Open The Dialogue

What Small Businesses Should Do Today Online

Chris Brogan outlines some of the basic things small businesses should do online.  While they are quite obvious to us in the space, it is still important to understand that small businesses may be averse to using the medium based on fears and misunderstandings.  Brogan’s recommendations are simple and he also provides justification for why small businesses should use/implement them.  Hit the link to find out what they are.

Brands and Facebook Lite

Facebook’s new Lite version does away with apps and pages and many other features that are so essential to brands.  This may spell doom for brands but David Berkowitz provides two reasons why it shouldn’t.

1. Over 90% of home internet users connect over broadband.  Because of this, they can afford the feature-rich regular Facebook site.
2. Users who try the Lite version will miss key Facebook features such as instant messaging and apps.

The Effects of Twitter’s New TOS

The new Twitter TOS is already having an effect on the experience resulting in fewer bots, squatters and imposters.  These are just a few of the ten profile types that will go missing.  Some of these are important to keep in mind in how client profiles can interact with the public on the system without being booted.

Is Social Media a Fad or Revolution?

(by way of Econsultancy)

I’m always surprised by how “new” social media marketing seems to be to some people. Social media has always been about conversations to me and the marketing comes from common sense, authenticity, and an open line of communication. However it wasn’t until I picked up The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell at my local library that I saw that social media marketing has been around a lot longer than I could have imagined.

In The Tipping Point Gladwell examines some of most well know things in America’s history and culture and tries to understand why they work or why they became popular. For instance Blues Clues and Sesame Street are two beloved children’s shows, but how did they get that way? Was the success of Paul Revere’s late night journey through the countryside  dumb luck or were there other forces at play?

Unsurprisingly, there is no simple answer to these questions.  Word of Mouth feats like these examples can’t be accurately mass produced. Similarly, social media marketing professionals know that viral is a dirty word, simply because it can’t be controlled. Luckily, through his research Gladwell had identified three things that can help any message reach the tipping point.

• The Law of the Few- The Law of the Few is surprisingly simple.  Through studies and testimonials Gladwell found that a majority of people can usually be connected to one person. Like a “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon Game” on steroids, Gladwell determined that there are three people that tend to connect others: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.  The connectors are the people that can quickly disseminate a message to many. Mavens are those who study certain things very carefully and can always help you out. And salesmen are persuasive, knowledgeable and want to help you.  By knowing your trusted mavens, your ultra-connected connectors and your salesmen, your message can easily be shared. Will it be viral? Perhaps not, but at least you are giving it a chance.
• The Stickiness Factor- When developing the show Seasme Street, creators saw that when a child was confused or bored they didn’t learn the lesson. It wasn’t sticky.  In the same way your application/message/ iPhone app or whatever Web 2.0 tool you have need to make sure its sticky.  If it isn’t then it won’t travel anywhere.
• The Power of Context- In any situation where a message is being spread, context plays a huge factor. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell examines the context of large scale events like the crime on subways in New York.  You don’t need to go to that scale, but if you want to spread a message, you do need to know the context.  For example, is Twitter the best place for your brand or are you just trying to jump on the hottest technology?

What are some of your laws for spreading the message?  Have you found The Tipping Point?

Photo by jgarber on Flickr.

While I have been one of the more silent members of the DialogueMedia team on this blog, those of you that know me, know that I am not exactly the most silent person. Working on a variety of client projects and new business opportunities as the Marketing Manager here at MWW Group somewhat prevents my participation as much as I would like. So, it is my hope that I can start more regularly posting about my many opinions surrounding social media and much more.

For those of you that do know me, I was a personal trainer while in college and have been a fitness enthusiast my entire life. In the past few years I’ve really noticed how online tools and social media has affected the fitness industry. You can now substitute many of these online tools for gym memberships, going to Weight Watcher meetings and yes, even a personal trainer. I continually go online to look for extra motivation, which is often found in the form of mobile apps and blogs for workout recommendations and diet advice. By utilizing the internet as a resource and the social media tools now available, there is no longer any excuse not to try and put a better foot forward and live a healthier lifestyle.

With mobile apps like C25K or Couch to 5K, even the most beginner can train easily for a 5K without the need of a trainer or a gym membership. The C25K, designed by Josh Clark is a great day by day, beginner’s 9 week running plan that takes you each step of the way to a 5K marathon. The  Nike + IPod app and other IPhone running apps lets you customize workouts from an iPod Touch or iPhone with added bonuses of pre-set options like time, distance, playlists and even mapping your run through Google Maps. What I find great about this app is that it lets you track your workout history, and hopefully, some major progress.

