One of the most bizarre aspects of the Iran protests has been the claim of Netizens that it’s a Twitter revolution.  Certainly, our conversational medium has made great strides in the rapid spread of information. In fact, the use of social media has been a critical tool in the spread of ideas, not only amongst Iranians but in their ability to inform the world.  So let’s not get over our heads. People make revolutions happen, not tools.

The Washington Post had a great opinion piece on this topic this morning.  Here was the key section that I found compelling:

…there are sharp limits on what Twitter and other Web tools such as Facebook and blogs can do for citizens in authoritarian societies. The 140 characters allowed in a tweet are not the end of politics as we know it — and at times can even play into the hands of hard-line regimes.

Indeed, Twitter and all conversational media tools really are just that: Tools.  They can be used for good or bad purposes, and in the particular case of short forms, they do not equate to in depth information or understanding.  It’s really about people, and how they use these Internet tools to spread information, and what that data causes them to do. 

I had the great honor of appearing on Voice of America’s international broadcast last week to discuss this very topic. Conversational tools spread information in an uncontrolled fashion. Actions create revolutions, not the tools, but the tools have evolved over time to allow for instantaneous, independent movement outside of governments.  Consider the following historical development of communication:

1) The Gutenberg press was invented in 1440: The resulting books triggered the Renaissance and the spread of ideas throughout Europe in roughly 50 years. Information can be spread in weeks on a continent, and months or years depending on location of foreign countries.

2) By the 17th century, we had newspapers thanks to moveable type. Newspapers really took off in the 18th century.  As information spread quicker, we saw Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin create newspapers and documents. The rise of the fourth estate allows American and French revolutionaries to create Democracy. The trend accelerates in the 19th century.

3) The 20th century brought broadcast and mass communications. Propaganda wars take place amongst many political theologies, from Goebels and the Nazis to FDR and Fireside chats to the Stalin and Mao-brands of communism. Democracy spreads further, but autocratic regimes use broadcast to control their citizens.  Information is now spread in hours instead of in days.

4) The Internet also rose in the 20th century, but it is only in this decade that we’ve realized the dream of a Gutenberg press in everyone’s hand. Now because of conversational media anyone can be a citizen journalist.  Information is spread instantaneously, beating out broadcast, and autocratic control is no longer effective for societies enabled with mobile or regular Internet communications.

But in spite of the spread and the break of control we still have a very desperate situation in Iran.  Violent protests have broken out as the now information enabled the Moussavi opposition and supporters refuse to accept the broadcasted message of their government.

Now the real revolution must occur… Or falter.  Autocratic control has lots its grip on information in Iran, but not the military.  The human-powered Internet only serves as a toolset to organize and galvanize the Moussavi opposition in spite of Iran’s best attempts to control its people using conventional media. It’s a time of action, of stones in the street, of bloodshed. May it pass swiftly, successfully, and with minimal loss.

Often, I’ll get asked which books I suggestfor social media. Sometimes I’ll quip, “[Besides Now Is Gone,] How to Win Friends and Influence People.” But in reality, while it’s something of a joke, but also a pretty serious recommendation (Image: Happy by kkoshy).

Dale Carnegie’s principles have stood the test of time because they are about fostering better relations amongst people. And the classic mistake with social media is to treat it like a mass communications vehicle, when it’s a conversational form that builds relationships. Social media is about a larger community and its concerns, as opposed to a litany of messages. There is no better set of guidelines for this then “Friends.”

For the United Way’s Staff Leaders Conference, Meg Keaney and I presented best practices for tactical social networking. We decided to embed and apply Dale Carnegie’s principles in the larger presentation (available here) to the three main social networks in the workplace: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. We walked our participants through these suggestions online.

The exercise was actually pretty challenging, and it forced me to consider a lot of my actions on and offline and how I’ve strayed since I last read “Friends.” Here’s what we discussed:

Become a Friendlier Person
1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest, sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
4. Become genuinely interested in other people.
5. Smile.
6. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most
important sound in any language.
7. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
8. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
9. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Actions to Be Friendlier on Facebook

Actions to Be Friendlier on LinkedIn

Actions to Be Friendlier on Twitter

Win People to Your Way of Thinking
10.The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
11.Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
12.If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
13.Begin in a friendly way.
14.Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
15.Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
16.Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
17.Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
18.Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
19.Appeal to the nobler motives.
20.Dramatize your ideas.
21.Throw down a challenge.

Actions to Win: LinkedIn & Facebook

Actions to Win on Twitter

Be a Leader
22.Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
23.Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
24.Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
25.Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
26.Let the other person save face.
27.Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your
approbation and lavish in your praise.”
28.Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
29.Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
30.Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Actions to Lead (Across All Social Networks)

Certainly, we just scratched the surface on Carnegie’s principles and how they apply. What would you add?

