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Was Mom wrong with her advice: “Don’t talk to strangers?”

Ann Handley in her opening talk contradicted Mom, reminding us that we should go out of our comfort zone and talk to strangers and learn from each other.

Go forth and learn we did -

From “The Magic Combination of Rich Content and Social Media Can Land You On ‘Page One’ of Google”

If you think about creating great content - if you build it, will they come? Maybe if you make it easy for them - the “crazy viral” content doesn’t have many barriers to access. A registration form is an example of a barrier for your users. When creating content, also think about usability - something that is easy to consume, read and share will be so, especially if the content is quality.

Different media types serve different purposes. Of course, you might want to collect email, contact information and names. If you explain why you ask for that personal information to share survey results, you might realize response rates as high as 95% as Michael Stelzner did, the author of Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged.

Some other quick tips:

• Develop relationships with key influences before you need to make an ask - hint - offer interesting, unique insight or value.
• Think about your signal to noise ratio - what content should be open and public, and what should be more private?
• Retweet buttons or links that allow people to share your content
• Video tools to use may be Screenflow for those who use Mac and Camtasia for those who use Windows
• Check out Sexy Bookmarks if you use wordpress

Life moves quickly, at the speed of Real Time. So what about business - how can business engage in real time? How Big Brands Engage in Real Time Conversations with Customers provided case studies of how both B2B and B2C brands leveraged online interactions to develop relationships with their customers.

• Hansen’s soda used Twitter in conjunction with street teams to grow their brand
• Intel used social media to discover the desire for the Ajay Bhat t-shirt from the Ajay Bhat commercial.

However, incentive-based contests are great for launching programs and products, not for building sustainable relationships. Social media is like a long term relationship, not casual dating. Speaking of relationships, what do you do when you screw up? You can address problems by figuring out what the problem is and addressing it. Apologize for your mistakes and ask for forgiveness.

Have we moved past the it’s-about-the-conversation/it’s-about-the-community chant? Social Media Measurement: Metrics, Impact, and Value addressed how we can measure our efforts in social media.

After a brief talk by Amber Naslund (available on slideshare) about what metrics to track and how to make meaning of so we can drive the ultimate metric.

While you can automate data gathering and visualizations, you can’t automate insight and analysis. Research will inform which social networks to participate in and lack of success provides opportunity to get customer feedback about the type of content they want to see.

Just like laundry, social media measurement only gets harder the longer you wait. Some free listening or measurement tools to investigate:

• socialmention
• backtype
• netvibes
• search.twitter.com
• GOOG Alerts
• boardtracker

If you’re really geeky, look at various APIs and RSS tools and pull together an iGoogle or Yahoo Pipes dashboard. Filtrbox also provides a more robust free social media monitoring tool than Google Alerts.

After packing my brain so full of information, it  felt like both carry-ons packed under the seatback in front of me, it was time for some leiderhosen and chatting in real life with those I’ve chatted with online for a year or more.

Apparently I need to clear my cache, because when I went back to Mack Collier’s blog, I didn’t get redirected to his new site.

Instead, I saw this title: “The idea that ‘content is king’ in blogging is total bullshit”

According to Mack, “Being Social is [king in blogging]”

The idea that good or even great content is not enough. Besides, “Good” or “Great” content isn’t even actionable - it’s too abstract. So let’s get concrete.

What makes good content?

1. Applies to your target audience

2. Findable or discoverable by your target audience

3. Helps or is otherwise useful to your target audience

For example, if you were trying to launch a new boutique geared towards teens/early 20’s demographic, you’d want to offer clothes they’d want to wear. You’d make your retail location accessible to them and you’d make it easy for them walk in by literally leaving your doors open.

One company that did this well? Abercrombie & Fitch, which changed its business from offering outdoors gear to offering clothing for the Tweens/Young Adult demographic. They even got a mention in LFO’s summer hit (’99), “Summer Girls”

Same deal with online marketing.

1. Provide germane (relevant) content - answer questions your audience may have or give them information they want to know.

2. Findability/searchability means that search engines can crawl AND index your content. If your content can’t be found, your audience can’t find you.

3. Helps or is otherwise useful - the call to action is so valuable for this reason. If you let people know what to do next and they want what you’re offering, you’ve lowered the barrier for purchase, adoption, etc.

So why does being social matter?

1. You get invaluable feedback loops from others - your content can improve based on customer/user feedback. You learn what resonates with people and what they think is worth repeating. Given the speed of publishing social media, you can iterate more quickly - concept to publishing no longer takes weeks or months.

2. You enable people to find out about you sooner, rather than later. Trust takes time. If you’re hanging out by yourself online generating amazing content, search is basically the only channel by which others can discover you. By leaving your blog, going to others’ and leaving insightful (not spammy!) comments, you’re creating other channels for people to discover you.

3. By adding or providing value (ie - being useful) you start building trust. Intention matters. Be open and honest about who you are, what interests you, and what you find interesting.

Good content is the minimum barrier to entry and great social content helps you learn, grow and refine your thinking.

Thanks to Deb Robison for the conversation that spawned this blog post and Mack Collier for his thoughts.

This post is the fourth in a series of my interpretation of Social Media Principles. More to come in the near distant future.

Previously, I discussed findability and searchability in Findability is Power, touching briefly on connections, crowdsourcing and community as pathways for surfacing good information. Because using social media means the information comes from people, I find it timely to expand on the next principle:

Karma is real:

The more you give, the more you get. You just don’t know what at the point at which you’re giving.

One of the main values social media provides is the means to connect people to people as well as people to information.

