I’m still formulating some thoughts on my presentation approach.  I’m leaning towards doing our own version of a “Tweetchat” as my actual presentation rather than go the standard presentation route.  Communicating key points about socialTV in the form of 10 questions in which the audience can participate directly by answering via Twitter.  There’s no wrong or right answer, everyone  on Twitter contributes to the overall conversation, as well as, in the room.

Example:

Using such hashtags as #smbyeg #socialtv we can encourage other social tv curious/enthusiasts to join in, probably from the East coast primarily…

I will post 10 questions, one at a time on the big screen for those in the audience who’d like to share on twitter, see the following.  

Q1: How would you describe SocialTV? #smbyeg #socialtv

A1: TV’s that talk nicely…:) #smbyeg #socialtv

Everyone can answer on their own if they choose, again using the hashtags for the tweetchat…

In between each question and answer I’ll fill in details, and my thoughts with images and other goodies to keep things interesting.  After all, more than just being the eye candy, I’ve got a job to do.

The audience members in the room who are not on Twitter still get to participate directly by being there, using the microphone if they choose when I open the floor up to comments.

Also, as everyone who’s ever been to a Social Media Breakfast in Edmonton knows, there are prizes offered up, and everyone in attendance get’s a chance to win one of 3 or 4 great prizes available.  In the past, this has usually been in the form a an on the fly quiz by the presenter.  This of course, falls to me this time around. 

I must honestly say at this moment I’m stuck, and could sure use some help on how to make the prize giveaways unique…I suppose we could have people guess the color of each other’s underwear…on second thought…any suggestions?

All in all, I’ve got a Prezi nearly ready to go if we decide not to go the Tweetchat route, but I like pushing things out of my comfort zone and that of the audience whenever possible and this relaxed, social media savvy crowd may just be the right formula…

What do you think?  Please vote here in the comments…Prezi or tweetchat, along with any thoughts you might have…  

Also, please don’t forget to give this a G+ hit and share it with others who might want to attend the event. 

Social Media Breakfast Edmonton #13 tickets here while they last. 

Interestingly, this issue touches on a few points I think you’ll find interesting.

1.) Many get excited about the technology first.  This isn’t really a “twitter” issue, despite being the primary social technology platform used for communication in this case.  Evidence within the sentiment of this online discussion state it’s a “moral” issue for many.  ”Do you like drunk driving?  Do you want drunks on the road?  No, then don’t tweet locations.”  Based on retweet evidence within the #yegtraffic and #checkstop hashtags on Twitter, this is the majority sentiment, punctuated by Lindsey Robin.

The response is ghost accounts created simply to tweet #checkstop locations, and snub those who speak out against the practice.  As with different issues in the past, this inevitable pattern persists. 

2.) Another popular but minority sentiment stated, is that since it appears to be acceptable to broadcast photo-radar locations (which are provided in advance to print media by policing services) that it should be acceptable to broadcast checkstop locations.   As always, what you tweet reflects on who you are, and what you stand for.     

Social media etiquette

With respect to protecting your brand and business here’s a tip.  Always remember to provide recognition for someone else’s work if you’re going to reference it or try to benefit from it.  

For example, if we were going to create a video in the hopes of generating awareness for our brand.  Say in this case, a video about this checkstop discussion.  First, we wouldn’t want the message to appear as if we had really been the first ones to recognize a pattern of behaviour, because in reality, it was CTV.  The professional thing to do is to give credit, and reference those who did the original heavy-lifting. 

Credit here is due to CTV Edmonton and Sean Amato for first identifying the discussion and doing a segment on it. (Disclaimer: a segment that I was in)  Anyone who positions themselves as being ahead of the curve on this issue, and doesn’t give CTV recognition for doing the ground work is suspect at best.  Common courtesy and etiquette should always come first.  Not providing credit or recognition says something negative about your brand.  If you see this tactic being used, my recommendation is to stay away.  

Once again, my sincerest thanks to all of those too many to count who retweeted me on the weekend for thanking CTV Edmonton about their efforts to raise awareness of this issue.  I believe this entire issue serves as an important reminder to be responsible in our decisions, whether that’s when consuming alcohol, tweeting or conducting business.      

Clearly a mental lapse, which was brought to Twitter by a since fired employee of New Media Strategies, the agency handling the Chrysler account. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chrysler also cut ties to New Media Strategies in March as a result of the above tweet.  

This is further evidence that in the social web, even though you can delete a tweet, it doesn’t disappear if it’s been retweeted.  Rather, it lives on forever in follow-up blogging by AdWeek in this case, and articles like the ones here and Chrysler’s own response here. 

Appropriate response?

Did Chrysler take the appropriate steps in your mind?  Should they not only have ensured that the employee of New Media Strategies was immediately fired but also end the business relationship with the agency themselves for a single tweet?

If this happened to you, what would you do?

So, picking up where I left off in my last post about not paying for social media profile services.  This is where you pay someone, or a company, to set-up your shiny new Twitter page, Facebook profile or YouTube channel for you.  

Next, look to avoid blindly creating “chit chat” or continuous “self-promotion” as the core of your new content development strategy.  

Here’s the question you should ask “before” you agree to work with any individual or company on your social media presence. 

First, you want to converse with others in the world, digital or otherwise.  Having said that, ask your new “social media guru” what their content plan is for you.  If they answer by saying, “we’re just going to start talking and engaging” put your cheque book away. What they’ve just told you is that not only do they not understand social media strategy deployment, they also don’t understand you, your customers, your culture or your business objectives.  Yet, they intend to announce your brand to the online world and you’ve just paid them to do that.  

Why would you cut corners on your digital strategy?  

The web is filled with case studies of companies who leverage social media in unique ways to grow their businesses, brands, influence and presence.  Yet, for everyone one of those success stories there’s another thousand who hired the lowest quote, and just started babbling on Twitter.  Worse yet, the plan is to beg for followers.

Gaming social media to pump up numbers, pump up perceived influence isn’t valuable, it detracts from your brand, reputation and real world influence.

Has your organization been down the following path?

1.) Start twitter account

2.) Start tweeting about yourself

3.) Not much initial response, so you follow 1000 accounts thinking everyone will automatically follow you back.

4.) You deem your 100 new followers as twitter success

5.) Reality sets in that you’re not gaining any new business from the first 2 weeks on Twitter and abandon the effort.  

Thank goodness you didn’t spend much money on this plan in the first place…but…

6.) You buy twitter followers thinking that somehow this is a win for your organization.

Instead, think of context, think relevancy and think of how you can provide value to your community.  You’ll build a reputation in the right way and for the right reasons.  A reputation built on pure values rather than fake numbers.  This is a marathon not a sprint, lay a strong foundation and be committed to the long-term.      

Ultimately, you have a choice.  

Hire someone who’s adding social media to their list of other services or hire a dedicated digital agency.  Of course, I have an opinion on which way you should go, but it’s your brand, your company and your budget…

Was this post helpful? 

Knowing how to set yourself apart from the crowd is critical if you are to succeed in business.  Sometimes, it’s because you roast your own beans in house.  Other times it’s the special rub on the brisket that has been passed down for generations that creates killer bbq. Maybe, as in the case of Double Tree Hotels, it’s the chocolate chip cookie you’re greeted with when you arrive.

Or maybe, you’re one of my favourite companies, Thinkgeek.com  These guys are really unique right down to the cool monkey.  No wonder they’re sold out of their “singing monkey balls” seen here:

Thinkgeek is wonderfully unique and dedicated to their space.  In fact, I’d say they “own” their space of special geek swag.  Nearly 400K followers on Twitter agree with me too.  They do a heckuva job engaging with customers in all of their social media channels.  Simple, happy, geeky effectiveness.

Let us know if you have a favourite niche company that you love. 

In the area of social media however, uniqueness doesn’t always win the day.  In fact, quite the opposite.  For many it’s about their automated content.  There’s an audience who just want the top ten things you can do to make something better.  There are large amounts of twitter users who believe that the best way to use their account is to push other people’s content without creating their own.  Don’t get me wrong, RT’s and links to content are great but not solely.  At least in my opinion.

The flip side is true.  One shouldn’t be so unfocused so as to not be known for something or lose your purpose.    

Whatever your uniqueness is, celebrate it.  As annoying as Bill Zucker is for his use of upper case letters for EVERYTHING he says, he’s managed in his own way to entertain and engage, a tactic that for him is working just fine.  Is he getting more gigs as a result?  A question maybe the Zuck will answer for himself here.  I will say that general brand awareness has definitely increased over the past year or so I’ve been observing.  People love quirky entertainment and Zucker doesn’t take himself seriously and has a lot of fun with his fans.

 Check out the #damnyouzucker hashtag.  

This all started when he was working on a online video project with Kelsey Grammer called The Kelsey Grammer Bill Zucker Comedy Hour.  One of the bits they did was Zucker would steal all the toilet paper on Kelsey and he’s scream….you guessed it – “damn you Zucker!”

For us here at fusedlogic, we don’t steal people’s toilet paper.  That said, we feel we’re unique because of our live video streaming business – fusedlogicTV.  That really sets us apart from other digital agencies in terms of services offered.  Add to that our strict dedication to digital strategy development for years, our great clients, and we’re very different than the other guys. Well I suppose that, and my unique aerodynamics but that’s another story.   

Communicating a clear advantage is often difficult.  Lack of creativity, lack of experience, and in larger companies, the lack of internal processes or champions to support such thinking.  Often though, it’s a lack of guts.  Business people become experts in “the way it’s always been done”.  Now if you’re Coca Cola, then you’ve been taught by your customers to keep Coke’s formula the way it is. However, Coke has been an innovator in countless other ways since the new Coke fiasco.  A pretty tough thing to do in the beverage industry.  

Question of the Day

What sets you apart from the mundane in your industry?

I realize this isn’t a purely social media question, it’s a marketing one.  The social web is the perfect channel to amplify your unique message once you’ve identified it.  As we’ve seen above.

Get it right and people will want to come work for you.  Get it right and customers will want to buy from you.  Get it wrong and nobody will care about you.  You’ll blend in.

Who do you think is highly unique?  Is there a person, business or thing that’s super different?

The name of the Twitter chat was called #leadfromwithin which was first started by its originator, motivational speaker Lolly Daskal.  I was fascinated and not sure what to expect from this particular chat.  I wasn’t disappointed.  If you’re looking for a philosophical, motivational, inspirational and emotional out pouring of thought, then #leadfromwithin is something you should search on Twitter often and conversation you should join.

My experience was disruptive – in a good way.  So often in business and in life you get caught in the “grind”. This was an hour of group reflection and streaming consciousness.  Seriously!  It was. You may be reading this and think that’s ridiculous and be moving on.  That’s perfectly fine but you’d then be missing the best part.

RoR – in this case I define, not as Return on Relationship as many might think.  In the context of this chat, I only really knew one person, still a great return for sure.  Having said that, my definition in this case is Return on Reflection.  There were so many great tweets that I simply couldn’t include them all in this post.  However, one “really” resonated beyond all the others.

“You are not your circumstances”  - Dr. Steven Eisenberg

It’s been no secret that the last several months have been very difficult for me personally, none of which I’ll highlight here again.  However, the circumstances I have been in have been pretty overwhelming.  This one statement freed me from a ton of personal feelings that I know was holding me back from being myself.  Changing my thought patterns in this instance brought on by this one tweet, and overall twitter chat experience has brought prosperity in the form of new deals this week.  My return on investment of that one hour on twitter will go far beyond these new deals this week.  Far beyond…  

How can you measure the change within a human spirit?  

Thank-goodness I was open to suggestion, none of this would have happened had I’d been closed minded.  Thank-you to all of the contributors of the #leadfromwithin twitter chat tribe.  

Also, a very special thanks to my friend Josepf Haslam for doing what you do.  

Finally, a special heartfelt thank-you to a woman in New York, whom I’ve never met in person, and only to date have had minimal but meaningful exchanges on Twitter with- Lolly Daskal.  A human being with a boundless spirit of inspiration – thank-you.

Starting with lowest to highest Twitter reach and discussion:

Doug Horner: 3,709 people reached

Rick Orman: 4,616 people reached

Gary Mar: 7,879 people reached

Ted Morton: 8,402 people reached

Alison Redford: 8,554 people reached

Doug Griffiths: 16,332 people reached

Now as you can see these samples were taken yesterday evening and cover 50 tweets.  To have a more interesting look, one might take these readings hourly throughout a 24 hour period.  However, I’ve got a life and won’t be doing that.  This is simply a snapshot of the ebbs and flows of Twitter conversation related to the leadership race of the Alberta PC Party.  I still find it interesting though.  The folks in the movie industry take detailed research on Twitter to predict whether a movie will be a financial winner based on the conversation, volume, sentiment, influencers associated etc…

I think this is too small a sample to truly have any real significance but it’s still interesting to see.  What do you think?

UPDATED

Based on the interest and my own curiosity I thought I would do a quick update of the numbers, so I took some more samples between 12 and 1pm today Saturday.  Take into consideration the time of day, also that this is now a weekend day and more people have the freedom to be online.  Also, it’s important to take into consideration the idea of “sentiment”.  Having a really high reach number but having a percentage of the tweets be negative attacks by opposition party supporters etc…so we should keep things in context.  Also, I like to look for breadth of accounts, are the tweets just made up of a few supporters or do we have a large list of people engaged?

Here are samples taken just a few minutes ago:

Again they are organized in ascending order.

Rick Orman: 3,062 people reached

Doug Horner: 3,808 people reached

Ted Morton: 4,863 people reached

Doug Griffiths: 11,472 people reached

Gary Mar: 13,126 people reached

Alison Redford: 18,073 people reached

What would be most interesting would be to dissect these samples to see the account demographics for each candidate, that would require a lot of work but it would reveal at least by appearance if for example Alison Redford is getting a majority of twitter conversation from women.  I wonder how much of the vote will be affected by those types of subset variables.  Further, is Doug Griffiths getting the 18-34 year old vote?  Where are the brands sitting in this regard?  

What do you think? 

UPDATED SATURDAY AT 5:00PM

All samples are in ascending order, we can see once again some have shifted in terms of general activity and discussion around their account.

Doug Horner: 3,748 people reached

Rick Orman: 5,114 people reached

Ted Morton: 7,126 people reached

Gary Mar: 7,150 people reached

Alison Redford: 10,338  people reached

Doug Griffiths: 14,365 people reached

Well, approximately 5 hours later, it seems the Griffiths camp continues to engage online, while the other camps have dropped considerably.  With approximately an 1.5 hours left until the poll stations close this will be the last update I’ll probably do.  Noticeably in this batch of samples is the discussion of Simon Ostler of CTV Edmonton news.  He shows up in all but Doug Horner’s stream… 

Thanks very much for reading and your comments on Twitter and here on our blog.

True to the form I’ve witnessed from you already, you showed little respect for those with whom you were communicating with. Now the other Alberta PC leadership candidate that was involved in our discussion is probably much more aware of your abrasiveness since he’s clearly met you, and might be willing to forgive your ignorance towards him, although I certainly won’t speak for him.

However, I’m an Alberta taxpayer and voter, someone who a leadership candidate for the PC’s or any Alberta political party should consider respecting.  I also own two companies, fusedlogic and fusedlogicTV inc.  I admit, I’ve not generated the same type of tycoon status in business that you have Rick, in fact, we’re just this tiny little company out in Sherwood Park, Alberta working hard as a team to make a living.  Your status has clearly emblazoned you with an arrogance that countless millions of dollars can provide. (I’m not saying all millionaires are assholes to be sure.)

Having said that, I tried to see past your arrogance tonight on Twitter, and give you the benefit of the doubt.  I even warned you to conduct yourself as if media was watching our exchange.  Despite that, you openly insulted a voter who hasn’t made up his mind yet AND you did it in fine style by leveraging the realtime web like a complete neophyte.  You don’t think we here at fusedlogic have “any distribution?”  We do.  Do you think being ignorant towards a voter isn’t news?  To some it just might be.  That I don’t care about.

You deliberately disrespected me by not answering my questions directly.  On Twitter, and frankly anywhere else in civil society that’s a direct insult.  Rick Orman, you acted like a pompous ass.  Now we all do from time to time, Lord knows I certainly have, and I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong.  However, when Albertans take a look at your twitter stream by going to search.twitter and searching #pcldr hashtag tonight, they’ll see that you intentionally ignored me when I was being respectful but firm in not allowing you to avoid my direct question about agreeing to come on fusedlogicTV along with Doug Griffiths and have a one to one debate on the issue the two of you were discussing.  Now sure, it’s your prerogative not to answer me for any number of reasons.  Especially if I was being grossly disrespectful.  I admit I was calling you out for being evasive about the invitation, and you still are.  Most recently also to Griffiths based on his last tweet regarding this issue.

So here’s the thing, I own fusedlogicTV, you want to be on it, you’ve got to respond to me publicly on Twitter with an apology.  Mr. Orman, I don’t care who you are, you don’t treat people like you did me tonight.  If you want to be leader of the Alberta PC Party, you need to learn some humility and manners.  Secondly, you sure as hell won’t be rewarded after insulting me with a special opportunity to promote your campaign free of charge on my network which will then be shared with mainstream media, bloggers and website owners.   Who the hell do you think you are?  I’ve told you who I am, I’m a honest, hard working Albertan with a family and I’m a voter, just like millions of others.  Including Stuart Thomson I suspect, who beat me to publishing a blog post about tonight’s exchange.

