Jeff Elder on social media

10 ways to cover the election year with social media

2012-01-09T09:20:00.001-08:00

2012-01-03T10:17:00.001-08:00

12 stunning holiday photos from social media

2011-12-23T11:46:00.001-08:00

Tweet to #myfavoritecause

2011-12-22T17:13:00.001-08:00

I love this kind of stuff

2011-12-15T16:24:00.001-08:00

I used to run social media for the big home-improvement retailer in the center of the furor over "All-American Muslim"

2011-12-14T07:04:00.000-08:00

I used to run social media for the big home-improvement retailer in the center of a furor over ads on the reality show "All-American Muslim." The company has not advertised after the group The Florida Family Association said the program is "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values."

People have asked me how I would have handled the situation, in which tens of thousands of messages piled up on social media, then were deleted by the company. Here's how: I wouldn't have played it safe, clammed up, and let hate rule the day. I wouldn't have deleted 28,000 comments. I wouldn't have tried to control the message. I would have tried to be a voice of reason. The large majority of people speak that language.

Thousands of angry messages piled up on the company's social media accounts, as critics accused the company of succumbing to a group that practices fear-mongering. Defenders of the company angrily responded, sometimes bashing Muslims. In the midst of this viral acrimony, the company was essentially silent on social media for days.

The company's Twitter profile proclaimed "We never stop tweeting!" But the company did stop tweeting. It didn't post for days, while anger, name-calling, and divisiveness took over. The company didn't post a status update on Facebook for days, and there amassed more than 28,000 comments on the company's careful statement about the situation. Many of the comments were spiteful. The company's social media accounts became arenas of hate.

Today the company removed the line "We never stop tweeting!" from its Twitter profile and deleted the Facebook post with more than 28,000 comments. A new Facebook post explains: "Some of the comments have been sharp and disrespectful in tone, but out of respect for the transparency of social media, we let the debate continue. However, we have seen a large volume of comments become more pointed and hateful. As a result, we have taken the step of removing all previous posts and will more tightly filter future comments on this topic."

Removing hate speech is a no-brainer, but preventing it from building up in the first place would have been a much, much better approach. Deleting an entire post of 28,000 highly controversial comments is no small move. It might appear to be an easy way to make it all disappear, and deny the ugliness ever happened. But it does nothing to actually address the discord that happened on your watch. It just erases the evidence. It's a Not In My Back Yard approach. And it can call into question the integrity of the company's voice, and cause followers to wonder if they are only seeing the positive while the negative is deleted. Big institutions that make unacceptable and controversial speech disappear also tend to make criticism of the institution itself disappear, and that happened here. Along with the hate speech, thousands of complaints about the company's handling of this situation also conveniently went away.

Let me make something clear: I have great compassion for the people at the company. I worked with them. I love some of them like family. I do not envy their situation. I know they would do anything to address the maelstrom on social media in just the right way. But the fact is, there is no perfect way. Discord makes dialogue difficult -- and even more vital.

If a company spends money and time to promote products and its own agenda on social media, it also has a responsibility to engage in real dialogue there when problems come up. I'm not saying you take on all-comers in a no-win debate in front of the world. But you say something. You take responsibility for what is happening on your page. You don't abandon ship because it's scary. You protect the values of the company and you protect the people at risk on your page. You can't run and hide when things get tough, and then re-emerge later to try to make money.

Press releases are the old way of trying to control communications. And that way is gone.

Social media can be an intimidating place to comment on a controversy. I've run campaigns where things went wrong, and tens of thousands of angry comments were posted. When I initially blogged about this last night, it was only a few minutes before people began posting their own opinions about the situation. In a half-hour, posts calling me names and accusing me of awful things came in. It felt like I got kicked in the stomach. I did what the company did: I took the post down, to make sure I was saying things right. I'm not sure that I am. I'm saying them anyway.

I grew up in the South, where the big home-improvement retailer is based. As a child in the late '60s and early '70s, I was sometimes exposed to bigotry, and some of the good people I knew did not speak out to oppose it. Southerners may know the kind of uncomfortable name-calling situation I refer to. Brave people spoke out against the hate. It was the only right thing to do.

Yesterday I donated $100 to one of the nation's oldest and largest Muslim organizations, which works to further understanding of Muslim people, culture and religion in America. I gave to its inter-faith programs, which reach out to those of other faiths to better relations. I did so because I want to support greater understanding between Muslim-Americans and other Americans who may be bashing misunderstood stereotypes rather than getting to know real people. Maybe it's not the perfect thing to do. I want to do something to help.

I'm speaking out, especially after the hate messages last night, because silence in the face of hate is never right. It lets fear-mongering win. We can't control the conversation, but we can add voices of reason and civility to it.

The 10 Coolest YouTube Videos Of 2011

2011-12-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

Why is mainstream news coverage of Occupy a debate?

2011-10-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

A Dozen Top Sports Figures' Tweets About Al Davis

2011-10-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

A powerful new search engine for Twitter topics

2011-09-29T22:20:00.000-07:00

A roundup of the most hilarious reactions on social media to the changes made by Facebook

2011-09-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

"The Partridge Family" and how it rescued me from growing up uncool in the '70s

2011-09-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

View ""The Partridge Family" debuts, with hints of music, social life and sex for '70s kids" on Storify

Share your story and be part of a national storytelling project

2011-09-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

You tweet it, I eat it, all the way across the country

2011-08-22T13:31:00.001-07:00

<a href="http://storify.com/jeffelder/tell-me-where-to-eat-nctoca" target="_blank">View "I'm On The Road From #NCtoCA, So Tweet Me Where To Eat!" on Storify</a>

A word about how to launch social media for your business because everyone's doing it and you should

2011-08-13T05:57:00.000-07:00

"We really need to." "We've got to." "We have to do it."
No. No you don't.
Your traditional company does not have to get up on social media because you've been hearing all about it. If your company is a good boy in khakis or a good girl in a skirt, they do not have to get the right kind of jeans and dye their hair blue just to feel cool.
I recently spent the morning at a traditional media company talking about their social media. "Should we...?" was asked a dozen times.
There is no "should."
"Everyone is doing it" has never been a good reason to do anything, and it's not a good reason to adopt social media as an individual, and definitely not to do so as a business. It is good to explore social media and to know your options, but that is not the same as launching a bunch of accounts and throwing your content up there to see what sticks.
Lurking is good. Lurk. See what other companies are doing. Check out your competitors. Learn the platforms. Then you might have a realization that "our company videos will make a really good YouTube channel," or, "Facebook photo sharing is perfect for our interior design pictures. Let's create a business page and make some albums."
In other words, let the unique original content you create lead the way. Social media sustainability always comes back to contributing unique original content as building blocks. If you don't have anything to say, grabbing the mic is a bad idea.
Forget "should." Should equals "We're obligated, but not enthusiastic."
And if you're not enthusiastic, what's the point?

"Men Of A Certain Age" cancelled -- fans across the social web respond

2011-07-16T15:00:00.001-07:00

View "Fans respond to TNT's cancellation of acclaimed drama "Men Of A Certain Age"" on Storify

Four U.S. murder trials over 120 years: Did new media hurt justice?

2011-07-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

A devastating murder within a family. A shocked public drawn into a sensational trial. A new media platform sizzling with salacious details. A verdict that many believe is unjust is angrily decried.

The Casey Anthony trial on social media in July, 2011? Yes. But also:

The Lizzie Borden trial, summer, 1893. Medium: Newspapers. Newspapers devoted pages each day to reproduce testimony word for word, and published wood-cut renderings of the proceedings. Many pre-printed editions with soaring headlines saying GUILTY and NOT GUILTY so they could fire them out as soon as the verdict was reached. Borden was found not guilty, despite lack of another suspect. So convinced was the public that she committed the crime that a nursery rhyme is still familiar about her giving her mother "40 whacks."
The Lindbergh kidnapping trial, winter, 1935. Medium: Newsreel. Some 200 journalists swarmed the trial and 100 telegraph lines were connected to the courthouse, but it was newsreel that electrified the public. A local magistrate allowed movie cameras in the courtroom and five newsreel studios sent continual updates into movie theaters all over the world. The newsreel coverage whipped the public into a frenzy and 10,000 gathered outside the courthouse calling for the suspect's death. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed for a crime historians agree he did not commit. Cameras were banned from courtrooms as a result.
The O.J. Simpson Trial, 1995. Medium: Cable TV news. According to Wikipedia, The L.A. Times covered the case on its front page for more than 300 days. The Big Three networks' nightly news broadcasts gave more air time to the case than to the Bosnian War and the Oklahoma City bombing combined. But it is cable TV news, and specifically CNN, which dedicates itself almost exclusively to the case. "If we had God booked and O.J. was available, we'd move God," said CNN's Larry King. A CNN poll estimated that coverage of the trial may have set back race relations in the U.S. by 30 years.

Note the similarities? The new media outlets won. In all four cases, many experts believe justice lost.

Google+ and business -- how will the marketing numbers add up?

2011-07-02T03:36:00.000-07:00

Social media got real when the numbers got real, and that was not right away. It's hard to blame the executives (many of whom were not on social media) for saying, "Why should we spend money on this stuff when we don't know what the return on investment will be?" (Especially in the recession.) I'm bullish on Google+'s ability to move ROI metrics, for the following reasons:

Google immediately released a new slate of metrics tools. Facebook Insights only gradually grew into a tangible role.
These tools are primarily focused on how users share your content on Google+, rather than basic user demographics, including an emphasis on the new +1 sharing button. This harnesses the social graph, an evolving realm of search. So you see what users are sharing, and their web activity after they share.
Companies like Radian6, General Sentiment, Coremetrics, and Facebook itself have answered a demand for social metrics. Google Analytics are very strong, too. The changes brought by Google+ won't mean a reset in this progress. The data infrastructure -- and market -- are already there.
Ford is already up with a brand page on Google+. Brands will not hesitate to plunge in, and apply real business objectives. (And kudos to Ford for going first. You can make a strong argument that the most important measurements to social ROI are at the top of the marketing funnel -- or have even added a new layer at the top. In other words, don't just focus on the bottom line, and get in the game. You want to be there, in front of your customers, where all ROI begins.)

But now lets the turn tables on you. What do you want from Google+ metrics? Ultimately data must measure your business objectives. Numbers are just numbers unless you provide the context by solving for something. So ask your company:

By metrics, do you mean sales, or another end goal? Conversion is just one category of social metrics, the other large areas being insights, awareness, and affinity. All provide meaningful data. It was unfair to demand ROI in the form of sales from a new channel in the recession. No channel was strong in sales in 2008-2009. (And social commerce has not responded since.) But a free platform has done quite well in showing who your customers are (insights), whether they're getting your message (awareness), and whether they are brand advocates as they engage with you (affinity).
Are you looking at communications as a means to an end? Ultimately social is a conversation, and always will be. If you have a motive, you're selling the exploratory role of the conversation short: You don't know what you'll learn (and be able to measure), unless you go in with an open mind. Besides, how much do you enjoy the hard sell? (Even click-throughs to your site are not the be-all end-all: engagement about your product is valuable wherever it happens.)
Is your business really ready to adapt, again? Many large companies wanted Facebook and Twitter to neatly dovetail into their existing strategies, and that didn't necessarily happen. Companies had to get a little more Facebook, a little more Twitter, to invest in the tools, and learn to use them. They may have to get a little more Google+, too. And they won't get there on the sidelines, frowning and saying, "Show me the money." Go master the platform, and develop your goals. Then you'll know if you're hitting meaningful numbers.

Invite info, and 10 Things To Know About Google+

2011-07-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

If you're not on already, it might be a little while. New users have been shut down due to "insanely high demand," according to Google. Is this a contrived way to get more buzz? Exclusivity is a recipe for demand. Here is a purported loophole to the blockade, but my experimentation with it did not work.

UPDATE: Many spammers are exploiting the demand for invites by luring suckers with phishing scams. Don't enter your email address or jump through any other hoops in an effort to snag one. If you're not in, you aren't going to get in by doing something shady. Also: Contrary to much of the conversation going on, attaining an invite does not get you in. Entry to the Google+ platform by new users, not the sending and receiving of invites, is where the holdup is occurring. Someone can send you an invite that you still can't use. Will this lockout end after the holiday weekend, when there is a flurry of iterations happening? Don't know.

In a nutshell, Google+ is Facebook like, with innovations in three areas: Grouping of connections; integration with search and surf; cool communicating gizmos.
Grouping app Circles is the game-changer, an easy, intuitive, right-in-front-of-you segmentation of your connections into different groups to provide instant levels of privacy. Think Facebook friends lists, but built right in. So your boss won't see party pics.
Communications app Hangouts is hilarious, a video phone functionality with a group, so you're all talking heads. Skype meets the beginning of "The Brady Bunch."
Search and surf apps +1 and Sparks are an undertaking. They're not intuitive, but in the long run might be a very helpful improvement in "the semantic web," showing you what you're interested in online.
Another function, the instant upload of photos from your phone, is scary. Sorry, I don't want everything I snap on my phone going anywhere - even if I do have to share it out afterward. I take pics of documents and where my car is parked. I want to upload stuff manually.
Gmail is changing to incorporate alerts from Google+. So they'll get you there, too, keeping you connected with Google+, even if you don't have it up. (Take that, Facebook! The G in Gmail is for "get you there, too.")
Google+ is going after gaming, too. Google's big investment in Zynga may be about to pay off: Checkitout.
No popularity contest with the connections numbers! One nice thing about Google+ is that you can hide the number of friends or connections you have. Which is a real relief. The old contest to see who has how many friends has been a petty and pointless part of the psychology of social networks.
Yes, it is kind of contrived that Google suddenly cares about our lives. Remember when Google took pride in being a scientific, algorithm-based company that couldn't be blamed for anything? A line in the Google+ demo video says: "When you have lots of options in front of you, it's easy to find yourself wishing for a bit of advice." A bit of advice? Since when does Google give a bit of advice? Since Facebook.
Overwhelmed? Good. That means you're sane. Social media users have just opened a closet, been avalanched by all kinds of junk, and then, when they think it's all them, clunked on the head by a bowling ball. The hits just keep on coming. Remember when the music industry kept changing formats? When phones wouldn't settle down? (Not that they have, much.) In other news, Facebook plans an "awesome new release" next week. (It's expected by some to be mobile in nature.) More new social platforms to try to evaluate. Oh good.

Give a salute to the Emoticon Style Guide O7

2011-06-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

: ) -- Acceptable in all contexts to connote upbeat feelings and friendliness. While :-) and :) are acceptable, the international preference in all cases is : ), because a hyphen nose and lips right under your eyes are a little weird.

; ) -- Acceptable when the meaning truly is a wink and a smile. Do not use in mean statements to slightly lighten the impact: Too bad! I just grabbed the laaaast muffin! ; ) or, Your partner and I only had a little affair. ; )

: ( -- Underused, perhaps due to our culture's fixation on being (or seeming) happy. Not acceptable to use in a guilt trip: Where are you? : ( or Your Hummer is ruining my planet. : (

; ( -- Many men are unable to use except in a movie.

: p -- Use to mean tongue sticking out. No one really likes this one. So, if you use it : P

O--===--====ll -- The emoticon for planking was very popular, but is now SO mid-June.

\ , , / -- Rock on, bro.

@}-;-'--- -- The rose emoticon was probably developed by someone who collects souvenir plates.

O7 -- Salute is cool to use when someone has done something stellar: Sweet job humming during the conference call. You're my hero. O7

:3 -- No one knows what this means, so it's acceptable in all uses: Hey, you! :3

:-O :O :u -- Use the last one to connote surprise or shock. The others are less effective because the o as the little mouth is not as fun as the u as the little mouth.

: | -- Straight-faced emoticon is highly underused and underrated. Because, ultimately, who are we to judge? Is not our greatest service to simply witness to one another's struggle? As in, You spent, like, a half-hour compiling a style guide for emoticons? : |

What to do when someone adds you to a Facebook group you don't like

2011-06-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

Have you received Facebook messages from a group and said, "Wait, I didn't join that group. Why am I getting these messages?" One of the worst, most invasive functionalities on all of Facebook right now is the Groups app that allows any friend to add you to a group and begin firing emails and invitations from the group right at you. There is no way to prevent this at this time. Let's not even get into the many ways this is dumb, and get right to you can do.

HOW TO LEAVE GROUPS

Click Home
Go over to the left navigation bar and click Groups
You will see a list of all the groups you're in (and have been unwittingly added to)
Hover your cursor to the right of the names of these groups and click the little X that appears
Click to leave the groups you don't want to be in

HOW TO TURN OFF EMAILS FROM GROUPS

Click Account, top right of the Home page
Click Notifications
Click Groups
Click Change Email Notifications For Individual Groups
Check and uncheck as you like

10 Ways To Improve Your Online Life Now

2011-06-26T10:03:00.000-07:00

Collect Gourmet TV. There has never been a better time to watch TV. You can watch watch you want, where you want, how you want, and when you want. So figure out what you want to watch, round it up, put it on your devices, and enjoy. My favorite show currently, Ray Romano's "Men Of A Certain Age" on TNT.
Consider Upgrading Your LinkedIn. LinkedIn is changing faster than Twitter and Facebook, giving you more functionality, and becoming more meaningful. Use InMails to reach out to people in your field. And don't give me that "But I'm not looking for a job" B.S. It's not about that. Here are reasons why you should upgrade, from the blog Social Media Examiner.
Do The Right Screen. Many of us now have internet connection on several sizes of screens: Desktop, tablet, and phone. Figure out what you like to do on each, and use them accordingly. Don't try to build a slide show on a tablet, read a magazine story on your phone or upload photos on your desktop -- unless that's how you like to do it. We have different screens for a reason.
Widen Your Network. It's easy to friend a friend, connect with a connection, and follow a follower. But the value is not going around and around the circle of a network, but shooting inward or outward on a spoke and reaching a new circle. So friend a friend of a friend, connect with a connection of a connection, and follow the followerer of a followerer.
Go IRL. Go to In Real Life events you learn about on social media. Do it again. Don't worry if you don't know anyone else who's going. You will afterward.
Bit.ly Your Link Life. Use a link shortener in tweets, emails, texts. Explore how bit.ly and other sites give you analytics on the links you share. Understanding web traffic is a huge skill.
Crop Photos On Your Phone. The easiest way to upload photos is right after you take them on your phone. You can share from where you are. There are sophisticated photo editing apps, but one necessary functionality is cropping. Do you want that guy you don't know with half his head in that great new picture of you and your sweetie pie? Get a simple app, learn to use it, and take control of your online photo life.
Stop Fearing Mistakes. Unless you post angry, post profane, post tasteless, or post intoxicated, don't post paranoid. The Game of Gotcha on social media, of condemning people for posting the same stuff they say in real life, is over. People in authority are finally realizing that social media does not create regrettable communications, it reveals them.
Make Two Facebook Friends Lists. At Least. Make a list of the friends you're closest to, and one of the friends you don't really know. (Here's how.) Now you can post three ways: To all your friends, to all but your distant friends, and to only your close friends. Yes, you want to be able to do that. (Think pics of kids, or posts when you're away on vacation.)
Get A Variety Of Face-First Profile Pics. Please don't think you're cool by making your profile pic a photo of a rock, or a squiggly line. If we don't know you, we want to SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE. (I know, tough concept for some.) Get a variety (some more professional, some more casual) of face-first profile pics you like, put them on different devices, and in a folder on your desktop.

How I grew followers to my @jeffelder Twitter account 1000% in three months

2011-06-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

On March 25, I had 4,267 followers on Twitter, where my handle is @jeffelder. Today, June 24, I have 43,968 followers. This post will tell you exactly what I did to grow my follower base so dramatically. First, a disclaimer:

I do not believe in the popularity-contest view of social media: That the little number beside your face on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn defines your desirability or value as a connection. But I am a realist. As a social media professional, I like what my follower base says about my effectiveness: Many of my clients want me to grow their fan bases. (When I ran social media for a Fortune Fifty company, I grew its Facebook fan base 700% in one year, to 500,000 fans.) I want the largest audience of potential clients, colleagues, collaborators, and friends that I can get. So on this issue, I choose to take the bait. I respect those who don't, and are content with a patient, organic growth that is not encouraged by the tactics listed here. And I concede that these are tactics to boost your follower base. But I also give myself some credit for being entirely transparent in how I've grown my account. On to specifics:

I joined Twitter Counter, Klout, and Twiends -- sites that measure and encourage community building. I bought ads or placement that highlighted my profile so other users could see what I do on Twitter and decide if they want to follow me. I did not "buy followers." I simply promoted my account to show potential real followers what I do on Twitter. That highlighted my content, and let it speak for itself.
I held a promotion on my Twitter account in which I gave $20 to the favorite causes of some followers. This was extremely popular, and has been emulated by others, who have credited me for the idea. It highlighted worthwhile causes and gave them positive buzz. It also gained me lots of engagement, followers and positive sentiment. (Should I do this again? I'm asking.)
I tweeted strong content with helpful links, and left space at the end of my tweets so others could share them with their thoughts. This is very important. I cut back on my @replies that were purely conversational, and concentrated on contributing good information that any Twitter user might want to see -- and share. The retweets of my information -- both automatic and old school (RT) -- soared.
I got my Twitter handle, @jeffelder, "out there," by mentioning it in media. (See what I just did?)
I followed back real Twitter users who followed me. Want me to follow you? @reply me, and I will.