This week I delivered a big hit in social media, but  it wasn’t on the blog.  It occurred on my Flickr blog in the form of SOBCon 09 pictures.  If you include photo views from Friday and Saturday at the conference, photos generated more than 4,000 views or almost 10% of my all time Flickr page traffic. So what does this mean from a content creation standpoint?

Amber Porter Cox

There are a few obvious conclusions:

1) The best way to serve a community is to give them stuff they’re interested in.  The SOBCon content was great! But at the same time, part of meeting in such an environment is socializing.  And what better way to help people enjoy a social event than take great pictures of them so they can remember their time there? Photos are always a big hit at in person networking events.

David Armano and his steed.

2) Learning how to use a media form well makes a big difference.  I tried video, and that was hard, but since evolving my photography skills from point and click to manual DSLR shots, my Flickr traffic has increased significantly. In fact, one of the hotel industry’s top blogs picked up my SOBCon Hotel 71 shot and ran it on their blog as a story.  I still have a lot to learn, but using a medium well can make a big difference.

The View from Hotel 71

3) My blog writing sucked this week :) Truth hurts, huh?

SOBConners Brat Pack: Shannon Paul, Brian Clark, Jason Falls, Zena Weist, Derek Halpern 

4) Thinking about other people is always the key to social media.  Liz Strauss reminded me of this at our Morton’s event and once again, it reminds me that others, not being smart, but others is what matters.

Will English IV and Liz Strauss

5) Do what you love online. My favorite creative outlets have always been writing and painting.  I can’t pain anymore because I don’t have time, but photography is fulfilling that need.  Is it any coincidence that the two things I’m best at online are blogging and taking photos?  Do what you love online. Your natural desire and talent will shine through.

Amber Naslund

Anyone involved in the Internet for a long time knows that net neutrality has been a long-term issue. Net Neutrality deals with the freedom of choice on which content we view on the Internet, as opposed to media or Internet companies selecting the content we should see or how content is “prioritized” for us. It’s an important issue that we in the business of media and communications need to stay on top of, and was the primary reason why last year’s BlogPotomac benefited the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Geek Entertainment TV Maven and an old college buddy Irena Slutsky just ran her 200th episode, a serious take on Net Neutrality. She interviewed Dr. Tim Wu “the guy who even the FCC trusts to help them make fair laws about such things as the AT&T and BellSouth merger.” Irena said:

Professor Wu is credited with popularizing the concept of “network neutrality” in his 2003 paper Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. In 2006, he co-authored the book, Who Controls the Internet? Network neutrality is essential to free speech, equal opportunity and economic innovation in America, so if you use the internet — or at least, if you watch porn on the internet — here’s your chance to learn exactly why you should care.

Check out this important video to get up to speed on Net Neutrality. And congratulations to Irena on what has been a very successful and continuing run with Geek Entertainment TV.

The SOBCON presentation “Integrating Social Media into the Larger Mix” that I gave on Saturday sparked quite a discussion at the event as well as on Twitter. Here is a brief narrative version to accompany the deck, which is also embedded in this post.

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) theory and campaigns were very common until the disruptive nature of social media. IMC was a big movement in the 90s to ensure that all outbound communications worked together. For example, AOL used banner ads, store displays, direct mail CDs, newspaper inserts, PR, etc. to become the number one dial-up service in America.

As social media has arisen, we’ve come across the strange duopoly of social media experts who are tactically proficient and corporate communicators who don’t know what to do with two-way communications. The resulting confluence creates a stand-alone silo where social media is experimented with and regarded as a shiny object. In essence, it’s not safe to (or unfathomable to) integrate social media as part of the natural, larger communications mix.

The problem lies in that people don’t consume media in a single-track fashion. People don’t use just Twitter, they participate in multiple social media conversations in different places. Further, they use more than just social media. They read traditional media properties, watch TV, see billboard ads, listen to the radio, etc., etc. It’s a multichannel world.

Complicating this matter is the ROI problem. Business efforts in social media are confounded by how to demonstrate actual results that impact the bottom line or drive perception change. It’s really hard to make a conversation into something more than that… Unless you can create ways and means for people to do more than just talk.

That provides the ideal opportunity to use social media and content as a form of relationship building and attraction. Coupled with non-intrusive “soft-sell” calls-to-action provided through more traditional forms of media, conversations can become more and turn into “results.” In that sense, the social media conversation turns into the top of a self-identified prospect funnel. To progress deeper into the funnel, our stakeholders have to trust our organizations and the people behind them. Then they may want to opt into a deeper conversation or discussion.

