Fresh Ground

Social media only works because it's social.

Let me explain a little more. Social media, at its heart, is about connecting with others who have like interests. If there is no human with which to connect then social media simply doesn't work. That's why people react so harshly to bots. Despite the eternal hopes of the Turing Test, humans like interacting with humans. They don't want to be tricked into thinking that they're talking with a computer.

But as humans we are also hard wired to prefer face to face contact. Sarcasm, for example, never plays well on IM or email because it requires vocal intonation and cultural resonance to work. Visual and audible cues are central to understanding the people on the other side of the conversation. That's why some great minds are trying to make technology more human-like; not to replace humans, but to make our interactions with technology more sociable.

Where social media excels in in helping start or maintain relationships. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn let us search for those who have similar interests, then seek out those people for contact.

This is where most people lose social media. Simple events, like Tweetups, are key to the whole process. Some can be complex, like huge trade shows, while others can be as simple as getting together for coffee.

Here in Boston we're blessed with an active networking culture that enables us to reach out on almost a daily basis. If you're around here, take a look at BostonTweetup, a great resource run by Joselin Mane. In fact, you can usually find Joselin at a number of the different events and connect with him face to face.

For those outside of the Boston area, take a look through Eventbrite, Meetup.com or Going.com to find events near you.

But for those who live and work locally, here are a few events that I find particularly interesting and useful:

• Mass Innovation Nights: Started earlier in 2009 by Bobbie Carlton, Mass Innovation Nights happens on the second Wednesday of each month at the Charles River Museum of Innovation and Industry in Waltham and showcases companies that are doing something innovative in Massachusetts. It's a great chance to meet entrepreneurs, investors and hear about new and up and coming companies, not just those in the technology space.
• Web Innovator's Group: Taking on more of a DEMO tone, WebInno has grown from just a handful of people to one of the see and be seen events in the Boston tech community. The 23rd event brought more than 1000 people to the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge. The companies here tend to be a bit more established and mature than those at Mass Inno.
• Mobile Mondays: One of my favorites. A worldwide event with an outpost in Boston, Mobile Monday brings together mobile developers, entrepreneurs, investors and service groups (like lawyers) to talk about the future of mobile technology. One of the few free events with an open bar (beer and wine), which doesn't hurt!
• Boston Solo PR Coffee: Yeah, OK, a bit self serving. I host this event each Tuesday in Newton. But the only reason I showcase it here is to demonstrate how easy it is to set up such an event. Using Twitter and my own passion for caffeine, I put out a call for solo PR pros to gather each Tuesday at 9am with the idea that as we get to know and trust one another, we can call on each other for support, help and growth. The group shrinks and grows depending on the week, but I've met some wonderful people this way. Plus, Alison Kenney, who came to the Newton event, just started another on the North Shore. My wife is part of a similar group for lawyers that meets over dinner.

So don't just Tweet, get out there and meet!

As TV viewers we are used to the feeling of false intimacy. TV news anchors in particular enter our houses every day conveying a feeling of a personal connection. But in truth we know little about these people. Sure, Walter Cronkite was called the “Most Trusted Man in America,” but how many people really knew him enough to trust him personally? Charles Kuralt, the venerable host of CBS Sunday Morning and the “On the Road” series built a reputation for being a homespun, down-to-earth kind of guy. But after his death we learned that he had a mistress and a whole secret family.

Social media takes that idea to a new level, promising individuals that chance to know our celebrities as easily as we know our friends. However, is this intimacy scalable? Can a superstar maintain a consistent level of engagement even when they have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers?

A few months ago friend and PR blogger John Cass got a mass email from someone representing Social Media Superstar (and fellow Jets fan) Gary Vaynerchuk asking for feedback on the upcoming launch of his book Crush It!

John was bothered by it and wrote a wonderful blog post on the topic. I threw a comment in, as did Gary and what ensued was a comment thread and Twitter discussion in which Gary asked me to email him directly.

I did and I never heard back.

Eventually I forgot about the email, believing that it fell to the bottom of Gary’s inbox never to be seen or heard from again. This wouldn’t surprise me as it happens to all of us.

But one Sunday morning I awoke to an email from Gary apologizing for not getting back to me and inviting me to attend one of his book launch parties:

Hey so I am sending this note to the few thousand emails I have in my inbox prior to August 1st. I am so sorry that I haven't gotten back to you yet but between the Birth of Misha ( 4 months old now) and the book ( comes out Oct. 13th http://crushitbook.com ) and the relaunch of http://corkd.com and launch of http://gourmetlibrary.com and http://cinderellawine.com and all the work with http://vaynermedia.com I have been insanely backed up! I am really sorry and the reason I have decided to go this route is that I have a feeling through twitter www.twitter.com/garyvee or facebook www.facebook.com/gary or in another email I have already answered this. If I have not been in contact on this and you still need an answer please send it back and accept my apology. Most of all I wanted to say Hi and ask that if you are even close to one of the locations of my book tour

http://crushitbook.com/crush-it-book-tour/

STOP BY AND SAY HI! Please, I would love to answer your question in person and give you a hug or hand shake!

