It’s all about data, about collecting, refining and interpreting it. People are, well, we’re all a bunch of fish in a bowl. Or, if you prefer, hamsters on a wheel. We are lab rats, we are subjects, we are collections of bit streams. We are … information.

And the kicker is that, put together enough things about us, and conclusions can suddenly be drawn.

Let’s say I go to the same grocery store every week (not a stretch — I really do). And I buy fish every single week. What if I buy, say, tuna steaks 70% of the time, and swordfish the other 30%? Am I automatically a tuna lover? Or am I simply scared to try something new? Or am I getting to the fishmonger when everything else is sold out?

What happens if a coupon is introduced into the mix? Does my tuna consumption go up to 80% if you give me $1 off per pound? That’s not too much of a victory, seeing as I normally buy it anyway. Will a $1 off coupon entice me to buy more pricey salmon instead?

The data gives its interpreters (Baker refers to them as the Numerati, which sounds a tad like Illuminati and perhaps is intended to) ideas but it’s not really a slam-dunk. Or, at least, not yet. Essentially what the Numerati do is, they bucket you. So I am a tuna buyer. And I am a sometime swordfish buyer. I am also a Caucasian woman, in her (ahem) forties, married, no children, living in Boston.

So far, so good. And when the data are all herded together, when the bits and bytes of our lives are aggregated, this may very well have a lot to say about us. It might be a predictor of how I’ll vote in the next election. Or perhaps it will show how I’d use a dating site if I should ever need one in the future. Or it may even tell whether I’m likely to become a terrorist.

The data matters, but, to my mind (and to Baker’s as well, it seems), there are not only herds of data but there are also nagging outlyers, the Border Collies amidst all the data goats. Perhaps I am buying tuna to feed to a cat. Or maybe I buy it with the intention of eating it to improve my health but, alas, never get to it and it goes to waste every single week.

Consider this case: a sensor is placed into a senior citizen’s bed, to determine whether that person is getting up in the morning. And, let’s say that weight data is also being collected, as a sudden dramatic rise in weight would indicate the possible onset of congestive heart failure. And let’s say the senior in question is a woman who weighs 150 pounds. Your own mother, maybe. Day one: 150 pounds. Day two: 158 pounds. Day three: 346 pounds. Day four: 410 pounds. Golly, is Mom really that sick?

Maybe Mom’s dog is 8 pounds. Okay, that explains day two. But what about days three and four? Maybe Mom’s got a boyfriend.

Maybe she’s got two.

When I had the occasion to meet Stephen Baker, we had the opportunity to talk a bit about these squishy, messy feelings. Sure, our hearts are in the right place. We want Mom to be safe and healthy, and we can’t be there. She might live in a warmer climate, and we cannot (or won’t) leave our cooler climes. Or the job opportunities may be no good there for us. For whatever reason, we are here and she is there. So we want to be aware, and caring and all, but in our desire to gather information and protect her, what else are we learning?

If Mom is competent, and single, and protecting herself from STDs, we truly have no business knowing who she spends her evening hours with. Yet this technology makes this possible.

And if we have any sense of the future at all, we have to think to ourselves: what happens when I become Mom’s age, and my bedroom and toileting habits potentially become a part of this huge bit/byte hamster wheel lab rat canary in a coal mine data stream?

It is often said that only people who have something to worry about in their private lives are the ones who are worried. Everyone else should be fine, blithely giving up their warts and preferences, their virtues and secrets, to all who ask.

I say bull. I like my secrets. I like my hidden life. And I’ll be damned if I give it up, even in the name of health, diet, voting, national security or even love.

A terrific read. I highly recommend this book.

PHP Freelancer

The Numerati by Stephen Baker, a Book Review is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

A Division

There are many folks who separate the two, and may even do so successfully. Online friends are online. Offline friends are off, although emails are exchanged, and there may be a Facebook friendship there or an exchange of tweets. But that’s it, right?

But then there’s the moment when a Facebook friend introduces you to another, and it’s for some purpose or another, such as playing Scrabble. Or a LinkedIn connection who you’ve never actually seen – just some networking friend of a friend – suggests coffee.