Here are some forms of traditional calls-to-action that can be used:

Of course, social media can be used as a call to action within traditional forms of communication. It only makes sense. Again, consider that people don’t single track their media usage. So as communicators, why should we?

Attending and participating in many conferences, I find myself dubbed a great personal brander (above, KD Paine’s picture shows me “forced” to bow my head with one of the greatest personal branders, Chris Brogan).  People always ask me how I do it, and I always decline to talk about it because of my stance on this matter. Ironically, this energy has only increased since the acquisition of Livingston Communications was announced.

Further if I tweet something even somewhat quirky or edgy – a by product of being Geoff –  it creates waves of DMs to the mentioned conversationalist about what I said.  Drama vis a vis public and private messaging ensues. Finally, there’s the light contact stalking, which has gotten to the point that I feel uncomfortable Tweeting on the weekends due to strange references that leak out in conversations.

No matter how hard I strategically avoid this movement, the Livingston personal brand has become inescapable.  And that scares the living daylights out of me.  You may be asking, “Why?”

Because I know how human I am. And I fear that my personality while clearly me and not contrived, will in some way eclipse, or worse, harm a client or my company.  Because, yeah, I do screw up just like everyone else. Further, to me the principle of communications is making my clients successful or achieving something online, not nano-fame.

In many ways my efforts to dodge the personal brand conversation really has to do with what is meaningful to my daily life. Let me list my top priorities:

• Providing strategies to successfully adapt organizational social media for the long-term
• Change the world, particularly through social cause activism
• Provide intelligent conversation and challenge the communications industry to evolve and become better
• Teaching individuals in my life how to execute social media rather than doing it for them
• Serve and market my employer through karmic efforts

Once again, I am reminded of Charles Barkley’s Role Model diatribes from the 90s. And I identify.

The personal brand is a Scarlet Letter, an unwanted, unintentional consequence of marketing my or a client’s organization, and wanting to have fantastic conversations about how online media can change the way communications works. If anything, I’ve intentionally tried to sabotage or minimize my personal brand, and yet here I am.

So, yes, maybe I really have a personal brand, but I do not find it admirable as an achievement.  Further, I don’t think it’s a good thing for a long-term enterprise social media strategy UNLESS I am committed to playing team ball. That means sacrifice. And personally I find it to be an encumbering burden that prevents me from feeling free online.

I imagine that I will continue online while the above objectives exist.  At the same time, there will always be this omnipresent level of discomfort.

A Word About Chris Brogan

I’ve given Chris a lot of grief and hazing about personal branding over the past few months.  I want to state that I think Chris Brogan is a good man who wants to do the world and the industry right. He does a lot of great things for people.

For me the conversation has been about enterprise marketing. Chris has some ideas I like and some less so, but there is more than one way to skin a cat. I want to pay respects to Chris and thank him for allowing me to have these conversations with him.

Further, he demonstrates that the personal brand does work for individual consultants.  His recent hires also show scale. It will be interesting to see how he does, and I suspect with the right help and strong back-end comms strategy and results, Chris will grow a strong boutique offering.

Somewhere amidst all of the Twitter hype a really big statistic was achieved, the creation of Ning’s one millionth social network. In a world where follower counts are lauded or decried for sheer girth, where it’s cool to just to be seen using the tool even from space, communities are bubbling to the fore.

One million subject matter specific communities, one million places where specific discussions related to some sort of common interest are occurring. Six million visits a month demonstrate recent features and additions are making their impact felt.

Sure, I know some of them are dormant, but traffic (pictured above) keeps increasing, demonstrating 6,000,000 unique visitors a month to Ning communities. Not too shabby for a social network oft criticized for serving the niche instead of the many, for being too small to be relevant. heck, there’s even a Ning for Dummies book now.

What’s relevant about Ning’s rise is that smaller groups of people are congregating to actively discuss the issues that matter to them. While mass-Twittering matters in the hype engine, the actual development of communities is accelerating.

Because we are so accustomed towards communicating with big channels, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are now the apple of our echo chamber’s eye. Yet online conversations are not about the wide swaths of tens of thousands of people, rather hundreds that actually interact with each other (see Valeria Maltoni’s breakdown of communities and Dunbar’s number). Social media has always offered the counter specialized content to the big mass market channel. And so it is only natural to see further splintering and the movement towards smaller, specialized communities even in the face of Ashton Kutcher.