Rick, I already knew you clearly had a lot to learn about the social web, but I never thought I’d have to remind you of your manners as well.  Albertans will decide once reading this and the information provided whether they liked your demeanour and value it in their choice for leader of the PC Party.

Who’s talking?  Many who spend time following the #pcldr hashtag seems to be a small grouping.  This is partial speculation, however, with as explosive as politics can be, this is really low engagement overall.  People just don’t seem to care about what’s being said, at least enough to spur on discussion and content generation online outside of the current observers.  The group actively participating in this Twitter discussion, predominately led by candidate supporters is even smaller.

Taking samples such as the one below over a week or more, the players on the list move up and down but generally stay the same. You’d think that the best time to see the most activity would be during or right after a live debate.  That is generally true, although policy announcements help, yet the amount of people being reached on Twitter, is in my opinion, very small considering the importance of this.  I do expect this to heat up as we get closer to the first ballot in mid-September.  Here’s a screen shot from tweetreach.

Now lets take a look at the Wildrose Alliance Party and their hashtag #wrp, who are not currently in an internal leadership race.

By comparison, the Downtown Arena District hashtag #yegarena discussion as of late has heated up but in the last 24 hours is on a bit of decline.

Go beyond this one small view, and take into consideration the amount of main stream media coverage this issue has generated in the last 6 days or so surrounding the Enoch and MLA PR issues have reached well over a million people.

The reasons for the low digital engagement regarding the PC leadership race in part would include accounts with small follower counts engaging.  A small cross-section of account variety engaging in the discussion.  That said, I’m not including the #ableg or #pcaa hashtags in this post, and that would normally need to be sifted through and considered for a more accurate reading of issue reach.  Also, the various campaign camps might want to consider the activity of their own teams in particular.

When building a better understanding of a digital footprint, one should consider several factors.  To measure more accurately, say as part of a formal project report, I would consider all primary elements that make up a digital footprint.  From the content created, the attention given to that content, the influence of those engaging, the sentiment of the comments, and the reach of that content across all relevant digital channels, such as Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, political blogs and mainstream media websites, then compare that with conversions.  This is a lot of work.  Some may be fooled into thinking that a single piece of software might handle all of this, and they’d be wrong.

To interpret what’s happening within that PC tweetreach stat above we need to ask some key questions.  Sure hired guns can create white noise to look busy but is this translating into increased interest in their candidate?  I’m seeing more impact based on direct comments made by a particular candidate.  As it should be.  How about the volunteers?  A small group of 5-7 or so per candidate quick to defend their candidates is evident, but are they convincing voters to join the discussion, donate to their candidate, buy a membership and become advocates?  I’m seeing a bit more positive evidence of this lately based on some of my own real-time analysis, that said, I wouldn’t suggest evidence of a “landslide” victory for any one candidate.  Pretty safe to assume this is going to a second ballot.

Curious as to who is getting the most traffic to their website?  I consulted Alexa.com which provides a global ranking for all websites. The higher the number, the more websites with better traffic than your website.  You want a low number.

In order of Alexa ranking worst to best:

 
When asking why these rankings are the way they are, there are several reasons.  From a commitment or lack thereof to digital content generation, and existence of an actual digital strategy versus those who haven’t focused on it.  In the case of Rick Orman, a concerted use of traditional advertising driving awareness.  He is also an outlier and less of a known entity as compared to the other candidates, plus he throws all other candidates under the bus every chance he gets.  Having said that, the proof is in the conversions pudding.  Each campaign will know whether this traffic is translating into meaningful membership conversion.  I would hope they’re modifying web content based on their internal web analytics AND what they’re hearing at events.  However, the above evidence supports that this work is beyond some of these campaigns. In at least a couple of the campaigns, this is likely a lack of knowledge and understanding.  In others, I would add a lack of prioritizing resources to focus on this.
Just for fun I also looked up the various Party websites.

 
Clearly, this is only a fraction of the information that one should consider before making any serious judgements, recommendations or moves.  However, if one or more campaigns takes a critical look at what they’re doing, and can figure out the flash points that drive membership conversions for them in particular among voters, and then repeat it, some late gains can be made.  I will say though, there is little help for those without any strategy.  The numbers above separate those who are simply going through the motions from those making a concerted effort.

Also, one final little tid-bit, currently with respect to “sentiment,” Doug Griffiths and Alison Redford are reaping more positive comments related to their efforts in the last couple of debates, Doug Horner, Gary Mar and Rick Orman are not inspiring noticeable jumps in positive sentiment, the majority is “neutral,” and Ted Morton is leading with respect to negative sentiment.

One other key thing to monitor is the low “attack” factor.  Generally the Wildrose is leading the political attacks with one NDP supporter being vocal.  That said, the PC candidates are generally not being challenged as much as I would have expected.

For me, as far as personal voting goes, demonstrating an understanding of technology is important to me regardless of Party. Technology permeates our lives, whether you’re 9 or 90 years old.  This isn’t the only consideration to be sure, but it’s important, and it drives me nuts that in this day and age, we still have to explain to business and political leaders that there’s this little thing called the “Internet,” an environment that should definitely be respected and mastered.  For me, the above numbers suggest there’s a fair amount of work yet to do.

One of the primary reasons I haven’t committed is available time, or timing of the ask.  Another reason I’ve said no is because my spidey sense suggested that the candidate wasn’t as genuine as I expect, and didn’t follow through with anything they said they’d do. Further, when push came to shove, one or more weren’t truly about change despite the sound bites.  I don’t want to paint a picture that every politician is disingenuous, or likely to mislead about their intentions for change.  That’s certainly not the case, I’m only highlighting the main red flags for me personally that drove my reservations to commit my personal reputation to a candidate.

What is spurring on this post today is no other reason than I happened to see this tweet by Doug Horner, one of the PC leadership hopefuls (shown below, not picking on you Doug, it could have been any candidate doing the same thing, they all have).

This tweet inspired me to quickly review the social activity of many of the politicians/candidates in this province.  My personal opinion is that overall that activity could use some help sprinkled with a little rant here or there.

8 points for politicians on why this isn’t about “ME” it’s about “THEM”:

I’m adopting this image by David Armano to make a point about the impression most politicians are making online in my opinion.  Most state they’re about “grass roots, about change, and doing politics differently.”  However, if we consider the amount of content creation by the “grass roots” about a particular candidate or party the list gets really short, really quickly.  The list of Trolls supporting one party or another, and engaging in attacks is larger than ever.  The smart thing is NOT to engage them, they’re children stomping their feet and looking for attention.  Mature voters see them for what they are.

1.) Be genuine – Most people don’t actually care about all the locations you’ve visited in the past with the exception of your competitors.  If you really want to communicate location, use a geo-location app like foursquare to check into a location, send that to Twitter and Facebook, and leave it at that.  Hint – become the foursquare mayor of these locations around Alberta, and I’ll really be impressed with your outreach efforts.

2.) Engage on the issues – granted twitter is not optimum for this, and a blog is more suitable.  Write 250 word replies to individual Albertans and their key issues from your heart, and then reply on twitter to that citizen.  Don’t like writing?  There’s always short burst videos comprising a video blog (vlog), you can say that same 250 words in 2 minutes, and YouTube is perfect for that because it’s shareable.   This takes time so be focused with your responses to the issues.  Don’t have the time?  BS.  This isn’t a priority because you don’t understand what to do, and how to deploy the multiple technologies for effect.  Frankly, most don’t believe social media will help sway opinions enough to cast a vote.  This little tidbit is good for those who disagree with that statement.  Social media when used correctly builds rapport, it’s not the silver bullet it’s a main component that should be baked in to all campaign activities.  Voters take that into consideration.  Parties who understand behavioural patterns online can really make a lot of headway.  Others…,the dinosaurs, well they’ll tweet to seem envogue, and be doing it blindly, broadcast all about “me” tweets to no real tactical advantage.  Sure, promote things that you’re doing, but also be prepared to engage in debate on policy and solutions and it’s better when citizens promote what you’re doing.

If you’re about “grass roots and change” for real…Set aside an hour a week for a public online debate.  Cover It Live is one example that could be installed on your website, or you can simply be on twitter during a designated hour using your hashtag to answer any questions thrown at you.  Schedule so that people know when they can engage with you.

3.) Use video for citizen responses, questions and engagement.  Mr. Horner, the travelling is impressive, I would have been even more impressed had you provided video footage from each of those stops with people stating why they’ll vote for you.   However, I’d be over the top if any candidate generated a bunch of content by citizens pledging their support voluntarily.  If politicians truly inspire, then the evidence will be there. Granted not all would get in front of a camera but some will.  In today’s digital landscape where the digital divide is still very real, learn to solve these problems, rural folks have a camera phone for a picture or an impromptu video, share life as it happens with Qik.

Coincidently, the most watched live Alberta Live! episode was when I interviewed Danielle Smith, Doug Griffiths is second, Dr. Raj Sherman, and newly elected Alberta Party leader Glenn Taylor are on fusedlogicTV too.  Here’s a hint, albeit a self-serving one.  fusedlogicTV is your very own Web TV Network for hire and Alberta is our strongest province for viewership for obvious reasons.  See any of your competitors airing a regular (unedited) TV show that works live and on-demand?  People are still watching those episodes, the campaigns and parties can promote these episodes at no cost.

4.) Teach citizens and volunteers to share – if campaigns taught citizens how, where to tweet, how to post a twitpic, where to post a picture on Facebook fanpage, a video response to Youtube, a comment on a blog…well you get the picture.  Of course, most campaigns don’t contain this knowledge or focus on it because many don’t believe these technologies will actually have any impact on the vote outcomes.  I have to say based on usage to date, I completely agree.  I’m incredibly uninspired.

5.) Engagement beyond evangelists – true penetration online is demonstrated in the analytics when more than your 4 campaign supporters get online and “create” content about you and what you stand for.  Time is precious, politics is hotly contested and heated debates ensue online so if people blog about you on their own, you’re reaching them.

6.) Lead don’t follow – Quite often, and some parties have more than others, the Trolls come out to play.  Now I could call these appleheads out here but giving these arrogant, self-indulgent, political know it all experts more ink is out of the question.  Anyone following the various political hashtags knows precisely who these boneheads are.  The funny thing is, some of these people actually believe they have credibility when they blog or tweet while they hide behind “just because we have a differing opinion doesn’t make us trolls” mantra.  Yes, actually in my mind it does.  Here’s why.  Leaders don’t build on a foundation of bullshit sniping.  Leaders lead by providing a positive message, solutions and action, by pointing out the positive for citizens not by tearing others down.  Leaders hoist others on their shoulders and carry until exhausted.  If you’re so “right” then lead and prove it rather than being a follower of a negative mob.  If your blog post simply tears others political views down for your self- gratification, then do us all a favour and at least have the guts to call yourself what you are, a political narcissist.   You know another reason why I didn’t run, I didn’t believe I was good enough to take on the important challenges that the citizens would need me to do.  My mind is one of business, and in my heart I can’t stand a system that often has to rip others up to get a job done.  The political system is broken and many supporters of various parties out there are ridiculous and it makes their parties look even more ridiculous.  If these folks ever take a step back to reflect, one out of 10 will be ashamed of their actions.  The others will defend their positions.  Why do you think there are so few “real leaders?”

7.) Data, data, data – it’s all in the data.  Well ok, not all but most of it.  Most campaigns won’t have the resources but Google Alerts are simple email notifications and Google Analytics on your website, Tweetreach for Twitter reach is a real basic start.

8.) Tell your story and that of Albertans – Get beyond the “vote for me for a better future” BS.  What does that mean in real terms for me and my family?  Tell that story, and if you’re a leader you’ll have stories about how you’ve already done this.  This will be about the Albertans and the lives you’ve changed.  Storify combined with Twitter is a great way to do this.  If you search, Edmonton Journal and Storify you can see how they have been using it, most recently to cover the U2 comments by Edmonton residents and others who experienced the concert and used the concert hashtag #u2360edm.

Ultimately, politicians in Alberta don’t capture the stories that affect us all, that we can relate to.  They’re even worse at sharing these stories beyond the podium or stage, and finally, as is evident in the one tweet by Doug Horner listed above but similar examples exist in all political twitter streams, true engagement is next to non-existent.  The expectations of your constituents has changed, it’s not about you, it’s about them, their needs and how you’ll lead this province “with” them, not behind closed doors but out in the open.

Do you have the “most digitally engaged” candidate? Let us know here, share the links to show off the digital footprint and we’ll invite you on to Alberta LIVE!

Leaders are not afraid to lead!

As a result of reading this blog post today, the following tweets by Strathcona County Councillor Roxanne Carr speak for themselves.

Councillor Carr follows up…

CouncillorCarr Roxanne Carr

@TricommStrategy @fusedlogic I am at #fcmhfx conference +would love to connect with residents back home #shpk#strathcoHow is Monday 3pm?

CouncillorCarr Roxanne Carr

Any other polis interested in a poli tweet on line with residents? #strathco #shpk Monday 3 pm?

1 hour ago

CouncillorCarr Roxanne Carr

@fusedlogic Thanks will put it in my blog – would like it open to all interests + topics #shpk #strathco

51 minutes ago

CouncillorCarr Roxanne Carr

@TricommStrategy @fusedlogic like I said any topic: budget, pot holes, Council priorities, even cats….lol …ps cats don’t herd well!!!

24 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

The signs they are a changing.  Secretly, many Strathcona County employees have been chomping at the bit to start Facebook fan pages, YouTube channels, twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles and blogs.

This is terrific and yes, it’s clearly early days for the County, and it’s exploration of social media.  However, this shows a small cultural shift internally towards what I hope is the foundation of a more digitally engaged Strathcona County community.

How do we get there?  Simple, we connect on and offline.  We hold events like this social media workshop in Council Chambers tonight that I’ve been invited to participate in by Councillor Roxanne Carr.  Thank-you Councillor Carr this is going to be fun.

Keys to building the Strathcona County community online.

1.) Train everyone! If people don’t understand why they should engage online, where the value is for doing so, they won’t.  Proper training will empower people.

2.) Self-organize. Don’t wait for Strathcona County employees to drive this initiative.  Come together offline at regular tweetups and meetups to connect with your community and then follow-up online.  The County employees should look to attend.

3.) Tell stories in your own way.  You may like photography like I do, so you may want to use Flickr as your photo-sharing hub.  Many simply use Facebook for this purpose.  Look at your world from these four primary content areas.

Text:
Micro-blogging http://www.twitter.com
Blogging http://www.wordpress.com
Presentations http://www.slideshare.net
Document collaboration http://docs.google.com/
Bookmarks http://delicious.com

Images:
http://www.flickr.com
http://www.facebook.com
http://picasaweb.google.com/

Video:
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.vimeo.com
http://www.viddler.com/
http://qik.com/

Audio:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com
http://www.podbean.com/

Social Media Sources:
Alltop http://social-media.alltop.com/
Mashable http://mashable.com/
Readwriteweb http://www.readwriteweb.com/
emarketer http://www.emarketer.com/
Techcrunch http://techcrunch.com/
gigaom http://gigaom.com/

And of course, http://www.fusedlogic.com and http://www.fusedlogic.tv

4.) Develop an Open Strathcona County Framework. Open Government is the next step, using social media doesn’t constitute an Open Government.  Collaborative discussions on this should begin right away.  I hate to say it because the word “camp” is so overused, however, “County Camp” should happen and we should invite folks from the Greater Edmonton area to participate. The purpose of such an “unconference” would be to discuss Open Data here in the County, as well as, a framework for process improvements within government based on case studies from here in Alberta and from around the world.

Here’s the prezi that I presented tonight at the Strathcona County tweetup so that everyone can review.  Thanks for all your questions tonight and contributions to the event.  Great job by Thelma Scammell and the entire Strathcona County Communications team, there’s lots of great things ahead.  It was terrific to meet everyone in person and I look forward to the next event.  Special thanks to CrowdMap.com for their great map on the wildfires in Slave Lake.   This prezi was built from this presentation on slideshare.net.

There are a couple of other interesting stories brewing and I’m wondering if they’re making a difference in the hearts and minds of the youth vote.

First, take a look at “vote mobs” being organized across the country at Leadnow.ca.  Students on campuses across Canada are using social media, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to self-organize and hold rallies in support of getting out the youth vote. This is very cool and there is certainly lots of main stream media evidence to suggest this is catching some steam, just search “vote mob.”

Now here’s an interesting twist on things.  What if this momentum regarding vote mobs suddenly shifted towards the Elections Canada and their recent citing of Section 329 as a reminder to all tweeting Canadians that it’s still on the books as it were.  The Edmonton Journal’s Paula Simons, has written an excellent piece on this a few days ago.

