Social Media Training: Trauma Room or Wellness Program?

While attending a SMC Seattle event Tuesday night (which comes back into my article at the end), I was questioned by the “101″ statement that plagues social media professionals: “Isn’t it free? What makes social media so difficult to learn?”

This question is one of those that can only be answered by a question.

“If you were injured, would you operate on yourself?”

Probably Not.

You may have heard that statement from other industry professionals. Yet the questioning answer does not define the whole idea when compared to social media. In the real world, emergency room trauma surgeons are not only highly trained experts , but they are talented and natural doctors. On a daily basis they are subjected to injury after injury, many of which are entirely new variations of harming the human body.

Social media and online professionals see this variety of change every minute. It is our life blood.

Some people are overweight, some are diabetic, and some have heart conditions. Others smoke or never get exercise. On the other end of the spectrum are finely tuned athletes who have gone “above and beyond” to do some extraordinary injury to themselves. Other folk just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and manage to have horrible things happen to them.

The trauma room surgeon however, is provided only with wit, knowledge, aptitude, and a box of tools.

It is within the box of tools that the surgeon must instantly find a solution. They only have  a short amount of time to make a best effort solution to the problem at hand before someone loses life. Regardless of how similar every injury appears, they are ultimately defined by hundreds of unique items overlapping the core issue.

In comparison to social media, there are typically no repetitive injuries. Every day of every month, some developer at another company flips a switch that will change the way the life blood of your business is flowing. One day Google will send you traffic, one day Facebook will feature your application, and on another hour someone will Tweet about your business and Digg your nightmare stories into the spotlight.

While a project or communication campaign may be scheduled, the social media and technology change WILL NOT WAIT FOR YOUR SCHEDULE.

The are so many tools and so many varieties of social media, you could compare the medical example by simply walking into the emergency room and tell the attending doctor to give you a pill. You will probably receive the question “which one, the red or blue?” (Side note: the variety of tools changes so quickly, that anyone outside of the social media industry is likely to claim that apples and oranges are simply both fruit.)

To detail the idea: over the past thirty days I personally received an average of 11 updates to the software I use. Every single day. That represents a total of 338 update notifications in a month (and that is just technical changes, not usage changes.)

Simply put: the social media realm is arguably the fastest changing industry EVER.

Social media is the only communication channel that connects into all levels of business and personal life
(which is a core reason it has so many changing elements)

While an error in social media probably won’t kill anyone, an error in social media (or the solution to an existing error) can cost millions in the form of damages and lost profit. Having the knowledge of what services changed, how they interact, what new options exist today, and how a business model falls into the whole mix is what social media practitioners need to take into account.

How does a wellness plan fit into this?

Having been to the emergency room more than once myself, you quickly realize it is a place you don’t want to visit very often. You see horrible things happening and simply think “I’m glad its not me.”

Everyone knows that it could be them.
We all play a little numbers game and lie to ourselves about how we are “different”
We hope to be one of the 999, rather than the 1 in a 1000.

Yet at some point, we are all 1 in a 1000. On both a negative and a positive level, the 1 in 1000 happens to all of us several times in our life. One day we may get hit by a car, the next we may have 15 minutes of fame.

We know from the ER example that most of the accidents could have been prevented. Those folk could have been seeing a doctor on regular check-ups or been using the proper equipment for the daily bicycle ride (but they chose not to.)

Having a strategic and tactical understanding of social media allows you to develop a more actionable wellness plan for your business. You can improve your chances of having positive occurrences (new job, new relationships, new friends, competitive advantage, maneuverability) and of reducing the chances of negative occurrences (slander, reputation damage, job problems, profit reduction, etc.)

If your eduction or business is not continually engaged in social media, you increase the chance of visiting the emergency room tenfold.  If you are not actively thinking of how to interact and seeking expert help, those professional plans are becoming more out of date every day.

If you are a professional looking to take advantage of this: it is best to listen, educate, converse, and maximize. It is also my viewpoint that you should never ask a general practitioner to operate on you, and you should never (ever) ask someone in the lobby what pills you should be taking.

To understand the ramifications of this evolution, I welcome you to visit your local Social Media Club. Here in Seattle we have an amazing group 1000+ strong that you can find at http://smcseattle.com or on twitter @SMCSeattle (disclosure: I am a Strategic Director for SMC Seattle.) Our group regularly has 150 in-person events, as well as informal meetings to educate our professional contacts with best practices. If you have questions about social media, feel free to reach out here and leave a comment/question.

There are also chapters across the nation (you can find them at SocialMediaClub.org)

Visualizing Twitter for Business - defining beginning conversations

Too many professionals jump on Twitter and then accordingly stop using the service based on one thing from my perspective: a lack of understanding.