Blog post title crowdsourced at #NTC09 - Lois de la fuente

One of the best ways to deliver meaningful results in social media is to tie your effort to an event. Whether it was Twestival or after parties at SxSW, smart organizations move from conversation to more meaningful activities where people can congregate or receive significantly more value.

This is something we encourage our clients to do in their efforts. For example, Networks Solutions has hosted or sponsored numerous online and offline events over the past year to foster more meaningful relationships beyond its current online social media efforts, which include blogging, publishing and discussing valuable research for small business owners, responding to general complaints on the Internet, and conversing with customers via its Twitter account.

Right now Network Solutions is backing up its Small Business Success Index research with a webinar featuring top entrepreneurs discussing what it takes to succeed in the new economy. The GrowSmartBusiness Webinar is ideal in that — combined with the research and an integrated communications campaign — it delivers real valuable content for Network Solutions’ core stakeholder, the small business owner or entrepreneur. It will allow hundreds of people to view the event publicy, participate and converse live. This goes way beyond a blog post or Tweet to generate more powerful conversations, relationships and customer actions.

Social media is a great place to begin relationships, but to deliver more meaningful marketing results real valubale calls to action need to be delivered. Events really help because they allow people to foster deeper relationships. When we communicate online a lot of the natural, intangible conversation axioms are lost — body language, tone, eye contact, etc. Further the types of social conversation vehicles don’t necessarily provide depth, so even an online event can dramatically evolve a relationship.

I see events as part of multichannel social media and traditional communication programs. Multichannel campaigns that go beyond a singular tool — Twitter, blogs, etc. — and involve integrate communications often develop stronger results. They also tend to feed each other.

Consider how many times you’ve seen an event trend on Twitter or photos from said event on Facebook or blog posts developed from the content? It’s just a natural way to develop more momentum.

It seems like I am on the road a lot more, and doing more private speaking engagements these days (original image taken in the Blue Ridge last October). But I will be appearing at two San Francisco conferences and one Chicago event over the next two weeks. Here are the details:

1) NTC: Looks like I have to leave SF early and won’t appear on Tuesday, April 28th’s Rational Pursuit of Change panel, but I will still be giving a blogging workshop Sunday afternoon (the 26th). Come on by if you are already registered for NTC, which is sold out.

2) On Monday, the 27th in SF, I will be at the first day of SNCR’s NewComm Forum one of my favorite social media conferences out there… Last year’s was very enjoyable as the content is vastly superior, only rivaled by Gnomedex. I am honored to appear not once, but twice. First, I will be facilitating the opening Keynote Conversation with Charles Best, Founder, DonorsChoose.org. Later that morning, Shashi Bellamkonda and I will discuss our SNCR Commendation of Excellence and IABC Gold Quill award winning social media program for Network Solutions.

If you are in SF, and have not registered for NewComm Forum, do so. It’s the most bang for your buck of any Internet communications conference out there. I’ll be there all day, so looking forward to catching up.

3) I’m looking forward to SOBCON (May 1-3), the production of blogger genius Liz Strauss. This is my first SOBCON, but I’ve heard outstanding things about this serial event. And it’s in Chicago, too, my first trip back since last year’s Lollapalooza festival (heh, heh). My session on Saturday is integrating on and offline communications. This is the next frontier for communications managers, so I hope you can make it. I will also be there on Friday for networking purposes.

And if you are in DC please register for BlogPotomac. Two months out and we’ve only got 1/3 of the inventory of tickets left. We won’t be making more available.

When a new competency is embraced by a larger entity, it is the nature of a corporate organization to turn that group into a department. In fact, most PR and advertising agencies actively seek to build or acquire a social media department to meet the growing demand for conversational services (Silo image by eirikref).

The siloization of social media within communications departments and their agencies represents a strategic error.

Integration is the key. And I’ve said this before when I was a stand-alone social media firm.

Every marketing department, every communications function, each practice area, and all teams should have this capability.  And social media needs to stop being looked at as a new profession. Instead these tools should be regarded as something that just about any worker can use in their tasks. By nature there will be some folks who are better at it than others, and they will evolve as specialists (remember the investor relations and analyst relations specialist, the copywriter in the ad agency?). 

The big issue we have to address as an industry – and CRT/tanaka as a subset – is cultural.  Dishing to the social media consultant an industrial revolution mentality.  This reflects corporate America’s legacy, and smart companies are evolving to become information age companies. Social media, the enablement of two-way conversations, should be something that companies seek to adopt across the line as part of this larger global trend.

The above is an abridged version of a post originally published on the CRT/tanaka blog. To read the next section of the post, “Stakeholders Don’t Distinguish Between,” visit the full post.