At some stage in the last two years we should have been writing posts noting that blogging has died. “Twitter will kill blogging” we were told by self-appointed “social media” experts, and yet today blogging is still very much alive and kicking.

Twitter hasn’t killed the blogosphere. It has changed it, but not in the way you think. Most will automatically point to the use of Twitter as a tool for blog promotion, and while that is an aspect that is notably different in the blogosphere of 2009 vs the blogosphere of 2007, it isn’t the key change.

Twitter has changed the blogosphere by fundamentally shifting the appeal of casual sharing from blogs to Twitter itself. Where as once upon a time everyone wanted or eventually had a blog to share their thoughts, today much of that has shifted to Twitter.

Link sharing, a key feature of the earliest blogs from the likes of Dave Winer is now conducted primarily on Twitter, or at the extension of that, Facebook, which managed to clone much of what Twitter offered to retain relevancy. Short notes and mussings on the days events use to be the domain of blogs, and now it its the domain of Twitter, and again by extension Facebook.

The pessimist notes that this is reflected in a “decline” of blogging as the number of active and new blogs does in fact decline numerically. That’s a glass half empty approach to the numbers that I don’t share, because the glass half full in this case has switched from a $3 bottle of Pasion Pop to a mid range bottle of Chandon. Sure, it’s not Moet Chandon Vintage yet, but what’s there tastes a hell of a lot better than it did before.

You see, the blogosphere has shrunk for the better, and those left standing have never been better poised to take advantage of a space that is notable for the dying corpses of the heritage media around it.

There’s still plenty of competition, as there is still numerous survivors who meet the criteria of old, but the mix is becoming more polished, more appealing, and stronger as a whole. Some dinosaurs in heritage media might still like to talk about bloggers in their pajamas, but the reality is very different. We are now at the dawn of a golden era of blogs, and Twitter has much to be thanked for delivering it.

Those of us who make a living by making things happen (i.e. who hustle) know that it is a people game. All of the tools in the world won’t beat the chemistry and aligned motivation that come from creative win/win deal-making. The tools are like a hammer for a carpenter. You have to have them, but carpenters are not defined by their tools. However, something substantively different is happening online at the tool level, thanks to social media.

A good carpenter with a power drill will beat a good carpenter using muscle alone. A bad carpenter with a power drill is, of course, just a dangerous maniac! But we don’t really have the equivalent of a power drill yet. We can see bits of it, but it is like having a drill, motor and battery that no one has put together. The pieces that make up this hustler’s power drill are: email + CRM + LinkedIn + Twitter.

“Hi, I Just Sent You a Wave. Can You Check and Respond”

Standards matter. In five years time, we may all be using Google Wave, but for now the Wave beta testers get voice mails, emails and other messages saying, “Hi, I just sent you a Wave. Can you check and respond?”

That does not help productivity (understatement alert).

Whatever is wrong with email, one thing about it is totally right. It is a standard that almost everyone uses.

So, email is the drill. It is the basic component. Don’t even think about working without it. You can use email to close a deal and to get a phone and/or face-to-face meeting.

Keep a Good Record of Who Said What in Those Emails

My personal CRM system of choice is Relenta, precisely because it is so email-centric. Many other people prefer to unlink these and use Gmail (or Outlook for the late adopters) and then integrate a separate CRM system. I still use Gmail as my back-up service.

But CRM has lagged behind the social media wave. Most CRM systems do not record the conversations that take place outside of email, the ones that happen on LinkedIn, Twitter and Skype (or, for those who like it, Facebook: for what it’s worth, I never caught the Facebook bug and see no reason to start using it now; I aim to be the last person on the planet not using Facebook).

The messaging fragmentation caused by these alternative proprietary messaging systems is a significant productivity drain. (”Heck, which system did I use to talk to Bill about the discount code?”)

Add LinkedIn for “Who Do I Know Who Can Connect Me To…?”

LinkedIn serves two essential functions:

1. It is a self-updating Rolodex. Once I have added someone on LinkedIn, I know I will have their updated contact details whenever they move to another job.
2. It answers the age-old hustler’s question, “Who do I know who can connect me to so-and-so?”

But I do not view LinkedIn as a destination site. I avoid communicating via its messaging system whenever possible and I don’t check it. I simply want access to the data: my updated contacts and their relationships in my power drill. That is not LinkedIn’s business model. It has been accused of being a roach motel. So, it may end up disappointing me, and I may have to find a service that does something clever with my Gmail contacts file.