FYI, I’m not advocating civil disobedience and here’s why this scenario is interesting.  We already have significant evidence of self-organization online on the “vote mob” front.  A faction of this movement could ignite civil disobedience online and Elections Canada should at the very least be monitoring the situation online already.  Although I suspect they’re ill equipped to do this effectively.   Also, not a single Canadian needs to tweet any result for Elections Canada to be in a pickle.  US based twitter accounts could of course communicate the results and Elections Canada would be at a loss.  This is why this is so difficult for regulatory agencies. This is the world wide web with a hyper-connected society leveraging technology to it’s potential.  While analog agencies like Elections Canada still try to remain relevant with some of their old legislation.

Frankly, for Elections Canada to prove their point of enforcement of S329, and I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect they’d simply need one person, who has correctly self identified themselves on Twitter, to violate the law as they see it, and bingo they have a case.  I wouldn’t want the hassle or expense of being that person, would you?  This is why in part I believe many will not violate the twitter ban on May 2nd.  Further, I have found evidence of those online who have stated they want to respect the law which is another reason that I believe the majority of twitter users/voters in Canada will not overtly violate this rule.

This should be interesting to watch.  What about you, do you believe people will violate S329 on May 2nd via Twitter or Facebook, vote mob or otherwise?

Have you exposed your brand to negative buzz?  Starting with good intentions, have you started a negative firestorm online?

What should you do?  Ignore or engage in a verbal sparring match as many do everyday on Twitter, Facebook and in forums?   Here are a few simple tips to consider when confronted with negativity online.

Assess the situation

Everyone should be listening to the Internet and monitoring channels and communities important to their business.  Look to identify the source, the ignition point or statement that has set things in motion then consider these questions.

• Is the information factually accurate or inaccurate?
• What is the level of credibility of the person, account or organization responsible?
• What platform is the negative activity happening on?
• Does this person, account or organization understand the technology and community they are operating within?
• Is there an ongoing conversation already as a result of the statement for you to research?
• What has been the sentiment of the initial responses to the negative statement?
• Is the discussion growing in size quickly or is it isolated?

What if any social media action should be taken?

Your options here are fairly simple, however, how they’re executed may not be.

MONITOR: This needs to be an ongoing activity for your organization so that you’re not taken by surprise.  This can allow you to assess in near real-time if the issue is progressing and if so how.  Be careful, ignoring issues completely can place you in a position where a conversation between two people on twitter can quickly turn into a firestorm of international media exposure in hours.  Do your assessment quickly and learn to act fast.  Generally, most issues do not reach firestorm stage but the potential is always there.

ENGAGE: You can choose to engage in a sparring match with the individuals and organizations involved.  This is rarely a good idea, you almost always look like a bully.  I experienced this during the airport debate, even if I was looking to offer facts available to me, it was usually still a negative outcome.  Rather than spar, I recommend remaining factual without emotion.  Your detractors will attempt to initiate personal attacks, do your best to not add validity or take it personal whenever possible.

Instead focus on clearing up misconceptions, admitting mistakes quickly and zero in on providing solutions to move ahead with. This is very difficult sometimes as often a mob mentality can ensue, don’t attempt to try to control this conversation, it will only make it worse.  You may however want to nudge the conversation in the right direction and your supporters should look to reinforce that.  No surprise that where this routinely happens includes politics, the environment, and government related communications.

Pre-emptive social media strike

Often there’s an urge to attempt to get your message out before anyone else can generate the story flow on your behalf.  Let’s say mainstream media writes an unflattering story about your brand or you have been misquoted, and it’s on their website.

If you feel compelled to respond, do it on their platform first, in the comments section, where you can most likely put things into context, to expand you may then want to use your own blog or website to follow-up and explain if required.  Resist the urge to jump straight to Twitter where the conversation may not be underway, and jump start it yourself.  This will almost certainly draw out trolling behaviour, and open up the opportunity for facts to be twisted 140 characters at a time, igniting a firestorm which you were trying to avoid in the first place.  One which could last a few hours, days or until someone gets fired.

Not a perfect science

There is definitely an art to this type of communication situation and the above tips are not intended to be perfect.  Continue to provide positive, share-worthy information and support others doing the same.  I’m of the belief that there is definitely an audience for that worth being a part of.

So how does your behaviour on the micro-blogging platform Twitter spread an idea, and how can you learn more about it?  You may have a different opinion but I believe that one needs to examine the pattern details of sharing, influence and technology.

The two-way flow of influence

There has been a lot of political unrest in the middle east, especially Egypt as everyone knows.  Main stream media tells stories which in turn influences our online publishing behaviours, and an idea spreads online.  Conversely, Web 2.o technology enabled digital communities and the individuals who comprise them one at a time become aware of things happening in the world as they participate on the ground as citizen journalists.  Which in turn makes main stream media aware of the story, who then tell forward the story thereby influencing the non-technically savvy and which reaches the coffee shops and boardrooms and away we go.

Back in 2000, when I started fusedlogic this effect as explained above was almost non-existent.  The technology didn’t exist to support this type of sharing cycle.

Micro-tribes of people still shared ideas, thoughts and concerns and looked to influence opinions but it was still done more face to face, via email and rarely but increasingly through static websites.

Why do governments, businesses and organizations need to respect social media?  How do you position a message or specific platform so that many can see it?  There are many principles simultaneously that could be examined, however, today we’ll focus on watching what happens when people get emotional online, which is often the fuel that drives viral responses.

On twitter today I was made aware of a”gephi” graphical representation made by Andre Panisson of how the Egyptian Revolution spread on twitter using the hashtag #jan25, the suspected date of Mubarak’s resignation.  Although preliminary, this shows how an idea or story, (in this case an national uprising) can spread on twitter.  Ultimately this is about patterns of behaviour and influence.  Nothing new for social media explanations really but for those who are working on better understanding this “social media thing” it might help and I really like cool visuals.

Things to watch for.  Pay attention to how micro-tribes form related to key influencers and how others look to spam and don’t end up getting much retweet momentum.  As a single individual, one couldn’t hope to know each one participating in this discussion personally and as a result of a offline relationship.  However, smaller groups carry things forward.

The Egyptian Revolution on Twitter

Obviously this type of impact doesn’t happen with every idea, story, blog post, sales pitch or tweet in general, a revolution within a country is a unique occurrence to say the least.  Most of the time people’s reach online looks something like this truthy project pattern image.

The above image is closer to the reality of your personal network interest level at any given moment.  Maximizing this effect is about allowing others to take ownership of the message or idea and spread that across their sphere of influence.  Corporations and governments typically fear this effect because they want to control what you see, hear and think.  That’s a mistake and is the perfect recipe for a revolution.

If you’re interested in learning more about the online ad discussion there are a few different ways to watch everything evolve.

“CrashtheSuperBowl”

First, here are some of the major brands who will most likely participate and they will invariably use YouTube to distribute content.  Doritos is back this year with the “CrashtheSuperBowl” YouTube channel.

Volkswagen Passat: The Force

Frankly the early leader, and so far my favourite.

BrandBowl 2011

Now to watch the most popular ads be graded by your fellow Twitter followers head to brandbowl2011.com

Here’s the current stats at BrandBowl2011.com of Volkswagen’s The Force commercial at the time of this post.

Twitter

The main Twitter hashtags that I’ll be following the rest of today and tomorrow are as follows.  If you have one to suggest please let me know.

#superbowl, #brandbowl #NFL #adbowl

In addition to using search.twitter.com, I’ll also use Tweetreach.  A current snapshot of the #brandbowl discussion on Tweetreach provides a periodical review of the ebbs and flow of the conversation.

For researching a particular Twitter account’s latest action, I like to use Twittercounter.com.

Enjoy your SuperBowl Sunday, regardless of which team you’re cheering for or which brand you prefer, there will be lots of ways to watch AND participate in the spectacle.  Feel free to let us know here which commercial you enjoy and why.

Ultimately, there are millions of dollars at stake during this weekend, and as a consumer you are right at the centre of it whether you know it or not.

SUNDAY UPDATE:

Here’s a screenshot of Tweetreach and the #brandbowl hashtag at 10:22am MST

If you missed the first set of data, check it out here. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

The State of Search is the topic and Walter Schwabe speaks with Sabrina Geremia, Head of Agency Relations for Google Canada about the inner workings of Google.  He asks a big question about “Google Me,” and includes questions from Twitter users @lonesomebilydad, @dandromarsky, @brendanC_86 @dheuman @DynamitePR @Zoomjer as well.  To learn more about search from an SEO industry expert, Walter also speaks with Rand Fishkin, CEO for SEOmoz about trends in the space.

Download on iTunes

Walter Schwabe speaks with Shawna Randolph, spokesperson from the Edmonton Humane Society about how their nonprofit is using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate more effectively.

Download on iTunes

The first method I mention is Google Alerts.  Staying in touch with a topic that’s important to you in this way can help you be better informed and positioned ahead of your competitors in business or just keep up with current trends.  Follow this link to set-up one or more alerts.

The second method I speak about with Jacqueline is about Twitter.  Many people would like to know more about Twitter but do not want to join the micro-blogging platform in order to learn.  Although there’s little to be afraid of, I provide a way for you to observe conversations on Twitter without an account.  If you head to search.twitter.com you can search just about anything, and then see what types of things are being said while at the same time identifying the sentiment of those comments as well.  I quickly referenced that Twitter uses something called a “hashtag” to organize conversations.  For example, #yeg represents the majority of conversation related to Edmonton on Twitter.  For more information on hashtags, the searchenginejournal has a pointed post about them.

Now if this segment has peaked your interest and you’d like to know about even more solutions, Mashable.com has a post that outlines “brand monitoring” and offers some more ideas or you can contact us directly and we’d be happy to help you out.

Thank-you very much for watching the segment on ShawTV.  Also mentioned in the interview was “Getting Social with Schwabe,” Canada’s only radio show dedicated to social media.  You can listen to past episodes here on our site, download them on iTunes and listen to upcoming shows airing Saturday mornings at 7am on The Team1260.

Walter Schwabe talks about measurement and the impact social media has on every day users.  This episode includes interviews with Stephanie Hayes and Ryan Hastman as a result of them responding to Walter on Twitter

A special thanks to Dorward and Company.

Download at iTunes

At first, I have to admit that my reaction was “wait a minute…!”  Then I let it sink into my thick skull for a minute.  She was absolutely right.  Do you agree?  Let me go further and explain.  Obviously, I think social media is “potentially” valuable when communicating on behalf of any campaign.  Leilas’ point was that the “potential” wasn’t being realized by any one campaign, and I completely agree.

This was substantiated by my conversations I’ve had with a number of campaigns and candidates.  In one case, as I stated on Getting Social with Schwabe this morning, a campaign manager behind a candidate for Mayor (I won’t say where), stated they didn’t think social media would have any effect whatsoever on your vote.  Well, I suppose if that’s your campaign strategy, you’ll find a way to ensure social media is irrelevant.

“Social influence” is about using social media to influence human beings online.  As the municipal elections progress, I’ve been looking for evidence of social influence strategies.  Difficult considering that this field of candidates is for the most part, relatively new to social media, at least on a mass coordinated deployment basis.  As many know, it’s easy to set-up an account, much more difficult to inspire voters to inspire other voters on and offline.

There are those out in the world who would have you believe that you don’t need to understand Twitter, or any other social technology, “just experiment and play around” they say.  In an election, 30-days is a very short period of time to influence people to vote your way.  Not having any idea as to how to accomplish that, and then venturing out into the social web and asking people for help in normal circumstances might be fine, but during an election, this may lead to demonstrating unpreparedness, and allow competitors to exploit this weakness on how to engage in the middle of an election.  Maybe this is your strategy if you’re a blogger with little to lose.  This unsophisticated approach can put your personal brand, and/or campaign at risk.

Voters could infer that if you’re coming into this election, and you didn’t think social media would play a role, that this would say something about your leadership capabilities.

What kind of things are voters looking for from candidates?  Certainly voters are using social to gather information in general, as was evident in the answers provided to my question on LinkedIn.  So an integrated communications strategy is key.  At some point people are going to want to learn more than your calendar of events 140 characters at a time on Twitter.

Most candidates in the Greater Edmonton Region, this includes surrounding areas like Strathcona County seem to be simply communicating their locations, events attended, and little else.   However, whether this approach is as effective as it could be is up for debate.

For example, does the candidate have “health buddies?”  Or better yet, a cluster of health buddies.  In a recent MIT study that suggests that social networks influence behaviour, in this case related to health issues, researcher Damon Centola, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, assigned participants a “health buddy” to measure the effect on whether social networks could influence behaviour on health related issues…and the study suggests that “yes” influence and subsequent action did take place.  The study found that how people were connected had a direct impact on how information flowed, the reach and the rate at which it spread.  This wasn’t solely the number of connections or “buddies,” but also the dynamics of those relationships that influenced actions.

Connections count, but the same amount of quality connections and shared experiences count more.

STUDY: “The rate of adoption in the clustered networks proved to be four times as fast. People were more likely to participate regularly in the health forum if they had more health buddies who registered.”

So my question to candidates in this municipal election is, are you focusing on building “micro-tribes of influencers” who support your position as a result of continued shared experiences?  Or are you simply taking up digital air?  This is now a very short race, those who had an understanding of this going in will ultimately be further ahead on election day.  Those who listen to bloggers who suggest candidates should simply wing it without any real advice or plan do so at their peril.  Voters like “fans” appreciate a real experience with the person of interest over event planning updates.  Voters appreciate real engagement.

Here’s an interesting example of how a political candidate, in this case younger than most running in the Edmonton region managed to build a core of support online that then translated into evangelism, and she states that she won in large part because of it.  She does suggest that meeting people in person, door-knocking was also valuable which demonstrates that shaking hands works too.

Watch a CNN interview to learn how Elise Hall used social media to influence voters to help her win her election for the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

Is your favourite electoral candidate demonstrating a higher level of understanding related to engagement and influence?  List them here, show your support.  As voters we should look for evidence of “political action versus broadcasting content,” if you think your candidate is generating action via influence make a case for it here.  Maybe others will agree with you, and your candidate will end up generating more momentum with people telling two friends or (two thousand) and so on and so on…

This time last year we were seeing the same rumors flying, especially after the appearance of leaked screenshots on the Boygeniusreport website. The photos are included below for those looking for a recap of the last round of rumors. It is time once again to speculate on when Apple will fully embrace social media.

The reality is that iTunes has not had a real significant change in its functionality in years, it is a music store at heart and it is a very popular. A change to introduce social media integration could be a minor one or it could amount to a complete overhaul of the interface we all know and have accepted. As it sits the rumors are pointing to the integration of social elements as a way for users to share not only information on what they are listening to but also for them to share recommendations with others. That sadly doesn’t mean that we will be able to share our favorite songs with our friends, but it is still a step towards making music and iTunes a friendly place.

The positive side of the rumored updates, assuming they are true, will be a new way to share music with friends. What worries me is the possibility we may see millions of “ (name) is listening to (blank) on iTunes” posts on Twitter… Then again there are easy and simple ways around that issue. Other music providers such as Last.fm already offer social media updating without the annoyance of thousands of posts about your listening habits to your friends and family. The model is in use already and works without issues.

Rumors of increased social media integration have been flying for a long time, iTunes is the logical first step if they are really intent on following through. The technology is there and services such as Facebook and Twitter are already in use by hundreds of millions of people. My personal bet is that Apple will bring some form of integration, tomorrow, I don’t know, but certainly it is on their radar.

Come tomorrow we will see if its going to be true and if Apple is really going to make a move into social media with iTunes.

Everyone was pretty good about the little slip-up, although in true social media fashion, there is a tweet explaining the mistake I made and I couldn’t resist and also had to blog about it too.

The Giant is Asleep

In a room of just under 50 professional people, (2) were on Twitter, that’s not entirely unexpected for this industry after my preliminary research.  There were also (2) self-proclaimed bloggers in the room, one of which I found out later was actually a teacher.  That too was lower than expected.  However, I believe that many started putting serious thought into taking some action towards becoming a “social accountant.”  I can extrapolate this from the questions that were asked after my presentation was completed.  Discussions of how to reduce white noise or irrelevant information flow, pilot projects  and where to start, this was a very friendly and engaged group.

Admissions of the beginning of Linkedin profiles and Twitter accounts.  By enlarge, this industry is dormant in terms of social activity.  Certainly with respect to Alberta, we have a long way to go before anyone could state that our regional accountants of any designation are truly invested in social.  My hope is that for one person or organization, yesterday’s presentation was enough inspiration to take action.  I did receive a little feedback from folks which I always appreciate as it helps me improve.  That despite the faux pas mentioned above was quite positive and I feel really good about the experience as well.  We’re all human after all and prone to mistakes, it’s how we learn from those experiences that is the real story.

I want to thank the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta for the chance to speak at their wonderful event at the Jasper Park Lodge and for the wonderful speakers gift too.

Interestingly, there were some folks in the room from very large organizations, including the provincial government.  As the nice folks I met here brace for impact regarding cutbacks, I believe they found the discussion around tax savings and government efficiencies related to an Open Government environment interesting.