A Collision

And suddenly the worlds begin to collide.

Who’s online? Who’s off? Does it matter? Should they be separate? Were they ever?

A Confrontation in a Dark Alley

And what about trolls? What are the differences between their online and offline personae? The person who is nasty to you online, do they really behave that way face to face? I’ve got my doubts, but hey, you never know. Maybe they really do have a misshapen nose, from all of the times its been broken by someone they’ve insulted.

A Hug in Person

But most of the time, there is little difference between the online and the offline world. At least, that’s been my observation, when I have met people and have had occasion to hug them in person. Sure, online we have some time to reflect on what we’re going to say. And we can ignore and unfriend and step away from the keyboard. Real life, offline, doesn’t really work that way. But a lot really is similar, and I can attest that it’s a blast to meet people who you’ve never seen before. I have honestly never had a bad experience.

Normal precautions, of course, should be taken. Don’t meet in some unknown, private place. Don’t leave without someone knowing where you’re going. Get information as you can before departing. Don’t be stupid.

But go out and meet ‘em. Meetings, gatherings, conventions, whatever you want to call them, they bring online people even closer. It’s a lot harder to flame someone if you know them.

Oh, and I can practically guarantee – once you’ve heard someone speak, you’ll hear their posts in their voice from then on.

PHP Freelancer

More Than This is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

I was uninspired, and didn’t want to just subject all two of my readers to my ramblings. Plus, I was looking for an actual day job.

Well, I found one. It’s a temping gig for a large financial services company which shall remain nameless. I am a Financial Analyst, preparing and running database reports. The job is rather similar to several other gigs I’ve held. And then I will be back in Social Media full time.

In the meantime, the Bot Boys are not forgotten, and I actually blog more for them that I had been. The need for Social Media exposure does not diminish just because I’ve got a new gig.

But I wanted to reach out, on this blog, for the first time in quite a while, to offer up some of the things I’ve learned along the way. So gather ’round, and hopefully I can help someone else to navigate the wild world of startups.

1. The best gift that anyone can offer startups is money. Advice and expertise are great, and they are helpful, but it all pales in the face of do-re-mi. And while startup competitions may not want (or, truly, be able) to part with too much of it, it is money that is most needed because, to truly succeed, someone has to quit their day job. You know, the thing I just got a few weeks ago? Yeah. Someone has to take a flying leap into outer space – but that person still needs to be able to afford ramen and a futon.
2. Speaking of ramen and futons, the startup game is, often, played by the young. This is not to say that those of us who were born during the Kennedy Administration have naught to offer. Rather, it is that we have mortgages. We may have children. We have lives that often require more than minimal Connector-style health insurance. We may have aging parents, credit card debt or any number of things that make living off ramen, on a futon, nigh impossible.
3. However, this does not mean that the not-so-young do not have a place in the land of startups. But that place is often a different one. The enthusiastic feel of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney (now I’m really dating myself) yelling, “Hey, kids! Let’s put on a show! We can get the barn!” is replaced with “Let’s see if we can get this thing to work before defaulting on the mortgage/Junior needs braces/gall bladder surgery is required/etc.” Our needs are different, and we may be more patient with setbacks. This does not necessarily spell being less hungry but, perhaps, less able to truly go for broke. The not-so-young person’s role in a startup is often more advisory. We are the ones who can’t quit day jobs until the salaries are decent. And that day may never come.
4. Startup events are best when they have a focus. Mass Innovation Nights, I feel, is something of a Gold Standard. There is a coherent beginning, middle and end to each event. It’s not just a lot of business card trading. The participants and the audience get good conversational hooks. Making contacts is vital – I hooked up with the Bot Boys at an event like that – but it can’t just be “Hey, let’s get a bunch of startups together, eat pizza and trade business cards!” The startups that are succeeding are too busy for such activities. And those that aren’t ….
5. Cloud computing, apps and software companies are everywhere in the startup space. With the Bot Boys, we can stand out a bit as we are a hardware company. Having a product that people can see and feel is valuable amidst a sea of virtual stuff.
6. The downside to that is that hardware companies have spinup problems that cloud computing companies just don’t have – app companies do not have to worry about shipping and packaging. They do not have to perform quality control checks on shipments. They do not have to work on product safety.
7. No one wants to talk to the job seeker, but everyone wants to talk to the entrepreneur – and those are often the same person! Human nature is a bit odd in this area, but I have seen people who are barely past the “I’ve got this great idea I’ve sketched on the back of a napkin” stage where there is a flock of interested people swarming around, whereas a person honest about looking for work is often overlooked.
8. Charisma counts. While one founder is going to be the inventor or the developer (the idea person), the other pretty much must be the socializer. Otherwise, even the best ideas are all too often buried. Someone must be willing and able to do public speaking, elevator pitching and sales. This need not be an experienced sales person, but that person has got to be a lot friendlier and a lot more fearless than most.
9. Most startups and most entrepreneur groupings will fail, morph, coalesce or break apart before succeeding. And perhaps that is as it should be, for being nimble is one of the characteristics of a successful startup. If the product sells when it’s colored blue, but not when it’s colored green, dip it in dye, fer chrissakes!
10. We all work for startups, or former startups. Even the large financial services firm was, once, a gleam in someone’s eye. Every invention started off as an idea. Even day jobs were, at one time, in places where the founders were living off that generation’s equivalent of ramen and sleeping in that era’s analogue to a futon. Yet somehow, against the odds, they made it.