What I want in my CRM system is something that shows:

1. For individuals, what recent status updates have they sent out?
   Note, this is “Just-in-time,” not real time. I do not want to be pinged every time every one of my contacts does something. I might look at that stream occasionally when I am in flow mode; but when I am in hustle mode, I don’t want the distraction. But when I am about to email or call someone, it would be great to be able to scan recent updates about them. (”Hi, Bill. Congrats on doing [whatever cool thing Bill just did]. How does this impact what we are working on?”) And I want this stream from whatever service the person actually uses: LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. Services already exist that aggregate these, but that would be yet one more destination site. What I want is that stream integrated in my CRM.
2. For companies, who else do I know at a certain company, and who else do I know who knows important people there?
   If I am pitching the CIO about something that relates to marketing automation , who do I know who knows the CMO?
3. The strength of my relationship with second-degree contacts.
   LinkedIn is useful for second-degree contacts (”Who do I know who knows so-and-so?”) Anything further out on the social graph is practically useless. But even second degree is useless if your LinkedIn contact database has been polluted by a lot of casual contacts. If I want connect to Fred, trying to do it via Bill is probably not worth it if I had only a 30-second email relationship with Bill 18 months ago. But my email and CRM systems know the strength of my relationships with contacts, or a reasonable estimation thereof, based on the frequency of my email interaction with them.

Add Twitter for Flow

Hustle and flow. You need both. Hustle is directed, focused activity (e.g. contact so-and-so and get them to commit to doing x, y or z). Flow is a relaxed state of ambient awareness that alerts you to new opportunities. (You could also add “Create,” giving you: Hustle, flow, create. In create mode, you “switch off all electronic devices.” But that, as they say, is another story.)

CRM and LinkedIn are about hustle. Twitter is about flow.

I avoid using Twitter DM. Twitter is great for flow, but lousy for hustle. Twitter DM only adds to messaging fragmentation and has been polluted by spam. For now, @bernardlunn mode is useful, but methinks spammers will ruin that soon, too. But the basic Twitter service is perfect. I follow until I decide to unfollow. No one can spam that.

It is a great research tool. Find someone who writes well on a subject, and then see who they follow. New services will take this basic idea to the next level. The one that might do this best is Aardvark.

The integration we need is not another Twitter client for people who live in the Twitter flow. It is integration of this flow with the traditional hustle tools of email and CRM.

Specifically, I want to see in my CRM system the Twitter flow of my contact, what they are writing about and who they are communicating with. If they have DM’ed me, I want to see that in my CRM.

Jason Peck is one of the O.G. bloggers who covered sports and social media.  Anything athletes, teams, sports professionals and other sports organizations were doing online, Jason was covering.  He is someone who inspired me to share my own thoughts about a growing passion of mine over the last year.  And a few of his articles gave me the moxie and drive to create SportsNetworker, which leads you here today as a part of this growing sports community.

Even though Jason didn’t come hear me speak about LinkedIn viral marketing at blogworld (I won’t hold it against him, lol) I thought it would be a great opportunity to show my appreciation for his pioneering efforts in this space with a video interview.  Watch below to hear why Jason started blogging on sports and social media, what it has done for his personal brand, and where the industry is headed in the future.  Make sure to check him out on Twitter as well, as he constantly shares killer content.

via sportsnetworker.com

Something popular web publishers have latched onto – that differentiates from many (but not all) traditional reporters  – is the power of understanding your audience.

I’m not talking a shallow understanding of the genres your audience is interested in.  I’m talking about an innate understanding of the content archetypes readers react to, the motivations behind readers as individuals interacting with media, and the steps necessary to develop an interested, activated community.

No longer is this skill-set reserved for the editor.  The writer must now have complete comprehension in the motivating factors an audience has.  Content strategy can’t be reserved only for executives, if so, their publication will slowly lose out to competitors whose writer’s mindsets live at the intersection between strategist and creator.

You can be a great writer, yet if you don’t understand your audience you’ll never create content which sticks.  Content no longer happens in a vacuum as part of a process for eventual consumption.  The friction has all but been removed.  There are many with talent for writing, but few with a talent for writing and the vision for creating strategic content that will resonate with targets and allow them to stand out in a world of infinite choice.

Consider that we have data at our fingertips about:

• Visitors to our content
• Subscriber interaction
• How users are sharing our content
• What the current hot content archetypes are
• What kind of writing style/tone users react to
• What content is resonating in real-time
• The influencers in any given niche
• What activates users behind ideas
• Search trends
• Category specific news trends

And that’s just a high level.  What I’m getting at is you’ve got more than enough data to fully understand your audience in meaningful ways.  As a content producer (or even a social media power user) using this data can let you develop a seriously powerful and effective strategy to win the future.

Questions to ask when developing this type of strategy include:

What type of style will resonate with your audience?