That's it. If you found this helpful, keep the party going and follow me on Twitter.

Twitter and the rush to judgment

2011-06-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by 1.5 million employees, who are women, who claimed sexual discrimination in the way a company, Walmart, carried out promotions. The court cited a companywide policy opposing discrimination, and the fact that promotions were carried out at store level, by 3,400 individual managers. For this reason, the court found, the group, which amounted to 75% of the company workforce, could not sue as one.

“In a company of Walmart’s size and geographical scope, it is quite unbelievable that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

The New York Times, in its front-page story this morning, said the major impact will be to discourage lawyers from filing huge class-action suits. While The Times did note the ruling was pro-business, it in no way signaled the ruling was pro-Walmart. While The Times did note the ruling made large discrimination suits more difficult, it in no way signaled the ruling was anti-women.

Yet when the news broke yesterday and flashed across Twitter, the immediate rush to communicate the news was limited it to, essentially: "The Supreme Court just ruled for Walmart and against women, which is awful." That's not really the story. The court did not even consider the merits of the case, whether Walmart disciminates against women, just its size.

The story might be difficult to limit to 140 characters. Breaking news is often communicated in a dumbed-down (and sometimes just dumb) way. But this morning, when reasoned analysis of the ruling is being published, Twitter has moved on. Few tweets are saying the ruling hurts large class-action suits, or the reasoning behind the ruling. The timeline pictured here shows tweets about the case, and the spike yesterday as the news broke.

I am no fan of Walmart, and I was raised by a single, working mom who faced sexism in the workplace. This post has nothing to do with my politics.

And I love that Twitter is such an effective headline service. It gets news out quickly, informs people faster, alerts the public to important events. But the short attention span of the American public has been limited even more by Twitter. And it troubles me that so few circle back to get beyond the initial headline, which often misses the point.

Death of an online friend

2011-06-16T05:34:00.000-07:00

We never met in person.

But in a dozen emails in January, you called me "my new friend," and we talked about me driving to your city, to have lunch. I sent you this picture of a painting by Franz Marc, because I thought you would like it, and you loved it, and that was fun.

Yesterday I went to your Facebook page. I'd been thinking about you, and wanted to see what you were up to, and to say hello. At first all I saw was that you hadn't posted in a while, but then I saw how many of your friends had. And how rueful and loving and full of memories their posts were. I read on and on, and saw that you'd left us.

You weren't sick, that I knew of. You were younger than me, and healthy. A dancer, a yogi, a hiker. It was so puzzling. I sent a message to one of your real friends on Facebook, and she said I would need to ask your family. I don't feel I can do that. I don't feel I could step into that inner circle and explain.

So sitting here in this same spot where I sat when we corresponded, I just wanted to say goodbye. I posted this picture on your Facebook wall, even though I felt a bit our of place. None of your real friends know me. And online friends aren't like real friends. Are they? So why is the pain and sadness and confusion I feel about your death so real?

I'm not a stalker, or a scammer, or a guy on a laptop in Russia trying to steal privacy information. I'm not a troll who will say awful things.

But how could they know that? They never saw the friendship in our emails.

They never saw that on a winter day, from cities hundreds of miles away, we smiled as we shared a painting of a little blue horse.

When partisan politics turns to hate on social media

2011-06-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

I was news editor of The European Stars & Stripes during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. During my year and a half in that role, a general on one side of the wars personally presided over the genocide of thousands of people because of their religion. He was finally captured this spring, and I tweeted that I was glad about that. The tweet below quickly was sent back to me.

(I have censored the tweet to hide the sender's identity and affiliation.)

The atrocities were a grisly and terrible thing to cover as a journalist. You do not have to be for one side or the other to oppose genocide. That someone would wish me dead for mentioning their hero's arrest on Twitter was stunning and sickening to me. (I do not align myself with any religion or group in the Balkan wars.)

As a former mainstream journalist and current social media professional, this incident touches upon something that has troubled me for some time: The increasingly partisan and divisive political discourse online. Moderates who are not as fervent or united as the extremes often get shouted down. Those with extremist views are more able to reassure themselves of the veracity of their beliefs.

The New York Times reported today that people argue just to win, a new wave of scholarly research suggests. Arriving at the truth is not the goal. So our discourse can distance us more rather than pull us together and closer to the truth. This might be human nature: Being right is a basic motivation. But it is troubling, and compounds the problems created by the ability today to surround oneself in a partisan echo chamber of one's own beliefs.

Objectivity may have been an impossible goal of mainstream, traditional media, but at least it was valued. The splintering of media into myriad subjective channels allows the Fox News junkies to surround themselves with their views and the MSNBC junkies on the other side to do the same. This leaves those of us who are more moderate in the crossfire.

On blogs, the largest topic of news stories linked to were about U.S. government or politics "often accompanied by emphatic personal analysis or evaluations," the Pew Research Center reported in a 2010 study. Pew also reported that most people use social media to get a candidate elected or espouse a cause, not to attempt to solve a problem. The more partisan a group, the more it may use social media: The Tea Party faithful embrace their causes on social media far more than do more moderate groups. Some say social media was the most important tool in galvanizing that movement.

The more extreme the views, the more propaganda necessary to defend it, and the more free and available social media may be employed. White supremacists have relied on social media to gather, and to immediately purge anyone who doesn't share their views.

Arguing just to be right is dangerous, but is perhaps human nature. Stoking the furnaces of hate is when it goes too far. When that happens on social media, the need for moderation is clear.

How To: Post On Facebook To Get Great Visibility And Interaction

2011-06-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

An expensive white paper came out today explaining Facebook's News Feed algorithm, which dictates what you see on the Facebook home page. What posts rise to the top, gather still more interaction, and stay there? This is gold to social marketers -- and mom and pop businesses. There are some tricks to optimization. Maybe I can save you a little money on that white paper.

First, the headline:

You see atop your News Feed the most popular posts from the accounts you follow -- what your friends have been liking and commenting on recently.

As TechCrunch pointed out in a post from April, several factors go into this ranking:

1. How regularly you interact with the original poster. If you connect with the poster often, their posts will rank higher.
2. How many comments are already on the post from your friends. (Likes count for a bit less.)
3. How old the post is.

What does that mean for you, in trying to get engagement on a Facebook post? Here's what I discovered when I was running social media for a Fortune Fifty company:

1. We needed to time our posts well. The clock is ticking, and if you post in a slow time, your post might never get traction. Don't post early in the morning. I found the best time to post was prime time -- from 8-10 p.m. -- or in mid-afternoon. This post from Mashable plots out good posting times. As the graph shows, you really shouldn't post from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. That might seem obvious, but many businesses post early in the morning, then leave their Facebook work at the office, missing key evening opportunities.
UPDATE: Facebook posts receive 50% of their Likes in the first 80 minutes, a study from social marketing company Visibli shows. So post at the wrong time, and you'll miss a lot of engagement.
2. We needed to aim for either a lot of likes or a lot of comments. We would regular post something akin to: Give is a "like" if you're ready for some football! Or we would post: What is your favorite football team? The two posts are quite different in the reactions they seek.
3. We needed our engagement posts to be succinct. The examples above are "grabbers" that immediately tell the reader what to do. If the call to action is in the third sentence, you won't get much interaction.
4. An engagement post needs to be about the Facebook fan, not your company. Imagine asking someone: How do I look? The answer is often: Great! Now imagine asking them: What have you been up to today? The answer is much longer. We got great engagement when we asked things like: What kind of grill do you have, and how do you like it?

A traditional marketer might ask, Why use strategy to get a lot of impressions and comments on a conversational post about our customers? You're not selling anything. Precisely. You're taking part in your customers' lives. You're giving them a chance to like something or comment on something. When Facebook fans log on and see your business is one of the most popular things in their News Feed, they think of you in a different way: Relevant.

Bored? Scared? Don't see the point? Answers to 10 common questions about LinkedIn

2011-06-06T09:07:00.000-07:00

1. Why should I work on my LinkedIn profile? I'm not looking for a job.
Your LinkedIn profile is a highly searchable summary of your professional life. If people want to get a glimpse of you as a new colleague, connection or collaborator, that's where they look. Besides, what if you do need to look for a job? Do you want to start from scratch?
2. I don't know where to begin. What do I do?
Upload a photo of yourself. Nothing looks worse than a profile with no photo. For LinkedIn, you want a picture of yourself facing the camera and smiling, in professional clothes. I like one taken outside on a nice day. The lighting is often excellent. And you look likable and upbeat. (There's a reason politicians do this.) It's a good idea to have a few professional head shots in a folder on your computer and on your phone.
3. Isn't it boring entering your resume information on your profile?
Yes. LinkedIn auto-populates some of that for you. But filling in your LinkedIn profile isn't as fun as pinging with friends on Twitter or looking at photos on Facebook. But it can get you jobs. It's your public, living resume, and is worth the time.
4. Does LinkedIn have a tutorial to help me get started?
Of course. Click here, and the short video below gives you a broad overview, as well.

5. Won't I look lame with only a few connections? Don't some people have thousands?
Sigh. There's that numbers-game, popularity contest again. It just doesn't go away. It's good for one's ego to see a big, fat number by your connections, but it's really not the point. You want to have a presence, and to put your best foot forward there.
6. I already have a profile, somewhere. I abandoned it, and I don't want to go deal with it. What do I do?
Here are some directions on how to delete an old account.
7. Should I connect with all my colleagues at work?
Probably. But those "close ties" are not really the ones that are most valuable, studies show. Your immediate circle doesn't really help you expand into new markets and opportunities. That's why LinkedIn is good for expanding your network.
8. Should I be careful who I connect with on LinkedIn?
Not really. LinkedIn information is not personal in the sense that some Facebook information is: No one can see pictures of your kids, or pictures of the inside of your home, for instance. I'm very open with who I connect with. But you could limit your connections to those within your network, i.e., connected to you via someone else.
9. Is LinkedIn adding new functionality?
Yes. You can even upload a video of yourself to greet viewers of your profile. Here are five tips for the getting the most out of LinkedIn, from Fast Company magazine.
10. Is it true you quadrupled your LinkedIn network in three months using an iPhone trick?
Yes. If an iPhone user would like to know how I did it, contact me via the blog, or on LinkedIn, here. I'll add you as a connection!

The secret sauce of sustainability

2011-06-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

Brian Sterricker, Heidi Sterricker, and Dave Perry, my hosts in Milwaukee and members of the United Adworkers.

What makes one project sustainable, while another, comparable idea quickly runs out of gas?

Why does an ad catch on, get talked about, bring results? Why does a social media campaign catch fire and spread quickly? Why does a group pull together, build relationships, hold great events, and function as a network?

I wish I knew. If there were one secret sauce, one key ingredient, everyone would use it every time they launched anything. Instead, we all hope to kindle that spark of inspiration.

A great group, one with that curious spark of success, recently hosted me in Milwaukee as I spoke at Marquette University. The United Adworkers is actually a group of competitors, ringed by the sincere collegiality of the Midwest, more interested in playing Show And Tell than King Of The Hill. My stay included lodging at the chic Iron Horse Hotel and a trip to Miller Park for a Brewers game, coordinated by my hostess, Heidi Sterricker, a leader of the group. It also included many conversations, and many questions before during and after my talk on What I Learned Leading Social Media For A Fortune 50.

Here's what struck me about this dialogue: It was not about "Look at me!" It was about "Check this out!" Or especially, "That's so cool." Recognizing quality -- whoever has done the work -- can be a difficult thing for one's ego. "When is my turn to shine?" I ask myself inside. "What if I never get a turn to shine?" My ego can persist.

That territoriality, that unhealthy competition, that frightened ego is what drains good ideas of their umph as much as anything else, I suspect. When that baggage is thrown off, the mpg is much better, and an idea can truck on down the road. I think that's what my hosts have in the United Adworkers -- a genuine appreciation for good work, whoever has done it. It was a beautiful thing to be around.

I also experienced this phenomenon at the Fortune 50 where I led social media. During a viral promotion, we crashed a server in front of a huge audience, perhaps more than 100,000 people. No one panicked or pointed a finger at me, the instigator of the viral madness. Instead we pulled together, an inspired email workaround was devised, and a team of two dozen of us ran -- as a team -- the most successful social promotion of the 2010 holidays, at least that I know of.

What makes something sustainable? Not saying: "Look at me!" when things go well. Or "It's his fault!" when things go badly. That's a very good start.

To read Teddy Lyngaas' blog post about my talk to the Adworkers, click here. Special thanks to Heidi and Brian Sterricker. Contrary to his tweet, Dave Perry did not dominate me in baseball helmet cheese fries at the Brewers game.

What does it mean to be the disc jockey spinning the greatest hits of your brand?

2011-05-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

I believe any brand page on Facebook and any company account on Twitter needs a manager who knows and loves that company and its products. (When I ran social media for a Fortune 50 company, we had separate people tending Facebook and Twitter, so we could concentrate on each platform and community a little more closely.) Over time, that person can build a meaningful relationship with the fans and followers. As I've said in the past, that person can be like a disc jockey playing the greatest hits of that company. But what exactly does that mean, and what does it look like in practice?

Content, as has been said many times during the Web 2.0 craze, is king. Unique, original, bite-sized content that can be used effectively in social media channels does wonders for your brand. These are the greatest hits the disc jockey can play. Examples:

A How-To video on YouTube that you can embed on Facebook and link to from Twitter instructing fans on the use of your product.
A pithy press release (is that an oxymoron?) on your company site touting a new innovation by your company. You can quote this on Facebook and link to it from Twitter.
A recipe you can publish in full on Facebook.
Historic company photos.
Fun trivia related to the company.
Photos fans send in of themselves with their products, or testimonies of their good experiences with the company.

These small pieces of content are perfect for social media because they are easy to share and link to. A blogger can pick up the press release and write about it. A fan can share the recipe with his sister.

Here's why its important to have a DJ who knows and loves the company: An outside content manager can sound very false to loyal fans. (Imagine a country music disc jockey suddenly showing up at a dance club.) And someone from outside the company can have a specific agenda that isn't really concerned about the fans. Sharing the duties within the company can lead to territorial squabbling, and prevent the voice of the account from really establishing a style and intimacy.

And having one disc jockey who has control of the mike means someone can say, "Your song sucks," when one part of the company is pushing content that the fans won't like. This happens. One person who owns a channel comes to know her audience well, and can objectively evaluate the content you put out there. She can experiment with posting photos, discounts, trivia. She becomes an expert in how your company interacts with customers, and can consult and advise the rest of the company. This last chunk of content is important: This disc jockey is more than just a voice of your company. She's also the ears. She's in touch with the fans. And the fans aren't the only ones who should listen to her.

How many fans, followers, friends do you have? Ugh. Aren't we past that yet?

2011-05-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

Your Facebook brand manager should be like a disc jockey spinning the company's greatest hits to an engaged audience. Not a high school kid desperate to be popular.

How many fans does your company Facebook page have? How many followers does your personal Twitter account have? Let me ask a similar question: How many kids signed your high school yearbook?

The popularity contest of social media is as inescapable, ego-based and shallow as high school social games. But I play it. I'm guessing some of you do, too.

A friend, who happens to have the most Twitter followers on any non-celebrity I know, deplores the numbers game. "Some of the most influential social/emerging media thought leaders I know have <300 followers," he tweeted recently, after we served on a social media panel together and discussed this topic. Quantity, we agreed, does not indicate quality. A big restaurant is no more likely to better than a small one. In fact, the opposite is often the case.

(It would be really nice if, someday, social media platforms gave us the option to hide our fans and followers numbers, rather than sticking them right under our pictures.)

A PR person recently reached out on LinkedIn to ask what was the minimum number of users a Facebook app would need to have in order for me to write about it. The answer is: zero. I'd love to be the first person to discover something great. Even Angry Birds had no users at one point. The key is the quality, and that's where some companies might need to do some soul searching before they pitch a story: Is it really great, or are they playing that popularity contest, and just looking for a reaction to something the company hasn't really invested in?

Quick: What's the most successful brand on Facebook? Texas Hold'em Poker with its terrifying 43 million fans? (Who, yes, get to gamble on Facebook.) Justin Bieber? Coke? Nope. They all have huge fan bases, but for real success, try a much smaller fan base. Try Audi. The carmaker's engagement is through the roof, and 10,000 likes on a post are not uncommon. (OK, so maybe that's a different numbers game. It does show engagement, however: quality rather than just quantity.) A recent study by the digital marketing analytics firm Visibli showed Audi is the most engaged big brand on Facebook. It's easy to see why: Its posts are gorgeous multi-media with rich, unique, original content. Adding that kind of content to the social media stream does wonders for representing your company.

And the Audi Facebook folks clearly know their community.

The person who runs your brand's Facebook page should be like a disc jockey spinning the company's greatest hits. That means knowing and loving the company -- and building a real bond with the fans. That means not forcing that disc jockey to play the same old song, but giving them good content. That means allowing that community to thrive in an organic way, rather than twisting or turning it to meet an artificial demand for ROI.

You know those rich, valuable conversations you have with your real friends? The talks that linger and add value to your life? Could you have that type of engagement with a huge group you don't really know, but whom you're connected with solely to pad the number of friends you have?

Build out that rich content. Add to the stream. Connect in meaningful ways.

Still need a number to work on? How's your cholesterol?

Who should win the 50 bucks in our limerick contest?

2011-05-15T09:44:00.001-07:00

Here are the finalists in our Limerick Day contest on Twitter. The winner gets a $50 gift card from Amazon. @charlottebeer didn't hit the button on his entry, so it came in late. I say we cut him some slack.

Vote in a comment below -- or leave it up to me! (Click on image to see larger.)

There once was a blogger named Jeff

whose preferences here brought great heft

If his readers don't choose

then someone could lose

he could give the prize to himself! ; )

Vote!

Help fix ASNE social media best practices -- don't just bash on Twitter

2011-05-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, the American Society of News Editors released a best practices for social media document. The reaction by journalists online was critical. In the case of some, like author and social media advocate Jeff Jarvis, the reaction was comical, but might have actually validated the charges by many old school journalists that Twitter should not be taken seriously.

But the snarky tweets, and even the more thoughtful blog posts, such as a reasoned and detailed analysis by Steve Buttry, may have overlooked a key point:

Social media is collaborative.

These were not stone tablets handed down from Mt. Sinai. We, as journalists and social media professionals, should contribute to, reshape, and help revise this document. Otherwise, we're still treating legacy media as the authority figure who lays the ground rules. Today, the conversation, ongoing and wiki in nature, is the authority. To this end, I've created a Google Doc and marked up the ASNE's original with my thoughts. I intend this as a contribution, perhaps a small one, and look forward to seeing the contributions of others. Please, rip mine up. This is a public document, but you must sign in to edit it. I would also hope the Storify docs that have sprung up could be harnessed, and social media as a whole could be used to develop these thoughts more broadly. (The irony of an essentially dead-tree model being used by the ASNE to discuss social media is not lost here.)

The ASNE's original work, penned by James Hohmann of Politico, is at times haughty, outdated, and vague. But it is also valiant, necessary, and constructive. The reactions online by many journalists, to attack like a swarm of piranha, then move on to the next victim, is not journalism or social media at its best. In this evolving time of communications, constructive collaboration is important.

Our Limerick Day contest on Twitter could win you $50

2011-05-12T06:44:00.000-07:00

May 12 is Limerick Day. What forum on earth could be better suited for limericks than Twitter?

Yes, 140 characters is a challenge. But what's the fun of no challenge? Poetry itself is a challenge, as is writing a great tweet. After all, the great Robert Frost said writing poetry that doesn't rhyme is like "playing tennis without a net."

Ready to play tennis with a net? It's this simple:

Write a limerick on Twitter. It must include either #limerickday or @jeffelder so I will see your entry. Entries must be received by midnight Pacific time. You must retweet our original tweet announcing the contest:

Today's #LimerickDay. Lets have a contest OK? Pen top limerick tweet. And this pls RT! One $50 top prize we'll pay. http://www.jeffelder.net

I will round up the best entries and post them here Friday. With your help, we'll select one as the winner. I'll email the author a $50 Amazon gift card.

So, you better get rhyming/they say it's all in the timing/if you top #LimerickDay/our prize we will pay/& your Twitter fame will b climbing

Why you should pay for social media

2011-05-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

Want a free T-shirt? Sure you do. Free is good. Here ya go. Put it on:

LIPOSUCTION DRIVE-THRU
Get sucked behind the wheel!

Don't worry about the message. It's a FREE T-shirt! It's a little scratchy? That's because it's a new fabric made from used cell phones. Cool, right? Oh, the shirt's a small and you're a large? Don't worry about it! You look great! And the tight fit goes great with our liposuction message. What do you want? It's a FREE T-shirt! ... Hey, would you mind walking back and forth in front of the TV camera at the boat show? ... Hello? ... HEY, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

Free is not always good. Especially when it has to do with getting your message across, your way. One size does not fit all.

