Dance With Strangers

Conventional Wisdom is what knowledgable people know. / Conventional Belief is what the masses think they know.

Unfortunately we often times confuse conventional belief with conventional wisdom, particularly in marketing circles. For example, if you just listen to the masses, social media is still THE top vehicle for marketers. But shift through the noise. Log off Twitter and those annoying #chats and talk to some really smart marketers who are working in the trenches. The conventional wisdom has it that the tried and true practices of marketing are making an enormous swing back into the mainstream. But they have been rejuvenated by the social media assault of 2008-2010.

Direct mail. Email Marketing. Events. And, yes, even advertising, are getting the best results these days.

But today they are done in a smarter and more focused manner. Because of all the social media noise these smart campaigns have become a breathe of fresh air. Certainly creativity and strong content still win the day, but the “old school” delivery mechanisms remain the best way to sell your product.

I’m not trying to write some “social media is dead” post, not in the slightest, but it goes back to something I wrote in January of 2007, when the blog was the highest form of “social”, in the post “Blogs are to hieroglyphics as Scoble is to _______?“:

“Content is still King, the blog is just one form of transportation.”

Don’t be blinded by conventional beliefs that social media is a revolution that you must be a part of or you will never succeed as a marketer. Instead listen to the conventional wisdom and realize that social media is (still) just another fantastic tool for you to use. Use it as a compliment, not in place of fantastic content and creative results-driven marketing campaigns. Always trend towards the wise and away from the believers.

A few weeks ago I talked about Facebook privacy and how I purged my “friends”. To be honest I meant to write this post the day after the original one but I’ve been simply blown away by the amount of people who sent me messages telling me how they were doing the same. Most did it for reasons outside of privacy, but the main theme was the need to simplify their lives a bit and that included social networking. It also inspired many debates with friends on how they do the same thing on LinkedIn, but use Facebook to connect with more people (this still seems absurd to me). Overall there is a sense that people are trying to find ways to connect with people, but reduce the noise, while protecting their online presence just a bit.

But there was one question I got the most. How did I make the decision on who to keep as a FBF and who to let go. Actually, it wasn’t hard. Before I did anything, I created this decision tree:

Seriously, this is what I did and it made complete sense for me because I’ve chosen to use Facebook to share my personal family life with friends. Your use of Facebook, or any social network, is completely your choice. Nobody can tell you how you should use it. But once you decide your goal for that social network think seriously about who you want in that network and be sure and clean it up once in a while in order to be true to your goal.

A lesson we all learn early in life is to not give in to peer pressure, it only leads to bad things happening. Typically this is a lesson steeped in fears around alcohol, drugs or reckless driving during the formative teenage years. Yet it applies throughout life, including when that teenager grows up and enters the world of business. Even in the relative safety of corporate America peer pressure can be a constant theme, leading to cutting corners, ethic violations and simply bad decision making. Peer pressure certainly prompts action, but using negative influences and causing adverse repercussions.

Peer motivation, on the other hand, provides the necessary inspiration from those surrounding you, but in a positive environment. This happens all the time in business, often through the creation of challenges amongst teammates to hit goals of self-inflicted peer motivation for folks driven to out perform others. Overall, peer motivation is something that we can harness in appropriate dosages to push ourselves and our teams to achieve great things, oh and it really works for parenting, but that is for another blog.

Peer Motivation and Athletics

When it comes to sports and athletics peer motivation is a critical part of the success recipe. Players often find themselves in situations where their peers raise their game to another level, not simply through the play of the game, but the influence of their workouts, diet or studying game tape. In fact, peers within sports are not necessarily on your own team, it could be your greatest opponent. Last night I was reminded of how powerful peer motivation can be watching “Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals“. Growing up in the 80s, in Boston, it was a great honor to watch Larry Bird and Magic Johnson take each other to new levels, and along with it an entire professional sports league. This peer motivation happens all the time in sports, although not always to the level of a Bird & Magic, and it also happens for individuals who are…well…um…not professional athletes.

During the last part of 2009 I was training to run a half-marathon in Austin and for this ex-offensive lineman running isn’t exactly a natural physical state.

But throughout the training process peer motivation kept me going, and the “peers” didn’t even realize the effect they were having on getting me through my goal. One of those people, Tim Walker, has been chronicling much of his work out regimen and discipline on his blog and on Twitter. Seemingly, each time I thought about skipping or skimping on a run Tim would Tweet or post about a workout technique. Undeniably this would make me run longer and faster, helping push me to finish that half-marathon in February. Peer motivation.