Is your audience typically used to very conservative media brands?  Great – create something stylish and maybe even a bit extreme.  That’s how you permeate the niche, not by cultivating yet another conservative image.  Just because the audience data tells you they’re used to one thing doesn’t mean you should copy a strategy which already exists.

How can I approach my niche in a way that larger competitors will have no defense against taking attention from their audiences?

If everyone in the niche has allegiance to certain brands, styles or tastes and you can position yourself as the antithesis, you’ll siphon away audience members who secretly think your way.  It’s a misnomer that everyone follows the trendsetters.  Many do, but there are plenty who don’t and quietly resent them.  And on the web, even a few percentage points of users can be enough.  Attack the players in subtle ways and you’ll pull their dissenters.  The aggregate amount of attention available daily is finite, you have to take attention away from someone else, it is the web’s – and the world’s – scarce resource.

How can you frame content in a way it will resonate?

Are you framing content in an appropriate manner for your target audience?  All of your content should be framed in such a way to create a referential brand behind your ideas and help them permeate the niche.

Are you taking advantage of ideas your audience can’t resist?

Study the successful tactical items – such as content archetypes or promotion plays.  I’m not advocating the theft of ideas , rather, you can make the ones that work become your own to fit within your unique strategy.

How do you plan on reaching sneezers/connectors?

Without some careful thought to understanding your audience, you’ll never push through ideas that resonate enough, frequently enough, to reach the all important sneezers/connectors of the web.  Seth Godin argues as few as 10 people can make or break a new idea.  This sounds accurate if you have the right idea.

The point is this:  understanding your audience is underrated.  Once you do have audience comprehension, take the time to think about how you can use this knowledge to formulate a content strategy.  With every company (and every person) now a media company, this matters for everyone.

There has been a lot of excitement over Google introducing Social Search as an experimental feature in Labs. Facebook COO Sandberg is also often quoted in this context, saying that “the web is moving from an information economy toward a social economy”. It is clear that both Google and Facebook want to be the platform that brings you relevant search results from people you trust. Who will win this battle?

Let us discount Microsoft and Bing for the moment, as they’re yet to catch up with Google in any case. Marshall Kirkpatrick over at the ReadWriteWeb says no one is the clear winner, but Facebook may have the strongest hand. On the other hand, Robert Scoble says Facebook is the biggest loser in the Twitter search deals.

Among the several factors at play here, such as who has the larger user base, the most important are Relevancy and Recency. Social Search will not be useful unless it is also Real-Time, and Real-Time Search will not be useful unless it is filtered by Social Relevancy.

Today, I follow several people on various social networks, who make up my “social circle”. The problem is not everyone uses the same social network for the same purpose. I follow some people on Google Reader as they share great content there, but I don’t follow them on Twitter, because they tweet mundane stuff I don’t care about. And vice versa.

This is just an example. The point is, a social contact or friend in one network doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is a relevant contact in another network. Today, I have the flexibility of deciding whether a friend is a worthwhile contact to connect on Twitter, Google Reader, YouTube, LinkedIn, Disqus, Digg/StumbleUpon, Goodreads, Last.fm, and so on. Facebook doesn’t give me this flexibility. Making friends on Facebook means I get noise from all the social activity of a contact, much of which may not at all be relevant to me.

Now consider Google Social Search. Because I follow different people in different social networks, Google knows not just who matters to me, but when and in what context. A friend I follow on Goodreads is relevant when I am searching something about books, but irrelevant when I am searching for breaking tech news. Google has the intelligence to apply relevancy to my social search. Facebook doesn’t.

Facebook Groups may try to emulate these different social networks, but I don’t think it likely that they can achieve the rich functionality developed by each of them for specific networks like books, music, etc.

Human beings on earth did not coalesce into one gigantic country, but segregated into multiple countries with their own culture and language. Eric Schmidt says that within five years, the Internet will be dominated by Chinese language content. We humans are social indeed, but not to the extent that we all congregate within one gigantic silo. Social networks on the web ultimately reflect social networks in real life. Google’s platform understands and accepts that, Facebook doesn’t. That’s why Google will not just remain relevant in the “social economy”, it has clear advantages over Facebook in winning the battle.

Since communicating the definition of social business design earlier this month, I’ve noted a wide range of reactions to the concept.

For the most part, people understand that we’re talking about what’s on the horizon for business. However, most detractors seem to take issue with the style of the idea’s communication rather than its substance. Some say they don’t understand. I’ll take that at face value and suggest they try harder. Others ask why simpler words weren’t used. Well, as a certain bald-headed guru told me, “words matter.”

