We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
–Albert Einstein

Over the last few years of growth in social media, I’ve observed an increasing divide between the hobbyist and business communities. In one corner the hobbyists are concerned about the tainting of social media by business interests and can’t see any value in understanding legitimate opportunities to use business strategies to improve and promote their social media projects. In the other corner, the business folks aren’t interested in mingling with the hobbyists and can’t see the value in learning from the the independent content producing pioneers; in many cases dismissing them out of habit for the big media companies.

Both are missing the point. Both are losing.

I believe there is little value in attending events exclusively in your own domain of expertise and interest. In order to push the boundaries you must explore other possibilities, examine how other hobbyists and businesses engage their communities, communicate with others and design their workflows.

Let’s examine my situation. My medium of choice is typically audio. Limiting myself to understanding content development for audio only will limit my creativity and opportunities. Understanding how text and video producers use their tools to tell stories and engage their audiences may help me identify innovative ways to produce audio programs. Consider that Cirque du Soleil isn’t exclusively a circus, theatre production or opera company. It’s a unique combination of elements from each — and other artistic and performance domains — which couldn’t have been achieved if the creators confined themselves to understanding a single art form.

Hobbyists would be wise to attend some business, marketing and media conferences and/or classes to learn how things have been done in a traditional sense and which innovative ideas are being considered now. There is likely to be a thing or two that will inspire them and may re-energize their projects (at the very least, their interest in their projects). Hobbyists might also consider listening to podcasts from a number of categories. They can learn a lot about engaging a community from Six Pixels of Separation, educating and entertaining from the NACOcast, connecting multiple ideas together in each show from Spark and providing significant value from David Maister.

Business folks would be wise to attend social media conferences and listen to hobby podcasts of all categories to gain insight into what’s engaging and successful on a limited budget and how a single individual can create, record, edit, produce, publish and promote multimedia content. There’s a lot to learn from the storytelling style that makes up The Hollywood Podcast, the passion of a male knitter in It’s a Purl Man, the exploratory discussions and topical rants in On the Log and the conversational style to promoting literacy, an industry and its players in Just One More Book!!

In social media, you don’t just miss the phone call when you’re out, you miss the entire opportunity to grow.

In case you hadn’t heard, GM announced in March that they are moving half of their $3 billion marketing budget, to third largest in the United States, to digital and one-to-one initiatives (GM Changes Game, Puts $1.5 Billion Online). That’s a full $1.5 billion dollars, a sizable portion of which will likely end up on the web.

It’s my curiosity on how enterprise money is being spent that led me to attend a discussion on Social Media and the Enterprise with panelists Natalie Johnson of General Motors, Chris Reid of Yamaha Motor Canada and Jenny Bullough of Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., and moderated by Michael O’Connor Clarke. Michael’s mere appearance on the stage resulted in a dramatic hush coming over the room.

Following pleasantries and introductions, Michael kicked off the discussion with a quote from The Cluetrain Manifesto:

“…companies so lobotomized that they can’t speak in a recognizably human voice build sites that smell like death.”

Harlequin enjoys strong brand reputation. This means that there’s a community built on decades of publishing books that appeal to a specific and demanding niche. In fact, Harlequin publishes 120 new books each month including electronic selections of their back catalog based on user demand through their website. Also interesting is that Harlequin still accepts unsolicited manuscripts.

One of Harlequin’s greatest successes is a series of meet-the-author podcasts that connected aspiring authors with potential readers and meet-the-editor podcasts which educated aspiring authors on the Harlequin approach.

Nathalie talked up General Motors’ social site imsaturn.com (though her way of saying I M Saturn was confused by the entire room to be I Am Saturn which led us to the website of a hip-hop musician). Another initiative that connects their customers with the organization is IGotShotgun.com which features behind the scenes videos. The greatest challenge to moving to the social web has been securing the support of the upper ranks and steering the corporate culture of 266,000 people in a new direction.

Yamaha brought in an outside expert to educate senior management on the value of social media for brand value and online reputation. Chris described how he could see the lights go on during the session and that having an outside expert added credibility to the campaign, that he alone would not have had the same impact despite the fact that he is the in-house expert.

While each organization has corporate blogging policies, each approaches participation in online communities by employees a different way. Harlequin’s multi-page policy comes down to ‘don’t be stupid’; don’t blog about authors, don’t blog secrets, etc… The brand is well defended by a large and passionate community. This means that Harlequin watches as the community responds to negative comments. GM allows employees to participate in online communities provided they are transparent about their employment. They moderate comments for foul language and offensive remarks. Otherwise, they allow negative remarks and criticism in order to be transparent and to learn from the community. Yamaha only allows internal blogging and does not permit employees to represent the company online.

When the panel was questioned about their organizations’ commitment to social media, Michael noted that the panel represents a new environment in which companies are dedicating full-time positions to social media engagement.

I was recently invited to a social media gathering in Ottawa. In fact, I received two invitations from the host within ninety minutes of each other; one from Meetup.com, the other from Facebook.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe I can attend the event. Nevertheless, I checked both sites to gauge response and determine if there is any consistency to the responses between the sites. I noticed that Meetup.com indicates 6 confirmations, 4 maybes and 1 regret, and Facebook indicates 17 confirmations, 41 maybes and 55 regrets.

While I appreciate the need to cater to the ‘online styles’ of all invitees, I wonder about the fractured nature of our online reservation systems. I realize that we cannot dictate the online habits of the members of the community, yet I wonder about the administrative efforts imposed on event organizers to promote their events and manage communications with the participants.

If we can get the physical location, date and time figured out for the real-life interaction, can we not do the same for the way we coordinate ourselves in the online world?