The most dangerous thing about social media is that there is no barrier to entry. We were reminded of that recently when a Consumer Reports study revealed that 7.5 million Facebook users are 13 and under. Anyone can launch a Facebook page. Do you want just anyone launching yours? The nephew who "really gets this stuff"? The intern who you'll never see again after the summer? The friend of a friend who has some cool ideas you don't quite understand?

There are people who actually know what they're doing on social media, and there are tourists who wander into it. A new study by Cornell and Yahoo! shows half of all tweets are created by 20K power users. Also noted in the study, Twitter reports that it has 175 million users. Yet 90 million of those accounts have exactly zero followers. In other words, lots of people give it a shot, give up, and junk their accounts by the side of the road. Is your business's name on some of those accounts? That's the equivalent of having a dilapidated billboard on the side of town. Doesn't look good.

The accounts that do stay active can be even more dangerous. I recently contacted an NBA franchise to ask if marketing leadership knew what was being tweeted on the team's official account by a fan who'd been placed in charge of it. No one there knew the account manager was using the account to root on his favorite team in the NFL playoffs. (Sports marketing agencies will tell you that one of the main problems for the NBA is generating interest in the regular season while the NFL playoffs are going on.) This is the kind of thing that happens when you delegate your social accounts to just anyone.

This stuff is no longer "new." Social media is not where it was a year and a half ago, when return on investment was unprovable, metrics were in a nascent phase, and few communications professionals had credentials. This is a real industry now, with excellent tools, like Radian6; real measurements, like sales directed from social media platforms via Coremetrics links; and real credentials, like experience guiding companies on social, and directing campaigns for agencies.

You get what you pay for. If you want professional social media, you need to pay a professional to do it. There is a paradox (I'm biting my tongue not say "hypocrisy") among business people who simultaneously scoff that social media companies and campaigns don't make money -- and yet refuse to invest any real resources or manpower in those areas. If you want to make an omelet, you've got to break some eggs.

How do you find good, qualified social media people? Ask. We are a talkative bunch. We will tell you that here in Charlotte, longtime PR and web guy Brandon Uttley and social media search guy Roy Morejon have just launched a promising and polished digital marketing agency, that enlightened ad man Jim Mitchem runs a great virtual agency, that Dani Burns and the Social Media Charlotte crowd help to organize social expertise in this town, that the Blumenthal's social media is excellent, that WCNC meteorologist Brad Panovich is tops in media on Twitter, that Queens U. prof Mac McArthur "gets it" from the academic side, that local product Jason Keath takes his Social Fresh events national, that hardworking Genevieve Jooste does right by her clients... (I told you we were talkative.)

And we will also tell you what we think about the Charlotte-based sales guru who is suddenly making a lot of noise on social media, the digital marketing franchise using pyramid sales techniques, the social professional who poaches other people's clients out from under them, and the old-time agencies trying to act spry by adding a young person to do social.

First, take off that FREE T-shirt. Let's get you something that fits, with your message on it.

Blogwell attendees, you might not need that pricey CRM platform

2011-05-04T03:37:00.000-07:00

I'm off to the Blogwell conference in D.C. (gamely typing this out on my iPad in the Charlotte airport), and I'm reminded that I far prefer going to a conference when I'm neither buyer nor seller. So it is today: As an independent consultant at this social media for business conference, I ain't pitchin', and I ain't catchin'. So I can be objective about what I see and hear.

Here's an objective opinion about what we're sure to see pitched today, CRM platforms -- Customer Relationship Management. I'm not a fan. Let me explain why, drawing from my experience running social for a Fortune 50, and with the use of a quick metaphor:

I recently stained a deck, and when I bought the stain, I asked the person at the store's paint counter if I should get a whiz bang roller with a cool attachment. "I wouldn't," he said. When I asked why he wouldn't get this cool-looking new product (I wanted it), he replied, "You're still going to need a brush."

That's the way it is with a cool-looking CRM platform: You're still going to need an employee with institutional knowledge about your company who can listen and respond to customers. When I ran social media for a Fortune 50 (until April, when I opted to go out on my own), I had several bad experiences with basic CRM tools, like scheduling tweets and providing standardized responses to complaints. In short, customers could tell they were spam. When we provided human responses, customers could tell that, too. When those human responses were informed, patient and attentive, the customers (who often showed up on our social accounts irate) were delighted.

We used the free version of Cotweet and native Facebook functionality (simply making our customer-service reps admins), and provided all customer relationship management with those free tools. I'm not saying CRM platforms aren't worth using. But as someone who is neither buying nor selling, I can objectively say:

You're still going to need a brush.

May 1, 1945 vs. May 1, 2011 -- How news spread of the deaths of Hitler and Bin Laden

2011-05-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

May 1, 1945: The world learns that Adolf Hitler is dead.
May 1, 2011: The world learns that Osama Bin Laden is dead.

These must have been very different news cycles, right? After all, the news of Hitler's suicide in a Berlin bunker had no Twitter, no Facebook, not even TV for almost anyone. Whereas news of the covert operation to kill Bin Laden in a Pakistan mansion must have flown much faster, with better details and more clarity.

Wrong. What's striking in looking at these two historic stories is how similarly the news traveled. For one main reason: Twitter isn't faster than radio and they both deliver a brief headline well.

At 10:25 p.m., May 1, 2011, Keith Urbahn, chief of staff for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, tweets the news that Osama Bin Laden is dead, setting off a chain of tweets spreading the news. CNN urges patience as the president prepares his statement, but the succinct headline "Bin Laden dead" simply outpaces the televised address. By the time the president makes his address, he is not breaking news, but making sense of it as a statesman. The following day, newspapers and their Web sites give the details, the backstories, the analysis.

At 10:30 p.m., May 1, 1945, Berlin radio announces the death of Hitler, setting off a chain of radio reports that quickly travel across the world. You can hear the first BBC announcement here. Note the BBC newsman says German radio "has just announced" that Hitler is dead. U.S. officials are wary of the unconfirmed news, and Winston Churchill is so reluctant to comment that he simply says the war situation is "definitely more satisfactory than it was this time five years ago." But in America, where Eastern time is six hours behind Berlin, radio stations broadcast the brief, immediately understandable news, which is then spread by word of mouth as Americans leave work. In the evening they gather in their living rooms to hear details on the radio. The next day newspapers, some with HITLER IS DEAD blaring over half of the front page, make the news official.

There are, no doubt, many differences in how these stories unfolded. Many did not know the details of Hitler's death for more than a month, and rumors that he was alive persisted for years. But that was in large part because of the circumstances of Hitler's death and the many aspects of the war, and not due to limitations of the media.

The brevity of the news is key here. Celebrity deaths, such as Michael Jackson's, have always been fodder for viral spikes on Twitter -- and the stuff of great radio news alerts. In the end, a news flash still is defined by the old newspaper criteria: If you can yell it in a crowded bar and the listener understands what you're talking about, it's a valid headline.

The brief news that a villain is dead travels fast, in 1945 and 2011.

UPDATE: Why I'm AGAIN giving to my Twitter followers' causes

2011-04-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

UPDATE, 12/13:

For the holidays I would like to recreate this giving campaign. I'm giving $20 to the favorite charities of 20 followers. All you have to do is RT my tweet to enter. I'll reach out to 20 of you and ask for your favorite charity so you can give it a shoutout on Twitter. Then I'll donate $20 in your name and tweet the receipt, as I have in the past.

UPDATE, 4/29:

Stunned to discover that I have gained 10,000 followers in the past month, I find myself at another milestone: 20,000 followers. Because gifts to my followers' favorite causes were clearly very popular, I'm giving $10 to the favorite causes of 20 followers. Just tweet the url of your favorite cause to me @jeffelder. (This is very fun!) Here's my original post explaining what I'm doing, and why:

I'm leaving corporate America, where I've led social media for a Fortune 50 company, and going out on my own as an independent social media consultant and entrepreneur. So a week ago I decided to allocate a small budget toward advertising.

I bought a couple of small ads on social media. But I once again experienced the fact that social media ads' effectiveness is spotty. Consider this evidence: One-third of all online display ads appear on Facebook, comScore, the digital marketing research company, reports. Yet those ads command a cost that is far, far below the market value of other online ads. Why? They don't work very well. You see those ads on the shoulder of your Facebook wall. Do you immediately get out your wallet? Me either.

I also signed on for several community-building Twitter sites, but the followers I gained were for the most part not relevant to me: Some were tweeting in other languages, others were purely looking to add to their own followings.

Then I had an idea:

I was about to cross the threshold of 10K followers. What if I noted that by giving away $100 to good causes on Twitter? What if I offered to contribute to my Twitter followers' favorite charities, thereby sending the money to good causes, rather than to the advertising media? Would that inspire a circle of good buzz and positive sentiment, gaining me the exposure I sought? I wanted to find out. So I tweeted the following:

I'm giving $20 to the favorite cause of 5 followers. RT this & reply with your favorite cause & its link to enter.

I heard from dozens of people on Twitter, advocating for their causes, and saying they thought this was a cool idea. I then gave 20 bucks to the causes of five Twitter followers. For that $100 I received great positive sentiment.

Were my motives entirely altruistic? Obviously not. If I wanted to be a philanthropist (a vocation I cannot afford), I could've anonymously donated the money to the cause of my choosing. But that's the point: I didn't give to my cause. I gave to other people's. And in that way, the project was collaborative. I received because I gave.

Collaboration is what social media is all about. We might all be motivated by WIFM -- what's in it for me? But we only get traction socially by taking an interest in what other people care about.

My followers got money for their causes, and the satisfaction of knowing they helped. The causes got a contribution -- and also several public shout outs. I got positive sentiment attached to my personal brand. Behold the circle of life.

But I also got something else: It was really fun. Fun making my followers happy. Fun discovering their causes. Fun giving in a way I would not have been inspired to give. Fun seeing the buzz created.

So I'm doing it again. Another hundred bucks -- $20 to five followers causes. Now I have another motive: Watching a cool social experiment continue.

Want to play? Tweet this:

RT @jeffelder -- I'm giving $20 to the favorite cause of 5 followers. RT this & reply with your favorite cause & its link to enter.

Good luck. I hope I get to give to your cause.

Meet the royal couple's chum and wedding guest: Charlottean who runs nonprofit helping African orphans

2011-04-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

Charlotte just might be the best-represented American city at the royal wedding. One young woman from the Queen City will be seated right up front with the royal family at the biggest wedding of the 21st century. She has also introduced more than a dozen Charlotteans to the royal couple.

You already knew Charlotte Symphony music director Christopher Warren-Green will be a part of the royal wedding tomorrow of Prince William and Kate Middleton. And his wife, Rosemary, will also attend. But here's something no one in town knows:

Meghann Gunderman, Charlotte Country Day school alum and head of the nonprofit The Foundation For Tomorrow, which helps African orphans, is an invited guest.

Gunderman is friends with Will and Kate after going to school together at The University of St Andrews. She attended the prince's 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle. He attended her 21st party at a castle in Scotland (with a "Gone With the Wind" theme). More than a dozen classmates of hers from Charlotte Country Day school came to that party and met both Will and Kate there.

Gunderman is in London now, and while "The Today Show" and media have contacted her, she hasn't done any interviews. No one in Charlotte knows she is a guest -- until now.

Gunderman and the prince share a love for Africa, and a devotion to its children in needs. See her nonprofit, here:

http://thefoundationfortomorrow.org

Washington biggies' Post-Its reactions to release of Obama birth certificate (SATIRE)

2011-04-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

YouTube stars the Gregory Brothers talk viral videos in Charlotte

2011-04-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

At right, The Gregory Brothers: Sarah, Evan, Michael and Andrew Gregory.

What's it like to create the most viral video on the planet?

"It was like drinking coffee all the time," says Michael Gregory of the Gregory Brothers, who were the biggest thing on YouTube in 2010 when their ubiquitous "Bed Invader Song" video was watched more than anything else. There have now been more than 79 million views of the video -- and that's just of the main version of the music video which "auto tunes the news" of a rape attempt with results that are somehow passionate, hilarious, poignant, soulful, and damn catchy. "It was amazing to watch it go viral, but we were also working a lot right at that time. So we had other stuff going on.

"It's the biggest thing we've done, but it's not the only thing we've done. Other videos we've done have millions of views. But, it's true, we wouldn't be here without it."

"Here" is on the Digitour of YouTube stars touring the country. Now about one-third of the way done, the tour started out west, came south, and now heads north. Michael said the largest house so far is about 600 people in L.A., but that a New York gig might be bigger. The Digitour plays the N.C. Music Factory tonight (4/26). Justin Ruckman, Matthew Tyndall and Desiree Kane of CLT Blog pulled together a press conference and streamed the live video this afternoon. See that here. CLT Blog, the strongest and best independent new media voice in Charlotte, has pulled together many events like this in the past.

The idea of a tour of YouTube stars brings up a question: Do internet stars need to break through to mainstream media to make it in the big time?

"It's not crucial," says Evan Gregory, brother of band mates Michael and Andrew Gregory, and the wife of band member Sarah Fullen Gregory. "But mainstream media is still the measuring stick of how big you make it, and will be for some time. When we made it in The New York Times, people who wouldn't have taken us seriously began to."

The Gregory Brothers' breakthrough to mainstream media is taking them to TV -- they are making a pilot of a sitcom for Comedy Central. "We want it to be like "The Monkees" of the 21st century," says Andrew Gregory.

That big time in traditional media awaits, yet the story of this band and this tour is a one-person audience in front of a computer, clicking the "play" button on YouTube, and encountering a video in a very personal way.

"Yes, that personal connection is different," says Evan. "People make a choice to play our videos, and you can feel that in the crowds on the tour."

HOW TO: Use Facebook Places On Vacation

2011-04-22T14:41:00.000-07:00

I recently took a trip to New York with my daughter. I took lots of pictures and posted them to Facebook immediately using the Places app on my iPhone. Here's how to do that:

Click Places, then Check In.
Select where you are from the list of places.
Fill in what you're doing.
Tag Facebook friends you're with.
Check In.
The post will ask if you'd like to add a photo.
Pull up a photo you've taken. (I prefer to take a few photos first, so I get one I like, rather than taking one while the app is waiting on me.)
Tag your friends in the photo and add a caption.

This accomplished several things:

I could show, not tell my friends where we were. They could see the geo tag first thing, rather than reading me describing where we were.
I could tag my daughter in the photos so her high school friends could see what a cool spring break trip she took with her old man.
I could use the fields in the Places post and the caption in the photo to comment on what were doing, rather than where we were or who we were with.
I could build a record of our trip that friends and family could follow along with during our trip.
I could get suggestions from friends who knew New York about where we should go and what we should do next.

One friend saw my Places post and pic of an inferior pizza place, suggested we go to Joe's in Greenwich Village, and sent us to get the best slice in the city. Social media in action. I also asked where to find the best bagel in New York, and was guided to H&H Bagels by the Hudson River (which I posted in Places). But I didn't really use Twitter much from New York, because my Twitter audience is large and less well-known to me than my Facebook friends, and I didn't really want to talk a lot about being out of town.

Five Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Your Social Media Life

2011-04-20T05:52:00.000-07:00

If you're on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or another social network, you have a social media life. You might think, "Yes, but I don't do much with them." That's an even better reason to do a little social media spring cleaning. Your social media accounts are highly visible. If your social media accounts are lame, people can conclude that you're incompetent, out of touch, or not a good connection. Let's get to work sprucing you up!

Get out your resume, and give your LinkedIn account a detailed overhaul. Boring, right? Yawn. Not nearly as fun as looking at your high school sweetheart on Facebook. Well, let me ask you something: Do you find money boring? LinkedIn can get you jobs. It's highly searchable. If your LinkedIn account is skeletal, you have a flimsy resume circulating publicly. An entrepreneur trying to launch a social media startup once approached me for support. I took one look at his LinkedIn and knew he wasn't for real: No picture, one job listed, few connections. The best way to beef up your LinkedIn is to make a little time, sit down with your resume, and fill out your profile with a little discipline. Give recommendations to people you respect, and ask for them to recommend you in return. I advise upgrading to a paid LinkedIn account so you can approach people via InMails who aren't in your network. An upgrade also allows you to see who has viewed your account, which is cool. And if you're an iPhone user, I have a ninja trick I used to quadruple my LinkedIn connections in three months. See it here.
Take charge of your photos on Facebook and elsewhere on social media. Ever discover, to your horror, a photo of you on Facebook that was not exactly flattering? Want your old high school sweetheart to find that and immediately conclude that he or she dodged a bullet by not settling down with you? All kinds of photos of you might be drifting around Facebook (people can upload what they want), but you can control which ones are most visible and are connected to your profile. Here's what to do: Click on your profile, then on Photos. Scroll down to Photos Of You. See something you don't like? Click on it and click Remove Tag. Now the pic won't show up when people click on Photos Of you, and won't appear in the little lineup of photos atop your profile. Now let's make sure you don't have any profile picture experiments gone awry. Go to your profile, and click the main photo in the top left corner. This takes you to your profile pic gallery, which is one of the first places people go to when they want to see who you are. See any pics that, in retrospect, you shouldn't have put up? Click on it and delete. Gone. Lastly, make sure you have two kinds of profile pics at your fingertips: One that is professional; one that is casual. Don't get too artsy. The professional should be you in a suit, face forward, in good light. The casual should also be recognizable. Put these in a folder on your desktop and also on your phone. It's amazing how often you need a headshot of yourself these days. It might feel cute to have a picture of your dog as your profile pic, but often times people just want to see what you look like. You also want to control who can see photos you're tagged in, which I address in the next section.
Spend some time on your Facebook settings. Click Account top right. Go through Account settings and Privacy Settings to make sure Facebook is configured the way you want it. In Account Settings, there are two key areas: Notifications and Mobile. I want to be notified about two things on Facebook, and I want to be notified right away: When someone messages me, and when someone tags me in a photo. I get those alerts via email and text alerts to my phone. Remember the horror of discovering that unflattering photo of yourself? Never again. Get a notification when someone tags you, and you know first. Privacy settings control who can see what about you on Facebook. Go through to control who can see your staus updates, contact info, etc. One of the key tools to using privacy settings is friends lists, which I get into in the next section.
Set up friends lists. I love having a wide and diverse base of friends. But that also means my Newsfeed is an eclectic mix of old friends I haven't seen in years, close friends and work friends -- along with more extraneous connections. I want to at least have the option of more streamlined channels that I can tune into for a more focused social experience. Otherwise I'm always in a crowd of jumbled relationships. Sometimes I want to be surrounded only by close friends. Other times, I want to see what my work connections are saying.
Friends lists also allow me to post to only these groups. And search allows me to see what my friends -- even my friends in a certain city -- are saying about, say, the Carolina Panthers while they're playing on a Sunday. So I can comment on their posts and take part in a real-time conversation about one thing.
How to create a friends list:
Click on the Facebook home page, then Friends, and you'll see a list of your friends with the option to "Create a List." Click that and add the friends for a "close friends" list. I do this instead of creating a family group, because I want my closest connections all on one "channel." When I sit down to Facebook, I can click this "channel" by clicking to the Home page, then clicking this list under Friends. Now I can see what the people most important to me are up to. As I said, I can also post to these people only.
How to post to a friends list:
Go to your profile, click the little lock under the status update box. Click "custom edit," then "these people," then type the name of your list: "close friends." Now your post will go out to only your closest connections.
I also like to have a work friends list that includes business pages I follow for work. I call this list "network me." I might not post to this work group, but clicking on it shows me what my colleagues are doing. Confession: I also have a "weirdos" list that I exclude from seeing things on Facebook. Why not unfriend these people? Because unfriending often equals drama. And they might only be in a temporary penalty box, and I'll liberate them from the weirdos list in a little bit.
Explore location-based social media on your phone. FourSquare allows you to check in to places you frequent, and become "The Mayor," unlocking discounts. Facebook Places lets you check in and see who else on Facebook has been there recently. This also lets you post your adventures out in the world to your Facebook page. Why would you want to do that? Well, remember the old complaint about social media that "no one cares what you had for lunch"? This allows more relevant, dynamic connections: You not sitting at home in front of your computer, you're out doing things. It can also come in very handy. After I checked in from Washington, D.C., a friend suggested a nearby restaurant. After I checked in from New York, a friend sent me to the most famous bagel works in the city. Neither of these people making suggestions were close friends, so they would have had no way to know I was traveling unless I checked in. Location-based social media is booming, and will be huge in the next few years. You want to be connected. Wade into it, and see how you like it.

Email blowing up with Facebook notifications? Join the club

2011-04-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

At 6 p.m. Eastern last night, the real-time web lit up with complaints from users getting emails from Facebook everytime a friend hit the space bar or exhaled. At 9, many users discovered that all their notifications -- the entire breaker box -- had been flipped in an error. Whose error? Well, Facebook's. Previous errors revealed privacy information to other users. But this was a "push" problem -- pushing millions of emails from the Giant Peephole into many of its users inboxes.

