minded

I tried on a lot of clothes. We liked some and we didn’t like others. We agreed on most things but there was a sweater that she liked that I nixed. I tried on everything that she asked me to try on. I kept open to any idea that she brought out. As a result I learned a lot about how to wear sweaters, which I had no clue about how to do properly and I learned about a store that I never would have considered going into.

Have fun

Go in with an attitude that going shopping doesn’t need to be a chore. Emmi brings a lot of energy to the situation and she knows what she’s doing. She is great for fashion beginners and also for people who are fashion clueless. Either way, she will treat you like you are the most important person, she will make sure you have a good time, she will respect your budget and your goals and I guarantee that when she’s done, you will look great and feel great about your wardrobe.

Emmi did not approve of this.

Come Out During Fashion Week

Oh, and if you want to see what Emmi did for Mike Lewis, CC Chapman, Stuart Foster and I, come to the Men of Social Media Makeover!

If you’re a marketer, social media pirate, brand, celebrity or super hero, you probably have a friendfeed account, but are you using it? We know that content is king and friendfeed allows you to bring it all together for show – while also allowing you access to ALL of your friends’ content. Seriously. The Friendfeed team was tied to a chair, eyelids glued open and force fed Barney and Sesame Street until they fully understood that EVERYTHING must be shared.

Share Your Content

And share you can! Not only does it have real-time, native integration with 58 (at post time) blogging, bookmarking, video, status, music, books and news tools, it allows you to integrate anything else with an RSS feed. I currently share content from 18 different sites on friendfeed.

Share Your Thoughts

Friendfeed’s Like | Comment | Share features allow you not only to add your own thoughts to a stream, but post them to link prediction markets like digg and stumbleupon or other micromedia sites like facebook and twitter.

Friendfeed has support for comments on any content, but also allows you to pass it through to other social properties with the Share link. Want to follow a conversation for the ages? Like it. The My Discussions feature will pull up everything you like or comment on so it does not get lost in a raging stream.

Share Other Content

Want to share content on Friendfeed? Use the tool bar bookmarklet, or email it to share@friendfeed.com. Friendfeed even has ways to notify you when you receive new content- via text messages and instant messenger. It’s borderline sick.

So, how serious are you about sharing? Probably not as serious as Friendfeed.

Hammertime

MC Hammer told a story of eyeballs and sales. His “social media” story was a story of authenticity. Ghosting, when someone else updates your social profile on your behalf, he shunned. He likened his experiences in the space to his experiences as a preacher (great question Gradon Tripp). His was the story of an entrepreneur- one who is convinced that he can sell the 250,000,000 Facebook users SOMETHING.

Shenanigans

Disaster Management

Surprisingly awesome was Wendy Harman of the American Red Cross. She told a story of a platform that is critical for disaster management communication. The American Red Cross has 150 twitter personas that they manage. She noted that the Santa Barbara Red Cross was more than likely furiously tweeting about the current forest fire situation in California. The Red Cross is also an excellent case for distributed brand persona management.

Worst Practices

Josh Levine of Rebel Industries gave a great talk on Social Media Worst Practices. He likened social media to a Bill Cosby joke about drug use.

I said to a guy, “Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?” And the guy said, “Well, it intensifies your personality.” And I said, “Yes, but what if you’re an asshole?”

He also talked about authenticity and using social media to go underground. When complimented on his use of up-and-coming “what’s next” hip-hop artists in a Toyota Scion campaign, he said it was part passion play on his organizations part, but part going to the experts in the crowd to find out who is on the bleeding edge.

THUNDER

Gary Vay Ner Chuk brought the thunder as usual. Although his presentation was shorter than I would have liked, he got across a few key themes. First: people who are buying bus signs and billboards in places like Harvard Square are obviously not watching the crowd. Everyone is looking down at their phone and not looking the ads. Ad spend? Wasted. You think Gary’s a wine guy? He’s a new media guy – THE new media guy.

Firmly grasping that content is king, he also talked more on the topic of content ownership and creation. In true Gary Vaynerchuk fashion, he told us like it is. He said: If you’re truly passionate about the content, you should give it forever. Do it forever, bleed out the eyes, you will be happy because you are doing what you love. In other words: #crushit.

photos by (and of) Gradon Tripp

Uncovering Social Media Data You Can Count On

With stakeholders throughout the enterprise taking a role in the ownership of conversations in social spaces, each wants to know the impact of a relationship on demand creation, customer retention and support efficiency. This panel addresses how to make the numbers meaningful for sales, marketing, customer service and product teams.

Click here to vote for Uncovering Social Media Data You Can Count On

Extending B2B Acquisition Strategies Using Micromedia

Let’s discuss the importance of proper brand personification in micromedia spaces. We will talk integration of micromedia as a channel in a communications plan and alignment of messaging with strategic objectives. We will cover clear statement of objectives, managing multiple objectives, integration with CRM and community initiatives and attribution of a sale to micromedia. The overlay will be the balancing act of how much sales vs. thought leadership vs. customer service vs. your laundry list of others.

Click here to vote for Extending B2B Acquisition Strategies Using Micromedia

DataRock

What would this post be without a little DataRock?

Trent was a vocal advocate for spam controls in twitter. Twitter users know that twitter is not going to implement a big new feature like that in the near future. He announced back in June that he was leaving. He came back in July to announce his last shows and to talk to Dave Navarro. No “wave wave wave wave goodbye”. The @trent_reznor account is just gone. The @nineinchnails still persists though as he said it would.

Good to see he has not gone soft.