Again I am so sorry for the gross delay and apologize if I dropped the ball and please know I am here and trying hard!

I don’t begrudge Gary his time, I figure he’s a busy guy with a lot of interests and it becomes impossible for one person, no matter how genuine, to respond to everyone. Furthermore, I'm told that he explained to the audience at IMS09 that some technical difficulties with his laptop were a big factor in the difficulty he had in responding.

But it did make me wonder about the scalability of a personal brand. In a recent conversation with John he takes it one step further and wonders if this kind of PR actually HURTS Gary’s brand.

Many of us have already experienced Facebook or Twitter overload, where we’re following so many people that it becomes impossible to track everything done by everyone. How often are you in a conversation when someone says something, assuming that you read the detail on their Facebook page, only to feel a bit blank? Or on the other side, how often do you prepare for a call by checking your colleague’s social medial page (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) just to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Each person has their own strategy for this, though it does call into question the value of any particular “follower” on these services. Do people seek out and read your entries or are those entries simply “caught” in passing by a select few?

But for Gary and others in the social media stratosphere, are they close to the point of backlash? How do they take that personal brand and turn it into something that continues to BE personal, even as they grow beyond a “few friends.”

We’re led to believe that social media is different; that what we get is not a facsimile of a personal relationship, but an actual relationship with actual people. Sure, this is possible one to one. You can put yourself in a situation to meet Gary, just as David Letterman and Oprah have, but does that constitute a relationship? Is that something that can help you as much as it helps him?

Part of this depends on Gary’s social media goals. If his goals are to have personal relationships with as many people as possible for personal growth, then at a certain point he has to do a house cleaning and focus on those.

However, Gary’s passion (and his passion for passion) suggests that his social media endeavors are about promoting his wine business. But I believe he, and others like him, need to take that passion one step further and start promoting the other people within their organization.

This isn’t to say that Gary isn’t great at what he does, he is. However, if he doesn’t start spreading the burden of celebrity to those around him -- especially those within his own organization -- he could face a backlash or even an emerging team of competitors.

First of all, let me say that I'm very pleased to be teamed up with Chuck in launching Fresh Ground Communications, which we created to provide social media-savvy strategic marketing and PR services to businesses. We help both social media skeptics and enthusiasts keep their communications programs focused on creating and growing business opportunities, and I'm looking forward to many conversations about building relationships from the ground up with your key stakeholders and influencers.

I've had the great pleasure of being able to attend the Inbound Marketing Summit 2009 in Boston, held for the second year at Gillette Stadium (go Pats!). I went in to the event yesterday expecting the sessions to be all about measurement and ROI, which seems to be on everybody's mind lately when it comes to social media. I was disappointed at first -- I found a great deal of the typical PR and social media guru bashing, as well as the same old hollow enthusiasm for blind adoption of social media. But as the event progressed, there were glimpses of what I like to call social media responsibility.

Social Media Responsibility
If you're going to engage your audiences through social media, you need to do it responsibly. There are a few principles of social media responsibility that I'd like to share with you:

1. Social media isn't for everyone, but it is probably right for you. I'll be the first one to admit that not everybody needs to be tweeting and checking Facebook every few minutes. But I encourage social media skeptics to pick a social platform and try it: engage its community in a discussion about social media. Some of the most effective and interesting users of social media are the very ones who were skeptical -- or are still skeptical -- of the very platforms they're using. There are a lot of social media enthusiasts who are getting sick of listening to the same old echo chamber messages, and who are looking for a fresh new perspective on things.
2. Social media success is about more than just marketing. This was the whole idea when I launched my own blog at http://morethanmarketing.net: if you're looking at social media as a marketing activity, you're not just missing the big picture, you're putting your company at risk. Why? Speakers at #IMS09 gave several examples of the dangers of throwing marketing staffers on Twitter and other platforms, but not empowering them to actually solve problems. You need to tie in the product development and customer support teams at the very least, or you risk alienating your customer base.
3. Social media is about change management. It's really about changing the way you do business. There are very few companies that can get away with the old school "we can control the message" communications model (Apple comes to mind). Integrating social media across the many customer touchpoints (not just the website and phone system, but every single employee of your company) requires a new way of thinking about your business.
4. Social media success comes from the top-down and the bottom-up. A really enthusiastic CEO / CMO / marketing executive cannot lead an organization to social media success alone; conversely, really enthusiastic team members cannot create social media success without executive buy-in. You need both in order to enact the changes required for social media to help your company succeed.
5. It's not about social media success for your business, it's about business success through social media. You just passed the 5,000 Twitter follower mark. Congratulations. But, what does that mean for your bottom line? Can you demonstrate that social media is leading to business growth? If not, why are you engaging in social media? Social media for social media's sake is a dead-end street.

Without an understanding of these principles, you are not tweeting or facebooking responsibly. I am very happy to see these concepts well-represented at the IMS conference. I'll share a few more thoughts with you coming out of IMS over the next few days.