Peer Motivation and Social Media

Social media is full of peer pressure, that has been well documented, but peer motivation is also a fantastic side benefit of social media. One great example is ChallengeApp, a new social network that allows you to challenge your friends or network to any type of challenge. Not surprisingly, Tim pointed out ChallengeApp to me and immediately we were in a challenge for the month of April. Our challenge is to get through 20 substantial workouts in April (join us?). We are only a few days into the month, but already I can tell this is going to drive me since we remind each other over Twitter and ChallengeApp about our workouts and don’t think it isn’t killing me that Tim has one more workout than I do already!

Peer motivation using social media or any other means is not just for athletics, in fact ChallengeApp (or really any collaborative platform) is a great tool for a team of bloggers looking for more production, fundraisers looking for more donations, company departments looking to out produce another department, the options are endless. Understanding how much power your words have on others may inspire you to be more proactive about peer motivation, and on the flip side you should search for people who will motivate you.

How are you going to motivate your peers today? Who motivates you each and every day and might not know it?

It’s event season for most B2B companies, particularly in the technology world. In the next six weeks I’ll be going to a bunch of shows for BreakingPoint, mainly to demo our cyber simulation capabilities to folks. As you prep for your upcoming schedule of events how are you telling your community that you will be out and about? Couple of suggestions:

• Blog about the events you are attending, why and what you will be doing at the event.
• Set up Twitter searches for the show names or hashtags, connect with people talking about the event.
• Post events to LinkedIn (groups and their actual event feature).
• Send out an email to segments who may be attending certain shows with an offer (we have a super cool t-shirt).

If you don’t tell people you are going to be someplace, don’t be surprised if they fail to show up.

The two tools I could not live without, or at least when it comes to my Twitter, are TweetDeck and Seesmic. Both appeal to me for different functionality and I use TweetDeck for @kyleflaherty and Seesmic for @breakingpoint. The main reason I like both applications are their ability to help me build personalized lists of people I follow, even before Twitter lists became a Twitter web UI feature. For example, in TweetDeck you will find six lists I have built:

1. Good Friends
2. Marketers I Trust
3. Colleagues
4. Boston Sports
5. Foodies
6. Austin Peeps

Building these lists allows me to follow more people and focus on certain topics, but it has also expelled any thought of visiting the main Twitter site. Nor will I check my full list of people that I follow since I don’t like to give up that real estate in TweetDeck. And herein lies one of the pitfalls of lists (whether within Twitter or in an app), because once I build those lists I rarely add new people, since I’m only looking, well, at those lists. I love my lists, they are full of great information and great people. But with your lists you don’t know what you don’t know.  My lists were missing people. People that I knew.

It finally hit me during a run. Yesterday as I was hitting my stride on a long distance jaunt I actually started thinking about Dave Fleet. Now, I’ve never met Dave personally, but we have had several conversations on Twitter and our respective blogs over the years. I’ve always liked the way Dave thinks and how he challenges people consistently, but in a productive method. Dave is a self-described “running nut”, hence why the run jogged my memory (sorry, had to), and I realized at that moment that I had forgotten to add Dave onto any of my lists in TweetDeck! As soon as I was back at the house I remedied this egregious error and realized I needed to go through my lists closely to make sure I’m not missing other folks like Dave. People who I have enjoyed talking with over the years and who teach me a great deal.

Here is how I’m going to do it:

1. Batch review my mentions (people who used @kyleflaherty) from 2007 and 2008.
2. Analyze trends to determine frequency of communications in order to find those I talked to the most.
3. Cross-reference this with my lists in Tweetdeck (now that they are interlinked with lists in the API).
4. Find the other Dave Fleet’s I’ve been missing.

Is this problem simply an element of my own lack of vision or something inherent in list building? Oh, and hey Dave, I have a few questions about stretching after a long run for you

We talk a lot about “shiny object syndrome” or the trap of getting too excited about the next great tool, gadget, website, social network, etc.

It struck me this morning however that shiny object syndrome is talked about because it is so easy to fall into…and to be honest, I love being in this phase. I do love new tools, gadgets, websites, social networks and more. There is something about unwrapping a new toy that harkens us back to that birthday so many years ago. I love discovering people on a new social network, particularly seeing folks I already recognize from other networks; reminds me of running into an old friend on the street purely on accident.