And a lot of today’s startups can, too.

See you ’round the scene.

PHP Freelancer

They used to call me Robot Girl is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

1. Post as fast as you can and don’t think about it. Anything worth doing, is worth doing fast.
2. When you’re being attacked, never step away from the keyboard. The way you feel about people online is never related to the offline world. It’s only caused by online events.
3. Be vague with your words. Anyone who cannot figure out what you really mean is an idiot, and you should tell them that.
4. Everyone should/must get you, even the aforementioned idiots. What you have to say is perfectly wonderful for every audience and needs no tailoring.
5. Be First and Best, every single time. Why let anyone else be happy? They’re a bunch of idiots anyway.
6. Always get in the last word, even if you have to do that over and over again while someone else tries to do the exact same thing. That person is an idiot. You, of course, are not. Never!
7. Call people by names, because there’s nothing that says maturity like using a taunt from second grade or a word that trips the profanity filter.
8. Discuss as many controversial topics as you like, and don’t expect hard feelings. If people become defensive, their skins are too thin for them to be online in the first place. Have at them.
9. Never stop, and never surrender, and never ignore anyone. All comers deserve your pearls of wisdom, 24/7! Even months later, when the other person has clearly gone off to do something else, go back and pick at that scab some more.

I hope you let me know if you’re going to do any of these, so that I can find a way to cross the street and walk in the other direction when I see you online. ‘Course, that probably just makes me an idiot.

PHP Freelancer

Community Management – How to be a Terrible Netizen is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