Facebook told CNN it had fixed the problem as of about 11:45 a.m. ET on Wednesday. Check out your settings to make sure. Go to your settings, go to notifications, and uncheck all the options that are checked that you don't want. Then hit save.

Some users also reported another odd symptom: Their cursor disappeared. They could still use Facebook, but the thin vertical line indicating where they were typing had become invisible.

Despite a loud chorus of complaints on Twitter and Facebook, Facebook told CNN "We discovered a bug that caused a small number of people to start receiving notifications they had previously turned off. We have since resolved the issue and apologize for any inconvenience."

A similar problem happened in 2008 -- the Paleozoic Age for social media, the difference being that many users were not on Facebook yet, and those who were had far fewer interactions. Still, interesting that the same issue popped up before.

Some users speculate this could be related to a new release -- so often the trigger when Facebook goes nutso. It appears notifications are part of current work Facebook is ready to unveil: Notifications to the new Windows smart phone. Could this be related? Hard to say.

No Breaking News Pulitzer Prize shows legacy media disconnected -- change is needed

2011-04-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and as always are the crowning achievements of legacy media, kingmakers of reporters at The New York Times, L.A. Times, and even the blog ProPublica, and a few smaller newspapers.

But the breaking news here is that there was no breaking news there -- no award this year for the first time in the 95-year history of the prizes. It was not given. This is a stunning omission considering that news -- in 2010 the Gulf oil spill and Haiti earthquake to name two huge stories -- has never broken faster, with more details, more sources, a wider distribution, and faster updates.

As the limping Pulitzer web site proves today, reeling as it is hammered by people wishing to see the winners, online news is not the forte of the Pulitzer Board, which is peopled by aging professors and executive editors. Several bloggers and/or Twitter news hawks should be aboard. That should be changed now.

Pulitzer jurors explained that there were few entries and no consensus for the category, but that seems extremely out of touch. The Pulitzers carry enormous weight.

To drop the ball in this area, where news has changed the most, appears to be head-in-the-sand, clueless behavior that misses the biggest breaking story about news -- immediacy.

As entries in the breaking news category have dried up in legacy media, a flood of breaking news has been diverted to social media. Perhaps there is more quantity of breaking news reporting than quality in the age of Twitter. But the change that Twitter in particular has brought to news is something Joseph Pulitzer himself might have cheered. The publisher (pictured here) made his name in what was considered in the late 1800s to be "new journalism." And he helped develop "yellow journalism" that makes many tweets seem prim.

Here are five worthy recipients of the 2011 Pulitzer for Breaking News, although none in the cookie cutter mold the board no doubt would have preferred. These news-breakers never made it to jurors. They were never nominated by their news organizations -- because there are no legacy news organizations behind the fastest breaking news today. Perhaps that suggests that the public should be allowed to nominate in this category, or that the Columbia School Of Journalism, home of the Pulitzers, should look for great breaking news in social media and elsewhere.

Because the Pulitzers did not acknowledge breaking news efforts this year, let's broaden the net a bit, and look at some news breakers and makers from a new mold. Here are five from the past year:

Egypt's "Facebook girl," 27-year-old Esraa Abdel Fatah, untrained in media, who set up a Facebook group that drew 70,000 members, helped bring down a corrupt government, and caused her to be detained. Is she foreign? Yes. Was she part of the story? Yes. Does she have enough guts to deserve a shoutout? Undoubtedly. Egyptian babies are being named Facebook. Need further proof that it played a huge role in this story?
Twitter itself. From the Gulf oil spill to the Haiti earthquake, to the Japanese tsunami to the death of Liz Taylor, Twitter has been the main vehicle of immediacy as journalists and citizen journalists broke news in new ways. It may have changed journalism more than any technology since the camera. If Time Magazine can name the Apple computer its Man Of The Year, Twitter can win a Pulitzer.
@breakingnews, the headline service on Twitter followed by 2.4 million. Get the alerts sent to your phone via texts, and you know what news is breaking as fast as anyone. Need to get a little more specific than Twitter? This is a staff that delivers news.
Twitter's company response to the Japanese tsunami. Helping find victims, posting the latest news, and channeling donations, this dedicated page was right in the middle of the disaster.(Albeit from 2011.)
Discovery Channel staffers tweeting about the siege of their own offices by gunmen. Coverage began even before the siege. Talk about reporting under pressure.

Facebook survey shows heavily promotional content by companies

2011-04-17T07:30:00.000-07:00

Click on graphic for larger view.

We are choosing to tune into commercials on Facebook in the same way we tune into each others' lives, a survey of Facebook content shows.

Disney and Lady Gaga may appear in your Facebook Newsfeed just like your high school buddy and co-worker. But the content posted by companies and entertainers is vastly more promotional, less rich with content, and less aimed at engagement than content posted by individuals, the survey shows.

The survey reflects a Facebook user experience similar to that of broadcast media, in which advertising intersperses content. The difference being that companies are not paying for placement of the Facebook posts, that users are voluntarily subscribing to the promotional posts, and that these posts appear in an identical format to personal content.

The content posted by companies large and small is dramatically more sales-oriented and less devoted to communication, the survey of 10 Fortune 100 companies, 10 small companies, and 10 individuals shows. Celebrities, who are among the most popular Facebook accounts, were also included in the survey of large business accounts, and were found to be predominantly commercialized.

The survey was conducted by me, Jeff Elder, a social media consultant who studied social media on a Stanford fellowship and led social media for a FORTUNE 50 company. It was not funded, suggested, or influenced by any company or agenda.

Two-thirds of the 10 most recent posts of the 10 Fortune 100 companies surveyed were judged to be self-promoting. Seventy-nine percent of the posts of small companies were self-promoting. Only 14% of individuals' posts promoted their blogs, companies, causes or favorite businesses.

Forty-six percent of the 10 randomly chosen individuals' posts were aimed simply at engagement, commenting on the poster's recent activities or thoughts. Individuals also posted links to non-product content in 40 percent of their posts, sharing content that did not specifically advance a personal agenda, but appeared to be simply interesting to the poster.

There were several other notable findings in the survey:

Some large companies chose to engage with fans rather than post promotional content. Coca-Cola, one of the largest brands on Facebook with 25 million fans, engaged with fans in the content of eight out of 10 Newsfeed posts, rather than plugging a product or other company agenda. Kroger posted six out of 10 posts with either non-product content or conversational topics to engage fans.
The most self-promotional large companies and entities were in the entertainment industry. All 10 Facebook posts surveyed were self-promotional on the pages for Disney, actor Vin Diesel and musician Lady Gaga. With 32 million Facebook fans, Lady Gaga's page is among the most popular on Facebook. This large subscribership to a page that is heavily promotional -- rather than one dedicated to conversation with fans or the posting of non-product content -- amounts to a 32 million-person heavily commercial channel on the world's most popular web site.
Small companies were also varied in how much they self-promoted or chose instead to engage with fans with conversation and non-product content. Four of the 10 companies surveyed were entirely self-promotional in their posts. Conversely, some small businesses were more interactive and engaged. For instance, Paper Skyscraper, a Charlotte-based stationery and gift store, devoted most posts to engagement and non-product content.
It would not be accurate to assume that individuals post persoanl content because they have nothing to promote. Some individuals promoted their businesses, blogs and content. One individual surveyed promoted his blog in 7 out of 10 posts. However, most individuals used Facebook as a link-delivery platform or two-way communications platform.
Many large companies' Facebook pages are "fan-gated," demanding a "like" from Facebook users before they can view content.

CONCLUSION: Most companies large and small that were surveyed have used their Facebook accounts to create one-way promotional broadcast platforms rather than two-way communication channels. A few companies have chosen to make a higher priority of engagement and link-sharing, making their accounts more like those of individuals. The entertainment industry is the most promotional segment, and makes one-way promotions a clear priority.

METHODOLOGY: The 10 most-recent Facebook posts of the accounts surveyed were evaluated on April 17, 2011. Accounts were chosen from different segments of the Fortune 100, entertainment, small business and individual segments in an effort to reflect a variety of Facebook accounts. Small businesses and individuals are not named out of respect for their privacy.

My Best iPhone Tricks -- What Are Yours?

2011-04-11T05:26:00.001-07:00

Several friends are getting their first iPhones now that Verizon is finally taking the biggest babe in the school to the prom. Besides being the best designed smart phone, the iPhone is a great surfboard and is more social than Charlotte's whole lioness pack of Tweet Tarts. Here are my favorite tricks on the iPhone (I've owned all four. Sucker...) What are yours?

Triple your LinkedIn connections. LinkedIn is the least intimate -- and maybe most important -- social network. Yet it's the hardest to grow your network on: You often have to specify where you know someone from, or provide their email address if they are a friend. Not on the iPhone. On the LI iP app, the middle icon says "Reconnect?" Tap it and a list of people you may know pops up. Click "Invite," and an invitation is on its way. You don't have to specify where you know them. You can pop off a dozen new invites a day if you want. I believe in having a large LinkedIn network. You're not invading someone's personal life, and you might help each other during this tough economic time. If you send someone an invite who is more selective and they ask how you know them, just explain how you found them. That's right: Blame the iPhone!

Post pics. Click and post to Facebook and Twitter from your iPhone. Way easier than going through your PC. There are many iPhone photo apps if you want to clean up a pic first. You can add a caption and tag people in the photos on the iPhone, too.

Post from where you are. This might seem rudimentary, but I'm amazed by how many people wait until they are home from an event before posting about it. Why? I'd much rather hear from you when you're in the middle of it all. Facebook Places and Foursquare help you plant a flag at the exact spot and time. I was once on a street in D.C., asked on Twitter where I should have lunch, and received a tip immediately that a great place was 50 yards away. Live social on the go!

Store and share documents. Another quick anecdote, again from a D.C. trip: I'm walking down the street and get a text from awesome colleague Becca Bernstein: I forgot to send her an important slideshow before I left on my trip. Where could she find it? I keep important docs in the cloud on iDisk, part of the MobileMe stable. So I just shared it to her via email from my iPhone. There are also apps that let you work on and send Word docs. And you can also Find My iPhone with MobileMe. Can be important!

Keep your sanity. I have a yoga routine on my iTunes that I flat out need to do several times a week. Because it's on my iPhone, it's always with me. I've done that yoga routine in hotel rooms all over the country. I also have a meditation routine that I once used on a plane when I was in the center seat between two offensive linemen.

Keep your sanity II. There are times when no one understands me like AC/DC and the Rolling Stones. By keeping tunes on my iPhone, I can blast "Back In Black" anytime. I once did it in a meeting. Sweet.

Get smarter. I notoriously listen to books at double speed on my iPhone. 1x works, too. Why listen to Emerson, Lake and Palmer when you can listen to Ralph Waldo Emerson?

Take, edit, add titles and post a video from your iPhone -- without ever using a PC. Get iMovie and learn it.

Favorite apps? Facebook, Maps, iMovie, iDisk, AP, HuffPost. Yours?

10 things I learned leading social media for a Fortune 50

2011-04-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

With Turing Award winner Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, instrumental in developing TCP/IP technology.

10. No one really "likes" a brand. They like a product, a certain design, or even the latest marketing campaign. But mostly they like how they were treated in their latest interaction with the company.

9. One-third of the fans love you; one-third hate you; and one-third are doing their own incomprehensible thing. This is true no matter what you do.

8. The executives demanding to see ROI for social media are often perfectly happy to throw $350,000 down a hole on a television commercial. Where's the ROI on that?

7. I have sat in board room meetings in which an executive scoffed about Facebook as a viable part of the business, then immediately turned to someone next to him and said, "Speaking of Facebook, last night I saw something really interesting..." Without a hint of irony.

6. Social media is most exciting when it's event based. Otherwise you're just sustaining something. Who wants to maintain the norm when you can go viral?

5. Going viral is like traveling in time. It's completely unreal. When we gained 56,000 new fans in one day, I barely slept. Hell, I barely blinked. It's crazy. I love it.

4. Everyone in the company wants to use Facebook as a broadcast platform. Few want to listen to the fans.

3. Running a Facebook brand page is like being a DJ playing the greatest hits for that company. Every department wants you to play their record, to promote their agenda. And sometimes you just have to say, "Your record sucks."

2. Social media is like rock 'n' roll. If it's not a little dangerous, what's the point? This makes corporate leadership nervous. It terrifies PR.

1. People who know and love the company need to hooked up to your company's social media accounts as if to an I.V. of lifeblood. The fans and followers should be their main customers, even their bosses, in a way. If you're farming that out to an agency or turning it over to a free lancer, shame on you. You're compromising the living soul of the company.

The fine art of link sharing

2011-04-09T06:06:00.000-07:00

I had a file folder on my desk when I led social media for a Fortune 50 company with these words written on it:

PAPERS I DON'T CARE ABOUT

It was four inches thick by the time I left last week. Sometimes someone would come to me, hand me a document, and I would immediately insert it into the file. I hate when people hand me pieces of paper.

I prefer to go paperless, and for people to send me links of the information they want to share. But I'm picky. I also don't like it when someone emails me a 2,000-character link in an email with the subject line:

Check this out

No.

I like to sample my information in an open marketplace of ideas. That way, if I think something is cool, I can engage with it, send it along, write about it. If I think it's lame, I can move on. No one is pestering me about it:

"Did you watch that video I sent you?"

No.

Think of it this way: Social media is a river of information. In the river are links, kind of like salmon. I am a bear leaning over and occasionally whopping a salmon up on the banks to flop around as I decide whether to devour it.

Do not email this bear frozen fish sticks. Send me tasty salmon! Share your links well. If you think enough of the information to share it, take an extra moment to abide by these three simple rules:

1. SHORTEN THY LINKAGE
Don't send links that are longer than a Russian novel. No one wants to receive them. I like bit.ly, but there are other link-shrinking sites. I have a bit.ly sidebar on my browser, so I can just click that bookmark from the web page I want to share and -- Voila! -- the shorty is copied to my clipboard, ready to be shared. bit.ly also counts the clicks to your link in real time. (Really real time. We were able to measure thousands of clicks a second when a promotion went viral on the Lowe's Facebook page I managed.) So you can see how many people are whopping your tasty salmon. (!) This is important if you're sharing something about your business or a client's business. And bit.ly records your links so you can go back and find them later to share again. DRAWBACK: Bad guys hide stuff in shortened links! (See No. 2.)

2. LABEL THY LINKAGE
"Check this out" and "I thought you'd like this" are not endorsements. They're ominous. The online equivalent of:

Close your eyes and stick out your tongue!

No.

Web-based attacks were up 93% last year over 2009, web-security company Symantech reported recently. Much of the mayhem was unleashed via links -- often disguised via link shorteners! So people should be wary.

Say specifically: "This is the Thai restaurant I told you about yesterday. The pad thai is nom nom."

If you email or text a link, do it to one recipient.

3. POSTETH, DO NOT SENDETH
When you post a link, Facebook pulls in a thumbnail photo, headline and type from that url. (Although those last two are entirely editable.) This allows your audience to peek inside the link a little at what's in there. If a link is for group consumption, consider posting it via Facebook, where this preview mode is automatic. If you want the world to see the link, post it on your Facebook wall. If you want a select group to see, you can email the link on Facebook, and provide the same link preview. (I also post links to Twitter, where they are not previewed. But if I sent malware via a Twitter link I wouldn't exactly gain followers, so there may be less danger of encountering bad stuff via someone's Twitter links.)

Emailing a huge group a link that's vaguely labeled is a party foul.

You can also share and compare gourmet links via social bookmarking site like delicious, which shortens links and lets you surf other people's shared links by categories, like "social" or "music." On a site like delicious, you see the salmon other bears are whopping at.

Please feel free to make your own folder labeled

PAPERS I DON'T CARE ABOUT

It's very liberating.

Controversy over the best coffee place in Charotte -- how social media critics schooled me

2011-04-07T15:09:00.001-07:00

A week ago I blogged that leaving my corporate job leading social media at a Fortune 50 meant a return to Charlotte coffee shops. As an independent social media consultant, I'll be a regular in coffee shops for client meetings and iPad work sessions.

I threw out my picks on Charlotte's 10 best coffee places. Little did I know that this blog, Twitter, and Facebook would perk up with more than 50 highly caffeinated opinions on the matter.

"It's obvious that you haven't experienced real coffee from cities that have a coffee culture" a reader commented on this blog. Others said they liked my reviews, but one theme was noted again and again: I'd left off some independent places, neighborhood gems fiercely defended by their fans.

"No Julias? Outrage," read one Facebook comment. Many others advocated for Julia's, Central Coffee, and Not Just Coffee. I'd never been to any of them. (I don't consider that sacrilege, just an opportunity to explore.) So I checked them out.

Not Just Coffee -- A reader of the blog described this as "the new, yet-to-be discovered hotspot with quirky hours and a hole in the wall location." The hours are limited, and so is the space. This place is tiny -- although the staff told me they are planning construction of a patio very soon. The barrista made my cup of coffee individually, and it was delicious. Very, very good. The place is friendly, distinctive, and charming. Could I do work in there? Probably not. But I might tap out a profound haiku on my iPhone. As the same commenter on my blog said: "It's where you'll find an eclectic mix of patrons from tattoo artists to musicians to graphic designers - a hang out spot embraced by the bohemian side of Charlotte's creative class."

Central Coffee -- Again, delicious coffee. Very tasty. The place has a nice, independent feel, and the basic, wide-open atmosphere of a study-hall cafe. (As Hemingway said, "a clean, well-lit place." I have to say it felt a little cold to me, but I was there right before closing on a weekday evening. Could I work there? Absolutely. Is it worth stopping in when in Plaza-Midwood? Most definitely.

Julia's Coffee and Books (pictured) -- If Julia's were a woman instead of a cafe and bookstore, I would have fallen in love. I grew up in my family's used bookstore, and worked in a different cafe and bookstore as a teen-ager. The combination is elegantly inspiring. This is the kind of place where you write the opening to a great novel. (Even if you never write any more of it.) The coffee was wonderful, but the bookstore, loft seating and gently thoughtful atmosphere is sublime. Go. Just go.

A word about the blog and comments. I posted my first piece by inviting rebuttal -- and I got it. That's what I wanted. Bring it! What I love about social media is that it's interactive -- and that interaction is collaborative. I'm not interested in "getting it right the first time." I'm interested in the conversation. The notion that information should be fixed, perfect, "the final word," or somehow inspire no reaction other than approval is delusional. Social media is a river of information.

Let the arguments flow like coffee. In newly discovered hangouts.

Couric out? Why legacy media still matters as social reigns

2011-04-04T04:31:00.000-07:00

Social media delivers news the fastest. But legacy news remains in its traditional anchor-person role in our mind's eye. Katie Couric is apparently stepping away from that chair at CBS news. Why do we care? Because the changing news landscape needs familiar personalities. Fast-breaking news often needs a sense-maker.

AP is reporting this morning that Katie Couric is leaving her anchor post at CBS Evening News less than five years after becoming the first woman to lead a network TV evening newscast.

The CBS anchor post has been a traditional role, a narrator of history. Walter Cronkite famously broke down while giving the news about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and supposedly lost faith in the Vietnam War, a turning point in how the country felt about it.

Social media may have replaced legacy media in breaking the news first, but traditional news has retained its role of authority. The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual report on the State of the News Media, released in March of last year, asserted that 80% of new media links are to legacy newspapers and broadcast networks, making clear that traditional news sources remain the backbone of the media. The stuff we float out onto the stream of social media still has to come from somewhere. The stamp of approval that a news item comes from AP or The New York Times or CBS news is the gold standard. (This is true, ironically, even as legacy news continues to be bashed as "the media" by many Americans. A 2010 poll showed Americans trust Facebook and Twitter more than legacy media. While 8 and 13 percent trusted Twitter and Facebook, respectively. Only 8 percent of adults and 6 percent of young adults said they trusted traditional media.)

And in legacy media, we still want personality, a trusted anchor person sitting in the chair, looking us in the eye. Walker Smith, head of Yankelovich worldwide marketing, once told me American media is fixated with the "celebrity chef syndrome." We latch onto personalities because they make things real and personable for us. The internet lacks that, he said. There is a void.

But can traditional news anchors fill that void? What does it day that Jon Stewart, Comedy Central's hilarious news anchor, was recently voted the most trustworthy in America? That we want our news a bit snarkier? (Couric finished fourth in the 2009 poll.)

10 Best Coffee Shops in Charlotte

2011-04-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

I'm an independent social media consultant again -- after a year in corporate America leading social media for a Fortune 50 company. That means Charlotte's coffee shops are some of my places of business once more. (Along with my home office in Dilworth and the places where I consult.) So I've been running through my list of favorite Charlotte coffee shops. (I wish I could call them cafes, but not all really are. What is this, Paris?) These are my Top 10. I fully anticipate a heated debate. Free refills on the arguments.

1. Amelie's -- Is there any question? (At least for the social media crowd.) Shabby chic + lots of room + 24 hours + yummy soups = Our hero. ONE quibble: I don't think the desserts are all that. Yes, they're good. But do they really deserve the massive hoopla and folk legend over the legendary salted chocolate chef thingees? (Amelie's is pictured above, on a Saturday night.)