Thanks to OneRedPaperclip.blogspot.com

Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency has written some interesting thoughts about karma in her blog, Horse Pig Cow. Her idea of karma centers on “gifting,” or the idea that an object gains value as it is passed from person to person, as in the example of One Red Paperclip. From one red paperclip to a house in Saskatchewan, Kyle didn’t know (and couldn’t know) when he would get the house. He did know that he had a red paper clip, and that paper clip had value.

Mack Collier, a social media consultant who started the Z-list, also has interesting thoughts about the give/get dichotomy:

As with anything else involving social media, I think when you start thinking about Ok…what do *I* get out of this?, then it all starts going to hell in a handbasket.

When Mack started the Z-list, he wanted to help spread link-love to marketing blogs with great content. Mack started a meme to help the community by surfacing lesser known bloggers with great content. In doing so, he created a lot of value as others added blogs they liked to the list. Did he have expectations of personal gain? Knowing Mack, no. Did he personally gain from it? Yes, by discovering blogs he didn’t know about previously, as well as any incidental links back to his own blog as the meme spread.

What “Karma is Real” Means for Business:

Giving and Getting requires at the very least, interaction with your customers. If you have a budget for feedback cards, do email marketing or run pay per click campaigns, you are already budgeting for customer interaction. Why not take it one step further and reciprocate with your customer base? Why not offer them information about who you are and what you’re up to?

Because people have a tendency to anthropomorphize or ascribe human tendencies to brands or products, providing customers with information about who you are and what you do enables them to start building a relationship with you. Tim Jackson, Masi’s brand manager, used social media to connect with customers and double sales. Tim posts about cycling, what Masi has in development and a bit about his personal life to help consumers connect with him and Masi.

Social media interaction patterns tend to mirror real life interaction patterns. People will know you by what you say online - on blogs, forums, and other communication tools. Karma tends to be the great leveller, by rewarding good behavior and condemning bad. Social media shows us that the community is a great karmic instrument.

The difference between online and real life is that Google remembers. And if Google doesn’t remember, archive.org does.

Data fascinates me - at any given moment in time, I’m processing a multitude of information from my physical and digital environments. Sometimes these worlds overlap. When this happens, the information relevance stems from context.

What is context? Context is the space, role, and place in my life of related information. For example, I talk a lot. I talk a lot about companies, productivity, Twitter, value and qwitter. I care about community, relationships and social media. The multiple (and some would argue redundant) social media tools I use to integrate physical and digital worlds provide meaningful data because the communities from which this information comes tells me about exchange constraints and the information source. Likely, I’ll think about 140 characters from a tweet differently than I’ll think about a 140 word blog post differently than I’ll think about a 140 word comment. I’ll consider other easily accessible information when processing the information provided.

I can minimize points of misunderstanding by having redundant, related information attached to geographic places that I relate to by virtue of professional or personal roles in my life that is temporal and spatial. For example, if I were still living on the East Coast and talking about a short, weekend trip to Portland, is that Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon?

Would your answer change if you knew that I had an older sister (with whom I enjoy a close relationship) living in Portland, Oregon and no relationship to anyone in the state of Maine?

Would your answer change if you knew that I were dealing with a personally challenging experience and felt incredibly overwhelmed?

Ok, enough about the hypotheticals - to get to the point:
What I fail to understand is how brand managers or evangelists can fail to link their companies’ products or services to each touch with a consumer or user. By dropping this link in interactions, consumers/users lose context behind the interaction and derive less meaning and value from both the interaction and the product. SnagIt’s Betsy Weber will always have a place in my heart because she’s an awesome person who lets me know to let her know if I have problems with SnagIt. She’s also interesting - she travels, lives in the midwest, shares her life with me. I don’t abuse my access to her because of context. I have an arm’s length, personal relationship with her and that’s enough for me to understand why she reaches out to me and engages me about the product. She doesn’t abuse my ear with shameless self-promotion because of context. Understanding that value makes me want to share this story.

Brand isn’t what you’re saying about yourself. It’s what others are saying about you.

Thanks to Jim Benson, for providing the conversation that sparked these thoughts on context. Read his thoughts on context on his blog, Evolving Web.

Last night, @briancarter asked an interesting question:

@briancarter asking about the brandjacked profile of Orrick, the law firm

Hrm. Interesting. I had seen it earlier this year, but thought it had gotten yanked. Apparently I was wrong, as a quick jump over to @orrick’s profile showed:

Not much action, based on the last tweet’s date, BUT the brand-inconsistent statements could be problematic, given Orrick’s reputation and its view of itself:

Orrick has dedicated itself to two interdependent goals: serving our clients and building an enduring institution. Today, we have more than 1,100 lawyers in 21 offices worldwide working together to pursue these objectives. We are proud of the service we have delivered and the firm we have built, and we are excited about our future.

Contrast Orrick’s Twitter profile with Skadden Arps’ profile:

Skadden

While Skadden doesn’t say much via Twitter, its use of the application isn’t off brand strategy, from what I observe.

Key Takeaways for Social Media Monitoring:

Google alerts would have been a good tool to use in this case, as the first tweet appeared May 14th, and the last tweet came out in July 16th, over two months later. Google alerts may have enabled the Orrick brand manager to take action and minimize the time frame during which damage was possible.

Another strategy is to check username registration, via a tool like UserName Check, and proactively register your brand as a username to prevent brandjacking.

Let’s take proaction another step further. What if Skadden wants to join in on the conversation? How should it start? For more resources on legal blogging or law blogs, check out LexBlog.

Thanks to @briancarter, for the tweet that inspired this post.