1. There are few emergencies online. Take your time. I have found, if I am in a hot hurry to respond, itching to answer, it usually means I am getting obsessive.
2. When it’s really nutty, step away from the keyboard. I suppose this is a corollary to the first one. I pull back when it gets too crazy-making, or try to figure out what else may be bothering me, e. g. I haven’t worked out yet, something at home is annoying me, etc. Being online, and being annoyed, does not equal that something online is causing the annoyance.
3. All we have are words (emoticons do nearly nothing). I like to make my words count, and actually mean exactly, 100%, what I write, but not everyone hits that degree of precision in their communications. I’ve learned to cut about a 10% degree of slack.
4. Not everyone gets you. You might be hysterically funny in person, but bomb online. You might feel you’re a gifted writer, but you’re writing to the wrong audience. You may be hip for your crowd, but hopelessly out of it in another. This is not, really, a personal thing. You can either waste your time trying to get everyone to love you or you can recognize that you didn’t convert one person and move on from there. Choose the latter; it’ll save your sanity every time.
5. Be Zen. E. g. I’ve found the old, “oh, you go first” kind of thing smooths the way a lot. I am not saying to not have your say and let everyone else win all the time. It’s just, ya kinda pick the hill you wanna die on, e. g. what’s really important. Stick to those guns. The others, not so much. E. g. getting into a shouting match and being kicked off a site due to your hatred of the Designated Hitter Rule — even on a sports or baseball site — is in the category of you’re probably overreacting and being really, really silly. I doubt that that is a hill most people would try want to die on. But defending your beliefs, fighting prejudice, etc.? Those are probably better hills.
6. And the corollary to #5: controversial topics are controversial for a reason. They get under people’s skin and make them squirm. And it’s not nice to do that all the time. So try to engage people in other ways. There are plenty of people on Able2know who argue a lot about politics. I am not a fan of arguing politics. But we also get together and play Fantasy Baseball (talk about your Designated Hitter Rule). Or we swap recipes, or pet stories, or the like. And then, when a forum member is sick or becomes bereaved, people who were just arguing ’til they were blue in the face virtually hug and offer tributes, prayers (or positive, healing thoughts) and words of comfort. This user multidimensionality is wonderful to see. Over the years, people have gotten better at it. If someone’s really bothering you, it’s possible that, in other contexts, you’d get along. You might want to see if you can find some common ground, and other contexts.
7. Know when to stop, or even let others have the last word. When I am really angry, I usually just withdraw. This isn’t a surrender. It’s just, I’m tired and life’s too short. You are not a smaller, or less worthwhile person, and you haven’t lost (whatever that really means) if you walk away and wash your hands of things. You are entitled to call it quits on an argument or discussion.

I hope you learn from my insanity and my mistakes. Life’s too short to let it get to you too much!

PHP Freelancer

Community Management – Handling Yourself as a Good Netizen is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

In the original article, the author talks about, essentially, how to tell whether a Twitter feed is being handled professionally, or not. Here are their “5 Points to consider before hiring a service to manage your Twitter account.”

1. Before you even look at the different tools for measuring a Tweeter’s level of influence (which can be misleading and in some cases manipulated) you firstly need to check the individual’s own Twitter stream.

• What type of language are they using? – agreed. Branding involves, among other things, speeaking the language of your customers. Are you a hip hop record label? A travel agency catering to retirees? A diamond jeweler? All of these businesses are going to have different customer demographics. There is no “one size fits all” here. I am not saying that people cannot adapt to communicate properly with everyone they do business with (after all, you need not hire a child to market to children), but the Social Media Specialist needs to get the message across so that the target readership is receptive.
• Are they SPAMMING their own followers by sending lazy Tweets for example? #FF @Tweeter1 @Tweeter2 etc. – I’m not so sure I call this spamming. I think, at times, it’s useful to do this. But overdoing it (and you’ll know it’s overkill if tweets like this – or quickie retweets – dominate the stream) is definitely not a good way to do business.
• How are they using their own account, is it professional or sloppy? Are they Tweeting late into the night and have no professional boundaries. They are over mixing professional with personal Tweets. – agreed. And with useful tools such as Social Oomph, tweets can be scheduled. There’s no excuse for late night tweeting, and no need for it. If the stream is meant to engage internationally, it might be a good idea to split it up into more than one account, so that one stream is for North America and another for Asia.
• Are their own Tweets all over the place so you are not able to pick up a clear message. – this is a good point, and not just when it comes to Twitter. A clear message is key – for the Robotics company where I work, the message is about sales, it’s about education and it’s about robots. NASA, for example, is only mentioned in the context of robotics, not in the context of space launches. There’s a lot of information out there. Consider it to be a bit like a garden – usually it needs weeding and thinning, as opposed to fertilizing.
• Are they acknowledging where they are taking their material from or just duplicating what they see their competitors doing? – ah, this is big. It’s why the original source for this article is listed. And it is a big part of how the ‘net works, or at least is supposed to. You post a blog entry. A competitor sees it. If they riff on it and post it and give you a linkback. that’s good for you. And you thank them and do the same in reverse and yeah, they’re still a competitor, but you’ve got common ground and there are areas where you can cooperate. Or they don’t acknowledge you, and everybody digs their heels in and the world becomes a slightly more miserable place. Hey, you make the call, but I prefer cooperation pretty much every time, myself.
• Do their Tweets make any sense to you or are they just full of self promotion they hold no real value other than grooming their own ego. – true, but I think sometimes this can come from Social Media marketing folk not being properly trained. If the marketing manager is unsure of how much promotion should be mixed in with information, the marketer might be similarly confused.
• How much negativity comes across in their stream – not everything is or should be positive, but I do get this. The idea is, well, are you promoting to people who want to buy your company’s organic brownie mix, or are you just going to sound petulant and whiny? There is, though, I feel, a way to be too perky. But I think if there are errors in this area, they should probably fall on the side of more, rather than less, perk.