2. Dilworth Coffee on East -- Cozy, with good wi-fi and a nice, woody atmosphere. You can find a table and spread out. Quibble: The coffee in the thermos jugs sometimes gets lukewarm.

3. Owen's Bagels -- I Love Geoff Owens, the story of this place, the room, everything. Love. But I dislike this little stretch of South Blvd., and sometimes they don't seem to have many bagels baked.

4. Caribou Coffee on East -- No one goes there; it's too crowded. Yogi Berra supposedly said that, and he could've said it about this place. Getting a bad rep because you can never find a place to sit. Or park. That said, it is comfortable, and you see people.

5. Summit Coffee Davidson -- OK, totally not fair because it's up in precious little Davidson, not in Charlotte, I KNOW. It's also awesome and almost worth the drive. Hippied out for this neck of the woods. Comfy and cool. Quibble: What's with the Web site?

WORST: Starbucks on East -- Crowded. They tow your car. The parking lot is a mess. Expensive. At times grubby. The tables out front are spewed with car exhaust. You occasionally witness a fender bender = the only bright spot.

6. Nova's Bakery on Central -- Love. Great baked goods. A little hard to get in and out of, and not enough places to splay out. A few chairs are fragile and rickety, others appear to be refugees from the nearby Salvation Army. Still, love.

7. Smelly Cat -- Why so low? Nice little place. But a little out of the way, a little small. Once spent an hour there inflicted with the wimpiest singer/guitar player ever covering folk-rock, and it nearly ruined me on the place. Still, you gotta love the independence.

8. Charlotte Cafe -- OK, totally not fair because, even though the name is "Cafe," it's a diner. And really more about hashbrowns than any latte-with-your-laptop kind of coffeehouse deal. But the coffee flows, especially from friendly and awesome waitress Leslie. Get the breakfast special with scrambled and links. Don't come on Tuesday when my buddies and I take up the back room. Quibble: Tiny bathrooms, Fox News on TV.

9. Caribou in Founders Hall -- A little stiff, I know. A few too many suits. But you see people, it's open, you can talk. It has a lively, in-town feel.

10. Starbucks on Tryon -- Interesting street people. Some room to spread out. But it's Starbucks, and I hate *$.

OK, berate me. Add a little cream and sugar, though, OK? That's how I take my cup of "You're WRONG!"

$ocial media expert$ and product$ often don't make business cents

2011-04-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not a fan of social media experts, strategy, platforms, or apps. I'll tell ya why: They're theoretical. They sound good, but... In the end they're often not that great when applied to your real needs.

As the social media manager of a Fortune 50 company, I was approached by every social media product vendor you can imagine (usually with a really silly name, like Tweetily-doo), and by big ad agencies that had suddenly turned into social media agencies (usually by hiring a recent college grad).

Well, you know how we made our Facebook page the second-fastest-growing on all of Facebook? By talking to our customers, and putting our products in their hands. Then when they had our products in their hands, we talked to them about the products. I know: Isn't that crazy? No expensive tools with dumb names, no big ad agencies with cool kids in skinny jeans.

We used the tools that you have right in front of you: Facebook, the products that are the core of the business, and natural conversation.

I'll lay out the steps on how to do that in future posts. But in the interim, tell those vendors and agencies to hold that thought. Long after Tweetily-doo and skinny jeans are gone, you'll still be here. With real customers, real products, and real conversations you need to have.

So let's talk about how to do that.

Leaving Lowe's for smaller and better things

2011-04-01T04:26:00.000-07:00

After a year in which my team grew Lowe's Home Improvement's Facebook page 700%, I'm leaving the Fortune 50 company to pursue other social media ventures. I'd like to apply the lessons I learned leading social media for a top company to your company. I'd also like to take the real experience I gained in Silicon Valley and Stanford University and make that real for you. (I studied at Twitter and Facebook on a fully paid Knight Fellowship to Stanford in 2008-2009.)

We had quite a ride at Lowe's, and made national headlines. During a viral promotion around holiday shopping, we made the Lowe's page the second-fastest-growing page on Facebook -- gaining 56,000 fans in one day -- no small feat for an outfit that sells hammers. My team also implemented a customer-service platform on social media that has made Lowe's responsive and attentive to customer needs. My departure is my choice, regretted by my bosses, and not without misgivings. I leave many friends at Lowe's, and will be forever grateful for my time there. We had a ball.

But I'm leaving to pursue smaller and better things -- consulting, speaking, teaching and a startup or two. In the end, I'm just not a corporate guy. Interested in connecting, getting my help with your social media needs, or having me speak? (For a while, the speaking part will be free.) Contact me via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or mrjeffelder (at) gmail.com.

What media do you prefer "old school"?

2011-03-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

What do you do "old school," and what do you do digitally -- or even as an early adopter? The ongoing personal technology evolution is indeed a personal -- very personal -- matter. And we've all got our own style and pace.

That style and pace typically defines how we are holding on to the old as the new continues to sweep into the consumer marketplace and our lives. (Think iPad for Christmas.) Do we hold onto what we love -- some people feel a loyalty to newspapers, for instance -- or is it a random pattern in each of our lives, defined by what we can afford and when we discover new devices?

This is a historic change, but it is reflected on an individual basis. According to a Booz and Co. article titled "Preparing For Generation C":

Currently, there are 4.6 billion mobile users (67 per cent of the world population) and 1.7 billion Internet users globally. By 2020, the number of people using mobile phones will reach six billion (nearly 80 per cent of the world population) and 4.7 billion people will access the Internet, primarily through their mobile devices.

That global change is an enormous power converting the legacy media in our lives to digital and mobile media. We each resist it -- and embrace it -- in our own way. Some people still love ink on paper. Yet those same people might be addicted to their GPS, text alerts to breaking news, and Facebook on their Droid. What's most interesting to me is what a hodgepodge it is -- you never know how someone is a secret Luddite. What is it that you hold onto as the global online evolution pulls the books from our hands?

I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, enjoy picking it up off the front lawn six days a week, unfolding it, leafing through it, and even stacking the old ones in a corner in the office. Yet I read The New York Times on my iPad, and Mashable on my iPhone.

I don't really know why I use the dead-tree model for the Journal. I just do. More than 1.6 million other people do, too. About 2.3 million people prefer it online, for reasons only known by them. This month, the number of people getting news online finally surpassed the number reading newspapers, according to a Pew Project For Excellence In Journalism study.

eBooks sales have skyrocketed, while sales of printed books have slumped, and bookseller Borders has declared bankruptcy -- but students say they prefer printed textbooks. One might think a younger demographic, and one that has to haul books around on their backs all day, might prefer eBooks. (The cost of a tablet could be a factor.)

I listen to books on my iPhone (in double speed, in fact), a habit that others find bizarre. But I take notes on paper, from years of working as a newspaper man.

It occurs to me that these are no logical, conscious decisions, but haphazard changes of lifestyle. Example: The other night I suggested to my girlfriend that we rent a movie on iTunes, and watch it on my desktop monitor from my couch. She responded as if I'd asked if she wanted to eat dinner off the kitchen counter, saying, "We should watch a movie on your TV."

We ended up watching "Ghost Town" on my computer. After a long discussion. In the media war between the Flintstones and the Jetsons, everyone's private life is a struggle.

Fast facts to commemorate Twitter's 5th birthday

2011-03-21T04:41:00.000-07:00

Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. About 400 employees work at the company.

Founder Jack Dorsey sent out the first tweet five years ago today. You can see it here.
Dorsey dreamed up the idea while eating Mexican food on a kids slide in a park, according to Wikipedia.
You can see when you joined Twitter here. I joined April 22, 2008, at the urging of my friend Brandon Uttley, who joined June 22, 2007.
Twitter's "tipping point" is said to be the 2007 South by Southwest conference, when tweets boomed from 20,000 a day to 60,000 a day, according to Wikipedia.
As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.
San Antonio's Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets in 2009 and found 40% of them to be "pointless babble."
Yiying Lu, an Australian artist, concocted the notorious "fail whale" illustration triggered when Twitter is overwhelmed by users.
I met Twitter co-founder Evan Williams in 2008, and found him gracious and fun. He tweeted about a serial I was writing on Twitter at the time about a female werewolf in San Francisco.
The most popular Twitter personality is Lady Gaga with 8.9 million followers.

At Twitter in 2009. Co-founder Evan Williams' wife is said to have picked out the green deer statues.

Brands don't have conversations. People do.

2011-03-14T05:38:00.000-07:00

If you Google the words social media strategy on this morning in mid-March, 2011, you will see more than 23 million results. Every one of them is hokum. Social media is conversation. No one in their right mind wants to have a conversation with someone who has a strategy. Mostly because those people are called salesmen (or saleswomen).

Imagine you were in a store, and an employee came over to say hello to you, to ask if he (or she) could help you, and to represent the business in a conversation. "Wait a second," someone in management said, pulling the employee back. "What's your strategy in speaking with that customer? Let's figure out what our goals are first."

Creepy. Do you want to be that customer, watching management and employee commiserate over what they want to do to you? I don't. Let's get outta here.

At a social media conference in Austin last year (not that Austin event, actually), I heard Douglas Rushkoff, author of "Get Back In The Box" and "Cyberia," say there's no such thing as an "authentic brand." In a long (and sometimes academic) address, he made the point that authentic businesses -- say, a farmer who sold his wares back in the old days -- didn't need to be branded. He was who he was. It wasn't until businesses got away from their roots, outgrew that personal basis, and entered a more impersonal marketplace, that we needed to give them a name, a picture or a slogan. A brand is a symbol conveying an image, and therefore inherently representative, or inauthentic. (Told you it was academic.)

The point is, I don't want to talk to a brand, or an employee with a strategy. I want to talk to people.

Social media strategy has replaced social media expert as the new buzz words in our field. I don't believe in either. On my fellowship to Stanford in 2008-'09 studying social media, I met Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Williams (founder of Twitter), and Craig Newmark (Craig of Craigslist). Those are social media experts. People like me are communications professionals. No shame in that, unless we pretend to be experts of something we're not. Social media is full of charlatans. You don't need their help nearly as much as they want your money. You'd be much better off getting a communications professional who knows your business, or simply a well-spoken employee.

Let's go back to the store. What if the manager pulled back the employee, brought in someone with a slick strategy who didn't know the business, and pointed them at you? Now let's run.

The more strategic (and application-based, but that's another topic) social media is, the less authentic it is. Conversation is free-flowing. And, as any good conversationalist exemplifies, depends upon good listening.

Management, let that employee approach the customer. The employee doesn't need a social media strategy. He or she just needs to know your business, to know the tools of the communications field, and to know how to listen. Then what unfolds will be authentic.

What do the 1972 Miami Dolphins and Woody Allen have in common? Me

2011-03-10T19:01:00.000-08:00

I'm an expert on the 1972 Miami Dolphins, Elvis Costello, typewriters, and the films of Woody Allen. This a weird collection of topics for expertise, but I would guess most of us know a lot about a few things. I collect information about these topics casually -- for instance by "liking" them on Facebook, or reading wikipedia articles about them. I look at pictures, or, in the case of the films, watch videos.

And these topics create networks for me. On Facebook, 6,332 people are fans of the page The 1972 Undefeated Miami Dolphins. I am one of these fans because my family lived in Miami that year, and we went to games. When you're 9 and your team wins every game and the Super Bowl, well, it doesn't get any better. (No other team has ever done that. Or ever will.) None of the other people in my life -- not my girlfriend, my coworkers, not even my family who lived in Miami then with me -- understand my love for that team the way the other fans of that Facebook page do.

What abut the other topics of expertise? Well, Elvis Costello pulls me together with iTunes users (although not so effectively on Ping, Apple's music social network). I've seen Elvis six times, and met him once. He brought an erudite anger into my life right when I needed it.

I've bought typewriters on eBay, a social network, two of them are less than 10 feet from me. (See pic.)

As a second-generation newspaper man, I grew up with typewriters, and love their clackety composition.

I grew up going to Woody Allen films with my parents, and took a great Films Of Woody Allen class at Stanford.

Your friends list on Facebook is a fingerprint unique to you. But so are the interests you pull together online. What you "like" on Facebook, what you favorite on YouTube, the links you send around. We have an unprecedented ability to surround ourselves with media of the things we love -- even if it is rare and obscure.

What's your collection of beloved stuff, and how do you surround yourself with it online?

(Prediction: Someone who loves one of these things will at some point see this blog post, and reach out to me.)

10 weird places on Facebook

2011-03-09T08:55:00.000-08:00

"Tis strange, but true
for truth is always strange
stranger than fiction"
-- "Don Juan," Lord Byron

Facebook can get pretty weird right there on your own wall. Just add one part childhood friend, one part almost significant other, one part frenemy from work, and a dash of your mom. There you go: a kaleidoscope of relationships spiraling crazily around your simple post that you liked "True Grit," or appear to have a cold.

When you branch out a little, the world's biggest social network gets a lot twistier. (There are pages devoted to people who are afraid of clouds. Not clowns, clouds. My apologies to anyone who truly suffers from nephophobia.)

Here are 10 weird places on Facebook, complete with links. Some of the pages are enormously popular -- but with a quirky backstory. Others are ghost towns. Enjoy.

Ferrero Rocher chocolates -- This is one of the most popular brand pages in the world, with 7.8 million fans. Weirdness: The company posts, oh, about once a month. ("Oh yeah! We have one of the world's most popular Facebook pages!") There are a grand total of three pics uploaded. That must be gooooooood candy.
William Howard Taft -- Personal page. The big prez has one friend, an eighth-grade teacher from Chicago. What's going on here?
Coke -- The most popular brand page in the world, with nearly 23 million fans, was started by two dudes. Not big-time ad guys. Not Coke execs. Two kinda slacker dudes, it appears. And their fingerprints are still all over it.
Which one of Charlie Sheen's women are you? This is an app. A developer somewhere needs more guidance.
Join if you didn't know that Yoshi from Mario is a girl -- It's one thing for video game characters to spawn some gender questions that can't really be answered. It's another thing for 718,000 people to publicly declare this to be a part of their lives.
I LOVE PUSHING THE PANIC BUTTON WHEN PEOPLE WALK BY MY CAR -- Group page. Doing this had never really occurred to me. Until now. If I do it and like it, I probably will go post about it.
Wearing Bacon Underwear -- This page is about exactly what you think it's about. (The profile pic is more attractive than you might be imagining.) 371 people in the world like this. One is a FB friend of mine. When I saw which friend, it all made sense.
There are HUNDREDS of Facebook pages related to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, a fictitious character made famous in the movie "Ghostbusters." Hundreds.
I hate it when your mad at someone and they make you laugh -- This page suggests immaturity with its purpose. (Note the bad grammar in the name.) Here comes the scary: The page has 914,000 fans.
Penguins!!! -- It's not hard to understand why more than 200,000 would "like" penguins. What's weird is the page admin marched off the penguins page a while back. Not a month or two, three years ago. No posts for three years. New fans join every day, and post every day. And no one's home.

Got a favorite weird place on Facebook? Take me there.

Social media reading list

2011-03-08T15:57:00.000-08:00

I listen to books on my iPhone at 2x speed. (A friend tells me that when I talk about these same books, I do so very rapidly, and that cracks him up.)

Maybe I listen to them at double-speed because the books are about social media, and it somehow makes sense in my mind to hurry up the old, long-form media. I think it's just because I get bored listening to them at regular speed.

But I do need the long form to take a reasoned, meditative look at social media. I don't want my thinking itself to be shaped by the ephemeral, nonstop short-attention-span pace of Twitter. (Lest I start acting like Charlie Shee, its latest VIP.) I want to think slowly about something that is causing us to think quickly. I don't want to get conned by the blurts of cute and clever. Here are the books I've been listening to, in the hopes that others might find them illustrative:

"Viral Loop" by Adam Penenberg -- Packed with case studies that are explained in a lively style by the NYU journalism prof
"Linked" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi -- A physicist compares the connections of a social network to the connections within the human brain
"Click" by Bill Tancer -- Global researcher at Hitwise takes a detective's approach to SEO. Like "Freakonomics"? You'll like this. He absolutely insists on unearthing truth.
"Cognitive Surplus" by Clay Shirky -- The author of "Here Comes Everybody" on crowdsourcing and wikis. He defends social media as far more active and productive than TV.
"You Are Not A Gadget" by Jaron Lanier -- An internet pioneer rails against "the hive mind" and general lack of new content in Web 2.0. If you work in social media, you should listen to this harsh criticism.
"The Drunkard's Walk" by Leonard Mlodinow -- Less about social per se than about the many events that make up our lives. But stripping away the mythology to look at the real patterns does resonate with Web 2.0's overall pointilist approach.
"The Hacker Ethic" by Pekka Himanen and others -- What really motivates people in the new workplace is based to a large degree on how they interact online
"Self Reliance" by Emerson -- Not many know that Emerson was a Twitter celeb way back when. ; ) OK, what's he doing on here? Emerson was the ultimate individualist, and his challenge to go your own way is a stout reminder not to let the majority or trolls sway your resolve. Needs to be read now more than ever.
"The Cluetrain Manifesto" by Rick Levine and others -- On how clueless big business is to the marketplace of ideas
"Rapt" by Winifred Gallagher -- This study of how we give our attention to things is fascinating in the context of social media

I hope that's useful to someone. If you read these, I'd love to chat. Very quickly.

What it felt like to be inside a viral Facebook promotion

2011-03-02T05:38:00.000-08:00

This graph shows page views to my company's Facebook page during a promotion. A later promotion jumped the graph even higher.

We gained 56,000 fans in one day, making us the second-most-explosive page on Facebook. We flattened servers like Godzilla stomps Tokyo noodle stands. (That's what happens when you get 71,000 clicks to one url in 30 seconds.) We got 16,000 "likes" on one post, and 4,000 angry comments on another. We made executives very uncomfortable.

We got 12.5 million page views in one day to our Facebook page. That's about as many page views as CNN.com gets on a slow day -- on a Facebook page. That's like going to the moon in a box. People just don't use Facebook that way. The great American Facebook experience is the Newsfeed. No one hangs out on a brand's fan page. The did on ours.

We got 12.5 million page views in one day to our Facebook page. That's like going to the moon in a box.

And this week the promotions we put on over the holidays to rock our Facebook page got three national shoutouts, the latest from the Harvard Business Review.

So what was it like in the middle of those viral promotions? Scary. "I haven't breathed deeply in four days," my boss said to me in the middle of one of our Facebook "parties." It felt like crowdsurfing a big crowd, one that was carrying us where it wanted to go, not necessarily where we wanted to go.

It was awesome. Viral is scary. It's like harnessing lightning strikes for their electricity. And it's something you can't command at will. You're lucky to get that huge crowd under your brand.

Scary is OK. Scary is good. You're not going to break Facebook, and Facebook is not going to break you. Social is ephemeral enough that today's disaster is tomorrow's success. (There were times early in our promotions when some believed they were disasters.) Take the risk. Surf the crowd. Control is overrated.

How to tame social media? Be childish!

2011-02-15T14:06:00.000-08:00

Two friends, Dani Burns and "Mac" MacArthur, are on a social media panel tonight discussing "taming the beast of social media." I have a few thoughts. Namely, don't be a spectator.

That runs counter to our instincts. Like Chauncey Gardner in "Being There," we "like to watch."

Clay Shirky wrote in the recent book "Cognitive Surplus" that Facebook is replacing TV. I think that's true in how and when we spend time. But the medium is not cool. In fact, it's best when heated.

People on Facebook think they want freebies. Sweepstakes and giveaways draw fans in huge numbers. But social media behavior -- such as the building of Wikipedia -- shows that they really want something to work on -- a puzzle, a game, trivia, a discussion, an angry debate. People on Facebook think they want to read and watch cool stuff. They approach it like legacy media. But once they watch the video or read the article, comments reveal that they really want to talk about themselves, while other people talk about themselves.

Posting and commenting is way more fun than watching.

In other words, social media isn't like TV. It's more like the elementary school cafeteria. And that's a good thing. We talk, we act up, we trade stuff. We avoid the boy or girl who used to like us. We're surprised and delighted.

I'll give you my Nilla Wafers for those Pringles.

Why it's important to rock your LinkedIn

2011-02-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

On LinkedIn, you can't check out pics of your high school sweetheart, ping back and forth during a ballgame, or post that you're finally eating at that great burger bar. Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and others are far sexier.

On the "Gilligan's Island" of social media, LinkedIn isn't Ginger. It isn't even Maryanne. It's Mrs. Howell. But remember, Mrs. Howell was rich.

LinkedIn is your living, public resume. It's highly searchable. People get hired on LinkedIn. (I did.) You should spend several hours a week tuning up your profile, making new connections, and trading pleasantries at the online water cooler of LinkedIn.

Facebook, to some extent, represents your past social life. LinkedIn can shape your future work life.