I was told about some very interesting things happening here in Manitoba, I can see sparks of interest and some daylight regarding the use of Web 2.0 technologies and that is very cool.

The local Twitter community is not as active as ours in Edmonton but there are signs of growth from what I hear from locals.  I really enjoyed my stay here in Winnipeg, the people were welcoming and the city itself has some terrific architecture.  There’s a lot of pride here and from what I’ve learned, there is considerable interest in the idea of Government 2.0.  I’d like to say more but have to head to the airport to catch a flight.  I’m heading to Seattle today to attend OpenGov West.

What I will say is, people feel Premier Seliger is open to the idea of Government 2.0, so I say – Here comes Open Manitoba!

Interview with the Mayor of Hinton, Alberta – Glenn Taylor

I first met Glenn on Twitter, when he put a link out asking for feedback on a housing report for the Town of Hinton.  I replied asking if he and his administration had considered using a wiki for policy feedback from citizens?  He replied, “No, but I’ll pass it along.”  Then becoming Facebook friends and continuing our discussion, we found out that he was presenting at the ALI Social Media for Government conference.  This gave me an opportunity to meet Glenn in person for the first time.  Glenn was presenting a fire-side chat (no PPT slides) with Ken Chapman of Cambridge Strategies about the Grande Alberta Economic Region (GAER).  The story is interesting in terms of how this particular region has been impacted by many different issues.  The Mountain Pine Beetle for example has had a devastating effect.  After the conference we agreed to follow-up and today’s interview was our next step.

WS: Why become an elected official?

GT: “That started in the sandbox, I was learning about the political process in grade 5 which was when I became class president.  After school I was involved in unions and activism.  For me, it has always been a sense of representing other’s concerns that’s interested me. Union politics turned out to be too limiting, contractual negotiations etc – a narrow lens of looking at the world.

The opportunity to represent citizens’ concerns to administration is what I found fascinating and why I really love governing at the municipal level.  You can discuss something at Council and the next day be having a cup of coffee over the fence with a neighbour fielding questions about the decision.  That has translated into what is currently my 3rd term on council and 2nd term as Mayor.  We’ve focused on shaping the community identity.  We’re an industrial town, and yet, as a community realize that we have a responsibility to give back to the land.”

During the ALI conference, Glenn described his initial response to Ken Chapman’s suggestion that he start using social media as resistive.  ”I don’t have time for this,” he stated while speaking at the ALI conference this week.   However, what I don’t think Glenn bargained for is how persistent Ken Chapman can be and so @mayorhinton is now active on Twitter.  Also during that presentation he revealed that others on his Town Council are on Facebook now, although they’re not as active as they could be and more Twitter accounts have been set-up recently too.

WS: What resistance if any has there been from your colleagues on Council, administration or the region?

GT: “Well I would start with the traditionalists being afraid to engage, the silent majority if you will.  They’re asking, how can we control the message?  What’s motivating that fear are examples like what’s happening with elements associated with Rockyview County Council generating a facebook group.  Basically fixating on the negative.

We (government) can’t be superficial, can’t just listen and continue to do the same thing.  We need to take action.  However, within administration there can be fear that change will bring about more work.  Fear about change of the status quo.  At the provincial level there’s a tendency to consult with citizens through town halls so that it can be stated folks were consulted and then do what was planned anyway.  As the community changes, we need to bring that message back from the citizens to the government.  In a municipal government it’s truly the citizens issues being presented to the government and that’s my favourite part.  The challenge becomes then, how do we get those issues to the administrative team…for change in process?”

Glenn didn’t name the group but I found this one called Stop the Madness in Springbank! which seems to be against development.

WS: How do you see social media impacting your region economically?

GT: “Well number one – you need to make decisions with good information which means you have to gather good information first.  Being open to listening is key and understanding the challenges.  How do we tap into that knowledge?  Traditional invitations to discuss the issue and also connecting people online through various channels.  Flexibility has to be present in our approach so that we can reach as many citizens as possible.  In fact, we’re hosting a workshop on social media to help folks understand the tools better.”

WS: What challenges lie ahead for you and your community?

GT: “We’re really at the beginning stages of engaging the citizens.  I believe that we’re ahead of the curve and that’s a source of pride for us. However, there can be a disconnect between administration and council that sometimes exists and that will be something we have to work on.”

WS: What advice would you give to other elected officials?

GT: “Build the business case, not I have a dream, rather it’s what I have learned. It’s way easier to to operate in reactionism rather than finding the path.  I’d say it’s important to be proactive rather than reactive.  For example at our GAER Board meetings we now start with blue sky sessions and ask what’s on the horizon?  What are you hearing in your communities?  Is it a priority, do we need to spend time working on it…that means that key issues have a chance to help us set our course at the beginning.”

“Leaders get the behaviours that they themselves exhibit and tolerate.”  - Larry Bossidy, Author of Execution: The discipline of getting things done.

And with that in mind, I’ll leave you with the same question that Glenn has posted on Facebook and like other elected officials I’ve come across (but unfortunately not all), he cares about the answers you give…

GT: What does community mean to you?

One of the things I’ve always taken exception to is the comment that social media is “free.”  You’ll see some content in the video below about Gary Vanyerchuk and “$0 dollars invested in Twitter to generate 1800 customers.”  Social media is not free, this is a gross generalization.  Vaynerchuk continues to state that social media is free throughout his book Crush It as well, and regardless of his success (which is substantial) he is sending the message that simply because the tool itself requires no registration fee to use, all social media is free and essentially has no value.  Wrong!

“There’s nothing stock about a stock car.” – Harry Hogg

He’s not coming straight out and saying social media has no value but to the untrained eye that could be how it is interpreted.  I certainly agree that on average the investment in social media marketing is considerably lower than traditional methods of marketing, but free and of little value?

Is the key to massive social media success simply just working 16 hour days on free software?  According to Vaynerchuk, yes and he explains the importance of what to spend those 16 hours on.  He advocates relentlessly building your personal brand, something I completely agree with. Ultimately, many social media tools may be free to use but the time invested and experience on how to apply them in a coordinated way is very valuable. In the case of Vaynerchuk and many others, it’s worth millions.

His main message is “listen” to the Internet and your customers, answer all your emails and comments and treat your customers like gold.  Sound advice AND it’s nothing new.  Having said that, many still do not do this because it’s too much work.  Vanyerchuk is proving that his simple, in your face style and showing up every day is and does work.  Is he passionate? Yes.  Is he relentless?  You bet.  Is it hard work? Absolutely!

As for his book Crush It, I found it a very easy read, entertaining in a few places and there are a few good tips.  Would I call it revolutionary or mind blowing? No.  Vaynerchuk’s mantra is simple, he considers much about the use of social media to be about showing up, sweating and being passionate as you do it.  With that I agree but in reality it’s not free.

As for the socialnomics video.

Eric Qualman has released a new social media centric video on Youtube, this man loves his stats and I think you’ll appreciate them as well.  I originally found the link to this video on Twitter via Mike Street (@streetforce1)

Mike’s link sent me to LitmanLive, a blog which provides a bit of a break-down of the stats within the video itself, it’s below for your viewing pleasure.

By the way, if you haven’t played this iPhone game called Pik’s Revenge yet, you’re missing out.  Speaking of “sweat,” we’re working with Edmonton’s Fluik Entertainment on this cool project, I thought I would throw this in too…

First thing’s first. What is foursquare?

That’s an excellent question!

As stated on foursquare.com:

Think: 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.  We wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.

foursquare.com home page

Think twitter, but instead of answering the question ‘What are you doing?’ and writing in 140 characters what you’re up to, foursquare lets people know where you are when you ‘check-in’ to any location you specify and vice versa. Now, you may be asking how secure is this app? It’s as secure as you want it to be. If you don’t want people to know where you are, you simply don’t check-in. For instance, you may not want people to know where your house is, so you don’t have to check-in when you are home. Some people choose to check-in at a location within their neighbourhood, rather than use their actual address. However, an important part of social media is being transparent. And it may be seen as misleading to check-in at a location when you aren’t actually there, regardless of how close you happen to be.

What makes a social media app valuable is how mobile it is. Foursquare is offered on the iPhone, of course. And can be accessed via a mobile web browser for devices without an app. According to foursquare.com, Blackberry and Palm Pre apps are in the works. Foursquare can also be accessed online where additional features can be used, but the whole point of the app is to be mobile.

So, how is foursquare a valuable app for tourism and hospitality in Alberta?

Well, obviously it only works if the tourists use foursquare and the mobile app. Given that those two things are in place, tourists can locate information about any city in Alberta that they are visiting. Provided that foursquare has the city listed in their system. Right now that’s not the case, but it’s getting there. Say someone from the US is visiting family living in Edmonton. They want to go out for dinner, but they don’t know any of the local restaurants. Using foursquare, they can use ‘Nearby Tips’ that lists comments from other users giving, well, tips about restaurants and businesses they’ve visited (As seen in the picture to the right). The great thing about this feature is that you don’t have to be ‘friends’ with anyone in the particular city. It’s just a list from all foursquare users in that location.

The other great thing about this app for tourism and hospitality is that once it gets more popular, there will be more entries from tourists themselves. So, it won’t just be content from the locals, but also tips and reviews from people who visit the city. Now, this means good and bad reviews. But this gives Alberta Tourism and the hospitality industry an indication of what tourists honestly think of some local tourists destinations, including restaurants, in real-time. This will give them essential info about what tourists want to see more of, what they don’t like so much, etc. Of course, some things will be out of the industries control. If the food is bad at a particular restaurant, there is little Alberta Tourism can do about that. But other concerns/issues may become obvious, and provide insight into changes that can be made. After all, it’s their job to ensure people want to visit Alberta, and have such an enjoyable time they wish to return, and recommend it to others! Every tool that is available to the consumer that provides information on the products and services to tourism/hospitality stakeholders is valuable. The technology is there. Foursquare enables some interesting real-time interaction between consumers, and the tourism and hospitality industries. It’s like a real-time comment card and a repository of comsumer behaviours. So we recommend that the stakeholders within the tourism and hospitality industry become very familiar with this application and it’s advantages.

Today’s organizations should realize that assigning the responsibility of social media to an intern does a few things that are not necessarily great for their brand.

1.) Puts front-line communications of the brand message in the hands of the inexperienced.  If you wouldn’t position your intern to pitch your biggest client in a lead capacity, don’t put a mass communications tool(s) in their hands either.

2.) Puts inexperienced intern in a position where they may be forced to make a critical “judgement call” decision publicly and in real-time.

In both cases, serious damage could be done to the brand “when” the situation is mishandled.  Often it’s a matter of time, not if but when.

Here’s another perspective.  Assign a value to your brand. Once you’ve estimated the financial value of your brand – $10M, $100 million dollars, measure that against how old your company is.  Then realize that it can all be negatively and dramatically impacted with an ill-advised tweet, video, blog post or photograph.

Sure many executives today are social media rookies, however, they should know what’s critical to communicate about their businesses and they have the authority that comes with their positions to back it up. In many cases the simple fact that the executive is the one communicating builds credibility, credibility that could lead to business.

Social media is not a place for interns to learn about your business via real-time interactions with your customers.

Your top line executives cannot afford to be “too busy.”  The world is a different place today for business and organizations, if your CEO, VP Marketing, VP Communications are not prepared to operate in this space to some degree and they’re not prepared to learn more about social media, your organization is at a severe disadvantage.

How would you like to wake up one morning as the CEO of a publicly traded company to find out your stock “allegedly” lost $180 million dollars in value?  The result of a song that went viral on Youtube.  You didn’t see it coming because you were “too busy.”

The above blog post link refers to the “cost of inaction,” I would offer an alternative to that – “cost of ignorance” could actually be proved in many cases.  Ignoring the implications of social media on your business model and its frontline communications or subsequently handing this important aspect of business communications to an intern is in my opinion foolish.

With the increase in aggregation solutions and cross-integration of popular channels, social media will become even easier to manage.  Effective management of social media channels comes from education and understanding how to use them first.

Frankly, this is not a new concept.  Communicating ideas online has been happening for years in all sorts of ways.  What we’re suggesting is that this process can be chaotic and unorganized.  Our solution is to provide a very simple series of websites that empowers the everyday citizen.  There are so many citizens who may currently make limited use of the Internet in their lives.  We hope this very focused concept that’s easy to use will inspire them to contribute their great idea for their local city or town in just a click or two.

These sites will be providing the ability for local citizens to participate at their local level and potentially affect change on a macro-level.

Every time there is a new idea posted, the Twitter accounts for each site are updated. If you’d like to follow from Twitter, the usernames are @futureedmonton, @futurecalgary and @futurereddeer.

Here’s the twist:

We’re loosely tying these sites together to provide a macro perspective on the ideas of what Albertans are contemplating. Everything will be crowd-sourced, right down to “functionality requests” of the sites themselves and how they evolve. We believe the elegance of this concept is in it’s simplicity and we encourage you to participate by voting, commenting or submitting your own idea for your city.

We’re also launching a special offer for towns and cities in Alberta today so tune into Global Edmonton at 5pm.

Socializing Brand You!

• What is “brand you?”
• What is the value of engaging in social media?
• Required “brand you” skills.
• How Twitter is a “brand you” amplification machine.
• Understanding and leveraging “micro-tribes.”
• Integrating social media into business processes.

I look forward to meeting more MacEwan students and faculty at this event and will look to provide as much value in my presentation as I possibly can.  I’m expecting some great questions from the audience and as always I’ll be referring to live Internet case studies and examples.  Also, no seat is safe in the house, I’ll be inviting direct audience participation and could call on anyone at anytime…

See you all next week…

Social media should support business process, too often social media is an orphaned concept that gets little respect within the top decision-making ranks.  This fragmented environment means that social media activities have little chance of supporting the overall enterprise and established business processes.  This is a common and in my opinion, a large mistake.

Most often social media projects are set-up in the I.T. department and a marketing executive launches a single campaign once all the accounts are set-up.  The media buy gets the lion’s share of marketing funds and the social media campaign is at a disadvantage to begin with.  If the executive or executive team isn’t prepared to commit to a deeper process integration long-term, that organization’s social media efforts will be less effective as a result.

An effective deployment of social media means a weaving of skills and brand objectives within an evolving corporate culture.  However, companies such as Zappos are rare.  Like anything in business, social media can come with risks, with every tweet a brand can be put at risk if the organization is operating without a clearly defined mandate.  This risk can be too much to handle for many organizations.  A recent example is described in this Brian Solis post about the NFL’s recent ban on tweets before, during and after games.

This “culture of sharing” if properly embraced can produce measurable and sustainable impacts within a marketplace, especially if employee teams become “cross-functional” and empowered where social media skills are concerned.  The real elements behind that success reside with the ability of the corporation’s culture to evolve. Can the business integrate, adapt and evolve existing processes to include social media?  Is there a management willingness to do this?  The question I hear most often in this discussion is related to “value.”

Here are some examples of companies generating share-holder value from delivering customer value within the social web.  Dell suggests $3 million dollars in one Information Week report from this Twitter account. http://twitter.com/dellOutlet

Here’s a great post by Jeremiah Owyang on how HP integrates social media into business processes.

Regardless of where your organization is in the above discussion, typically it all starts with someone inside who is a champion for the idea of adopting social media.  If you are that champion, stay strong.  You’re about to be up against some very strong “don’t rock the boat, we don’t understand it, it’s too risky” type resistance.  Start with education, it’s the key to moving forward.

Twitter, Facebook and other social media are already impacting your organization.

Social media is about the social dynamics and the amplification of human behaviors, rather than the technology used. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms have cultural variations but ultimately “human nature is human nature.”  Pay close attention and strive to understand such statements as, “human-web, citizen-web, crowd-sourcing,” which demonstrate that people are at the centre of it all.

With this fact in mind, it’s a safe bet that many of your employees are already engaged in various social web activities.  Your organization may block access to these technologies at work and yet privately, employees are talking about how they “hate work, can’t wait to leave work” via a mobile device, “love their work but hate their boss” or worse.  On the flip-side there are also folks who love their job, company and customers.  Probably most importantly, your customers are also out there talking about your brand, at least you should hope they are.  Either way, having your organization sitting on the sidelines with its “head in the sand” is the last option that should be exercised.

Only the brave shall pass.

In this “frady cat, uneducated” scenario I’ve seen play out more times than I care to count, decision-makers are typically the barriers to moving forward successfully.  Often, managers think social media is a waste of time and honestly, there is some truth to that point-of-view.  That’s correct, I just said that social media can be a waste of time.  If time is purely spent on self-gratification and entertainment with little to no engagement in meaningful discussions or learning about issues, trends within your industry, that’s time wasted.  Tagging photos on Facebook and offering “dude you were so wasted last night,” doesn’t constitute the kind of relationship building most managers appreciate.  Having said all of this, scheduling endless meetings over coffee, or having long phone conversations without a point can also waste time, however, that activity can be made to appear productive.  In the end, the sales numbers don’t lie and everyone pays the piper eventually.