2. Ask to be given the name of one of the business accounts they are managing, go through this with a fine tooth comb. Keep an active eye on the account and monitor how they are managing the business’ online profile.

• How many Tweets are there and what type are they sending? – it’s a quantity and a quality game on Twitter. You need to get across some seven views before people start to consider buying. And consider Twitter’s international, 24/7 appeal – people may be checking at 4 AM. This, by the way, goes against an earlier statement about the marketer not tweeting into the wee hours. No, they shouldn’t – but unfortunately, sometimes, that’s when the readers are online. After all, if you’re tweeting for people playing World of Warcraft, they’ll be on at 4 AM. As for quality, that goes along with the above statements as well – are the tweets worthwhile, or are they dull self-promotion?
• How are they engaging with the client’s audience? – some of this is in the form of retweeting. I think that retweeting and replying have a place, as it is a give and take type of engagement, so long as the retweeting and replying don’t crowd out the original content.
• How is the call-to-action placed and worded? – this is fairly self-explanatory. There is a difference between what looks like a hard sell, and what has more of a friendly “Hey, check this out” vibe. Does the marketer know the difference?
• Are the articles relevant to the client’s industry and audience? – this harkens back to my NASA example above. Content is necessary, of course, but irrelevant content is worse than no content at all. Better that the marketer pump out less content if it’s not relevant, yes?
• Are they adding any value? – the $64,000 question! Can you tell without having access to measurement tools?

3. Ask for a number of references and call them.

• How has the business level of influence grown? For sure if they cannot achieve this for themselves, they are not going to be able to do it for the client. – try objective measurements if you can get them, like Google page rank, bounce rate, etc.
• What have been the benefits? – only your industry will have the specifics for this. Increased sales may or may not be the actual benefit. After all, sometimes social media is used for damage control. If that can be performed more efficiently and inexpensively – that might be the benefit.
• What difference has it made to your online brand? – again, this is a specific question.
• How good is the level of communication? – hard to say what this means without context. After all, the car dealer and the online cancer support group are going to have different needs in this area.
• What results has the business seen? – again, objective measurements are best, whatever you can get.

4. Ask what Twitter measuring tools are they using to provide their clients with monthly reports.

• While there are some good free tools around they do not come close to paid analytical tools for managing Twitter accounts. – agreed, but sometimes that’s how things go, particularly if the Tweeter has been working for startups or nonprofits.
• Ask what recommendations they have made to the client that have enabled the business to grow based on the findings. – these should be in whatever reports the Tweeter provides.

5. Ask how much time they intend to spend on your account over the week.

• How will this time be managed with all their other projects? – this is a good question for any sort of a freelance or offsite working relationship.
• What elements of account management does this breakdown in to? – again, this is not confined to social media; it’s a good question for any potential employee who’ll be working remotely, or not exclusively with you.
• How will they keep you informed and up to date with relevant Tweets and conversations? – reports? Emails? What is manageable and relevant?

And now a few of my own.

• What do the tweets look like? Are they interesting? Relevant? Grammatically correct within the character limit? Or are they just slight variations on a theme?
• Do any provided links work, or do they go to dead ends? Do the links have any sort of measurement behind them, even if it’s just simple click metrics? Do they lead to generic pages, or to any custom pages for Twitter users?
• What’s the follow/follower ratio? Does the person follow everyone, or are they, at least seemingly, a bit choosy in this area? We all know that there are junk follower accounts – does the Tweeter even follow those or seem to use auto-follow?
• How often does the person tweet? Daily? Monthly? A monthly Twitter stream is barely this side of useful. Tweets need not come every five seconds, but it is a fluid, evolving medium and needs more attention than that.
• And finally, and this is a question for the person (and you may not get an accurate answer, by the way), does the Tweeter actually like what he or she is doing? Do they have a passion for it? Or is it, like, Time to make the doughnuts? I’m not saying that we can (or should) always love what we do. But plenty of people love doing this. Why not hire someone who does?