I’m loving Crossfit for their day by day strength and conditioning workouts. When I need to spice up my workouts I visit them often to grab one of their workouts of the day. Warning: they are intense but great workouts.

And if you are looking for people who are going through the same things you are, chances are there is a site for that too. Melting Momma is a great blog surrounding the issues and experiences of gastric bypass surgery and Fatbloggers.net literally describes themselves as, “a bunch of guys getting together for the purpose of supporting each other while we lose weight.” How great is that? You don’t even have to leave your house!

Like any workout, these apps, tools and groups are completely subjective. Everyone is different and I suggest that people just get online, play around and find out what works best for them.

Chris Brogan’s recent post “All the Hats and Faces” reminds me of Erving Goffman’s influential work on interpersonal communication theory called “On Face Work” written over four decades ago.  Chris is definitely onto something and it drives a point that I want to bring up:  Is social media flattening the complexities that make us human?

Goffman’s work discusses how as individuals we negotiate “face” in our daily social interactions.  What is face?  Face is basically our self image within the bounds of what is appropriate within a given situation.  Meaning, when we are at work we put on a “face” that fits the work environment which is different than what we may put on when with friends and family.  Chris outlines some of his different faces:

I am a blogger. I write about what captures my attention.

I am a business man. I run a company of marketers and business communicators.

I am a marketer. I promote my clients, and help them gain more business.

I am an author. I write books about things I feel are helpful.

I am a father. I have two loving children I enjoy playing with.

I am a husband. I have a supportive wife (who made the collage in this post).

I am a speculator/future-thinker. I love thinking about what’s next.

I am a community guy. I love people. I live in that world. I love community.

I am a friend. I have lots of friends, and often wish I could give each of them more time.

I am a fan. I love lots of things: hotels, media making, reading, scotch, liquor.

I am a consumer. I buy and use products all the time. I have opinions.

I am a publisher. I write a successful and well-ranked blog.

But Chris goes on to list what he does to maintain these various faces.  Goffman calls this “face-work”, behavior that helps maintain the “face” you put on.  In Chris’ case, when he says he is a blogger, his face-work involves writing about what intrigues him.

This was only possible when these different environments could be kept separate.  When Goffman wrote his piece, there were no BlackBerries or iPhones, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and on and on.  This offered us to be “messy and complex” and at times contradictory.  But in today’s connected world, barriers that once existed have melted away.  What you say or write in a “personal” capacity on your “personal” blog or Twitter profile may have repercussions at work and various other situations.  What may have been said off-hand by an executive that was completely unrelated to the business at hand can affect how business is done off-line.  Was this a failure of the person or a failure of the reacting organization to recognize or understand how face plays into it?

Social media is creating enormous stresses in how we reconcile these different faces that we have in a medium that does not afford nuances that exist in reality.  Are we having a generation growing up on Facebook and Twitter who do not understand such differences? Currently, as Chris suggests, our professional face is the dominant face online, risking that risks a whole host of other faces that we put on in other social circumstances.  But we are more than our professional selves as Chris points out too.  Is corporate culture ready to take this into account going forward knowing that future generations will continue to spill everything onto the medium unfiltered?  Or will social media allow greater control to the user in how, when and by whom their communication can be viewed online?

As much as constant software updates are a pain, they’re essential in today’s digital world.  If you have a blog on the web and unless you use WordPress.com, TypePad, Tumblr, Posterous or the like – odds are you might have the nagging “update me!” notice hanging around every couple of weeks or months.

Earlier this week, WordPress announced a new security release of their popular publishing software that plugged a pretty serious hole:  one that would’ve allowed someone to gain administrator access pretty easily.  While minor software updates usually sit on the bottom of to-do lists around the web, a few of the more prominent voices were targets of attacks trying to gain access before they upgraded their blogs.

Paul Stamatiou was saved by some extra security plug-ins he has in place (ed note:  What were they?) while Robert Scoble’s blog was actually comprimised.  Robert’s logic for not updating right away is fair but “1/8th” is a risk I’ll take to make sure all of my public publishing systems are secure.

So, if you have some downtime this weekend, take a look around your web and make sure everything is up-to-date.  WordPress has automatic updating features and even if your server isn’t configured to handle that, the regular update process is easy as well.  If you’re in the agency world, the same goes for any client projects you work on as well.

Photo credit: CarbonNYC