In social media we understand and accept the principles of sharing, engaging and being open to serendipity. We benefit from engaging and sharing information with people online to form new friendships and working relationships. But how often do we ignore these same social media principles in "real life"? How many times do we sit in the coffee shop working all day with our headphones in trying not to make eye contact with the person sitting next to us?

I share my thoughts on sharing, engagement, and serendipity in a short video....


Your thoughts?

Photo Credit: Medmoiselle T

I have come across quite a few blog posts where the first paragraph is a general complaint about the hours we work; where we are the victim and technology is the weapon. To that I say, ignorance is bliss.  From my perspective, we CHOOSE to work beyond the confines of traditional work hours because we can.  We can, because we have the tools, not vice-versa.

It seems that just about everyday a new tool comes out that offers to pull the fabric of our self-made social web even tighter.  Some new tools on the block are Foursquare and Plancast.  Neither of which improve the quality of my network, but they are cool and fun, and I choose to try them out.  Now add these to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or whatever your social media weapon of choice, and there is some serious time spent in the name of connecting.

I am connected to the social web via TweetDeck.  I'm watching and participating in the conversations that I care about.  Does it add to my workload?  Definitely.  Do I like it?  No Doubt.  Is there value to my company?  Absolutely.  I think the debate stems from how "work-day" is being defined.

The view seems to be that of the old-school corporate time clock vs. workshifting.  One is focused on time and the other on outcome.  One is focused on the office and the other is location agnostic.

Therefore, if I'm focused on outcome and I'm location agnostic, does that equal a longer work-day?  No, it's equals a work-day that may include Monday morning at 4am or Sunday at 9pm.  It also may NOT include Tuesday at 9:30am and Friday at noon.  By re-framing perceptions of working hours and work space, you can quickly see that in most cases there are not more working hours, but the hours worked are more effective.  This also requires setting boundaries for when you're "on deck".  In other words, don't call me at home at 4am unless I'm expecting it.

By extending the definition of work-day to include workshifting, it opens up a world of possibilities on how to achieve an objective.  I can collaborate with social media tools, attend a conference or speaking engagement, have an online meeting and of course (at least in my case) go to the office for a dose of much needed corporate culture.  Despite how this post may read, I love going into the office because I need to connect in person.

So next time you read about how the evil social media tools are driving people to work 24 hours a day, stop and think.  The definition of work-day is growing up.  Are you growing along with it, or are you fighting for the status quo.

What say you?

Photo Credit: tranchis

So much advice is being disseminated I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about lessons learned from the inside.  We were experimenting around with social media in late 2008.  To be honest, we were just tinkering with Twitter.  We noticed that people were having conversations about our brand and we wanted to get in on the action.  To keep this post brief, I'm going to focus specially on Twitter.
 
We started working with New Marketing Labs to help us narrow our focus, or should I say, start focusing. Lesson 1: learn how to listen.  Listening is hard.  When we started, we responded to just about every post on Twitter. There is a balance between the community being self sufficient and the company's desire to join the conversation.  We were trying not to be "that guy".  You know..."that guy", the one that brings a hundred business cards to an event and measures his success by the amount of cards he gave out.  I think, in the beginning, we were "that guy".  We measured success by the amount of conversations we were involved in as opposed to engagement with the community.
 
Twitter, to many companies, is public customer service and the Twitter public timeline is the diary.  A company's successes and failures are there for the world to watch in real time.  The companies that do it right, are the best listeners, not the best talkers.  My advice is spend 2/3 of your time listening and 1/3 engaging.  It's a simple metric which is derived from from how we listen in the real world.  As humans we have the ability to listen at 400 words per minute but we talk at roughly 130 words per minute.  That's a good guidepost as opposed to a rule.  However, some of the most useful advice comes from the people that are the faces behind the branded Twitter accounts.

Glenn Dobson manages our GoToMeeting Twitter account and he was kind enough to give me his thoughts on how to be an effective listener.  Most people that follow GoToMeeting on Twitter know Glenn as ^GD.  He is the man behind the tweets.  I believe he even had a marriage proposal on Twitter from a crazed fan.  You should ask him about it.  

Glenn's Top 5 Tips for Effective Social Listening:

1. Be genuine in your interactions: People can spot a fake and do not appreciate lip service, you could do more damage than not engaging at all.
   
   
2. Be responsive:  If you are going to offer a presence you need to be there when needed.
   
   
3. Know when to take it offline: Sometimes 140 characters are not enough to work through an issue, know when to offer a more traditional support channel so that you can resolve the issue sooner. Don't be afraid to lose the publicity of resolving the issue in public on Twitter.
   