You can get a professional, passionate Social Media person, to handle your Twitter stream, do your blogging, manage your online community, promote your Facebook page and more. We really are out there.

PHP Freelancer

Twitter, Social Media and Professionalism is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

• STAT 1. 53% of people on Twitter recommend companies and/or products in their Tweets, with 48% of them delivering on their intention to buy the product. (ROI Research for Performance, June 2010) – I wonder if this takes into account what essentially looks like spamming (e. g. buy this stuff!) versus what seems to be more sincere mentionings of products, e. g. someone says I am loving this new Gatorade or I think my New Balance sneakers really are making me faster? I am well aware that it can be difficult for a large-scale survey of tweets to tell the difference between the two but, if there is that much of a return, then I gotta figure, the people either know – or, perhaps, they just don’t care.




• STAT 2. The average consumer mentions specific brands over 90 times per week in conversations with friends, family, and co-workers. (Keller Fay, WOMMA, 2010) – I wonder just what this means. I mention products all the time, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m touting them. Ugh, I hate what they did to my conditioner! Why did John Frieda have to change it? is a far cry from I’m gonna get me some more of that Amy’s Low-Salt Marinara Sauce with Basil – it is sooo good. Since the stat doesn’t mention whether the mentionings are positive or negative, I suppose it’s a corollary to the old saw, that any press is good press.
• STAT 3. Consumer reviews are significantly more trusted — nearly 12 times more — than descriptions that come from manufacturers, according to a survey of US mom Internet users by online video review site EXPO. (eMarketer, February 2010) – And this is how viral marketing works, kids. If a company can send out its minions to tout a product, even if it’s not 100% positively (and it’s more believable that way, as it doesn’t look like mere puffery), then folks eat that up. Astroturfing Nation, here we come.
• STAT 4. In a study conducted by social networking site myYearbook, 81 percent of respondents said they’d received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchase through a social site; 74 percent of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision. (Click Z, January 2010) – I suspect that’s more of a function of the pervasiveness of social sites versus their influence. E. g. I’ve got cousins who I truly only hear from through Facebook. Do I give their opinions more credence than I do passing acquaintances’? Sometimes. But I am getting this Facebook-based advice from them because we don’t pick up the phone or send snail mail or meet in person (we’re too far away to do this, anyway). To my mind, this is almost like giving the phone company credit for marketing strategy if we were chatting on the phone. We’re not. We’re using Facebook. I think this is a potential confusion of medium versus message.

So, are social sites really that important? Is Twitter really that targeted? Do consumers really trust their pals more than they do slick, conventional marketers? Probably maybe, not really and yes. It’s up to the Social Media Marketer to separate the wheat from the chaff with these kinds of stories, and see what’s really going on.

PHP Freelancer

Four Important Social Media Stats is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

The author comes up with five good ones:

1. A Ghost Town
2. Land of 1,000 Flowers
3. Drama Central
4. A Circling Storm
5. A Clique

Here’s what they mean. A Ghost Town is, essentially, either a more or less empty community or one without deep engagement. People may come in after an initial push and then just abandon the place. Now, the converse to this is people who hang around forever and never seem to convert to paying customers of any sort. In a commercial enterprise, that’s no good, either. But definitely you need for people to hang around, at least a little bit.

Land of 1,000 Flowers is where there’s perhaps a little bit of everything but there is little connectivity. Some of the problem could potentially be alleviated with a very good search engine, e. g. if people see that the question about who wrote Peter Rabbit has already been answered, they might just go to that answer, rather than asking it again. Of course the downside to this is converting potential participants right back into lurkers.