So do this:

Get a good profile pic of yourself, outside on a sunny day, in a suit. There's a reason politicians do this: You look competent, trustworthy and likable. DON'T post an artsy profile pic of you in casual clothes.
Completely fill out your work history, education, and expertise. Get it proofread. Update it often.
Add people as connections, correspond with your connections, and check out who looks at your profile. (Link on the right side of your page; may require upgrade.)
In your status updates, post links relevant to your profession.
Write a lively intro that shows who you are, professionally.
DON'T include your Twitter feed if you goof around a lot on Twitter.
DO be open to connecting with people. This isn't Facebook; you don't have pics of your kids on here. If you would shake someone's hand and introduce yourself at a mixer, you should add them on LinkedIn.

Just generally familiarize yourself with the site. Click on stuff, explore a little. You never know, you might get a new job or make an important connection, just by spending some time there. Then go to the burger bar to celebrate, and brag about it on FourSquare.

How To: Tivo your Facebook

2010-09-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

I love having a wide and diverse base of friends. But that also means my Newsfeed is an eclectic mix of old friends I haven't seen in years, close friends and work friends -- along with more extraneous connections. I want to at least have the option of more streamlined channels that I can tune into for a more focused social experience. Otherwise I'm always in a crowd of jumbled relationships. Sometimes I want to be surrounded only by close friends. Other times, I want to see what my work connections are saying.
Friends lists also allow me to post to only these groups. And search allows me to see what my friends -- even my friends in a certain city -- are saying about, say, the Carolina Panthers while they're playing on a Sunday. So I can comment on their posts and take part in a real-time conversation about one thing.
How to create a friends list:
Click on the Facebook home page, then Friends, and you'll see a list of your friends with the option to "Create a List." Click that and add the friends for a "close friends" list. I do this instead of creating a family group, because I want my closest connections all on one "channel." When I sit down to Facebook, I can click this "channel" by clicking to the Home page, then clicking this list under Friends. Now I can see what the people most important to me are up to. As I said, I can also post to these people only.
How to post to a friends list:
Go to your profile, click the little lock under the status update box. Click "custom edit," then "these people," then type the name of your list: "close friends." Now your post will go out to only your closest connections.
I also like to have a work friends list that includes business pages I follow for work. I call this list "network me." I might not post to this work group, but clicking on it shows me what my colleagues are doing.
How to follow a real-time conversation:
To follow a "channel" than is a topic in real time, like the Panthers during a game, type the topic (Panthers) into the search field at the top of any Facebook page. Go down to the bottom "see more results," and click. On the new page, click "Posts by Friends." Now you see real-time results of what your friends are saying about the Panthers. You can comment and like, or reach out to a friend because of a post.
One last possibility for how to Tivo your Facebook. You can subscribe to SMS alerts of a certain person's posts -- so you get texts to your phone everytime they post. I find this creepy, but it might have its uses. Let's say your daughter is having a baby. You might subscribe to your son-in-law's posts for the days around the due date, so you know when the big event is going to happen.
Hope this helps. Next to privacy, focus is the most important part of my Facebook experience. Otherwise, it's just a jumble with lots of static.

As Google Buzz Shortcircuits, Waves Keep Comin'

2010-02-16T13:59:00.000-08:00

Google Buzz is shortcircuiting, but Google Waves keep coming.

Even though both disappointed, Wave is an important contribution, here's why:

We all benefit from the wave metaphor of adopting social media platforms, updates, approaches and strategies. And trying to keep up with all that Buzz will flat out make you crazy.

If you don't think metaphor is important in technology, think again. The Long Tail Of Information is what convinced us the Web was important, because we realized we could find anything there. The Cloud is changing how we think about ownership of information. And The River of the real-time Web helps us to understand data in motion.

Maybe there's room for the metaphor of the Wave, after all. Despite all the mistakes Google has made lately.

Google has been ambitious, to the point of recklessness, with its latest products. The Giant Question Mark seems bent on controlling every market - but not thorough enough to release an excellent product in any of them.

Two of its latest products have been forays into social media, and neither appears to be the next big thing. The collaborative email platform Google Wave does allow multiple parties to work on a document, adding multi-media, maps, and other widgets. But its still in the sandbox stage. Google Buzz, a bid to add social media and sharing of Web info to Gmail, was so poorly planned and executed that it violated privacy information and appears to many to simply be irrelevant. Many social media watchers seemed to respond, You gonna try to take on Facebook, 400 million users strong, with that thing?

Here's where Wave is not irrelevant:

We need to collaborate, to work on projects together and with the benefit of discussion. We need to release finished products, and we need to stay plugged in.

But we also need to get on with our lives.

It's exhausting racing to adopt everything that comes down the pipe. (Especially when the new stuff is as lame as Google's latest.)

It's good to adopt, periodically. It's good to know the new stuff. But that's an action that we repeat now and then, not all the time. Think of updating your devices and platforms and processes periodically. Like a wave.

Nobody should make rushing to adopt every new platform a business model or even a personal philosophy. Do it in waves. Otherwise, it's not even Flavor Of The Month. It's Flavor Of The Moment.

A sugary thrill, and a pointless, even dangerous Buzz.

Google buzz: Privacy menace, unneeded, new Wave?

2010-02-11T03:27:00.000-08:00

Who would play you in the movies? Joan Cusack would play Comet Creative PR pro Laura Foust. Mark Wahlberg would play software engineer and Vanderbilt booster Scott Lundgren. Got a Hollywood double, or know somebody with one? Let me know via Contact.

Just in case you've been off the grid for the past two days, the buzz is ... Buzz, Google Buzz, the Giant Questionmark's entry into social media. How much is this being discussed online? Remember Balloon Boy? It's reaching those heights, or lows. There are 1,856 articles about Google Buzz, on you guessed it, a Google search. There were zero articles on Monday, but on midday Tuesday, a peak of about 750 cranked out.

Topic #1 is privacy. PCWorld points out concerns about the feature that compiles a list of a Buzz user's Gmail contacts who users most frequently e-mail or chat with: "Buzz automatically starts following these people and makes the list public, meaning strangers can see who Buzz users have been in contact with." The Silicon Alley Insider takes that a step further: "Imagine ... a wife discovering that her husband emails and chats with an old girlfriend." (Interesting scenario. A "Desperate Housewives" app could do something with that.)

On Cnet, blogger Molly Wood called Google Buzz calls Buzz "a privacy nightmare." Her main worry: The mobile version, which includes GPS functions, and automatically shows your whereabouts to those nearby unless you shut that off. "So be equally prepared for everyone around you to know who you are and where you are when you post to Buzz from your phone." Wood also assails Buzz because it's linked to Gmail, and while social media involves inherent privacy risks, "I do have an expectation of privacy when it comes to my e-mail." Good point.

I have another question: Do we need it? Put another way, is this one more social media platform that brings us closer to having our heads explode?

I want social media platforms that make my life easier. I like the combiners and dividers that have entered the space lately. Threadsy, for instance. It combines Facebook, Twitter and Gmail, so I can see all my messages in one place. Facebook friends lists, threatened by the new Facebook homepage (cue exploding heads) let me build "channels" so I can see aspects of my Facebook life one at a time.

Google Buzz, like Google Wave, is neither a combiner nor divider of my social media life. It's a new competitor. And Google seems to need to compete with everyone and everything right now. Remember when Toyota was everyone's favorite car company? Then it got greedy and the accelerators stuck. That's where Google is right now. The accelerators are stuck, and the Giant Questionmark is crashing into everything.

Where will the stuck accelerator crash next? I'm not sure Google's navigational GPS has any real direction. If Google continues to harvest Facebook data, will Buzz become a competitor to the portal Facebook has become? Is Google Wave now obsolete?

Suddenly the Giant Questionmark is not providing very good answers.

Google Buzz is an attempt to divert from from Facebook and Twitter. Right now, we don't need that. The Big Tent platforms of Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Match.com and Twitter (in that order of relevance.) work well. That's because social media is in a network TV phase. When we reach a more specialized cable phase, maybe we'll need a Google Buzz, or something better. Foursquare is exploring a Travel Channel for social media now. That I can handle. Google Buzz, I don't know. My head is feeling combustible.

Consulting, Google Wave and Threadsy

2010-02-09T04:19:00.001-08:00

Are you a free lancer or consultant? You need to read the Wall Street Journal's special section How To Succeed In The Age Of Going Solo, published yesterday. Two main takeaways: Nail down basic financial bookkeeping, and collaborate well with others -- rather than seeing them as competitors.

Which brings up a question: Why hire a communications consultant? Communications are changing rapidly, and are in disarray for many businesses, small and large. This is not a Band-Aid fix, something that can be handed off to an intern who slaps up a Facebook fan page. What's required is a cohesive, integrated strategy, which involves three types of communications. In my case, I know traditional media, which has changed dramatically in the past few years. I know new and social media; Charlotte Magazine called me "one of the few in Charlotte with actual professional training in social media." And I know face-to-face, from years on networking in Charlotte. I can make a free presentation to your company on what I can provide. Let me know by clicking "contact."

If you're not on Google Wave yet, I have more invites to the new social media platform called the future of email by many. Yes, it's still buggy and relatively unpopulated. It also gives you a glimpse into the multi-media, shared forum for working on projects with others in real-time. It's worth exploring. For an invite, click "contact," and leave me your email address.

My favorite new platform is Threadsy, which combines email, Twitter and Facebook on one interface. I find this very useful, because it means just one check-in to see all my messages. Some have compared this to Google Wave, but I see little resemblance. http://bit.ly/ceVRYI

Charlotte ad agency BooneOakley had two Super Bowl commercials for CarMax on Sunday, involving animals watching TV who respond with astonishment to a CarMax ad. One is the startled hedgehog already famous online. Here's a clip of one of the ads, below.

What you need to know about the latest Facebook changes

2010-02-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

You need to understand important privacy issues involved with the new changes made by Facebook.

New changes to the homepage, announced last night and being rolled out now, have nothing to do with "Facebook turning six," as Napoleonic CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed in the company blog, and as mainstream press eagerly accepted. This has everything to do with money, and threatens our privacy, again.

The Facebook blog post announcing the new changes, changes which have not appeared for most users yet, begins benignly. We are told that the homepage includes one icon for all our notifications, such as if someone likes our post, or commented on a post that we commented on. Great.

The blog post continues that we will see our friends' photos and videos rounded up in a new way, from a menu on the left of the home page. Great.

For some reason, listed last, is a section on games and applications that is three times as long as those other two sections. The news here is that we will be immediately reminded when there is any change or update or activity in the applications or games that we use, that the developers will be able to contact us more easily, and that friends can see what applications and games we have been using from their home pages.

Not. Great.

This once again is a matter of Facebook selling our privacy. We don't want every one of our Facebook friends seeing whatever games and applications we've been using. Do you want me to see what dumb apps and games you've been using? If you're a friend of mine, I can. Example: I can see that a friend of mine who loves to rail about how social media is a time waster has been all over the applications What '80s Band Are You? and How Dangerous Are You? I'm not sure he would like me being able to see that. I can see which of my friends are on dating apps, and who's been tending their farms...

Want to spy on what apps your friends are using? Here's the preview of the new changes. Might as well check it out, for your own edification, because people will be able to see what you're doing online.

And any delusion that this comes from a birthday party Facebook is throwing itself is a matter of the mainstream press not following the money. Facebook just made changes to its Live Feed and News Feed. (Those are now tweaked again.) They're not making these new changes for their "birthday party." They're making these changes because the old changes hurt developers, and therefore hurt Facebook's ability to develop ways of making money. Facebook is the TV network, the apps are the TV shows. Facebook wants hit TV shows. That keeps us on the site, sells us products, gets us lookng at ads, and gets us to tell our friends about our farms and mafia wars.

Back in November Facebook began planning these changes, planning how to make apps easier to see. Last month, Facebook began advising developers to harvest our e-mail addresses, which they can keep forever, as a way of retaining our activity in games and applications.

Why is Facebook advising developers to get and keep our e-mail addresses?

This is a major privacy issue, as this excellent blog post from All Facebook, The Unofiicial Facebook Resource, one of the few media vehicles that actually watchdogs Facebook, points out.

But there's another issue here: Time. Facebook is the biggest time suck in the universe: It is the site where we spend the most time online. The other changes to the Facebook home page actually do make Facebook easier and faster to use. That's a good thing.

But updating us every time there is a change in any one of the applications or games that we use, showing us all the apps and games that our friends use, and making it easier for developers to contact us, does not make Facebook easier and quicker to use. It sucks us into the time waste, compromises our privacy again, and is clearly aimed at Facebook and its developers making money.

Facebook will do whatever it wants. The site refused to address the highly unpopular changes to the Live Feed and News Feed months back, only to tweak it in this latest redesign. This is a buyer-beware situation, and Facebook is a free service.

But we pay with our privacy and our time. And it's important for us to realize what Facebook is really doing with its birthday party, and what gifts its harvesting now.

PLEASE walk through your privacy settings by following this post's directions.

9 Easy Ways To Improve Your Online Life Today

2010-01-31T08:30:00.001-08:00

Check out threadsy, the coolest new social media platform I've seen in a while. It combines the interface for e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. I have 10 more invites to the beta. Help yourself by going here:

http://bit.ly/cP5pBv

Set up Facebook friends lists. They help you create different channels so you can see your close friends, work friends, high school friends -- however you'd like to see people -- one group of the time. This blog post will walk you through how:

http://bit.ly/5SRjaQ

Explore Twitter. If you're not a Twitter user, and you wonder what all the buzz is about, here's an easy way to just sort of listen in. Google the phrase "Twitter advanced search," or click here. Type into the search field any phrase you're interested in. You could try "snow" or "Saints" or "Tar Heels." Then set the parameters for "place" to within 15 miles of where you live. Now you can see what the people right around you are saying about the topic that you are interested in. Some of the posts will be a little inane. (Welcome to Twitter.) But you might discover that you occasionally like to do this search, to listen in on the conversation in your area on a certain topic.

Explore Foursquare, the most successful geo-based social media platform. Is it still in a silly, somewhat irrelevant form? Yes. But everything is heading toward mobile, GPS-based smart search, and you need to understand this stuff. Start an account, and play around with it on your phone. Be careful about friending people you don't trust. You don't really want frenemies knowing where you are, do you?

Polish up your LinkedIn profile. In this economy, everyone should have a sparkling public, living resume. If you have a halfhearted LinkedIn profile, you may be doing your career more harm than good. This is a methodical process, and has none of the voyeuristic fun of checking out your high school sweetheart on Facebook. But it could help you get your dream job. Go through and make sure all your jobs, your educational information, any awards, and any professional group affiliations are represented. Join the group Charlotte Business Professionals, the city's best face-to-face networking organization. And write a few recommendations for people you've worked with. Chances are, a few will return the favor.

Check out Evernote, everyone's favorite app for improving productivity. This helps you save all kinds of information from the Web, syncs it to your phone, and makes it all searchable. Within a day you will be raving about it.

Explore voice-related dictation programs. Give your wrists and hands a break. They really were not made to type on keyboards and phones all day. If you're a Mac user, get MacSpeech. (I'm writing this with it right now.) there are many different recorder and dictation programs for your phone, as well, including the free Dragon Dictation.

Create a folder on your computer of "head shots," closeup photos of yourself that you like, including casual pictures and more formal, work-related shots. It's surprising how often we need head shots today. You should have at your disposal a variety that you like, cropped and ready to go. You should also have these on your phone. Otherwise, you will end up with pictures that you don't like of yourself being circulated for work and other purposes.

Create a personalized business card you love. If you let face-to-face meetings go during the recession, get back out there. Zazzle lets you create your own, prints and ships within a week or so, for cheap. Remember to inlcude your photo on your card, so people remember who you are.

Why many business's Facebook fan pages don't work

2010-01-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

Has this ever happened to you? Someone sends you a friend request on Facebook, and you think, "Oh yeah, I like that person," and you accept. Immediately you're bonked with a request to fan their Facebook business page. And you feel a little used. You haven't even had a personal interaction with your new "friend." And they're already selling you.

This is one reason I don't like how many business owners use their Facebook fan pages.

Fans are naturally enthusiastic about someone or something. I know who and what I'm a "fan" of. I don't need someone to urge me to remember that I'm a fan of Ella Fitzgerald, fresh fish and the McGlohon Theater. And if they did, I'd be suspicious.

What often happens is that we fan a business because we're real-life friends of the business owner, and we're showing our support. There's nothing wrong with that. But, notice that we're coming back to the human connection. The bond is with our friend, not with a logo and a storefront.

There are businesses that use their fan pages well. The shoe store Step By Sloan uses its fan page to showcase new shoe styles, posting photos on the page's wall. That window-shopping approach makes sense for that business. For your restaurant, it might make sense to post dinner specials or events. But when a brand new Facebook friend immediately asked me -- a content renter -- to fan her real-estate agency, I thought, "why would I do that?"

I've had several business owners tell me how many fans they have on their business pages, and I suspect some of this is tied up in the unfortunate popularity contest on Facebook -- The Numbers Game. Are you trying to boost the number of fans on your page just to indicate that your business is thriving? That's understandable, but what if it gets in the way of your actual relationships with real customers and friends?

The content of your fan page needs to be interesting; you need to invest yourself in that business page. If it's simply wallpapered with promotional posts and the company logo, fans won't really be fans. They'll tolerate the page because they're friends.

Ask yourself: How would you greet customers in your brick-and-mortar or at a networking event? You'd be as personable as possible. If you're going to the trouble to maintain a business page, go to the trouble of being present and sociable there.

On the other hand, if you're at a cookout and someone asks you about work, you don't dash into another room and re-emerge in a suit, business card in hand. You talk about work because it's a part of your life.

Just because you have two pages doesn't mean you can't be a friend on your business page and can't mention work on your personal page. Too stringently separating our personal and work lives on Facebook often results in a one-sided personal page, and a very drab business page.

Reward a friend for being a fan of your business page by showing up there personally yourself and investing in that relationship.

Reach the peeps!

Wondering how to reach the folks from Saturday's social media conference at Queens University of Charlotte? This Twitter list is a great way to get them all in one fell swoop:

http://twitter.com/QueensDiana/cltsoc-attendees

Where's social media going? GPS shows us

2010-01-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

Where's social media headed? Whip out your smartphone's GPS to find out. Location-based social media apps on mobile devices, such as Foursquare, are changing the games. Right here in Charlotte, startup Stash Games is mapping a new direction.

I recently sat down with two of Stash's leaders, Matt Wackerhagen and Kristi Stanfill, to talk about their company, which blends mobile, gaming, and a fun, story-related role-playing aspect. Here's what they told me about social media in motion:

"As more smartphones include robust mobile technologies, we're seeing social media become more physical and tangible," says Stanfill. "No longer are people just networking remotely over the internet. This becomes very real when you know where your friends are, and you can go connect with them in person."

One of the big knocks on social media has been that it's a time suck. Stanfill says that's changing, thanks to geo-based apps. "In many ways, it is more relevant. It gets you up off your butt from in front of your home computer. And it communicates what you're doing in the real world."

Foursquare has been the first big breakthrough in geo-based social media. That smartphone app lets you tag the locations where you are and communicate those spots to friends. You can leave tips for other users about the place where you are, unlock information about the places you visit, win virtual badges, and get ranked as "the mayor" of a locale.

What kind of impacts will geo-based social media have on us? Several important ones:

Privacy becomes a huge issue, because people can see where you are, what you're doing, and what your preferences are. So you won't want as many "friends."
The nostalgic aspect of Facebook will be left in the dust. Facebook has been a great deal about gathering, cataloging and sharing the past. You don't do that on the go. Facebook is about who we were. Web 3.0 is about where we're going.
Relevance becomes a priority for people on the move. Look for virtual contacts and signatures to become a bigger part of business, and for Farm Town and other dopey apps to fall away.
And gaming goes mobile in a fun, social way.

That mobile gaming is where Stash Games comes in. The company is taking role-playing, treasure hunts and mystery stories into mobile social media with a new kind of interactivity. The company builds games with a plotline, so companies can build morale, friends can bop around a city, and tourists can explore a new location.

"This is the stuff that really gets me excited," Stanfill says. "I love seeing the evolution of this augmented entertainment. It's "The Da Vinci Code" meets "Amazing Race."

Where'd Stanfill get her love of treasure hunts and mystery? She's the daughter of a former federal agent, and she moved around a lot as a kid.

So she could've GPS'd this destination long ago.

Walk through Facebook privacy settings

2010-01-18T06:09:00.000-08:00

In December, Facebook sent out a message to all users about a change in privacy settings. There was some controversy about this because while Facebook claimed to be giving users more control over their privacy, they also seem to be suggesting that we reveal more personal information to marketers. The best way to control your privacy information on Facebook is to methodically go through your privacy settings. It's not as fun as looking at photos of your old high school sweetheart, but it does mean you can rest a little easier. I jokingly call Facebook "the giant peephole," because it gives a glimpse into its users lives. You just want to make sure people can only see as much as you want them to see.

Keep this post up in one window, and open a new window in your browser. Call up Facebook. Now you can read these instructions while making changes to your Facebook profile.