It is not that Twitter is the “ultimate tool” , “PR Killer” or anything like that. Twitter is pretty useful: if and only if you can wrap your brain around new ways of communicating with your audience. If you are planning to use Twitter for professional purposes, you need to have an established target when you join a conversation.

If we draw a comparison: imagine for a second that you just entered a masquerade party where everyone is talking another language, are all wearing disguises, and have many predefined motifs. It would be pretty scary to be the new person with no understanding.

How do you create a target audience at a masquerade? You remove the masks.

In the real world, you would watch mannerisms and listen to conversations.

Twitter (like many other social platforms) has a huge benefit that is often ignored: there are dozens of applications that allow you to see what is underneath the “here and now”, allowing you to attach historical significance, trending, and personal data to thousands of masked conversations.

STEP ONE: How to begin, using Twitter Search.

If you just type a search term into Twitter you will likely get a fire hose of somewhat irrelevant information sprayed at you. The following list of search operators is directly from Twitter (unfortunately, such unsexy things as search operators are never properly advertised on a search tool)

I highly suggest you take thirty seconds and browse the operators below. Using them on Twitter will GREATLY increase your understanding of what people are talking about.You can also use the advanced Twitter search to construct searches using these queries.

STEP TWO: Visualize the information
Once you have have developed an understanding of the basic search functionality of Twitter you can then move on to using dozens of applications that present the information with different metrics and visualizations applied to them. Many users of Twitter browse the basic interface and think “so what?”, completely oblivious to the various tools that can provide rich and detailed information about why, when, where, who and what the conversation is about.

Mailana -provides a breakdown of conversations and networks based on reciprocal tweets. It also offers suggested people to follow, tag clouds on conversations, local twitter users, and additional people talking on subject matter.

Twitter Browser - allows you to see a social network of Twitter users by first looking at one account. While there is no hard data on the users, it provides a simple way of seeing multiple social connections in an easy interface.

TweetStats - do you want to know how often a person tweets or when? This is a very useful tool for knowing when specific members of your core audience are active.

TweetVolume - compare the volume of times five different terms have been mentioned on Twitter. Highly useful for knowing what conversations produce enough traffic (and a very simple, no frill interface)

Twellow - it is a simple, robust, people directory. Everyone joining Twitter needs to know who else is talking.

If you have a moment, take the time to browse all of the tools above BEFORE trying to establish a business strategy around Twitter. Knowing the conversational marketplace and the existing networks before devoting all your time and energy will maximize your success.

Any questions regarding Twitter (or online conversations in general) can be left below, sent on Twitter to @123socialmedia, or if you are feeling particularly adventurous you can follow our private reputation management beta @buzzprofile

Vanity URLs - Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and more…

Facebook recently announced that it is opening up “vanity URLs” for members to choose easier to brand URLs. Originally the URL  of any Facebook page was just a randomly assigned number like “id=595845231.” , fairly soon you will begin seeing facebook.com/firstnamelastname or facebook.com/pepsi (which is already up and running)

Facebook’s announcement has made a stir in many spaces regarding the value of branding and search engine impact.

Unfortunately, while Facebook may be the largest social network online: the ability to have vanity URLs at a site is nothing new. Twitter has always had vanity URLs, Linkedin uses your name, Myspace has been doing it forever, and 4 out of 5 other social networking sites use “vanity urls”

You may say “but Facebook is the largest network…”

So what?

Issue One

Facebook may see some initial SEO ramifications from the change, but we have to ask a little deeper about the big impact and reaction that major search providers need to make. What would happen to Google if Facebook suddenly had 200 million new vanity URLs in place? I would suspect Google would place a variety of inhibitors on the Facebook.com domain to prevent massive spamming problems.

More importantly, in just the regards of Google and Facebook… they are competitors. Do you really think Google wants Facebook providing top search results for 200 million users? Does Google want to send massive amounts of traffic to a competitor? (probably not)

Issue Two

In the very recent past Facebook attempted to dictate terms of service to 200 million users. It caused a horrendous backlash and Facebook was literally mobbed by the masses. Tens of thousands of Facebook users revolted and created user groups and petitions complaining about the new terms.

As Facebook moves to provide “vanity urls” to help users define the Facebook site as a destination (perhaps on e-mails, business cards, and more) many users should be very wary of the question “who owns this Facebook profile?”

What happens when Facebook decides to change policy about your vanity URL in six months? (you do realize that Facebook doesn’t have a robust business model and is grabbing at ideas…. so change to ToS is expected.)

As a professional who has been operating in the search engine and online reputation niche for a decade, I would only recommend that you professional brand something that you own and control 100%.

This means a domain name, your site, your personal brand. For instance I have barryhurd.com as a test site that I routinely change with new ideas and formats.

Issue Three

Having one profile doesn’t cut it these days. When someone searches for you, they are going to be exposed to 10+ results on the first page search. That literally means you need AT LEAST ten sources of information about you online if you want maximum control over how interpret you online.