Drama Central, ah, yes, this bit of juvenalia. This is a byproduct of having a smaller community/one that is not too active. If there are 100 members, and one acts out, that one will loom large. With 1,000 members, that person’s impact is diminished. With 1,000,000 members, they barely register as a blip on the screen. And, even in a smaller community, if there are 100 members but there are a good 1,000 topics being created every month, the one Drama Queen’s attention-grabbing me me me topic can be more or less swept under the rug. But if there are only five or so new topics every month, guess what’s gonna be front and center?

A Circling Storm, this is basically a situation where there are a lot of entrenched factions, hostile to one another. Even in a well-moderated community, this can still happen if there is a Politics section (and, to a lesser extent, in a Religion section). These are areas where people form strong opinions and don’t want to back down. How to handle it? I say let them argue, for the most part, but intervene if newbies are being chased off or it becomes too personal.

A Clique, of course this is a niche or fringe group that grabs and hogs the spotlight. This can be whiny teenagers (you know who you are), organic gardeners, birthers, I dunno. They can absolutely create a self-fulfilling prophecy — e. g. if the only people who are welcomed are from Omaha, then those are going to be the ones who stick around, and then eventually people from Poughkeepsie or wherever don’t stick around and suddenly your board is filled with Nebraskans.

What to do? Well, it may seem obvious, or it may not. Manage the site! Don’t just leave it to chance!

But — the other piece of it is — don’t go overboard with management. Heavy-handed community management can be stifling. Find a balance, and do your best to follow it, all while respecting the community and its interests, but nudging it in the proper directions if it threatens to go off-course. You don’t just have to let the boat go wherever the currents take it but, at the same time, you also need to leave the dock.

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The Risks of Having a Community Without Management is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

The gist of that article is, take control of your information, keep it as a uniform brand and check it every month or so. The corollary to this is one from Shama Hyder Khabani, which is, essentially, don’t spread yourself too thin. Concentrate in only a few places.

Absolutely agreed. When I google my own last name, 502,000 hits come up. And, fortunately, my own website is at the top (Yay, SEO!). My two Facebook profiles (I have one for work) come up as fourth and fifth. Then comes my LinkedIn profile, and then Twitter. Then there’s my Examiner profile and then the last entry on the first page of results is a link to my profile at Go Articles.

Putting my last name into quotation marks yields only 2,800 hits. Most of the same usual suspects come up on Page One of the results although one place called Jobs In Social Media comes up. Classmates is at the bottom of the page. But nothing is too weird or scandalous.

To my mind, checking and rechecking every single month might just be a bit excessive. Is there a need to keep your profile accurate? Sure. Flattering, or at least not damaging? Yes, particularly if you are looking for work. But to keep it sterile and perfect, as you scramble to make it perfect every moment of every day? Eh, probably not so much.

I would like to think (am I naive? Perhaps I am) that potential clients and employers will see the occasional typo and will, for the most part, let it slide unless the person is in copyediting. I am not saying that resumes, for example, should not be as get-out perfect as possible. What I am saying, though, is that this kind of obsessive and constant vigilance seems a bit, I dunno, much.

Will the world end if I accidentally type there instead of their on this blog? And, does it matter oh so much if I don’t catch the accident immediately?

I mean, with all of this brushing behind ourselves to cover up and/or perfect our tracks, and all of the things we are leaving behind, where’s the time and energy to make fresh, new content and look in front of ourselves?

To me, there is little joy in reading a blog post or website that looks like it was put together by someone who’s barely literate. But there is also little joy in reading sterile, obsessively perfect websites and blog posts. A little imperfection, I feel, is a bit of letting the ole personality creep in there. Genuineness — isn’t that what the whole Social Media experience is supposed to be about, anyway?

I refuse to believe — I hope and I pray — that a bit of individuality isn’t costing me potential jobs or the company potential clients. And if it is, then that saddens me, to feel that, perhaps, there is a lot of lip service being paid to the genuineness of Social Media but, when the chips are down, it’s just the same ole, same ole.

Genuineness is great. One you can fake that, you’ve got it made? Gawd, please, say it ain’t so.

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What Do You Look Like Online? is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site

Like most books on Social Media, it’s a bit behind the times, but that is to be expected, as the time from concept to print is often longer than the shelf life of many Social Media initiatives and news items.