OK, first let's go up to the top of the Facebook page, and click on "settings." Let's go to "privacy settings," probably the least fun and most important category. Let's start with "profile information." Click on this category, and you'll see a list of information about you. You should be in control of who can see these things. The first topic, "about me," refers to the little box on the left of your profile page. This includes my birthday, networks, relationship status and other private details. I only want my friends to see this, so I toggle this to say "only friends." But I have one friend who I don't want to see any of my information. (Don't ask.) So after I've chosen "only friends," I also click "custom." Then I type in the name of the friend I don't want to see this information. Now only my friends, with the exception of this one friend, can see my "about me" box.

I can now do the same operation on each of the things on this list. For almost all of them, I want only my friends to be able to see my profile information.

There's a little category here you might want to tweak. See the category "birthday"? Besides making this so only friends can see the information, I also want to hide my birth year from everyone. (Vanity.) So I can go to my profile, click on "info," click on "edit," and toggle my birthday options to say "show only a month and day in my profile."

Now lets go back to privacy settings, and continue to choose who can see the categories of your profile information. On this list is something I want to shut down: the photos and videos that other people tag me in. I don't want anyone to see these. I want people to see the photos of me that I post, not the photo of me that some friend posts, probably without my approval. Otherwise, the photos "of me" taken by other people are the first photos anyone sees of me on Facebook. They see other people's photos of me, not the photos that I choose to post. So I toggle this category "photos and videos of me" to the option "only me." So no one can see the photos other people post of me, except me.

Below this is the category "photo albums." I choose to "edit the options" here, to edit who can see the photos I post to my profile. You want these photos grouped in albums, rather than all thrown in together. Here's why: I don't mind if friends of friends see my profile photos, but I don't want them to see the photos of my kids. And I want everyone to see the pictures I've posted of me with famous people, because I'm proud of those. So I can adjust the privacy settings for all these albums.

Now let's go back to privacy settings, where we can control who can post to our profiles. I have a few pesky friends who have been overly opinionated on my wall. I need to shut them down. So on the four categories of who can see and comment on my posts, I customize the settings to say only friends can do this, with the exception of the pesky friends.

That's all for the profile information of privacy settings. Let's move on to the next category, contact information. At the top of the page click settings, privacy settings, contact information. I don't want everyone or even all of my friends to see my mobile phone number or my address, or my e-mail. So I toggle those switches to include a friends list I've made of "close friends." Contact information might be the category or friends list comes in most handy. If you don't know how to make a friends list, see this post for instructions. This allows you to share your personal contact information with a small group of people who you want to see it. I do want everyone to see my website, so I toggle that switch to "everyone." I also want everyone to be able to send me a message, so I click that to "everyone."

Now let's take a look and see how a friend can see our profile. See the box "preview my profile" at the top of the "contact information" page? Click on that, and it will take you to your profile. You can type in a friend's name and see how they see their contact info.

Let's go back to our privacy settings and click on "applications and websites." This has been a controversial area, and might be the most important one for you to understand. See the category of what your friends can share about you? This is a red flag.

When friends enable applications, those applications and outside developers can see information about you, even if you don't use that application.

If that makes you feel uncomfortable, it should. Why should some outside developer be able to access your information when you're not even using their application? Let's shut this down right now. Click "edit settings." Now we can control what information our friends can share about us when they dabble in outside applications. (Again: creepy.) The only thing that I want these applications to be able to see is my website, because I want that to be publicized. (I'm marketing to the marketers, heh heh.) But I don't want these applications to have access to anything else here, because they're not even my applications, so I just want to shut them down. So the only box I check is "website." The fine print above the boxes reminds you that everyone can see your publicly available information. That's why we controlled it in the previous section. Save this information and let's go back to applications and websites.

I've chosen to block applications that popped up on my wall too often as friends engaged in Mafia wars and other games. On the block applications tab I can see what I've chosen to block. The next tab, "ignore application invites," lists the friends that I've shut down from inviting me to do certain applications. (I have a few who've gone overboard.)

Let's go back to our privacy settings page, and click on "search." I don't mind if everyone on Facebook can search for me, because that allows real-life friends to find me, and friend me on Facebook. (But again, I did shut down what information people can see about me in the previous section. Aren't you glad we did?)

I've also chosen to allow public search results, from search engines like Google. That's because I work in social media, and I want potential clients to be able to see what I do. But if you don't want people to be able to Google your Facebook page, say no here.

Let's go back to the privacy settings page and click on our last category, "block people." There are two strange robot profiles who bugged me some on Facebook. I've blocked them here. You might have more serious stalker problems. If there's someone out there who you don't want to be able to find you on Facebook, put their name and/or e-mail in here.

We're done! This is like going to the dentist: It's unpleasant, but it's a lot better than the repercussions if you don't do it. Aren't you glad to know that not everyone out there (including marketers) can see all that information about you? That friends can't post unflattering pictures of you? That third-party developers can't harvest your info simply because a friend is using their app?

I know I do. Thanks for going through this with me.

Threadsy the next big thing? Get an invite.

2010-01-17T07:41:00.000-08:00

Who would play you in the movies? Send me your Hollywood double, or the perfect star to portray a friend.

Are you a combiner, or a divider? That might be one of the big questions in social media right now. For while 2008's mantra was "All aboard!" And 2009's was "Here's how to do it right." The social media approach for 2010 is:

Have it your way.

(Sorry, I was always a BK guy instead of a Mickey D's guy.) One of the big complaints I hear about social media is: "I don't have time for this stuff. Who wants to be on the computer for hours every day?" But configuring social media -- including email and chat -- to work for you cuts down on the time you put into it every day. You just have to put in the time up front. That's where the block is for many people -- and businesses. They don't know how to configure things to work for them. That's the most valuable thing I can provide.

Pulling together a custom-made social media and email interface for you that feels comfortable is an individualized process. But let me throw out two approaches that go opposite directions.

If you're a combiner, you might dislike hopping back and forth between email, Facebook and Twitter. Do you have to hit all three when you hop on the computer or pick up your phone? You can reroute Twitter DMs and Facebook messages to your email, but what about @replies on Twitter and other Facebook interactions? Threadsy is a new social media site that combines social media platforms so you get them all in one place. In September Threadsy placed second in the Techcrunch 50 competition for startups. Thready is currently in private Beta, but you can snag an invite here. I feared I might be overwhelmed by it -- facing all my social media and email at once. But actually, it's very handy. I don't have to hop back and forth as much. And there are two dandy features: The smoothest bit.ly link shortener I've ever seen; and a profiler that shows you all your friends' public social media accounts when you click on one of their messages. So I found flickr photos I'd never seen from a friend. You might want to at least experiment with Threadsy. Combining these accounts is one philosophical direction all this is going.

But what about another direction? That's where the dividers come in. If your idea of social media sanity is sorting all your messages into manageable folders, try Facebook friends lists, Twitter lists and Gmail folders. Some believe Twitter and Facebook can save us from email overload, as this Guardian blog post suggests. I can see that argument. And many of my friends send personal greetings via Facebook, rather than on email. The quick messages come through Twitter. I do file my Gmail emails into different categories. (You can double-categorize them by adding an "important" label to a "work" label, or a "needs long reply" label to a "personal" label.) Then I don't just stare at a massive inbox. Or several massive inboxes: I'm stunned by how many people have separate email accounts they must access one at a time. Combining those into a Gmail account can make your life much simpler, and you can route those emails into separate folders. But, some folks are dividers by nature.

Whether you're a combiner or divider, it's worth putting in the time to configure your online communications. Three hours going in can save you an hour every day, and untold frustration.

Moses was a very talented divider.

Panthers, "Avatar" and your social media

2010-01-03T16:34:00.000-08:00

Who would play you in the movies? Hollywood meets Charlotte in this game pairing lookalike stars and their Charlottean counterparts. Got a casting inspiration? Let me know.

The Panthers' promising play at the end of the season shows the players' talent -- especially with the running game and defense -- and proves there are problems at the top. Yes, the Saints sat starters today, but the Panthers are now showing potential that was nowhere to be found earlier in the season because a talented team was not ready to play. That's a coaching problem. ... Charlotte is too passive and patient a sports town. Observer readers are voting to keep Coach John Fox and GM Marty Hurney 54%-46% in 4,300 votes. I disagree. Jake should've been out earlier in the year, Matt Moore should get the starting spot, and Fox and Hurney should be out now. ... Does Fox even try on third-and-long? The Brad Hoover handoff is not the exciting play we need to see. ... I'm listening to former Ravens coach Brian Billick (pictured, right) do the color announcing for Fox and thinking, "He'd look good on the Panthers sidelines..."

The video below is a hilarious look at what a Christmas album would be like from the intentionally weird pop diva Lady Gaga.

The Harvard study showing men who drink six or more cups of coffee a day are safer from deadly prostate cancer just seems wrong to me. That much coffee is good for the prostate? I'm resisting objecting to a prostate study led by a woman researcher. OK, I'm not: I just want the lead researcher to have the part of the body being studied, that's all. And I don't blame women for feeling the same way about men leading studies about female plumbing parts.

The whole "social media is narcissism" argument is B.S. Smartphones and social media connect people; narcissism is self-centered isolation. And the fact that nearly 300 pundits have written this in the past month shows only that this is the flavor of the month for opinion writers who don't understand the platforms. What we need to do is organize our social media.

I loved "Avatar." But special effects aren't everything. (I don't go to a Sherlock Holmes movie to see special effects and kung fu.) If you want to see acting, rent "I've Loved You So Long" with Kristin Scott Thomas (pictured, right), or this year's "Juno," "An Education." Speaking of "Avatar," did you know the first 3-D movie hit American screens in 1923?

Questions to ask about your business on social media: We're now on question 6 in this series. Previously we've asked What does our business hope to accomplish? and What social media accounts do we now have, how active are they, and what problems do they have? and Who's going to maintain, feed and grow these accounts? and What are the communications skills and weaknesses of the social media leaders in our company? and How will we integrate social media into the overall communications strategy of our company?

Today we move on to our next question:

How will we measure the success of this objective?

Return on investment has been one of the big social media questions for businesses. But you can't evaluate whether Facebook and Twitter are "worth it." You've got to be specific to your business and your campaign. Will you measure it by how much traffic you drive to your Web site? To the number of new requests for business? Many businesses go those directions. But I'm going to suggest a different approach, especially as the economic downturn lingers. Why not ask if social media is connecting you better, generating more contact and dialogue and improving your online brand? Or, even better, would those areas be suffering without these new efforts while your competitors pull away from you?

Questions to ask about your business on social media

2009-12-28T05:47:00.000-08:00

Social media is not a one-size-fits-all. Every user and business is different, and its communications strategy, including social media, should be different.

Questions to ask about your business on social media: We're now on question 5 in this series. Previously we've asked What does our business hope to accomplish? and What social media accounts do we now have, how active are they, and what problems do they have? and Who's going to maintain, feed and grow these accounts? and What are the communications skills and weaknesses of the social media leaders in our company? Today we move on to the next question:

How will we integrate social media into the overall communications strategy of our company?

Initially, Facebook, Twitter and the rest were often referred to as "social networking." Then we moved on to the term "social media." The first phrase is actually more accurate in the business world. You're trying to connect with customers and other companies. Think of this the way you do email and phone calls, not the way you do a TV commercial. How do you want to communicate, and how does social networking fit into that plan? Are you mostly a business-to-business company? Do you need to increase sales? Do you want to promote your personal profile? That information should shape all your communications -- including face-to-face. Social networking should dovetail into what you already do. It's not a prefabricated media; it's part of your communications. Make it yours, and connect it to your other approaches.

Ideally social networking should work like an accordion, pulling you together for face-to-face, and keeping you connected as you pull apart.

Top YouTube vids, Panthers, BofA's new stud

2009-12-19T07:01:00.000-08:00

All my columns have a gimmick. Glad You Asked had the reader quiz. The Insider had the "whisper" photo. This one has Who Would Play You In The Movies. For a closer look, click on the photos. Send me your star and photos and I'll put you in.

Looks like you can't tell Panthers QB Matt Moore on Twitter that he was a rock star (he looks like one) in Sunday night's victory over the Vikings. The account @MattEMoore has been removed. Too bad. Teammate and pal Rhys Lloyd still rocks the Twitter, though, better than any other athlete in town. You can hear his British accent in his tweets. ... Terrible that robbers who took the valuables of three people in East Charlotte at 3 a.m. this morning then shot two of them. Give those guys the harshest sentence. ... How many of the top five TV shows involve any kind of screenwriting? Try none. "American Idle," "American Idolatry," "Dancing With No Real Stars," "Dancing With Stark Unreality," and "NBC Sunday Night Football." (Where the Panthers rocked last night.) ... Today's Wall Street Journal sez hedge fund boss David Tepper made $7 billion for his hedge fund and $2.5 bill for himself by better big on banks, including the big one based here. He scooped up BofA stock when it was at $3 a share. It's now at $15. You gotta like that new BofA chief Brian Moynihan was a rugby stud at Brown. ... I WANT TWO TIX TO THE NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTY AT THE BECHTLER. There, how's that for subtle? ... Ouch. Stephen Jackson's bad back hurts the Bobcats, who have shows signs of real promise this year. I still think they'll make the playoffs. ... So, how'd ya fare during the great blizzard of '09? The only flake around near my place was me. ... Budding R&B and gospel star Rudy Currence of Rock Hill absolutely killed it Friday night at Whitehead Manor, the genteel conference center and biz-coaching joint neatly tucked away at Sardis and Rama. Social media stud Jim Deitzel let is slip Friday night that his Rubbermaid outfit is up for a commercial of the year award for its cool TV spot of a woman being avalanched by her closet. Spouse Susanne, also a social media hotshot and one of the hosts of the Currence concert, looked absolutely stunning Friday night. ... Check out Huff Po's best of 2009 YouTube vids here. Love those babies. ...

In case you didn't catch this, Facebook's new privacy policies are a sham, aimed at you giving up more privacy to marketers. You can check out screenshots of Facebook's redesign here. ... Why is Caribou on East so packed, and far more likable Dilworth Coffee just up the road a calm little nook of caffeine and Wi-Fi? ... Saw Mike Collins' Android phone on Friday when I was on "Charlotte Talks" talking Christmas gadget gifts. It's pretty fast on surfing, I must say. How about Verizon hammering smart phone users who bail on their contracts (for the iPhone, I assume) with a $350 penalty? (I only paid $140 two years ago to do the same.) ... Speaking of Mike, he leaked to me a very funny and locally star-studded Julius Peppers number for the upcoming "Charlotte Squawks." ... Texas Pete, you're better than Tabasco. Duke's mayo, you're better than Hellman's. And that's not just me being a homer. ... ... Snoop Dogg was on Martha Stewart's show making brownies on Friday when the notoriously stoned rapper joked about dropping a special "green ingredient" into the mix. ... Accenture consulting has pulled its billboard ad of Tiger Woods looking into a gloomy sky with the headline "Tougher Than Ever To Be A Tiger." ... Yay French courts for pushing Google back on book copyrights. Yay Yelp for rejecting Google's bid to muscle in for a takeover. Is Google actually finishing any of its projects these days, or just expanding?

Questions to ask about your business on social media: We're now on question 4. Previously we've asked What does our business hope to accomplish? and What social media accounts do we now have, how active are they, and what problems do they have? and Who's going to maintain, feed and grow these accounts? Today we move on to the next question:

What are the communications skills and weaknesses of the social media leaders in our company?

If a younger employee will be your main social media person, does this person need to grow up some and into a more professional online demeanor? If your point person is an executive, do they need to loosen up some and brush up on tech skills? Chances are, this person needs to do one or the other. Knowing their drawbacks in advance can prevent public embarrassment.

BofA chief, wintry mix and tech toys

2009-12-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

All my columns have a gimmick. Glad You Asked had the reader quiz. The Insider had the "whisper" photo. This one has Who Would Play You In The Movies. For a closer look, click on the photos. Send me your star and photos and I'll put you in.

First the good news: The Big Bank is staying. Now the surprising news: Young buck Brian T. Moynihan, 50, new chief, gave five times to John Kerry campaigns. Really? A pinstriped liberal? ... An inch or two of wintry mix to hit Charlotte area tomorrow? Buy bread and milk, and remember: If your car goes into a skid, drive like a Southerner and slam on the brakes while twisting the wheel madly. Actually, what you're supposed to do is pump the brakes slightly and steer in the direction you want the car to go, which is also probably the direction the back of the car is skidding. See a video demonstration here. ... Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan hacked U.S. drone planes with off-the-shelf, $26 software? Oh, I feel safe. ... My last girlfriend and my ex-wife both thought Tiger Woods was really hot. They probably didn't realize they had a shot with him. ... Bill James, you're an idiot for your "homo" comment. But The Observer readers voting against same-sex benefits online need some educating, too. ... You gotta like the Spangler Foundation giving so much to schools, especially since it lost two-thirds of its assets in 2008, thanks to heavy investment in BofA. ... Man, is this town suddenly hot for the arts, or what? A spot at The Bechtler private New Year's Eve party is the invite to drooooool over.

I'm talking tech toys with Mike Collins Friday morning on "Charlotte Talks." Weird: An old-timey German board game called Settlers of Catan made popular in the '90s is sweeping high-tech circles, says the Wall Street Journal on Page 1 today. ... The worst holiday tech gift you could possibly give someone is the iPhone. That's not a gift. It's a lifestyle decision. (And one I've made three times.) They need to do it themselves. Besides, then they'll want to play with it on Christmas, but will have to fight through the AT&T bureacracy to get set up. Get 'em an Apple Gift Card. They can get whatever they want. This is crazy, and smart, you can get one for "any amount" in a retail store. No price limit. Millions? Billions? ... Best tech toys? It's a great time to get a game console. Wii, PlayStation and Xbox are all super cheap now... The Beatles Rock Band is supposed to be a winner. I mean, everyone knows the songs. ... The Kindle II is apparently cool, although I don't want to read the paper on an Etch-A-Sketch, myself. ... Casio sent me the High Speed Exilim camera to play with. It's the size of a thin bar of soap, and shoots 1000 frames of video per second. A typical video camera shoots 30. This thing gives you super slow-mo with vectors so you can study your golf swing.

Questions to ask about your business on social media: We're now on question 3. Previously we've asked What does our business hope to accomplish? and What social media accounts do we now have, how active are they, and what problems do they have? Today we move on to the next question:

Who's going to maintain, feed, and grow these accounts?

If a social media account isn't sustainable, it will slowly wither. (As most Twitter accounts do.) It just doesn't make sense for a business owner who doesn't speak social media to set up an account, get bored, and hand it off to a nephew who "gets this stuff." That's why so many businesses have doubts about Return On Investment: They've invested time, energy and attention that they don't have or want to give. Starting a social media account is like getting a puppy. You've got to ask: "Who's going to take care of this thing?"

What are your favorite gadgets and apps?

2009-12-15T12:04:00.000-08:00

All my columns have a gimmick. Glad You Asked had the reader quiz. The Insider had the "whisper" photo. This one has Who Would Play You In The Movies. For a closer look, click on the photos. Send me your star and photos and I'll put you in.

I'm on "Charlotte Talks" on Friday morning talking tech toys, gadgets and apps. Got something on your wish list this holiday season? Leave me a comment below, or click the Contact form and let me know. I'll try to mention your toy during the show. You can also tweet me Friday morning with thoughts.

Pics are up from the fun StudioBanks holiday party at Dil Bill last week. Dil Bill has its own holiday shindig Thursday night. ... Among Fortune's Dumbest Business Moves of 2009? "Ken Lewis Leaves BofA Hanging" in which the mag says: "Lewis packed up his golden parachute last October and bailed." ... Anybody else noticing that the Bobcats are, uh, pretty good? They've won 6 of 9, and Gerald Wallace might be the most unrecognized superstar in the league. ... Rabid Avett Bros fan @crystaldempsey points out that howl-at-the-moon local blue grass-rock geniuses are posting giveaways in a 12 Days Of Avett campaign on their site. ... Chamber sez big eco devo announcement there tomorrow (12/16) at 11 a.m. ... WCNC's Jeremy Markovich posted on Twitter that his newsroom argued proper tipping today. 15%? 20%? Guess I go 20% and above usually. ... Is last-minute cancellation the new black, or is this a holiday thing? (I'm guilty, too.) ... You can drop one of the arguments for a moral victory over China: The Wall Street Journal reports today China is quickly becoming a green-tech leader. ... What's the worst holiday gift you've ever received? Mouthwash? Anti-snoring strips?

Questions to ask about your business on social media: Many businesses plunge into social media without knowing what to do. So they end with accounts that are half-hearted, sporadic, or junked by the side of the road. If you're trying to focus your business's social media strategy, it's important to take stock. Do you have a Facebook page you love, where all your friends and customers engage with you, and also a boring, empty corporate page no one seems to care about? (Guess where the juice is?) Did you slap up a LinkedIn profile you never visit? (That's a big mistake.) Last time I gave my first question to ask about your business on social media: What does our business hope to accomplish? Today we move on to the next question:

What social media accounts do we now have, how active are they, and what problems do they have?

Who'd Play You In The Movies? Part 2

2009-12-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

All my columns have a gimmick. Glad You Asked had the reader quiz. The Insider had the "whisper" photo. This one has Who Would Play You In The Movies. For a closr look, click on the photos. Send me your star and photos and I'll put you in.