The social web can be a tough transition for managers, there’s a sense of control loss.  Especially for those who are not about listening to customers.  I’m not an advocate for shutting all access down.  A clear policy and accountability behind the use of these powerful tools and platforms should be designed and implemented.  Imagine an organization of 5000 people or more all engaging positively in building brand loyalty…I suggest providing direction, education and creative solutions as a healthier alternative.  By the way, this is the same flat-organization success that induces cold sweats among the “coast and collect a pay-check” managers in your midst, you can see them coming a mile away.  We lose business opportunities when matched up against these folks.  The social web represents a shift in business model and cultural philosophy that many want to avoid at all costs.

Your customers demand increased access

Organizational leaders should realize that many customers have learned to voice and amplify their opinions, especially when things go wrong.

This evolution means re-examining how your organization addresses customer relations.  Savvy orgs will claim that (theoretically,) every employee is now responsible for the customer experience, (as it should be.)  If this is true, that philosophy needs to translate online, managers following an effective social media strategy should learn how to cultivate internal evangelists and teach them to take the lead in terms of community management.

Prepare for the psychological and cultural impact

Participation within social media will definitely impact the psyche of your organization. Participation takes commitment and the bravery to push through these changes and we’ve found that this is the toughest thing for organizations to do.  When was the last time you invited clients to sit down and offer their advice on how you could be better?  When was the last time this event took place publicly for all to see?

If unprepared for this environment, social media can expose short-comings, insecurities, ineffective processes and dated marketing strategies.

Frankly you should probably ask yourself if your organization actually does anything of interest?  “If your organizational tree fell in the forest would anybody care?”  Are you irrelevant?  If so, your company has larger issues at hand, like looking for a new leader.  The social web can be tough and if you commit to it properly, it can also be extremely profitable and one of your most powerful tools.  The question is, are you up to the task?

When was the last time the number of “impressions” your ad campaign generated also told you how many conversations about your brand were happening in real-time?

When was the last time “frequency” explained how many times a customer mentioned your brand, product or service to others and the sentiment of that comment?

When was the last time the above information actually told you “why” people were buying your stuff?  Or why they didn’t buy?

The truth is, most organizations despite the decline are still spending large dollars in the traditional advertising space and are justifying these expenditures on metrics that are estimates in many cases.  Then those same executives look at social media investments with risk in their eyes, a lack of understanding and claiming there’s no way to measure.

Top executives claim there’s no budget for social media.

What they’re really saying is “we don’t understand.”  Then they provide a media buyer with $250,000.00 or more to go fire away at the big three, print, television, radio for a 90 day campaign.  Why?  Not because it’s necessarily the right answer but because it’s what they understand and the safe move.  Now in this recovering economy there are shifts in these patterns to be sure.  Much of the traditional ad industry is feeling the effects.

Every once and a while, I come across an executive who has thought the above questions through and has realized that the ability to hold conversations, build rapport, inspire action directly on a mass scale or one on one and track all of those activities is definitely appealing. “Welcome to the social web.”

Social media metrics do exist, they’re just different.

Social media is word-of-mouth advertising ON FIRE!  You have to change how you look at measuring things.  Measuring conversations is a hands on job.  You can’t just tally up the traffic numbers and say we won.  You have to dig deeper than that and it is possible to do so.

A strong online campaign will demonstrate “engagement” levels that will include a number of things.

My definition of social media “impressions” would constitute the number of times elements of your campaign get mentioned across blogs, articles, comments, video, images, mass-media, micro-sharing platforms, social networks.  This information would also include, “sentiment and influence within micro-tribes.”

Beyond just eyes seeing the message, many other things can be identified.  Did your message move or inspire further actions or discussion publicly online?  If it did, this can almost certainly be tracked.

What was the sentiment of action taken?  Are citizens blogging about your message, brand, product or service positively or negatively?  If they explain their position and why they feel the way they do that can be identified.  Did they spoof your television ad on Youtube?  Did they create a twitter hashtag and engage others on Twitter?

The interaction and what can learned within the social dynamics identified can help your organization understand your customer and their relationships or “social networks” better.  That understanding can lead to emotional engagements, emotional engagements can lead to influence and influence leads to action.  The social web is where you need to commit your resources long-term and you need to do it, yesterday.

Where’s the value?

The value is in the human connections and relationships generated between your brand and your customer.  Those connections properly nurtured will build loyalty and loyalty means repeat business and influencing new business.  The social web is the perfect environment for this.  That’s where the value is.  This doesn’t happen overnight and it isn’t easy.  However, the ability to amplify a message is immense and shouldn’t be ignored.  The problem isn’t with the social web, the problem is with current organizational mind-sets and it’s time for a change.  If you truly understood the social web, you’d never call it a fad.

• The Social Web Isn’t Just for the Young Anymore (gigaom.com)
• Forrester: Social networking grows up (infoworld.com)

Chris, I respect that you are “NOT a follower,” great blog post regarding Twitter!

Having said that, hopefully you are a “listener.” Frankly, that’s where the real benefits start within social media. There are rich trends that exist about the Edmonton community and throughout social media in general, Twitter as a source is certainly no exception.

I also respect the fact that you understand what is important for you in terms of sustaining your high-level of job performance and the associated expected level of audience engagement.  If the blog is the best tool for you to communicate with your audience based on research and experience, then stick with it.  Go with what works for you.  I strongly recommend that you don’t just engage in every new technology or in this case 3 yr old technology that comes along simply because others in your office have their own views.  Certainly you’ve communicated Twitter wouldn’t be sustainable given your schedule.  However, if that were your only issue I would offer that it’s perfectly fine to keep your tweet volume to just a few per day as long as they offer some value.  Yes, there are others with a tweet volume that suggests they are not accomplishing much else, possibly even within your own ranks.  I know personally my tweet volume fluctuates depending of what’s happening around me at that point-in-time and is also dependent on my objectives.

There is a larger issue here beyond your use of Twitter.

Frankly, this kind of situation happens frequently within organizations that don’t actually have a concise plan for operating within the social web.  I’m sure you’ll agree trial by error isn’t always the preferred way to go.  Unfortunately many organizations start down this path because one person convinces another internally to “join the conversation” and management is ill-equipped to handle the implications.  This often ends up with a public airing of this uncertainty online, just like iNews880 is doing via your blog post as we speak.   In this case, your audience is not only seeing an internal conflicting discussion regarding the “effective” use of social web tools such as Twitter being evident in your office, we also see the larger issue related to a lack of clarity from an organizational stand point. There doesn’t seem to be unification regarding how social media should support your business model.  Regardless of whether that’s true, the perception is a bit chaotic.

“We are what we share!” Twitter is like a cocktail party, standing in a corner and not talking to anyone would seem odd, possibly rude.

Back to your personal position on Twitter, if you’re not prepared to communicate with the folks throughout the day in 140 character bursts and your employer has no clear direction or internal policy on this activity, then best to avoid crawling into the birdhouse. You are 100% correct that there are elements on Twitter that are not about building rapport and relationships in real-time, one of the coolest things about the Twitter platform, but rather spam related exploitation in one form or another. I support your position that these “micro-tribes” within the Twitter and social media community-at-large are shall we say, less than desirable. Twitter is an acquired taste as far as social media options go and it is a game-changer, not a fad.   Much of our connected society is extremely impatient. Twitter is a real-time “statusphere,” that allows those with narcissistic tendencies to communicate at will about anything and attempt to be first doing it – breaking news!  I admit I operate within that environment too.  Follow me here.  In some cases, those who didn’t have a voice at work suddenly do on Twitter and they can express it “quickly and often.”  That element you seem to grasp well, that’s also why the “statusphere” concept like Twitter and the recently acquired $50 million dollar friendfeed are not “fads” that will go away anytime soon.

Sleep well knowing that at least with respect to Twitter you’ve stopped to look at the business implications (albeit your own) of using the tool first rather than simply trying to look like the one of the cool kids.  Stay strong Chris, good on ya mate!

Also, for those staying in touch on Facebook regarding Edmonton Fringe shows, food, street performers and reviews.  You should be aware of the main Fringe related Facebook group.

We are excited to have performers and Fringers blogging about their experiences at Edmonton’s Fringe Festival.  Much of the daily action regarding social media and specifically blogging activity is happening on ShowYouOurBlog.com.

Many on Twitter are following the Twitter account @EdmontonFringe which notifies everyone of a new blog post on the aforementioned blog, as well as, other interesting Edmonton Fringe tidbits that come along.

Many like watching video and we don’t disappoint.  Here is the ShowYouOurs Youtube channel.   You’ll also be interested to know that we’ll be live streaming a couple of shows from the Edmonton International Fringe Festival this year.  This first of which is tonight at 8:45pm from Venue #1 – Choon-Hyang: True Love The live feed will be broadcast from the ShowYouOurBlog site listed above and the archived content will be posted on this Youtube channel.  The Edmonton International Fringe Festival continues towards breaking new social media ground as this will be our 2nd of 3 live webcasts from the festival.

We have been working with the production staff from Seoul, South Korea and we expect a good turnout online from that Internet savvy country, despite the time zone difference being 16 hours ahead, which in this case works in our favor as it should be early Tuesday afternoon in Seoul.

If our challenge helps one more person, child, family eat- it was WELL WORTH the effort.

Many may have thought that we forgot about this charitable social media project, the Facebook group and flickr groups have seemingly been ignored and it’s all over before it really got started…WRONG!  Our work has been to inspire and organize and then inspire and organize some more. Starting with keeping Edmonton’s Food Bank in the loop, which has led to a discussion at the provincial level with the Alberta Food Bank Network Association, we hope to involve the national and international organizations shortly.

Achieving a “happy mind.”

The fragmented photo group approach wasn’t going to work.  So we found some great and very giving people for the construction of a centralized website to house all the photos.  This is being donated by Victor Rubba and his Crazed Coders of Edmonton.  Victor assures us that the site which is to be located at www.happymind.ca will be fully operational on August 15th, 2009.  We chose “happymind” by the way because it represents two things:  One, the state of mind after donating.  Two, D-DAY or donation day for this challenge will be in support of and coordination with the central message from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who is scheduled to speak in Calgary, Alberta on October 1st, 2009.

We want to get his attention by scheduling this on September 30th, 2009.

SIDEBAR:  I was invited to meet with and speak to the University of Calgary steering committee on the topic of social media at one of their meetings this summer.  This great group of people responsible for inviting the Dalai Lama to speak inspired me to align this challenge with their efforts around actNOW and what we’re doing perfectly supports the message from the Dalai Lama of achieving a “happy mind.”

Trying to collect 1 million photographs representing 1 million donations from people around the world predominantly via social media is a daunting task and one I know we’re all up for.  There have been many social media initiatives for the purposes of charity that have done very well in the past.  Twestival comes to mind, I attended the Edmonton event and that model is brilliant and we’d love to inspire a similar effect in cities around the world.  The 12 for 12K gang continues to do great work each and every day as well.  The real challenge here is to get folks not only to donate food but then take a picture and upload it.  We hope you’ll agree, that in this day and age of uber connected citizens, donating a picture is not too much to ask in order to achieve a “happymind.”

Our plan remains simple.

Go out to the universe and ask for your help.  To support you, we’re working through Rotary International and still need to reach higher within that organization.  Anyone know John Kenny President of Rotary International?  By the way, Rotary has 1.2 million members and great communication channels within their organization, Rotarians are very special people and their help would be spectacular.  We’re also approaching other organizations with considerable size such as the Lutheran Church of Canada and Edmonton’s World Trade Centre organization.  We’ve had numerous discussions with Share Our Strength on their ability to help promote and support this initiative.  They have agreed to promote this to their 40 thousand newsletter subscribers and we are very grateful for that.  Wouldn’t it be fantastic if President Obama, Prime Minister Harper made a donation and posted a twitpic?  They both have twitter accounts, so does Premier Stelmach for that matter.  What about other world leaders?  How about the United Nations?  There are people out there with connections to get folks like this involved.  Please reach out and touch them…

Does anyone know somebody at Feeding America or having anything to do with the Pound for Pound Challenge?  Please contact me at walter[at]fusedlogic.com your help is greatly appreciated.

What about brands?  How can your corporation benefit?  Simple, own this event, put your brand behind it, your marketing message of inspiration.  We want to share this experience with you, it’s about feeding the hungry for us and we know we cannot do it alone.

How can you help?

1.) Donate, take a picture and upload it to www.happymind.ca once it goes live or the facebook, flickr groups already in place today.

2.) Inspire everyone in your personal network to donate food and a picture at work, home, friends and family and the world at large via all means possible on or before September 30th, 2009.

3.) Be creative, persistent and inspirational in your communications regarding this world changing challenge, we won’t stop after September 30th and we must surpass the 1 million photos.  Hold tweetup food drives in your city on September 30th and post the pictures.  Write a song, make a video to inspire others and post it on Youtube, (our channel).

4.) Be an Ambassador!  Get your local organizations like the food bank, Second Harvest, Rotary Club, chamber of commerce, church, mass media, politicians, schools etc involved.  Send them the link to this blog post or others that explain the goal and what to do.

5.) Use Social Media: On Twitter (@fusedlogic) please use the hashtag #happymind, on your blogs please consider posting a “happymind” badge.  Spread the word through Facebook, with well over 200 million people, we can do it folks, take minute to inspire others.

VERY IMPORTANT: Please tag your photo with “HAPPYMIND.”

Jupiter takes a hit (NASA / JPL / IRTF)

At fusedlogic we continually watch, learn and observe trends happening within the social web. Essentially, we’re observing numerous examples of good and bad uses of the social web, while also analyzing new technologies and tactics. One example of this is below. To show our support for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and landing on the Moon, we’ve put together a (not so) short list of sources related to one of our passions internally here at fusedlogic: NASA! This organization is becoming ever more adept at leveraging the social web. From its ever growing use of Twitter starting back in March 2007 and continuing with the Mars Phoenix Twitter account back in December 2008 – famous for tweeting about “ice on Mars,” (here’s a Wired article covering the event) – to today’s fury of events including the fact that “Jupiter” is trending on Twitter today due to a collision with a comet. Jupiter, which is 10 times larger than our planet with atmospheric temperatures -108.15C° and experienced its last asteroid hit in 1994. Interestingly, this recent impact on Jupiter is the size our blue planet, kind of scary if you ask me…

Without further ado:

Information on the Apollo 11 re-creation:

• http://wechoosethemoon.com
• @ap11_Eagle
• @ap11_Capcom
• @ap11_Spacecraft

NASA Multimedia:

Video:

• NASA TV
• NASA Public Channel
• High Quality NASA TV Public Channel *

*We recommend you copy this link into a program like VLC to watch.

Pictures:

• NASA Image Gallery
• Astronomy Pic of the Day

NASA Twitter Accounts:

• Official NASA Account
• NASA Tweetup Account
• Mars Phoenix Lander
• Mars Rovers (Spirit & Oppy)
• Mars Curiosity Rover (Launching 2011)
• Cassini Equinox Mission (to Saturn)
• Kepler Planet Search

STS-127

• Astronaut Mark Polansky

STS-125

• Astronaut Mike Massimino

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

• Official JPL Account
• Earth Vital Signs
• Planet Quest

NASA Hash Tags:

• #NASATweetup
• #NASA
• #STS-127
• #NASAtelevision
• #HST
• #LRO

One of the most technologically capable organizations on our planet is proving that it also understands human beings and human nature.  Specifically, our need to share, communicate and explore things larger than ourselves.  The social web has become a new frontier that NASA has successfully integrated into its daily operations: Twitter in space, cameras that allow us to experience a day in the life of a solid rocket booster and turning astronauts back into the heroes of yesteryear.

Apollo 11 united the planet around a single moment in human history, just like today’s social web is bringing the earth’s population ever closer.  Maybe Neil summed it up best regarding NASA’s use of social media:  “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

What’s your favourite space-related memory (abductions don’t count)?  Let us know in the comments.
If you have any other online NASA assets that you think are cool, please feel free to share them below.

His new book: Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighbourhoods, will be released September 8, 2009, and talks about potential business uses of Twitter.

Walter Schwabe had a chance to chat with Mr Israel and have a few questions about his views on social media answered.  This will be the first interview in a series of them with Shel Israel, so be sure to check back often for the next interview!

Walter: How would you describe to an “outsider” the value of social media?

Shel: Social Media allows you to speak with people all over the world who share your interests. The places where you meet tham may be virtual, but the relationships that form there, the trust that builds there and the influence on what people buy, sell, read, watch, listen to or visit is very real.

You can purchase "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk to Customers" from Amazon.ca

Walter: How would you define “social media expert?”

Shel: I think words like “expert” and “guru” are over-hyped in a field that is this new. When it comes to business, they become marketing gibberish. Social Media has been around for business since 2006. There are no best practices just yet, only good ideas.

I flinch when I’m called an expert. I’m a writer. I’ve talked to a lot of people in a lot of places about how social media is changing their businesses and their worlds in general. I’m a good story teller. But to claim expertise, would assert a level bordering on infallibility. And I am among the most fallible of people.

Walter: How did you manage to write a book and do all the other activities that you do each day?

Shel: Vitamins & coffee.

Walter: How has Twitter impacted relationship building in general?