I dug into my archives this morning to see what I was blogging about last year at this time and was struck by a coincidence. On April 3, 2007 I wrote a post titled Less is more in which I discussed scaling back the number of social media/social networking tools I was engaged in in order to achieve focus and be able to distribution my energy effectively. The ‘talk of the week’ on this week’s Canadian Podcast Buffet’s features a discussion on ‘overexposure’ to social media tools, networks and conversations.

Since the episode won’t be published until tomorrow, you can prepare yourself for some of the discussion by reviewing the following blog posts which inspired the dialog.

• Dave Fleet discusses a thought provoking video
• Bob Goyetche revisits a long-time love

I attended the Facing up to Facebook session at the University of Ottawa, yesterday. It was a panel discussion with Law and Technology Faculty Professors Jeremy de Beer, Ian Kerr, Jane Bailey, Val Steeves and Michael Geist and it was moderated by Andy Kaplan-Myrth.

The discussion was lively and informative and had a unique mix of social media participants (Profs de Beer, Kerr and Geist) and observers/researchers (Profs Bailey and Steeves). While there was a clear recognition of the role of social media tools such as Facebook, the discussion focussed largely on the impacts of these technological gathering places on culture and privacy, and their not-so-subtle use for corporate interests.

I found it particularly interesting when the panel explored the influence of culture on the need for social media tools and influence of social media tools on culture. Prof. de Beer introduced the room to John Fiske’s concept of Semiotic Democracy, “the delegation of the production of meanings and pleasures to viewers”.

The majority of the conversation focused on privacy concerns, the misrepresentation of information sharing controls as privacy controls and the use of aggregate information (not specific information) to generate consumer profiles. Prof. Bailey wondered if privacy is now passé. Indeed, social media tools are about publicity and micro-celebrity rather than privacy.

The session reinforced my realization that businesses that have stood up social media services (such as Facebook) are manufacturing a three-tiered privacy-crippled environment:

• crippling amounts of information that creates an environment in which privacy may be possible through obscurity
• crippling suite of options designed to perpetuate a false sense of privacy
• crippling terms of use agreements designed to protect the interests of companies through obscure language, excessive text and circular references beyond the patience and comprehension of most people

Excerpts of the Facing up to Facebook session are available in this week’s episode (#95) of the Canadian Podcast Buffet. The entire session will be released as a podcast through the University of Ottawa.

When you think about it, storytelling is a constant in any form of media including audio and video. Even when the content is meant to educate or convey a procedure, there’s some method to the delivery that can be identified as storytelling. The fact is, information is easier to remember when the consumer can relate to the content and the use of stories is an amazing way to make that connection for your audience.

Your challenge this week is to think carefully about how you present your content and find ways to enhance your message through storytelling. Remember the best stories have a beginning, middle and an end — three acts if you like — and they don’t clutter the story with unnecessary details.

If you have any questions feel free to email me, markblevis@gmail.com. Your next challenge will be available next week at markblevis.com.

 

 Challenge number 4: Use stories [1:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I fly to Germany on Tuesday to deliver a presentation titled Return on Influence: Using Social Media for Business to a client.  The talk illustrates how conversation and community are at the centre of  the trust economy.  I use case studies to show that the use of social media and new media technologies are important components of a comprehensive business strategy.

I’ll have some time to take in Cologne on February 8th and I’m hoping that there are some social media and new media enthusiasts, specialists and professionals that would like to connect for a geek dinner on the 8th.  If you fit that description and are interested in connecting, leave a comment or email me (markblevis@gmail.com) to make necessary arrangements.

Part of following a digital conversation means going wherever the conversation goes. While RSS is a great tool for that, closed systems such as Facebook still require a login to see what’s going on inside.

Last night I was introduced to spokeo.com. For the time being I’ll call it a social media aggregator. It does the legwork for you by trolling the various social media sites for the activities of your community (based on email addresses) and organizes the information for you. Spokeo pulls activity from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc… You can add websites and blog URLs to the list and organize the information in groups, by user and even drag and drop user-related resources into your own structure.  It’s the flexibility and ease of organization that makes spokeo a unique and powerful tool in this space.

As with any digital tool, there are many opportunities for unscupulous use. For community-minded individuals that live in Web2.0, Spokeo is an invaluable tool.

If they could only build in trending…

If I charged a nickel to everyone that asked me how to make money from podcasting and blogging, I’d have model for recurring revenue in new media and social media. I may even be rich by now.

My answer to the question has been consistent: develop your skills as a content creator, audio producer and community developer (or be part of team that has those skills) and then maybe you’ll have something to build on. In fact, I blogged about this nearly a year ago using a garden as a metaphor for building skills and engaging in sustainable growth — neither of which you can rush.

Robert Safuto put up yet another brilliant post (he’s good at that, really) on the subject of business models for new social networks. Rob suggests that if you start with a business model you’re doomed to failure. I agree. As a bonus, Robert used a garden as the metaphor.

I once saw a sign that said “Farmers feed cities”. Remember, they don’t necessarily get paid based on the value of that reality.

Tod Maffin’s email came out earlier today: a last minute social media meet-and-greet with Jeremiah Owyang (formerly of PodTech, soon to be with Forrester) would be held this evening in a Vancouver lounge.

As it turned out, the lounge was booked for a private event. Thankfully, us social media types are very adaptable. We ended up talking about the web and digital toys (like Andrei’s Sony Ericcson phone that scans and reads business cards) at Milestones in Yaletown.

By this time tomorrow night, I’ll have attended three new media/social media events in three nights. What’s particularly nice is that I’ve made new friends (Tatsuya Nakagawa, Rachel Newton, Vern Baker, Chuck LeDuc and Andrei Iancu) that I will have the opportunity to connect with, again, tomorrow night. It was also great to hang out with Derek Miller (not because he was my ride).