   
4. Be open to feedback even if it's negative: All feedback is good and sometimes negative feedback is best for growth.
   
   
5. Don't feed the trolls: Everyone knows the Internet is full of trolls, no one can make them happy so sometimes the best response is none at all. Put your efforts into the people who want to work with you.
   

My Top 5 Tips for Effective Social Listening:

1. Use tools such as CoTweet and Radian6 (and hire a ^GD clone).
   
   
2. Separate support inquiries from general conversations about your brand.  Assign a specific group to manage the support inquiries (in our case, tech support and product queries).
   
   
3. Create a branded Twitter account.  List the real names and pictures of the people "on deck" as part of the Twitter profile.  This helps humanize the brand.  Check out GoToMeeting Twitter account for an example of how we're doing it.
   
   
4. Use the carrot symbol and initials to identity who is posting.  If I was posting from the branded account I would end my post with ^DB. 
   
   
5. Learn from the best.  Check out: Southwest Airlines and Comcast as just two of the many great examples available.
   

It's very likely that you and/or your brand are being talked about on Twitter.  Follow the advice that is relevant to your needs, and toss out the rest.

What are your tips for effective listening?

Photo Credit: abrinsky
 

We have advertised on political talk shows, and with that comes some degree of risk associated with the content.  On occasion, a radio host will make outrageous or inflammatory comments that incite a political group.  Typically the "group" uses the outrageous comments to promote their agenda, and so the mud slinging begins.

Like many companies today, we use social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to listen and engage with customers and the broader community.  Several months back something new happened, our web conferencing product became part of a trending topic on Twitter, but not in a positive way.   

We started seeing tweets about our brand with comments such as "boycott", not something you want to wake up to on a Monday.  Because of the sheer volume of noise around the controversy we decided to suspend our media.  Giving us the opportunity to gather our thoughts and determine next steps.

We decided that instead of using traditional PR tactics to address the controversy, we would release a single tweet from our branded Twitter account, and then listen.  The tweet had no links, and it read something to the effect, "...we have suspended our media and we will re-evaluate...".  As expected, the tweet was picked up quickly.  Over the next few weeks, we fielded some tweets from our personal and branded Twitter accounts, and eventually the controversy subsided.  Even though we carefully crafted our first tweet response, all the subsequent tweets weren't scripted.  Therefore, we didn't come across as cold and unsympathetic.  The communication was genuine and honest, and the community responded positively.

I am not suggesting that using a single tweet to manage adversity is always the best solution.  In some cases, public outreach via a press release with relevant links is needed.  However, in this case we felt the best solution was to speak to the community in the same voice and using the same tool from which it originated.  Speaking for myself, the lesson learned pertained to honesty and transparency, and the power of the tools on the social web. 

So what does this have to do with workshifting?  The method we used to resolve the conflict didn't require us to higher a PR firm, a consultant or use an expensive press release distribution tool.  The free tools are available to workshifters of any size.  The tools are not the exclusive domain of large, well funded companies.

So if you're starting a company founded upon workshifting, you have the ability to use the social media tools with the same level of scale and effectiveness as a large company can, and in many cases even better.

Have you used the tools to manage adversity?  I'd love to hear your stories.

Photo by: Matt Hamm

If you get paid to blog or you get free stuff and then blog about it, this applies to you.  The FTC revised their Endorsement and Testimonial Guides which take effect on December 1, 2009.  This also extends to all other forms of endorsement and social media.
 
First, I'm not a lawyer, but I am a marketer, blogger, vlogger, tweeter, and I work with a lot of influential bloggers (such as New Marketing Labs), podcasters and more.  So I really care about this stuff.
 
My personal take on this Ruling is fairly straight forward:
 
1.  If you act on behalf of an advertiser (you get paid), say so and be very obvious
2.  If you got something for free, and blogged a review, say so and be very obvious
3.  If your an advertiser you should be clear about your disclosure requirements, and monitor
4.  Be transparent and honest
5.  Read the Ruling, not complying could cost you $11,000 per violation
 
All in all it's common sense.  Disclosure is at the heart of credibility.  This is truly the media half of social media.  As our industry evolves and scales, it's no surprise that some regulation follows, and as far as disclosure is concerned, I think it's good for business.
 
AJ Leon has made Winston Churchill a popular reference on this blog, so I thought you'd enjoy the following quote
 
"We must take change by the hand or rest assuredly, change will take us by the throat."
 
If you want more information about the FTC Ruling, check out this article by Kelley Drye & Warren.

I would love to hear what you think about disclosure.  Is it good or bad for social media?  Does it represent a maturing of the industry?

Photo by: rversde23