Words do matter. When I began my stint as a Forrester analyst, I was directed to write for the smartest clients in the room. I patterned my blog with a similar approach. I’m not a journalist, reporting about what’s happening now – Mashable, Consumerist, and TechCrunch are great at that. I’m a business consultant who analyzes what’s happening now in order to advise companies on what happens next.

But style matters too. A lesson I learned the hard way years ago was that often perception matters more than reality. Some people have difficulty with how Dachis Group has defined social business design, which reminds me of another lesson I learned long ago – if you’re going to complain about something, offer a constructive solution.

As for substance, I believe there’s quite a bit in our thought piece. However, to put a finer point on the definition:

• Social Business Design [the key concept] is the
• intentional creation [deliberate, not accidental] of
• dynamic [live and constantly changing, not static] and
• socially calibrated [a primary filter/perspective]
• systems, process, and culture [three key elements of all organizations].
• Its goal: helping organizations improve value exchange [whether monetary/non-monetary or short-/long-term]
• among constituents [people who care about the organization for some reason].
• Social Business Design uses a framework [i.e. how it can be applied to different scenarios] of
• four mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive [MECE is a key to strategic problem solving]
• archetypes [ideal states that serve as goals]:
• ecosystem, hivemind, dynamic signal, and metafilter. [connections, culture, communication, content]
• This model can be applied to improve customer participation, workforce collaboration, and business partner optimization. [business functions that relate to professional roles]
• Doing so provides insight to help measure and manage business [you need to measure it to manage it] to
• produce improved and emergent outcomes. [results - read this for more on emergent outcomes]

I welcome the conversation around social business design and hope that we can help guide the way for the confused.

via beingpeterkim.com

Social Media – the new battleground of inane buzzwords and incessant hyping of how important it is for businesses to hop on the bandwagon … usually with a couple of high paid consultants hired to whisper sweet nothings in the ear of some CEO.

It is all about ROI of conversation based on consumer involvement as well as creating some kind of brand buzz. It’s all about getting your face out there on Twitter and Facebook so that you can be a part of some conversation around your products or services. It’s all about trying to find that magical formula that will help you increase your sales by making your business seem to be more human.

Is it really though?

Hugh MacLeod had an interesting post today where he talked a little bit about corporate PR and advertising in this new socialized world of communication.

Then I tell them, “You don’t create social objects by pulling levers; you create social objects by creating social gestures.” Then I tell them, “Virals don’t start life out as virals, they start life out as gifts. And gifts are always in conflict with their own value.” Then I tell them, it’s a brand’s job to be interesting. And what wakes a brand interesting is the human interaction around the brand, not the inherent qualities of the brand itself.

I spend a lot of time thinking about social media and how it is used, how it could be used, and how it is misused. In the end I believe that all you need to know about how to use social media can be boiled down to two very simple things.

Honesty and respect.

As simple as that might seem in theory it seems to be a different case when it comes to actually being a part of this new world.

Honesty

One of the biggest buzzwords you hear when the discussion turns to social media is – transparency. More often than not the idea of honesty is tied into this concept of transparency when really it shouldn’t be.

The idea being that businesses need to be transparent in all aspects of their business practices and that by doing so they are being honest with their consumers.

In my opinion this is a boatload of crap. You can be honest with me as a consumer without having to open up the soul of your company for my scrutiny. The fact is I don’t care for the most part about how you do your business. What I do care about is that you are honest with me about your products, or services, and honest with me when something goes wrong and how it will affect me and my family.

It means that you don’t hide behind press releases that have been whitewashed by legal departments. It means that you don’t make your consumers have to force your company in to fixing problems because it’s cheaper to wait until the noise gets too loud.

Being honest with your consumers is one of the simplest and easiest ways to make me interested in your business.

Respect

You show me respect and I will return it a hundredfold.

Don’t treat us just as consumers to constantly be bombarded with what all know is bullshit advertising. Don’t insult our intelligence by thinking that we don’t know when we are being sold a lousy bill of goods.

Show us the respect that any intelligent human being deserves because gone are the day where we take what you are saying at face value. Gone are the days when might made right because more now than ever we truly have the biggest bargaining chips in any discussions we might have – our voices, our feet, and out wallets.

Treat us with respect in all the way your business interacts with us and you will get that same respect back. Treat us with even the smallest amount of disrespect and you will hear about it and you can pretty well kiss any ROI goodbye.

Honesty and Respect

Pretty simple eh.

Two simple things that can make the difference between a working social media experience for your company – and us, your consumers – and finding yourself floundering as our world changes around you.

It really doesn’t get any simpler than that.

via shootingatbubbles.com