In regards to search engines, you may need dozens or hundreds of interaction points to make sure your results on Google are favorable.

Some examples for myself:

• http://barryhurd.com
• http://linkedin.com/in/barryhurd
• http://www.google.com/profiles/barry.hurd
• http://visualcv.com/barryhurd
• http://peoplepond.com/barryhurd

Some business accounts that I use for my professional name:

• http://twitter.com/123socialmedia
• http://www.slideshare.net/123socialmedia

Some Solutions:

There are many ways of looking at how you are perceived online. Far more than can be covered in any one article. You have professional networks, real world contacts, family members, both personal and professional lives, and a mixture of information presented by you and the people interacting with you (family, friends, clients, competitors)

If you are interested in knowing how to maximize your brand and reputation online, you can add yourself to the waiting list for our private beta @ buzzprofile.com

You can also visit the public reputation repository @ http://reputation.buzzprofile.com or follow our conversation on http://twitter.com/buzzprofile.

Additional Reading:

There is a lot of talk about the specific aspects of Facebook. Allen Stern has - Brand Yourself/Your Business- Not Facebook, Anil Dash has - The Future of Facebook Usernames, Marshall Kirkpatrick has - Why I don’t need a Facebook URL, Chris Messina has - Facebook Usernames and the battle over your digital identity, and the official Facebook blog with the announcement here.

Google Local Dashboard - Analysis and Metrics - great new tool

Whether or not you know it, every business model has the opportunity to be both hyper-local and worldwide. Knowing how to establish numbers and metrics is key to all business models, whether you have a bottom-up approach to business or if you instead focus on top-down.

For businesses with metro and regional presence, Google has done a great job of making some updates to the way Google Local works. It includes a completely *essential* item… metrics. You can now control how local listings are defined and you can see how visitors are finding your information. The ability to interpret these metrics and make changes to your business model is a quick and easy way to redefine how your business operates.

Check it out at www.google.com/lbc

Per Google:

• Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
• Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.
• Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for “tea” or “coffee”?
  
• Zip codes where driving directions come from: Which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

For small business: the Google Local Dashboard allows you to fine tune your Google presence. Registering your site for the “perfect keyword” and watching you stats gives you the ability to KNOW where your results are coming from. This one detail can make or break most small businesses (especially retail)

For big business: THINK STRATEGY and roll-out tactics to your smaller geographic audiences. When coordinated with scale, you can now control a massive amount of Google local presence and search power. If you multiply 100 monthly tactical viewers x 100 communities x $2.50 average cost per visitor : you get the benefit of $25k+ in free monthly (and very on-target) advertising.

Please let us know below if you find a new tip for using this great new functionality on Google’s local functionality.

Social Media Snapshot Tuesday

Today I wanted to point our readers to three very interesting stories happening on the web. Each of them highlights a major influence between traditional media and social media, whether you consider the technical or social interaction happening.

1. “When even an organization like the US Navy is talking about Twitter and friendfeed at even the top levels you know something crazy is going on.” - Robert Scoble. In an interesting conversation on Chris Brogan’s blog about The Web 2010, Robert threw out a simple but enlightening comments. When government and military officials are buzzing about things, something is truly catching on (or blazing the house down!)
   If you browse Robert’s blog about The Web 2010, he has some great bullet points that have been debated here locally with the Social Media Club Seattle crowd…. so I know he is not alone in thinking we will see some of these changes (as a side note, Robert’s next project Building43.com is launching June 11th - which is also my birthday. Couldn’t have picked a more fortunate day!)

   

2. On a darker note: TechCrunch has a great highlight today about the social ramifications of online media in other parts of the world with China shuts down Twitter and Bing in lead up to Tiananmen anniversary. As author Mike Butcher says “It’s widely known that China runs a pretty tight ship - to put it mildly - on what its citizens get to see online, especially that content which exists outside of China.” While I have a broad experience in dealing with worldwide communication, it is a quick reminder to our online readers that there are still billions of individuals who lack the freedom of expression many of us enjoy in social media.

   

3. Alan Mutter at Reflections of a Newsosaur wrote Worse Quarter for Newspapers, Sales dive $2.6b
   “The $2.6 billion sales decline in the first period of this year is equal to almost a third of the $7.5 billion that newspaper ad revenues fell in all of 2008. Newspaper ad sales last year fell 16.6% to $37.8 billion, making it by far the worst 12 months in the history of the industry.”

   As marketing reflects the state of many industries and overall economies, this is a huge factor in many worldwide businesses. This is a topic that has obviously been felt here in the northwest, as covered by the death of the Seattle PI print edition (read Is Local Media Evolving or Dying?)

Any of these articles covers a world defining scenario for many individuals and businesses. It is articles like those above that make my morning cup of coffee so enlightening.

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