This week I have been hit by the syndrome twice! First was starting to use Gowalla, a geo-location social network similar to FourSquare. It is a fun network that allows me to find different “hot spots” near me such as a restaurant, movie, etc. The long term usage of this type of network may be minimal, but right now I’m having a blast collecting tacos (you have to play to understand that one).

But this morning my shiny object syndrome hit a fever pitch when I started to unwrap my new Kodak Zi8. I’ll be back with a longer review of how I use it from a B2B prespective…but today I’m just going to enjoy the side effects of the syndrome!

Last month, when you told me how many Twitter followers you had by simply inserting it into the conversation, much like you would tell someone about the weather during your vacation, I ignored the cry for validation.

A few weeks ago during another awkward social media “tweetup”, when you casually dropped your Hubspot Twitter Grade when talking up the waitress, I swallowed my retort since it actually looked like you would get her number.

Last Monday, on a chain of emails that was supposed to be about a possible fantasy football league trade, you actually typed the words “The way Frank Gore is running the ball this season reminds me of how I created that series of Posterous posts on graffitti and linked it to my Flickr group on urban art.” I didn’t even reply.

And last night, over a beer, you mapped out in avid detail your penultimate plan for aligning your 20,000th Tweet with your 10,000th follower, your 1,000th Facebook Friend, your 500th FriendFeed subscriber and 50th FourSquare badge. I drank.

You have been my friend for a long time so let me just tell you this as straight forward as I can. Nobody cares about your personal social media numbers. Nobody wants to know how many follower/friends/subscriber/badges you have “collected” or what you plan to do during an artificial social media milestone. Most people won’t tell you this, but I know that deep down, below your glazed over eyes from staring at your TweetDeck columns, my old friend is still in there.

Remember the numbers you used to care about? No? Let me remind you.

The night before my wedding you told me about how you came up with that killer marketing campaign that increased recognized revenue by 285% in one quarter.

While I was on a business trip in Europe you sent me an email, excitedly detailing for me a new blog post you were writing that would kick off an online resource center for your community of 500 app engineers.

The day I introduced you to my second son we spent a lunch where you used approximately 15 napkins to illustrate for me how you were going to use SalesForce.com, WebEx and some homebuilt application to launch a fully integrated online demo system, with the goal being to reduce your company’s current sales cycle by three months.

I miss my old friend. The one who knew which numbers mattered.

This is the question that I’ve been contemplating for a few months. In July I actually started protecting my Tweets for two reasons:

1. The lack of respect Twitter shows to security vulnerabilities brought on through spam accounts that push malware.
2. The benefit of approving all followers and having a better feel for who is following me.

Protecting your tweets may seem to be against all things social, but in my opinion it is exactly what a social network should be about; choice engagement. By protecting my tweets I not only protect myself, but I started to see myself change my Twitter habits. Each time someone follows your account you must approve them, otherwise your Tweets will not show up in their stream. In order to approve I was taking a much closer look at their bio and profile. Clicking through the URL they posted I was more deeply reading their blog or perusing their LinkedIn profile. By the time I approved a person I was highly confident they were going to be a great person to communicate with and I was following back in much higher numbers than before I protected my account.

By protecting my Twitter account I was becoming more social.

But what if it was an anomaly? Trying a bit of an experiment I went again to the default Twitter mode of unprotected Tweets to test the waters. This morning I noticed that my follower number had jumped about 100 over night and not matter how highly I think of myself I knew this was going to be a sign of distress. Going through the most recent 100 followers I found:

• 91 Bots (mainly in the porn flavor)
• 6 Business Spam accounts
• 3 Legitimate people that I followed back

Three! Suffice to say I’m now back under the protected Tweet side and glad for the protection and increased engagement it provides.

A simple thought, “Life is what you make of it”, but poignant.

Did you get up this morning and decide to be productive? Happy? Sad? Frustrated?

Can you change that feeling around to something you want?

Social media is like life. It is what you make of it. A friend reminded me of that last night. The power of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook is that you get to decide who you want to have discourse with and you can’t complain if that discourse is not what you currently need. It is what you make of it, and you have made it that way.

Change it. I am, starting today with Twitter and then this blog over the weekend. Stay tuned.