Shel: Well this week it is allowing everyday people in the West to support and interact with the people on the streets of Iran. In so doing, we are bypassing government processes, many of the barriers of language or geography. We are discovering that we in the West and on the street of Iran both love freedom, for example. I don’t know how it will come out over there, but the relationships between many people over there and many of us in the west will change things in some way that is not yet definable.

That’s in specific. You asked in general. Twitter lets people behave online closer to the way we do in real life than any previous social media tool. For example, have you started more business conversations by saying something like: “Are you going to buy anything,” “You ate in ABC Cafe? I love that place, what did you have for lunch?”

Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighbourhoods" can also be pre-ordered from Amazon.ca

Walter: What is the most offensive thing you’re witnessed on Twitter? The happiest moment?

Shel: Offensive: The Florida-based creep who asks new mothers to send him breast milk. Can’t do “happiest,” but most inspirational was seeing @jkrums iPhone photo of US Air Flight 1549 landing on the Hudson river.

Walter: If you couldn’t use social media anymore ever what would you do?

Shel: I would use whatever came along to replace it.

Walter: Some psychologists suggest Twitter and social media are for people who cannot build “real” relationships, do you agree?

Shel: Pundits have been declaring the dangers of everything new probably since the kids hauled out of the cave using daddy’s newly created stone wheel.

Pundits now have academic titles so they sound like “experts” talking about technology that they do not use and do not understand. In the old days, they had clerical degrees and were called “witch-finders.”

I really appreciated the opportunity to interview Shel Israel.  We quickly recognized that there was simply too much we could talk about and agreed to expand our interview into a series.  We agreed that we’d start with some really basic questions and then progress to a discussion surrounding his work on “global neighbourhoods.”  Look for that coming soon…Walter Schwabe.

Biographical information courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shel_Israel
Picture also courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shel_israel.jpg

Why would anyone put their brand at risk when the common perception by an outsider like Primeau is that the social web is a complete waste of time?  I wish I could say that the majority of people out there understand social media, with the clear exception of Edmonton talk show host Lesley Primeau.  However, if I was to say that I’d be in serious error, (not the first time).  The fact remains that Primeau and those like her are still the majority, although many continue to open their minds to the possibilities.

At the heart of many social media discussions I’ve had with business people is the issue of “self-preservation.”  With that in mind, an interesting example of this took place tonight.  Some of the local Edmonton Twitter community, myself included rallied around and defended our passion for the use of said micro-blogging platform and that of other social media.  Some of this rallying was in direct support of Edmonton’s social media community spokespeople @mastermaq and @britl and the fact that they were put on the defensive by Primeau.  ”Companies don’t pay people to forward their social agenda, you can’t tell me they’re actually working,” said Primeau during a flurry of generally negative opinions regarding the use of social media and Twitter.

It’s pretty clear from my tweets that I didn’t agree with everything Primeau said on the show. In one instance, I also mentioned that I would have preferred that Mack and Brittney respect and reward those who kindly responded to their pleas for online reaction by mentioning said people by Twitter handle.  Kind of a little thing but I just thought that would have been a cool touch.  That’s the great thing about Canada, everyone can have an opinion and social media enables me to express it.  Just a reminder to everyone, including myself – one should always remember that “we are what we share.”

Sharing information and thoughts within the social web can lead to simple cooperation, it can also lead to the organization of individuals into collectives, groups, tribes, communities.  Tonight Primeau united some of the Edmonton Twitter community into a micro-tribe as a direct result of her lack of social media understanding.  This effect can be a positive one and it can also be negative. People online can organize into “mobs” and attack.  I wouldn’t say that happened tonight, however, that certainly happened recently with MLA Doug Elniski.

In fact, some might say this blog post and my opinions expressed on Twitter this evening could be categorized as overtly negative.  Even my friend @gadgetgreg on one occasion calmly asked me to “be nice!” (Sorry Greg, Primeau just got me all riled up.)

My study of the social web over the last five years has taught me several things and one is that there’s almost always someone who’s going to be offended for some reason at some time about some thing.  Some appreciate @mastermaq for his claims that he doesn’t care about other’s opinions regarding what he says online, which tonight oddly enough opened the door to a Primeau comment regarding narcism that was a follow-up to a caller comment regarding the use of Twitter.  When asked by Primeau if he regretted anything he’s said online, he responded. “about the only thing would be spelling mistakes.”

I’ve always said you have to be brave to enter the social web and @mastermaq and @britl are certainly that.  Not only for representing the Edmonton social media community as spokespeople and experts to Primeau’s audience but also for defending the position of all of us who have immersed ourselves into various online communities and eco-systems for business or pleasure.  An activity that Primeau clearly sees little to no value in.

Watch @fusedlogic @paulney and @eadnams on twitter as well for updates.

The folks that attended fusedlogic’s latest event digested something of the social media variety.

Held on Tuesday, June 2 at the World Trade Centre Edmonton in the wee morning hours, Twitter for Breakfast was a micro conference for business professionals looking to learn the basics of the popular social networking site, and specifically how to implement it into their marketing and communication plans.

And of course, thanks to our free wi-fi, Twitter was utilized during the event with live tweeting by the attendees, the fusedlogic team and special guests @carlapr and @difabs. Thanks for coming out, guys!

We were very pleased to have two of our clients in the room. Special thanks to ATB Financial and MacEwan School of Business for coming out.

We also had some other great companies in the room:

City of St. Albert

Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA)

Arrow Engineering Inc.

Pursuit Placement Group

Alberta Blue Cross

Heritage Collaborative

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend! And thanks to the WTC for being so accommodating at such an early hour.

What’s next on the event list? Twitter for Lunch?

Stay tuned! It’s going to be an exciting summer!

Many have walked into the Alberta legislature and stood in awe of the building, the staircases and marble columns. I feel a little sense of majesty every time I go there. However, I must admit, to never having the pleasure of being in the Premier’s office. From the pictures, I think it sends a message of “old world” power and respect.

Interestingly, as soon as, Premier Stelmach’s staff send out a status update on the web, we welcome him and his team into another office of power and respect. The Premier has entered our virtual office within the social web.

Now one might suggest that the playing field is level in that case, but I wouldn’t. Actually, I firmly believe the playing field remains seriously tilted in the citizen’s favor. In recent weeks this “tilt” has applied considerable pressure on the government. Starting 19 days ago with Paula Simons (@Paulatics) of the Edmonton Journal writing a hard-hitting article on the use of a Northumberland, England picture in the Alberta Brand project. That article was referred to by Jeremy Fritsche (@jeremyfritsche) who tweeted the following which alerted the Alberta Twitter community.

jeremyfritsche Authenticity should be the key to a good brand – where is Alberta’s? http://tinyurl.com/c6ery7 #albertabrand #YEG #ABLeg

Of course, applied pressure is not unique to social media. The example above of citizens within mass media exercising their right to “free speech,” has also been a key. The difference here is that the social web amplifies the conversation around each issue. The social web enables many more people to organize, voice their opinion and share it in near real-time.

The Premier, despite having this pressure applied to him and that of his government, has a tremendous opportunity. I believe the majority of hyper-connected Albertans would embrace Premier Stelmach reacting personally online and thereby increasing access. Further value could be generated by directly sharing ideas, building relationships, learning and inspiring Albertans personally with every tweet. The following tweet doesn’t quite qualify in that regard.

@premierstelmach Photos of Premier Stelmach enjoying pulled pork sandwiches on the Leg grounds — http://twurl.nl/v47jwv #ableg

And citizen’s counter the above with Tweets with sentiment similar to below.

dblacombe @premierstelmach does no one monitor this account “Steady Eddie”? You should take a page from @g_campbell who actually speaks here!

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. – Albert Einstein

Prediction: Albertans updating their status online on Twitter and else where will continue to influence public opinion, and ultimately government. Hyper-connected Albertans are learning to inspire action.

Due to this combined pressure from all sides on the government regarding a number of issues, such as the new Alberta Brand and the continued dust raised over Bill 44. Don’t be surprised if there’s a “cabinet shuffle” after the current session ends.

In effect, one might say that with every tweet, the “statusphere” is playing a key role in re-defining Alberta’s authority.

A few days ago I posed a question on Twitter regarding a new application called TweepMe, now widely known as a spammer haven. The answers I was looking for in response to the question focused on the “motivation” behind using TweepMe, and Twitter usage in general. From that I was hoping to draw conclusions as to how that reflected on us as users. The tweeted question is below.

What are your thoughts on “buying” followers? http://www.tweepme.com/

Here’s how the TweepMe site describes its service.

TweepMe is the fastest way to accumulate followers on Twitter. When a new member joins, every other member automatically follows the new member, and the new member follows them back. The process is gradual and happens over the course of weeks or months depending on the number of TweepMe members.

Personally, I’ve always struggled with the concept of “auto-follows and auto-direct-messaging.” Despite being efficient, the struggle for me boils down to “mass-followers but at what cost?” Several questions come to mind in terms of Twitter etiquette. If you follow me and I follow you back, is that enough? If I don’t have time to send a personal direct message “thank-you for following,” would people still prefer an automated pre-fabbed response instead of nothing at all? Not sure about you guys but I’ve never clicked on a link coming in from an automated direct message, not once.

This action says to me: “Hi sucka, thanks for the follow, now go check out my blog and buy my stuff.”

Systems like TweepMe are simply numbers focused and deliberately impersonal, this defeats the purpose and great social upside inherent within social media. In the case of TweepMe, you actually pay for the privilege of being impersonal. Some obviously see the allure to being the largest spam broadcaster on Twitter, I don’t. Clearly, this is a subjective discussion as to what constitutes “value” and how to deliver it to others. Moving forward, here are some of the tweeted responses to my TweepMe question.

• Sirthinks: @fusedlogic followers for the sake of followers. Seems to defeat the whole point SM. Social commentary of like, or intriguing ideas.
  4 days ago from twidroid · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation
• 
  Taite11: @fusedlogic Tweepme seems pretty worthless to me. Everybody on there will soley want to push out their tweets rather than read.
  4 days ago from TwitterFox · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation
• 
  enThrall: Feed your ego with thousands of followers? RT @fusedlogic What are your thoughts on “buying” followers? http://www.tweepme.com/
  4 days ago from web · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  enThrall: @fusedlogic re:tweepme – Depends on why you’re on here. Nice pkg of ppl to discover, lot of crap. Risks big mktg interest, less SM essence.
  4 days ago from web · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation
• 
  eadnams: @fusedlogic only good if you don’t get caught… better question is… what about selling accounts with lots of followers?
  4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet · Show Conversation

Do I promote my company and team on Twitter? Absolutely, I’m proud of my company, we’re doing some awesome work within the social web (admittedly not all of it visible), our clients are very happy and we’re growing. Marketing is a part of the Twitter community, how one does it is the key difference.

I’ve been asked to supply some of my social media principles in the past and so this might be a good time to talk about those related to Twitter.

1. Be respectful of others.
2. Be human, even if you are a news feed. Example – @iNews880
3. Promote the work of others, re-tweet and use the (via @method ) whenever possible.
4. Follow others, don’t be a snob. (exclude spammers and profiles of little redeeming value)
5. Think – Would this tweet make my mom proud?
6. Observe, listen and learn.
7. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
8. Avoid “automated” actions that degrade rapport building whenever possible.

Ultimately, just be yourself – “Tweet YOU Edmonton!”

Now sure, that might mean that you’re a spammer like many on TweepMe or a self-serving one-way broadcasting Twitter snob wasting valuable Twitter server power. Regardless, if that’s who you are, then be proud and be aware of #unfollowfriday or worse yet…

I had a comment on my Facebook last night from a friend who had decided to drop me. Nothing personal, I’ve just been Tweeting way too much from #democampyeg! Last night’s Edmonton Democamp 6 was the last straw.

I’ve recently taken advantage of the ability to have my Tweets directed to my Facebook status. It has been good in that it’s allowed me to update Facebook more easily and often, thought it may be a little too often. I have noticed one or two friends dropping off since I’ve done this.

So, should I disconnect my Twitter feed from updating my Facebook status? I have an idea what some of my Edmonton Twitter friends will say.

Is the only option to disconnect the feed? Well, I looked at several options to cut down on my updates so I don’t upset my Facebook friends.

Cut the Twitter/Facebook link altogether

Upside: keep friends who don’t want to see my face in every one of their Facebook newsfeed stories (not that I blame them) from not wanting to be my friend. Downside: I update Facebook less. This also limits the conversations I’ve been having in Facebook.

Limit Twitter updates that go to Facebook

You might wonder how this can be done, but I have noticed that when you respond to another Twitter user, that doesn’t go to Facebook. Normally I respond a lot to other Twitterers. Social media is about the conversation, after all, which I do plenty of. When I attend an event like Edmonton Democamp 6 and Tweet all about it, most of that stuff goes to my Facebook status.

Friends adjust Facebook updates from me

This is the part that has changed. The original post section is left in italics, so you can see what might work again if Facebook changes their mind. Hey, it can happen. They’ve done it before!

The new option in Facebook is similar, but it seems to be an all or nothing approach. Mouse over an entry on your home tab. You’ll see an X in the upper right hand corner of the entry. Click it and you have the option to no longer see updates from that person. I prefer Facebook’s approach from before. It’s not perfect, but at least you can still see something.

The photos above show the process by which you can hide someone from your news feed. I added Jerry back to my feed. I am just using his feed as an example. It’s fairly straight forward to hide someone from your feed now, but if you’ve made a mistake, you can undo it right away.

Notice you also have an option to show your hidden Facebook friends as well so you can add them back into your news feed. If you scroll to the very bottom of the page you’ll see some text “show hidden posts” and “see hidden friends” just in case you’re not quick enough to catch these boxes as they pop up.

If you have some complaints from Facebook friends, let them know how they can adjust your feed so you can keep them happy.

This can be done. When you’re in your home window in Facebook, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you can find the “Options for newsfeed” link. Click on that and you will notice that you can see “more about these friends” or “less about these friends.” Seems like a good idea, but I would be willing to bet that most people don’t even know that exists. It also relies on people making the adjustment themselves. Not a bad option though. Less experienced users, of which there are many, would probably never figure this out.

If you mouse over a Facebook news feed story you’ll notice a pencil appear in the top right of the story. This gives you the option to see more or less about a person.

Twitter box

It used to be stuck in the Boxes tab along your menu bar, but now you can move it to the Wall tab. The problem is Facebook doesn’t allow it to move above some of your other boxes so people can actually see it. You have to look for it. You may as well not even have it. It also only shows the latest Tweet, so if you had something interesting about 10 Tweets ago, forget it.

Limit Facebook status updates friends see

This one is tougher than you might think. There’s no obvious way to do this. Facebook has so many ways to tweak your settings and they’re all over the page. In fact, on this note, Facebook is a disaster.

What Facebook needs is a way for you to be able to determine how many of your status updates go out. I could make it so certain friends can’t see my updates, but this isn’t ideal either.

I think the ideal solution is to be able to stop your status updates from being published but people can look at your profile to see what you’re up to. So the updates are essentially only being published on my page. This allows me to keep my Twitter link active and post away. Those who are interested will come to my page anyway.

Manage social media updates

This is a bit of a work around, but I thought I could post to ping.fm, which I have set to update my Twitter status, as well as Brightkite and Friendfeed. I could set it to update Facebook and Twitter, but cut the Twitter link to Facebook on the Twitter side. I would have to go in and post the occasional ping.fm update to make sure I’m updating periodically. I don’t use Ping.fm all that often, and it would be a hassle to go out and do it this way, even just to remember to do it.

Why bother?

I know some of you must be wondering, why? I think it’s important to manage your social media relationships just as you’d manage your real life relationships. No doubt there’s much crossover between the two.

I’ve decided to tackle the issue because if there’s one person who says something, you can bet there are a dozen others who aren’t. So, it’s incumbent on me to evaluate and adjust how I do things so I don’t make some people unhappy. I think it’s all part of getting along and I really do appreciate the feedback. If I’m doing something that upsets someone, I want to know. Yes, I know you can’t make everyone happy, but if there’s a minor change I can make to keep someone happy, what’s the big deal?

I’m focusing on personal relationships here, but I do have a lot of business contacts in my social media network too. If it was a client or potential client and you were doing something that upset them, don’t you think you’d want to know?

I would appreciate your suggestions on this. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s run across this issue. We’re breaking new ground on a regular basis with social media, so I think ironing out these kinds of issues to smooth out those relationships is important.

Alain Saffel

In recent weeks the Edmonton twitter community has grown considerably. Why? Well, some members of the local media have decided to fire-up their Twitter accounts and publicize doing so. Even the City of Edmonton has gotten into the act. In fact, Albertans from many walks of life are joining Twitter, including those in political circles, but that’s another whole series of posts.

So, I’ve decided see where the Edmonton Twitter community feels it fits when compared to the generally accepted best practices described in the well-known social media standard Groundswell. You’ll notice that I’ve thrown in a bit of my own interpretation for good measure as well. Figure 3-2 on page 43 of Groundswell shows The Social Technographics ladder. Many members of the Edmonton Twitter community may fall into one or more of the following technographic groups.

Where are you in the Twitter universe?