Now, I would like to be fair. Since I have read a number of Social Media books, I already know a lot of this. The main thrust of this book is to get to corporate executive types. That is, this is for people who have no time, and little desire to actually learn much about Social Media, but they still want to be up on things. Okay, so far, so good. However, I think that the medium of a book is, perhaps, misplaced. After all, if busy execs are too caught up in other things to really get into Social Media, then how are they gonna find the time to read a book? And this is a short one — it’s only about 150 or so pages, but still!

Seriously, when I was doing rate analyses at a larger insurer, I was told to make them so short that the execs reading them wouldn’t even have to use their vertical scroll wheel (you’d be surprised what you can do with small print and graphics). And that was back in 1999. In the over ten years since then, muckety mucks have only gotten busier.

Be that as it may, it’s a fairly breezy read. Like I said, I know a lot of this stuff already, so to me it’s mainly skimmable, but it could be of use to a person with limited familiarity with them new fangled things like Facebook. I mean, it explains that Twitter is a microblogging service, etc. Certainly this is true, but I do hope that the intended audience for this book has read a few articles in the NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, The ABA Journal, Fox News, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNN.com or the like and so has probably already learned that nugget of information from one if not all of them.

For me, the most vital bit of information came at the end of the book (why is that always the case? For a book intended to be a cut to the chase for executives, putting this at the end is rather self-defeating). Essentially, it came in the form of an overall strategy, referred to as a New Media Plan, but really, this is decent advice for any sort of a corporate undertaking:

• Set goals with timelines – well, yes. It makes sense to not just go blindly into things, plus budgets and patience are not infinite. However, I would say, there often needs to be more patience with this type of marketing than one might think. Yes, it’s fast and easy to get things out there — but it’s often not so fast and easy to reap what you have sown.
• Develop a measurement plan – how else would you know whether anything was working? Ploof is careful to note that this might not just be raw numbers, and the items you’re measuring need to be germane. As in, if post a funny LOLcats Youtube on your site, you might get lots of hits but, unless you’re selling LOLcats tee shirts or the like, is anyone going to stick around and actually purchase your product? Plus, what if your market is B2C and only consists of five companies? Having three readers, and have them as major influencers in three of those companies is a home run, a rousing success, a touchdown, a hole in one, you get the idea and I’m tired of the sports metaphors. Having a million readers and none of them from the five all-important companies is one of those things that looks lovely on paper but means diddly.
• Create a Content Creation Engine – this is vital and it really needs more play, not just here, but anywhere. Creating a blog (like mine, even) means a commitment to the readership. It means, you intend to be there for the long haul. And so that means finding ways to get good content, make it, polish it, etc. For someone like me, I look for books like this, and news articles and other things that I think my readers might like and that fit in with my vision of Social Media marketing. For a large corporation like Coca-Cola, content could be generated in lots of ways – say, recipes, or commercial archives or news stories just to name three off the top of my head.
• Align with traditional marketing programs – absolutely. There should be a symbiotic relationship between the two.
• Participate within the community – this means, figure out (use Google Analytics for this) which key words your customers and readers are using to get to you, and use those same key words to go out into the ‘net and see what else it is they are seeing. Which blogs and communities are they getting to? Which Flickr photo streams? Which Youtube videos are up? Add comments, like on Facebook, etc. And do damage control if you have to — as this is a way to find the bad with the good, too.
• Learn how to help community leaders – which bloggers really get your company? Maybe you’re a role-playing game site and there are fan fiction writers – so, who’s really good? Who are your fans? The ‘net has a lot of positives with the negatives. It’s not all about putting out fires. It’s also about promoting the good stuff.
• Build your own online community – this can be through forums, it can be a Facebook page, it can be getting Twitter followers, etc. and,
• Analyze and Adjust – but of course! If you’re about to hit an iceberg, you might wanna change course.

All in all, it was a decent read, but the strategy piece at the end, for me, was the part that really made it worthwhile. Otherwise, I would suggest reading Avinash Kaushik or Shama Hyder Kabani.

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Book Review: Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media-from Blogs to Social Networks is a post from: Adventures in Career Changing Adventures in Career Changing is a part of: Janet Gershen-Siegel's site