Joiners - essentially, you’ve joined Twitter because you were encouraged by something you read, watched or a even more likely because you’ve been encouraged by another Albertan to join. You may also belong to at least one social network such as Facebook or Linkedin. In fact, to be considered a real Joiner you’re setting up profiles in several places.

Just for fun I’ve provided a short-list below of new members within the Edmonton Twitter community that may fit into this category based on current level of followers. These folks are at 100 or less followers (this number is a moving target so it’s not exact). There are many new users but these are a few that happened to use the #yeg hashtag at the time I was writing this post.

If you’d like to add your name to this list to increase follows just leave a comment with your twitter profile name and what category you feel you fit into best.

• http://twitter.com/JenCrosby
• http://twitter.com/michaelbridge
• http://twitter.com/jodinechase
• http://twitter.com/Carywill
• http://twitter.com/eglinski
• http://twitter.com/cfsmith
• http://twitter.com/DavidCronin

Spectators - After joining the community, a lot of observing Twitter and its culture takes place. This is of course a natural activity and, not to worry, everyone does this to some extent as this eco-system continues to evolve. We’re all learning…that’s one of my favorite things about social media in general. The opportunities to learn from others are immense and I consider myself to be a life-long learner. Having said that, as a Twitter user, your updates are very low as are your followers – you’re watching quietly.

Through observation and learning, confidence begins to increase and gradually this impacts activity type and volume. Conversations, exchanges of information, direct messages, link posting all increase. The newest members of the Edmonton Twitter community become more involved in terms of the types of Tweets and level of participation. Generally, an increase in tweet volume tends to happen and a need to “break the story” or “RT” (re-Tweet) interesting tweets also starts to take place. Possibly the courage to post links of their own blog posts or the first Twitpics start to appear – personality really starts to shine through.

Critics - As ones’ personality starts to shine more and more within their tweets. I believe a further diversion of grouping starts to happen. Commenting, taking positions on various subject matter that before may have been considered controversial like politics for example starts to happen. The person has much more confidence now and so rating, reviews and criticism tends to happen more. Further, if the person is sarcastic in nature, a skeptic or generally negative this also presents itself.

Collectors - Personality and confidence allows the newest members of Edmonton’s Twitter community who are remaining active to communicate things like hobbies. Music, photography are two top ways people start to demonstrate these traits. Links to other profiles on sites like flickr and Last.fm are used.

Creators - I’ve left this category towards the end because when it comes to Twitter I think that this group is really a catch all in a lot of ways. If you’ve created even one Tweet you could technically be considered a Creator. However, I define Creators in this case to be Twitter users who are active in almost all of the technographic categories in some way, have several profiles, share numerous types of content from video, audio, photos, links, opinions, etc. The most active of all the groups, Creators are separated by the reason they’re there: to build relationships, to build an army, to build credibility, to build intelligence and observe trends.

Autobots - (I’ve invented this last group.) Twitter naturally has this built in ego-meter that is your “followers” total. Some fall into the “I must have a million followers” mentality and I admit I watch my own numbers too. How can you not? Having said that, some go to great lengths to “monetize” their Twitter activity somehow. For example, let’s say you like to sell e-books, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” However, an Autobot would then employ various automated software apps to auto-follow people and almost certainly auto-direct-message (DM) people with their affiliate e-book selling site link. Now just like with Viagra spam, if the 8% of people who got those spam emails didn’t buy Viagra via this method then the spam industry may not exist.

Be wary of those who are strictly focused on just creating a larger number. Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research tweeted this recently:

@jowyang bloggers are arguing about how much 100,000 twitter followers is worth http://tinyurl.com/c3z6nk I say earn trust, not buy it

Walter Schwabe

It’s not ready for public consumption yet, and the iPhone app will be available through iTunes.

The program seems to be an internal social media tool and with project management elements. It will be interesting to see the final product. I think it’s something that could be quite useful for most companies.

Edmonton social media community expanding

We started out our discussion about social media in Edmonton by watching a CTV story about Twitter, with several Edmontonians featuring prominently in the story.

Media interest in Twitter has grown substantially in Alberta, particularly in Edmonton lately. Many media organizations have jumped on board and are now experimenting with the medium.

With this media interest there has been curiosity among its viewers and consumers, and according to Mack Male, the number of Twitter users in Edmonton has grown by 50 per cent over the last month. Nice!

Social media community changing?

Edmonton has a vibrant social media community and we’re quite friendly. There was a question whether this will change as time goes on and the community grows. One thought was that instead of meeting as one large group as often happens, people will begin to gather in smaller groups.

There were some comments about people joining Twitter and billing themselves as social media experts or social media gurus. Typical hype. Kind of hard to bill yourself as a social media expert when you’ve been on Twitter for a week, nobody’s following you and you’ve Tweeted a couple dozen times.

One person who could legitimately bill himself as a social media expert in Alberta is Walter Schwabe (@fusedlogic). There aren’t many in Alberta, but the number is growing across Canada. Mack Male’s another one here in Edmonton.

Mainstream media and social media

My favourite part of the discussion was also one of the more contentious ones. Recently mainstream media organizations have been going through a lot of difficulty due to the recession. There seems to be some glee in social media circles about their difficulties.

Mainstream media in Alberta is beginning to join the social media community, and Edmonton’s media especially. It’s obvious they’re quite new to the medium and are having a few growing pains. Who hasn’t though? I’m willing to give anyone new to Twitter the benefit of the doubt, except for spammers or the instant social media experts.

My only observation is that Alberta media organizations seem to have jumped into the game without much of a social media strategy. I could be wrong. I they think they could use an effective social media strategy to cut their learning curve and increase their social media impact.

Continuing the discussion about social media

We again made our way to Brewster’s Pub in Oliver Square for drinks and discussion. I had reserved for 15 people but we had many more people than that. Not bad for a Monday night!

We were lucky to have Alberta MLA Doug Griffiths join us at Brewster’s. He’s also on Twitter as @GriffMLA. The Alberta government has made a strong push to get involved with social media. It was good to hear Doug’s perspective on it. He said he’s had lots of good feedback on the Alberta government’s social media efforts. On a side note, I thought it was interesting that he was on the CBC show The Week the Women Went.

It’s interesting because there’s been kind of a long running conversation on Twitter about breaking news and the mainstream media. Twitterers have been trumpeting their successes in breaking stories, leaving traditional media flatfooted. Twitter users have also taken some photos that mainstream media could never hope to get on the spot.

Smart phones with digital cameras mean that anyone can break news. It’s impossible for the media to compete with that, and the mainstream media will admit they just can’t break that kind of news as quickly.

The US Airways crash on the Hudson River photo is a classic example of how quick Twitter can be.

That’s fine in our instant gratification culture, but I think there are a lot of people on Twitter who fail to see the benefits of mainstream media. Twitter, in its construct, is limited to 140 characters per message. There’s no depth to it. You may witness a shooting, bombing or accident, but you are an observer, for what it’s worth. You can’t delve much beyond what you’ve witnessed and experienced.

My friend Patrycja Romanowska (@kamazonka) wrote a very good piece on the troubles in mainstream media recently. She pointed out that those in social media who deride mainstream media organizations tend to forget that the news is reported by those media organizations in the first place.

We’re not just referring to a Twitter user witnessing a plane crash, but to reporters sitting in dull city council meetings and reporting on what’s going to happen to your property tax bill next year, or attending a police press conference, etc.

So, if you’re one of the new media people inclined to gloat over the apparent death of mainstream media, keep in mind where you get the news to comment on in the first place.

This is not to say that people on Twitter can’t break news more quickly, but to understand the limitations of the medium. Twitter has as much depth as a mud puddle, but it is miles wide. You can’t beat its reach. If you want to understand what’s happening, you just won’t get it on Twitter. You need to go to print media, online or off, to get that depth.

Edmonton media on Twitter

I think it’s great to see many local media people getting on Twitter to see what it’s all about (Global Edmonton, Edmonton Journal, iNews 880). I’m sure they’ll find ways to leverage Twitter to help get their story out, and good for them. Twitter is excellent for that and I’ve noticed that when people become aware of local media personalities getting online, they get a large following on Twitter fairly quickly.

I find that fact interesting. If the mainstream media is apparently so irrelevant these days, why are so many on Twitter interested in following them and talking to them? It would seem that there’s more interest in mainstream media than you might hear on Twitter.

Not bashing Twitter

Having been a member of the media and a Twitter advocate, I really understand both sides of this issue. I also understand the limitations of mainstream media and the Twitter medium.

I love Twitter and find it to be an extremely useful tool. I know that I can find basic information out quite quickly on Twitter. Twitter excels at quickly pointing you towards important resources on almost any issue you can think of. Newspapers are where I find depth of understanding and can really learn more about all aspects of important issues.

While mainstream media is experiencing a great deal of difficulty lately, I’d attribute those difficulties more to the current economic situation and the reluctance of management to really take the Internet and social media as seriously as they need to. They’ve managed reactively and have jumped online, with the majority of media outlets not having quite figured it out yet.

So let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and understand that Twitter and mainstream media are not a dichotomy. They can and will co-exist. You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and hear on Twitter that every mainstream media organization is now closed and your only source of information is online. I think some Twitterati would like that, but they live in a dream world.

Entering the social media with a strategy

I will be watching Edmonton media Twitterers to see how they use Twitter and experiment with it. Media organizations are smart to get involved in social media, but they should go in with a social media strategy to maximize the benefit they receive from it.

It’s easy for individuals to jump into Twitter and experiment, but large organizations should iron out some details and really understand the medium before they make the foray. It will save them a lot of headaches and make their efforts more effective.

Edmonton Social Web Meetup

At tonight’s Social Web Meetup, Edmonton’s expanding Twitter and social media community will be up for discussion, along with the media’s expanding presence on Twitter in Edmonton.

It should be an interesting discussion and I think it’s something that we could probably devote an entire Social Web Meetup to.

Get signed up on the Social Web Meetup page if you’re interested in going. It’s centrally located at NAIT at 7 p.m. and we head out afterwards to Brewster’s Pub at Oliver Square (104^th Ave and 116 St.).

Alain Saffel

I believe that your perception of a given situation is reality for you. In other words, if you perceive that the government isn’t transparent, then that’s your reality.

Here’s my perception based on what I’ve witnessed after having worked with government and advised government affiliated organizations on social media. Two internal cultural segments exist within government surrounding the discussion about the social web.

I designate those two segments as “the brave and the fearful.” The “brave” are those who read Groundswell and then attend conferences similar to the Advanced Learning Institute’s Social Media for Government event that’s wrapping up in Ottawa.

By the way, should you like to observe the conversation on twitter the hashtag is #ALI. Or, try the conversation by links like this PDF by @mikesgene which shows chatter about the usual suspects such as, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Second Life, wikis…etc. The undertone of these tweets is that many are focused on implementing the technology as soon as possible, which is where many begin their social media learning journey.

Heading home to join the conversation

Excited delegates are now heading back to their respective bureaucratic worlds filled with visions of changing their particular corner of the world by inspiring colleagues to “join the conversation.” Many will suggest starting a blog, creating a wiki, shooting pictures, video and as many that attended #ALI did, they’ll encourage others to quickly join the twitter community as well. A sort of “citizen journalism meets public sector mashup” if you will.

People like @pameladawn state on twitter that she is “taking what I learned at #ALI and heading back to Saskatchewan.” Who am I to argue with that? I think that’s great AND I think Pamela and her colleagues are probably in for a surprise.

Why? Because over the next few days all across Canada, as everyone shows up to their respective government offices, so too will the second segment of government in this discussion: the “fearful.” And thus the uphill battle begins with the non-believer. If there’s one thing that makes people in government and especially decision-makers nervous, it’s citizens with an opinion who know how to voice it by way of the social web.

Resistance to social media

To a certain extent I understand the root of the resistance. Afterall, often political careers and/or elections are built and destroyed based on a few well-timed words in the media that the social web picks up and runs with, here’s a real gem- case in point.

Pamela may experience frustration while some of her colleagues defend their resistance as being prudent, careful or even risk averse. That said, many of these intelligent, hard working folks won’t come right out and call their feelings what they really are, which is “ignorance driving fear.”

Regardless of how you perceive the resistance factor, experience has shown that these “anti-change agents” are a large barrier to progress into the social web. Sure there are pockets across this great country of activity where the planets have aligned and progressive thinking and open creative minds prevail, yes, even in government there are creative minds. I just simply wouldn’t bet my entire business on waiting for, as one twitter user @jdarrah called it “moving the glacier,” to actually happen at the speed of social media business.

Essentially, this is the “newly initiated and willing evangelist” trying to convince the “resistant and fearful” that having a transparent and open dialogue with the average citizen in a highly effective communications environment with little control over the end message is a good thing. That within government, there are better ways to listen, learn, collaborate, communicate and share ideas with constituents.

Social web victory

Is there a way forward for the newly initiated brave? Absolutely! Here’s one example of a brave leader who has looked to tackle a very tough world issue and by being incredibly brave has generated this awesome social web victory via youtube. However, Her Majesty Queen Raina of Jordan, despite having initially built up a tremendous amount of “social capital” with the human web, she too has lost momentum and along with it possibly opportunity to continue to build her quest to the next level. Having said that, I suspect we haven’t heard that last from the Queen on this issue of equality.

What many of the delegates at the #ALI conference will likely communicate on the conference wiki in a few weeks is that beyond the technology. The real work is done on issues like cultural differences and understanding, commitment and sustainability. These are the factors the must be successfully navigated in order to build lasting results.

As brand new twitter user @doctornaud said in their second ever tweet which was directed to me in response to my tweet about the fact that our governments are so far behind. “@fusedlogic I totally agree but we need to start somewhere.” Exactly right doc, exactly right.

When asking the average private citizen about whether they feel their government is transparent, chances are you’ll likely get sneers, chuckles accompanied by looks that communicate – “are you kidding me?” Well, ladies and gentlemen there are definitely elements within government that really do want increased transparency and more open communication. They’re excited to share the new knowledge they’ve just learned and would like to implement social media solutions to accomplish that goal. That to me is highly cool and it needs to be supported.

ChangeCamp Edmonton

Those of you who consider yourself a part of this group are not out in the cold. Consider joining us at ChangeCamp Edmonton. I guarantee this journey will collectively test our will, patience, creativity and bravery. Further, I believe it will be incredibly fun and rewarding as well.

Chances are that many are about to learn what I perceive to be the most important thing about social media, beyond the technology, social media takes serious dedication and a long-term commitment coupled with brave and meaningful human interaction in order to be really successful.

Walter Schwabe

mastermaq @fusedlogic Check it out, you were one of the top 10 referrers to Techvibes last month! http://bit.ly/153SH 28 minutes ago from web

Alain Saffel (@alainsaffel) has been doing such a great job keeping up with our content, so I can focus more on growing fusedlogic within our industry of social media, make sure to give him a shout out when you can.

By the way, I appreciate you supporting the change in fusedlogic voice on our blog, I will commit to blogging more, we’ve just been really busy negotiating on a new office space, (still pending) and many other deals that will grow our company considerably once they’re in place and of course we continue to work hard on current client projects, followed up by having a tea party with my wife, daughter and special guest “Barbie” and I’m actually exhausted at the end of a 12- 14 hr day.

Having said that, this cool bit of information has perked me right up this morning. Thanks Mack and thanks to all the cool guys at techvibes.com for posting that information, you guys do great work.

One final thought: besides a few direct emails and DM’s on twitter, we’d sure appreciate some feedback and comments on the Guy Kawasaki interview pieces. Even if you hate it, please let us know (especially if you hate it). We’re always working hard to be the best we can, in part, your feed back drives that innovation and polish. Thanks in advance for your time and effort on that.

By the way, the Seth Godin interviews are next…

Walter Schwabe

When I sat down to write about Guy, I realized I just didn’t know that much about him; time to do a little research about Guy Kawasaki. The one thing I did know about him was that he was an “evangelist” at Apple; probably one of the first company evangelists out there.

I’m not going to bore you with typical “about” details you can find on his website. Guy, as you know, worked for Apple to evangelize the Macintosh computer. He was there for a few years and helped start up some software companies and ended up back at Apple.

Upon leaving Apple once more, he started up Garage which went through a few incarnations providing services to venture capitalists. He recently sold one venture, Truemors, and is doing quite well with his latest venture, Alltop.

Alltop.com is billed as an online magazine rack that pulls in RSS feeds from blogs and other websites on almost any topic you can think of.

He’s no stranger to controversy, and his latest involves his site Alltop.com, something Michael Arrington at Tech Crunch calls a “big pile of nothing.” For a big pile of nothing, Alltop is doing pretty well, with an Alexa ranking of 88,348. Not too bad for a site that’s been around for less than a year.

Of course not all the comments on Tech Crunch are negative. One commenter pointed readers to a quote from Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, with the quote: “Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement.”

Guy Kawasaki: the interview

guy-kawasaki-interview-pt-1

Click the above link for the MP3 of the interview.

Walter Schwabe, fusedlogic CEO, got on the phone with Guy Kawasaki for a long chat ranging from his latest ventures to social media and how he uses Twitter.

We’ll give you a synopsis of the interview in print and cover the highlights, but you’ll want to download the MP3s for the full conversation. You won’t be disappointed.

truemors.com, how long did you have it? And what was the inspiration for it originally?

Guy had truemors.com for a little more than a year.

“We truly wanted to democratize information.” Instead of wealthy people and religious leaders having had the power to publish in the past (through scribes, printing presses and then desktop publishing), it’s now in the hands of everyone to post anything, spread information, or disinformation.

Truemors is good for people who might like to set up a blog but don’t have the time or capability to do it, but would like to post information.

Sale of truemors

A few weeks before the interview, Guy sold truemors to NowPublic.com and had breakfast with Leonard Brody, owner of NowPublic, a site where people collect and broadcast news.

“Rather than having several hundred reporters, you have tens of thousands of reporters,” Kawasaki said about NowPublic.

I suppose you could call that crowdsourcing?

“Yes, Twitter might be an extreme example of that.”

“I think today, for most events, the first place you would hear about it is Twitter. Even if there are people who are tipsters, who are professional tipsters, and they listen on their scanners to police, and emergency and fire broadcasts right and then they call up the San Jose Mercury and they say I just heard there was an armed robbery at the Ikea [for example] in Palo Alto.”

Guy said newspapers are the next day, online might be a few hours, but someone could be in that Ikea and be on their cell phone immediately on Twitter talking about that armed robbery 30 seconds later.

Walter talked about a similar situation he went through when his wife and daughter were with family visiting Disneyland in the fall and there was a fairly major earthquake in California. He first heard about the earthquake on Twitter and combined listening to CNN with Twitter to try to find out how bad the damage was. The advantage was with Twitter in that he could talk to people who were actually going through it.

About Alltop.com: how is it different than truemors.com?

Guy said he got the idea for Alltop from Popurls.com that had been aggregating the RSS feed from Truemors.

“PopURLs takes about the top 15 or 20 news sites and puts all their feeds together on one page so that you could see the all the news happening from various feeds in one place rather than having to go to 15 individual websites.”

“We noticed that PopURLs was sending us as much traffic as Google. So I got in touch with PopURLs and I said just ‘what’s the story here? How does this work? How can you send us so much traffic?’”

“I got to be friends with him and I said well ‘you’re covering tech and business do you have any intention of covering things like celebrities, fashion, wine, food, cancer, ADHD, autism, sports,’ going down the line, and he said ‘no, I’m just going to stick with tech and business.’”

“So I said ‘alright, so if you’re not going to do it, I’m going to aggregate the news in all those topics’ and so that’s how we started Alltop.”

What’s happening on Alltop and how big will it get?

Guy said they’re adding three to five topics per week and will have a big software change coming up that will allow them to add three to five topics per day.

Initially the topics started out quite broad, like sports.alltop.com but they soon found they needed more specific topics like baseball, cricket, hockey, etc. This will progress to things like newyorkyankees.alltop.com because there are large number of blogs specifically about them.

“It is kind of endless. Someday we’ll be as big as Google maybe.”

Alltop relies on qualities feeds of information.

“I can’t think of a topic where you can’t find 15 or 20 feeds about it. You could take the most esoteric disease that only 5,000 people in the world have and you’ll find 20 feeds or 20 blogs about it.”

Guy hints at how Alltop might change in the future

“At that point we have a different issue. We have a user interface issue because right now you can come to our home page and it’s an alphabetic index. But what happens when we have a thousand topics. You don’t want to be scrolling through all that, so the next version of our homepage you’ll be able to look at things a la index, which is what it is now, or categorized. For example, sports versus arts.”

The third option he’s looking at is a search feature where you’d type in something like “baseball” and you’d see all the different baseball-related categories.

Criticism of Alltop and Guy Kawasaki

Walter recounted some of the criticism of Alltop and Kawasaki that the site is not breaking new technological ground and it’s the same as POPurls.

“In a sense they are correct. This isn’t revolutionary, patent-pending new technology. Anybody can do what we’ve done. All you need to do is set up a little program to aggregate feeds. So there is no proving them wrong in the sense that, you know, it is revolutionary, you are wrong by not calling it not revolutionary.”

“Where we can prove them wrong is they think that it’s not a big deal. I think it is a big deal.”

Guy Kawasaki gives it to Tech Crunch with both barrels

“Now, to be honest, whenever a story breaks in Tech Crunch or in some place like that. No matter what you do, let’s take a far-fetched example. Let’s say that somehow I invent a new kind of battery that will charge in five minutes and will run a Macintosh laptop for 25 hours with absolutely no impact on the environment that can be made for $5 each… and by the way it only ways two ounces.”

“Let’s just say I did that. The comments in Tech Crunch would be ‘I thought of this five years ago. How hard could this be? I could have done this but I didn’t think it was worth doing. The only reason why Guy is in Tech Crunch is because he’s Guy; it’s not because this is revolutionary.’ And so that’s the nature of Tech Crunch.”

“It’s a bunch of angry little people living at home with their mothers who have never even French-kissed. Nothing you could do would impress the Tech Crunch crowd because, according to them, everything is easy, they’ve already done it, they thought of it ten years ago and it’s no big deal.”

“So the bottom line with that is that you just have to ignore those comments.”

“If there were a Tech Crunch the day that Google was announced, people would have said ‘there’s already ten search engines, I thought of doing a search engine by counting the number of links to a site and prioritizing results that way, there is no business model for this and the only reason why it’s in Tech Crunch is because it’s coming out of Stanford.’ Right? That’s what they would have said about Google.’”

“The bottom line lesson is: we need to ignore the bozos in the world.”

Part 2 of Guy Kawasaki interview

In the next installment of our interview with Guy Kawasaki you’ll hear Guy talk about Twitter and how he leverages it, blogging CEOs, who should be Twittering at your company and how you can be successful on Twitter.

Alain Saffel – any questions? alain@fusedlogic.com

I’ve done these kinds of long interviews before when I worked as a journalist, and normally the majority is never used in an article.

Considering this is site is far different than a newspaper, it brings up some possibilities. Should I:

1. Put up the audio & a transcript
2. Put up the audio & an article
3. Put up audio, article & transcript
4. Transcript & article only
5. Article only
6. Transcript only
7. Audio only

What would you prefer? I think it’s a really interesting bit of audio. Is it really worth putting up a transcript? It’s a heck of a lot of work, not that this is the issue, but if nobody would read it, what’s the point?

Given my journalistic background, of course I have a preference for articles. They’re more compact and get to the point.

So, I’m in the middle of editing the article and listening to the audio to see what hidden gems there may be in that Guy Kawasaki interview. It’s quite an interesting conversation that Walter and Guy are having.

Let me know what you’d prefer.

Alain Saffel

With a smaller group and a few new faces to the group, we engaged in a discussion about the social media people are using, the tools they use to augment their social media experience and some of the issues surrounding social media. The discussion this time was led by Mastermaq.

Of course Twitter was the main topic of discussion, as it usually is. Everyone at the Social Web Meetup was on Twitter. Normally I’d be tweeting about the discussion, but because it was such an active discussion, I wanted to make sure I caught all of it. Do you prefer to actively tweet what you’re hearing or to listen, reflect and respond or tweet?

Peoplebrowsr was recommended as a good tool to be able to track multiple Twitter streams.

How do you use Facebook?

I thought one of the more interesting discussions was about Facebook and how people use it. Some people have a real issue with having an open profile, with worries of identity theft or at the very least doing some data mining. Having pictures of relatives, particularly children, was an issue with one of the meeting attendees. Do you keep your profile open and add everyone?

My profile is limited to friends and family, but I do have some business contacts on there. One of the meeting’s more active Facebook users said he had thousands of friends on there!

Some of the other social media tools we talked about: LinkedIn, ping.fm and friendfeed. Randy Troppmann from runningmap.com was there and talked a bit more about his site.

Free versus paid social media tools: how much would you pay?

One question I brought up was: At what dollar amount are you willing to go beyond the free account and into a paid account?

Most people said it really depends. I was thinking of my recent purchase of a pro account on Flickr, which is $25. One other person said $25 as well. Would you be willing to pay $25 per year for Twitter? I’d be willing to pay more, but I know a lot of people wouldn’t be willing to pay anything.

It’s actually quite an important question because the majority of social media tools out there are free and many people stick to the free ones. As the economic downturn continues, more and more companies are likely to ask themselves that same question about how much the market will bear in terms of subscription fees or ads. Their will likely depend on finding that balance.

Our next Social Web Meetup is February 2 at NAIT. There’s plenty of room, but make sure to join the group and RSVP. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are with social media. The point of the group is to share. I am a fairly experienced social media user and I learned a lot at this Meetup. I’m looking forward to the next one and hope to see you there too.

Alain Saffel

Or does the fact that during CBC’s Canada Votes! election broadcast, Susan Ormiston attempted to look like she actually “gets” Twitter while trying to pull off her best “I-wanna-be-hip-like-John King on CNN” impression by informing the future leader of the Liberal party – the ever unbiased Peter Mansbridge-that there’s this thing called the Internet (Peter, see Bill Curtis ref below) and something called Twitter while finger-scribbling on a SMART board.

I would have almost believed Ormiston if she hadn’t delivered her segment with all the micro-blogging savvy of someone who was briefed about Twitter while getting her make-up done just before going in front of the camera that night.

Thankfully much of her audience not on Twitter were probably blissfully unaware.  That’s partly for the reason Twitter is not yet “mainstream,” at least from the Canadian perspective.

Does the fact that the mainstream broadcast media is grappling with micro-blogging and Twitter on television broadcasts mean we can all exclaim Twitter as “mainstream?” No, not yet.

How about if the Wall Street Journal writes an article about Twitter as it did today?  A helpful explanation of Twitter (and how some are using it) for the beginner and the more savvy Twitterati to be sure.  Does the fact that WSJ (just another “broadcaster” on Twitter) in terms of it’s use as a tool like many pro-journalists mean that Twitter is finally becoming “mainstream” when WSJ starts conversing with others rather than simply pushing updates?

Well maybe. . .

In fact, WSJ only needs to follow and learn from Tannette Johnson-Elie (@telie) of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who uses Twitter very effectively as an unpaid crowd-sourcing tool for stories and sources -myself being one of those sources.  She not only updates us on what she’s writing about, but she actually talks with us as if we were…well…”human beings,” just like she is.  I suspect many other journalists/broadcasters such as Sanchez and Lemon on Twitter do the same but that still doesn’t mean Twitter is “mainstream.”

Having said all of that, there are certainly signs that we’re at the “tipping-point” for the label to be more realistic.  Why?  Well for one, many high-profile users are “tweeting.”  Barack Obama’s campaign for President of the United States is using Twitter very effectively for their purposes (107K+ followers); Joe Biden has 2600+ followers; McCain, of course, needs Bill Curtis to find the Internet for him, and because of that, McCain has 4174 followers.  Sarah Palin has just over 1000.

Actually, the “tipping-point” is fast approaching really because of the collective combination of all of the above.  With these high-profile users comes a large communal following. Obviously that certainly helps to spread the word about Twitter into the “mainstream” of society.  So, we’re getting there, but we’re not there yet.

No, for me, the litmus test for when I’ll start calling Twitter “mainstream” is when the Republican party and McCain campaign shows a Youtube video of McCain himself using Twitter remotely (a laptop is fine) which is then followed up by a Ross Perot-like SMART board explanation of the micro-blogging technology and culture-at-large that makes John King red with envy.

When that happens “my friends,” then I think it’ll be safe to say Twitter is not only “mainstream,” but more likely just about to be “mothballed.”  Not to mention that by that time, Biz Stone and crew will have figured out how to make a buck on Twitter without it caving and everyone jumping ship to Identi for good…

Actually come to think of it, Twitter is perfect for the McCain/Palin ticket.  McCain can sum up his entire campaign platform like this “My friends, Maverick, Iraq war, Barracuda, drill baby drill,” and still have 81 characters left of the 140 to talk about his economic plan or “pork-barrel spending.”

In the spirit of sharing some business news during Small Business Week (and condensing posts because I’m so busy lately,) here’s some interesting new information for you.  Some of you may remember a video I shot earlier this year with Peter Urban of Smibs (featured below.)  At the time, SmibsNet (a collaboration and networking software for businesses) wasn’t ready for public beta.   That all changed last Tuesday with the launch of the public beta and Peter asked me while on Twitter the other day if I’d blog about it.  Peter provided me with a personal invite to sign-up for the beta and fusedlogic is now listed on the site.  This software is very cool and helps to solve the business development collaboration issue that many companies have.  I suggest that you consider signing up and trying it out.

Sidenote: Peter did agree to call me so I could asked him some specific questions as prep for a more in- depth blog post but if you know Peter, he’s hard working and a beta takes a lot of effort.  I’m sure he wasn’t going out of his way to ignore me.   Besides we bump into each other all the time at events and around the neighborhood.  Maybe he’ll bring his SmibsTV crew down the Web 2.0 meetup and present SmibsNet there on Nov 6th.   Below is the video interview with Peter some months ago on Whyte Ave in Edmonton.

Also, Peter if you’re reading this and I know you are, Smibs needs to be a Sherwood Park Chamber member right away…expect me to be relentless on this point.

I wanted my next effort to have a key interview or two, providing you the audience with a nice change from my usual self-indulgent approach.  After some thought (environmentalists will be happy to know that no smoke appeared during my thought process), I wanted to reach out to some serious blogging enthusiasts.  One of those picked was Chris Pirillo, the self-proclaimed “geek” behind Gnomedex – a blogging conference to see if he’d be willing to answer a few questions for my article.  Chris replied, “What questions?”  I emailed six questions to him, and they must have offended him as I’m still waiting for a response.  Most likely, though, he’s just very busy.

Having said that, I’m under a deadline, and Barb the editor would have had my guts for garters if I didn’t get a move on.  So as I usually do in these situations, I picked more than one interviewee to touch base with for just such a time-crunch occasion.  So who’s the lucky duck?  None other than Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt of Horsepigcow.com fame.  Given that she’s in Lisbon at the moment, we opted for an email exchange to save on the cell bill and Skype break-up.  Below is a short excerpt from our email chat.

W: Do you think micro-blogging, in this case, Twitter with it’s growing notoriety is reducing the overall relevancy of the personal blog?

TH: I don’t know if relevancy will be reduced, but, in my case anyway, frequency is reduced. I know a large number of bloggers who post less because they are able to share their ideas quickly and succinctly on Twitter. However, once I’ve had a rigorous conversation on Twitter and ideas come together more coherently, I put them into a blog post. I no longer meander around ideas on my blog. I meander around ideas on Twitter, then post more solid content to my blog. So, in the end, the relevancy is actually increased on my blog because every time I post, it’s been thought out more than it used to be.

W: What are you doing in Lisbon at the moment? Business, a conference?

TH: I’m speaking at SHiFT08: It’s awesome because now that I’ve been on the speaking circuit for 2.5 years, I know many of the other speakers. Brilliant folks. It’s amazing how our ideas start to flow together, too.

The rest of my interview with Miss Rogue will appear in next month’s Edmontonians Magazine edition. I’d like to thank Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt for her time and responding so promptly from the road during an international event where she’s presenting. A true pro.

Here’s the Tweet:fusedlogic #yeg Amber Alert Call 780-423-4567 . 7 yr girl, peach dress/flowers. 20-30 yr old balding blond male. Blue SUV AB license ending in 179 about 3 hours ago from TwitterFox

This information was passed along by others who follow me on Twitter such as @Zoomjer.  Also, @ChrisLaBossiere provided this information from the Calgary Sun while retweeting elements of the info above.

However, I believe the perpetrator heard the Amber Alert because he left the little girl in Evansburg, Alberta, a town 100km west of Edmonton.  Thank goodness she’ll be alright!  Now we all have to turn our attention to finding the scumbag who took the little girl.  In this case, the Amber Alert probably applied enough pressure on this coward, low-life, child molesting psychopath by providing everyone listening with a good vehicle and physical description.

Time and time again I’m living through instances where Twitter is used as a communications tool to reach people in a time of need.  If you passed on this information today while on Twitter, cheers to you and well done.

WARNING:  There are a few instances of swearing and use of the “F” word in this video, so if that offends you DON’T WATCH.   Oh and thanks to @creativesage on Twitter for bringing this video to my attention.

Here’s a list of where you can find me in order of who asked first.

“The Art of Marketing without Marketing” – Propel Magazine, shipped today and hits the stands this month and I’ve been asked by David Cree (Publisher) to write for the next issue which is really great.

“Understanding Social Media” – Troy Media Corporation, a series that will deliver interviews with Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Chris Heuer, more here.

“Social Media 101” – Monthly column with the Edmontonians Magazine.

All of the above opportunities were a direct result of social media working in fusedlogic’s favor.  Whether it was the topic itself or through a series of events online that led back to myself and my company, social media came through and continues to do so everyday.  Another example of this is how Twitter has led to my being interviewed for a facebook centric article written by Tannette Johnson-Elie, (@telie on Twitter) a journalist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the articles…are they interesting?  I was asked to provide some high-level perspectives and will definitely delve deeper in upcoming articles.