What you're doing: Justin Ruckman just posted the first of a series of monthly video podcasts on innovation in Charlotte. ... Observer buddy Rogelio Aranda posts this ad from a local mag on Twitter. What's a Brazilian Butt Lift? ... WFAE is hosting a blood drive today from 10:30-1:30 in Spirit Square. ... Ray Romano is on Bob & Sheri tomorrow at 7:10. ... Social Fresh organizer Jason Keath debuted on Mashable yesterday. ... Brandon Uttley just wrapped up the year as PRSA President. ... Lunch meeting Wednesday at Jillian's for Business Marketing Association Carolinas. ... Harry Hoover of My Creative Team throws out this gassy site just developed for a client. ... Lake Norman Holiday Tweetup Dec. 22 at Red Rocks Birkdale.

What they're doing: Business Insider's list of 21 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade -- Maps, Video Rental Stores, Dial-Up. ... Check out this hilarious version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by 21 of the most annoying voices in music. ... Can Google concentrate and focus on anything? The behemoth will will sell a phone, the Nexus One, as soon as next year. ... Robert Kelly isn't so sure about taking over the top spot at BofA because the pay might not be enough. He's made $13 mill and $20 mill the past two years, the Wall Street Journal reports.

What I'm doing: Really enjoyed talking with Bruce and Jill Hensley about Queen's Feast, Charlotte Restaurant Week, coming up again in the end of January. ... I'll be on "Charlotte Talks" on Friday, talking about gizmos and apps for Christmas. ... Enjoyed putting up the tree this weekend: Here's a pic. ... Looking forward to cool holiday dinner and concert at Whitehead Manor starring emerging R&B star Rudy Currence. ... Looking forward to speaking at the Charlotte chapter of the Institute of Real Estate Management on January 20, and at the social media conference hosted by The Observer and Queens U on January 30.

10 Questions To Answer About Your Business On Social Media

Facebook grew by 200 million users in 2009, from 150 million to 350 million. That's about 550,000 new users every day. Many of them don't know why they're on there. "Because everybody said I had to" seems to be a popular answer. That's fine for personal accountants: Folks can get on, meddle around, and make goofy mistakes as they go. (Everyone should, however, deal with privacy concerns.) But this is a major problem for businesses.

Social media is where Web sites were a decade ago: Businesses are slapping up accounts in a rush to get on the space. Then many business owners run out of steam and expertise, hand the accounts off to a nephew (because this is "kid stuff") and the problems begin. Social media is communications with a broad and very public reach. Inexperience and lack of judgment can embarrass your company in a hurry.

So, first question: What do you hope to accomplish for your business on social media? I'll look at 10 more questions every business should consider when launching a social media presence.

Who would play you in the movies?

2009-12-12T06:31:00.000-08:00

Facebook was born when Mark Zuckerberg broke the rules and posted photos of Harvard students for his friends to compare in a hacked game of Hot Or Not. Recently the camera has focused in still more on the comparison of faces on social networks. Google Goggles has rolled out: The application attempts to identify the subject of your mobile photo photos through image search recognition. And Thread.com lets you give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to your friends' friends in the search for a romantic partner. If you deem someone "cute," and they do the same for you, voila, your profiles pop up for one another.

All of which got me thinking. Would Google Goggles mix you up with lookalikes? What if you were thrown up against your double in Hot Or Not? And, finally: Is all this an excuse to pull together one big game of Who Would Play You In The Movies?

Twas.

I asked my Facebook friends that question, and they supplied me with their movie star double. Others I approached with possible casting. Here are four pairs of Charlotteans and their movie star doubles. You can click on the photos for a better look. I'll roll out a couple more every day. And if you'd like to play, send me your movie star double.

Why Charlotte is like Tiger Woods

2009-12-09T06:20:00.000-08:00

Gatorade has canceled its Tiger Woods Focus drink, while denying this is in any way because he hasn't appeared to have been focusing much, at least in matters of the heart. But over in the river of the real-time Web, Tiger is a huge hit right now:

"God bless Tiger Woods," -- Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, gushing that the scandalized golfer has fueled more recent traffic than Michael Jackson's death. Classy.

There is some debate about whether Tiger should have plunged into that river of information to address the furious Twitter traffic that initially carried new of his car crash and affairs. But one thing is certain: He has not been able to hunker his way out of this mess, to hold onto his privacy, or endorsements. It's impossible to control the river.

I'm guilty of the same thing, and so are you.

When my friend Matthew Vincent, the Charlotte innovative blogger behind Minimum Failure, unfurled a petition to The Charlotte Observer's Twitter directory the day after I met with him for coffee, I was horrified. "Allow me to return the knife you misplaced in my back." But that was my attempt to control an understandable flow against big media trying to control social media, or at least to shape it. The Twitter directory has sputtered, not because of the petition - "I don't think even I signed it" Vincent told me Monday night - but because its ambition was to pin down a rush of information. I do credit my former boss, Steve Gunn, the mad scientist of The Observer's innovation, for trying.
Joshua Benton, the head of Harvard's Nieman Lab, a journalism and technology think tank, spoke about this Monday night at Queens U, noting that the real-time Web is a "river of news you can dip a toe in." A great turnout drew DavidsonNews.net online journalist David Boraks, WCNC's Stuart Watson, The Observer's Jen Rothacker, Catch Creative's marketing director Art Henson, and Queens U's Mac MacArthur, one of the area's top social media thinkers, and the Dean of the School of Communication's Van King, who played host and introduced Benton.

It's all in flux. You can't hold onto your information. Paddle your kayak in the river, whitewater-riding public art expert Sarah Gay might say. The Blumenthal, where dashing Douglas Young has always sought a dynamic buzz around events, has plunged into the river by adding a healthy social media strategy to events.

What I'm doing

Dinner with good friend Rick Bainbridge last night at Mickey Schmick's in South Park. ... Speaking to Dilworth Rotary on Friday at Byron's SouthEnd. ... Meeting with favorite PR duo Bruce and Jill Hensley about social media and their cool eat-out-well-at-a-discount event Restaurant Week. ... On "Charlotte Talks" with Mike Collins on Friday the 18th to talk about tech toys for Christmas.

What you're doing

Sarah Hada, Compass Group PR star, jokes on Facebook about starting a Charlotte Complaint Choir - the NYT featured groups like this. It's a funny idea, along the lines of "Charlotte Squawks. ... Susan Hilger has posted a political edge to her cool "gree n" eco cuffs wooden jewelry - "peace cuffs". ... Looking forward to holiday parties in the next few days at two of my favorite local tech out fits, Banks Wilson's StudioBanks and Jon West's 3tailer. ... Counselor Kevin Lock is looking to complete charlottecounselor.org soon. ... Davidson's Lisa Gray is trying to round up digerati who love classical music for WDAV. ... Steve Knight is exploring the niche of faith-based not-for-profits (knows his stuff). ... CLT Blog's Desiree Kane has a fascinating new story on the masked marauder behind a puppet theater of Charlotte Twitter bots that skewers the unsuspecting.

What they're doing

The season's hottest toy is Mattel's Mindflex, which lets you move balls according to the electrical activity in your brain. Discovery Place has a creeky old version of that. ... Facebook will soon allow you to control who sees each thing you post. So you can gripe about your boss and hide that from her. ... Google's real-time search aspect is cool, and somehow unnerving, to watch it updating as you're trying to glean information. ... Kids aren't collecting beer cans anymore, the Wall Street Journal reports today on the front page. That's the world's oldest beer can, at top.

Want something in What you're doing? Tell me in the contact form.

A new way of doing business

2009-12-07T05:28:00.000-08:00

David Kyle, Dani Burns and Roy Morejon at Thursday night's Search Engine Marketing Charlotte party at the Charlotte Chamber. Photo by Charis Pope.

It's not what you know, it's who you don't know. That's where your next big deal, partnership and trusted connection are waiting, wondering where you are. Let's get you there.

I'm a connector, and as we emerge (we hope) from the recession, networks online and off have never been more important, especially in Charlotte, a city going through a significant change, from old to new, from banking and NASCAR (cash 'n' crash) to much more. (And the fact is, the city has always been about much more.)

Get out to face-to-face events and you see this.

Last night I moderated a panel on innovation and starting tech companies in Charlotte at Area 15 near NoDa. The talk will soon be posted as a podcast on CLT Blog. On the panel were City Councilman Warren Cooksey, Josh Lippiner of the new project Charlotte 2.0, Scott Nedderman and Chris Beck of Netphase , Philip Dodds of The Cloud Market (who organized the podcast), and Desiree Kane of CLT Blog. Dodds and Justin Ruckman of CLT Blog will use the monthly podcasts to explore the impediments to tech growth and innovation in the city.

The takeaway? Charlotte is not an incubator of innovation or adequate at inviting and nurturing startups.

Thursday night I moderated a panel at The Charlotte Chamber on social media. On that panel were Duke Power social media specialist Lisa Hoffmann, Chris Harrington of Luquire George Andrews, Jim Deitzel of Rubbermaid and Roy Morejon of B2We .

The takeaway from that panel? Many companies, large and small, for profit and nonprofit, and many self-employed professionals, need help and guidance on social media.

I'd like to help on both fronts.

Moderating panels is much like interviewing people, which I did for years as a columnist at The Charlotte Observer. But now I'm not interviewing to hit a deadline, I'm interviewing to discover your needs and connect you with the next person that can help you in business. Some of this is how I'm built: I'm a born networker. Put me in a room with 100 people whom I don't know. No, I'm asking. Please put me in a room with 100 people I don't know. That's where I'm happiest. Then I can introduce those people to you.

Know Nathan Richie? You should. He's a broadcast pro and keenly insightful about social media. Jim Mitchem? An adman who breaks all the norms. Kara Schwab? One of Charlotte's funniest and most artful writers. Bruce and Jill Hensley? The longtime Charlotte PR pros are doing innovative things with their project Restaurant Week. Get to know them. Adding them to your circle is fun, productive and good business.

This is one of the biggest needs today in Charlotte, and in the world. In their new book, "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives," Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler write:

"Social networks have value precisely because they can help us achieve what we could not achieve on our own."

They're not just talking about online social networking. Social networking means face-to-face, as well as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Online connecting means next to nothing if it doesn't draw us together. The two forms are best when they work like an accordion, pulling us together and keeping us connected as we pull apart. And Christakis and Fowler aren't just talking business, or that it's nice to know people socially. They found that your friends' friends' friends can help make you fat or thin, happy or unhappy, single or happily married.

I hope you'll connect with me here. Tell me what you're doing with whom in the Queen City, how I can help, and who you'd like to reach. I'll put you in this blog, and I hope I can put you in my iPhone contacts, too.

This is what makes me happy, it's a great way to do business, and it's what I believe on a fundamental level. Just remember what the Zen Buddhist said to the hot dog vendor:

"Make me one with everything."

Favorite moments at The Observer

2009-11-05T05:01:00.000-08:00

I've been a columnist at The Observer since 2002, and Friday is my last day as I move on to pursue social media entrepreneurship. I've had many great experiences, from making friends with a hitman to meeting a president and Nobel Prize winner. Mostly, I've enjoyed connecting with all of you, which I will do now even more than ever in person and on social media. With great gratitude to Charlotte and The Observer, here are some of my favorite times.

Almost being kissed by movie and TV star Bonnie Hunt, who misunderstood her handlers' instructions in posing for a photo with me for my column. "How's your breath?" she asked me. "Oh, you're fine." Then she put her arms around me. That was fun.
Making friends with Michael Fitzsimmon, who was hired by a drug gang to kill crusading pastor Barbara Cameron, but heard her preach, found God, did his time, and went straight. "How many people did you kill?" I asked him. To which he ominously replied, "Let's put it this way: I could take care of anything you needed done."
Meeting Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison, Michael Jordan. Jeff Gordon, Steve Smith, Tony Bennett, Elvis Costello, Pete Sampras, Ken Lewis and Ric Flair.
Surviving for a week on nothing but Christmas party food.
Performing in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus as a clown, and walking backstage next to unicyclists juggling and enormous, swaying elephants. Circus women are the sexiest women on the planet. Bar none.
Having "the Dog Whisperer," Cesar Millan, tell me: Every dog needs to know its job. People, too.
Having Andie McDowell tell me: Beautiful women should never sell themselves short and trade on their looks, even if they sacrifice their careers.
Walking down the street with former hoops star Muggsy Bogues, who is so beloved in Charlotte that everyone greets him by name.

Living in Concord Mills mall for four days without leaving over the Thanksgiving weekend, and telling Sheri Lynch on the air: To quote the name of one of these stores, I need a Bed, Bath & Beyond.
Having a Harlequin Romance villain based on me, and giving the author a tour of my apartment, where she asked the details of my sex life.
Driving the 500-horsepower Ford Shelby Mustang.
Going 115 mph around a NASCAR track.
Writing with Tommy Tomlinson, Tom Sorensen, Sarah Aarthun, Jim Morrill, Karen Garloch, Eric Frazier, Ames Alexander, Scott Fowler, Peter St. Onge, Liz Chandler, and many other scribes.
Sneaking backstage at the Rolling Stones. An arena executive told me: "That's the door to backstage. Under no circumstances do I want you to go back there. ... I'll be over here."
Testing the new super-sticky Post-It note by putting it on the belly of an exotic dancer and having her undulate.
Blowing my bit part in the Broadway show "The Wedding Singer."
Listening to Tony Bennett sing "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" a capella with no microphone in the McGlohon Theater from five feet away.
Talking female body parts with "Vagina Monologues" author Eve Ensler.
Having Hugh McColl point out the changes he made to uptown Charlotte looking out the windows of his offices in the sky at the BofA tower.
Watching NASCAR team owner Felix Sabates bid $2 million at a charity auction for Super Bowl tickets, and then, when I asked him who was taking, saying: "I'm not going. I hate the Super Bowl!"
Breaking a story from the National Institutes of Health on how stress is reconfiguring American brains to be more prone to depression, which has devastated the lives of people I love.

Watching my coworkers at The Charlotte Observer file faithfully in, one after another to work on the morning after the ice storm in December of 2002. As much of the state huddled in their dark homes, waiting for conditions to improve, our staff suited up and showed up to get people news they badly needed. Every Election Day, every Christmas eve, every rainy Sunday night in February when most people are at home, the people of my paper come through, 365, year after year. Of that I am fiercely proud, forever respectful, and profoundly moved.

Foxx vs. Lassiter on Facebook

2009-11-03T08:51:00.000-08:00

It's a Facebook election, with pictures and enthusiastic encouragement posted for the mayoral candidates' friends to see and comment on. This lends a bit of a smalltown feel to the mayoral race online, as if Republican John Lassiter and Democrat Anthony Foxx were running for high school class president, not for the mayor's seat of the nation's 19th largest city.

I just did a TV spot with Stuart Watson of WCNC NewsChannel 36 on social media and the mayoral race. It will be on tonight's newscast at 5:45. Here's what we talked about, primarily how the mayoral race breaks down on Facebook, the platform each uses the most.

Foxx has a bigger following, and a younger, more active approach. The Democrat has more than 3,300 friends, contrasted with Lassiter's nearly 1,200. The Democrat also has a "group" of more than 1,200, while Lassiter's only group is just 154. In what could be an age difference, Foxx plays more on Facebook: He's a fan of Stephen Curry, who starred at basketball at Foxx's alma mater of Davidson. And he's a fan of jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. He's more active, and relaxed.

This participation seems to pay off for Foxx: Fifty friends responded on Facebook to get get-out-the-vote post this morning. Just 10 of Lassiter's did. That community spreads out to each of that person's friends. And that can add up.

One interesting note about Lassiter on Facebook: He lists his cell phone number. So friends get access to that. When WCNC's Watson called it, Lassiter picked up.

As a Facebook friend of both, I created a friends list with just them on it, which allows me to isolate and compare their posts. Politicians often want friends during a campaign, so friending two opponents and checking them out this way can be illuminating.

Will these guys bail on Facebook tomorrow? Something tells me they'll be a little less active after the election. (Just a hunch.) But Foxx is invested there. And win or lose, a populist candidate benefits from the personal touch. As a more corporate guy, Lassiter might indeed back off some.

Also, I created a mayoral race list on Twitter, so you can compare the candidates' tweets. You don't have to be friends or be followed by them to see that.

Jonathan Woodlief, 14, leads Facebook revolt

2009-10-29T03:44:00.000-07:00

Nearly a million and a half angry Facebook users are protesting recent changes to the Web site. The leader of the furious online mob? A smiling eighth-grader from Apex who wears his baseball cap backwards and likes to play FarmVille.

His parents were not aware of this.

“He's doing what on Facebook?” asked Jonathan Woodlief's father when the Observer called their home near Raleigh on Tuesday night. Then David Woodlief and his wife, Claire, got Jonathan, 14, out of bed. He came downstairs and explained just how he happened to become the leader of one of the fastest-growing viral movements online. The group was booming by more than 100 new members a minute on Wednesday.

Adding a twist, Jonathan Woodlief just happens to be a dead-ringer for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, another social media whiz kid, who is only 11 years older than Jonathan.

Jonathan is the administrator of the Facebook group CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!!, which has exploded over the past six days in response to unpopular changes the site made to its News Feed feature. The feed now shows only those friends Facebook deems “important” to you.

Maybe innocence helps a cause. Jonathan added a note to the side of the group page that reads:

Lets try and get 10,000,000 people to join! :)

Jonathan did not start the group, but joined it a day after it was started because he dislikes the changes. Poking around on the page, he noticed that the group had no administrator, the person who configures the page, allows posts, and makes rules for the group. Believing in the cause – and perhaps sensing an opportunity – “I clicked a button to make myself the admin, and that was it,” he says. Since then he's been inundated with messages and friend requests from around the world.

“We had no idea,” David Woodlief said after the situation became more clear. “He's a smart kid.”

Why Faceberg has its pitchforks out

2009-10-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

In Faceberg, the people are up in arms over the new, improved Newsfeed, which seems to choose for us what we see about our friends. The goal is to help filter the "social utility," and the New York Times writes a jaw-stroking think piece about how it represents an important new direction online. Hmmmmm...

That hasn't stopped 700,000 people from joining groups -- in just the past three days -- protesting the change. The biggest affront? Facebook only allows the 250 friends it deems most important to you (algarythmically, of course) to be listed in the feed. After that, the filtering philosophy says, you don't really care. (NYT glosses over this point.) Here's a link explaining how to remedy this.

Do people care in Charlotte? Uh, yeah. I posted two items about the changes on my wall and received more than 40 responses in two days. (And remember, only 250 of my closest friends could see this, at least when clicked on the new, default Newsfeed.)

Over on Twitter, everyone's favorite annoying little bird has been crowing about its new searchability, thanks to Bing, the greatest search engine no one uses. (And, apparently by design, a very economical porn search engine.) Google is huffing and puffing its way up behind the Bing deal, and all this was announced at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where there was so much tweeting about tweeting that 50 tweets simply announced Twitter CEO Evan Williams was taking the stage.

Here's just a really radical idea: Why don't you guys stop twisting the dials long enough to make a little money? I agree with the NYT that filtering is the next big thing in cyber-communications. But Facebook friends lists, the simple way to filter that most users won't take the time to set up, does this pretty well.

Over here in the cobwebbed corner of what my friend Andria Krewson calls "legacy media," we do something pretty well: Hit people's seasonal needs. Halloween is Saturday. Facebook is the biggest photo-sharing system in the world. How'sabout a cheap way to share via family, age groups around the country, topics of costumes, with a paying prize for best costumes? Thanksgiving will be big-time photo sharing on Thanksgiving. What about a nonprofit tie, or a way to support the troops? Christmas might have a few Facebook and Twitter holiday e-card possibilities. Hello?

Twitter is already searchable. Sure, incorporating tweets into search engines is intriguing for all its possibilities. But let's work on some standardized hashtags first. And I want to get updates on my NCAA bracket this year, telling me exactly where I stand after each game. I want Election Night tweets that aren't all over the map.

Instead of giving us "the next big thing" every few months, why don't you guys just give us better platforms for our real lives? In other words, we're your customers. Act like companies, not messengers of the gods. Follow our needs, and stop leading us into "the future."

Live from BarCamp 2

2009-10-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

Charlotte BarCamp 2 is huddled in Area 15 near NoDa today, for the Charlotte Area's chic-est geekfest, an "unconference" that develops as it goes. We're kicking off this morning with what looks like about 200 in the lofty, artsy space. It's a different crowd for Charlotte -- geekier, friendlier, not-so-Southern, happily nerdy. SEO man Corey Creed, massage therapist/geek Summer Plum, former Observerites Crystal Dempsey and Andria Krewson and, of course, Justin Ruckman, the boy hero of CLT Blog -- and one of the organizers -- are just a few faces in the crowd.

Watch live on http://cltblog.com/live

The topics for the seminars will be pitched in a moment. "And hopefully they're not all about Twitter," joked one of the organizers.

Web 3.0 and journalism

2009-10-09T10:24:00.000-07:00

Google Wave represents a new opportunity for print journalism. Wave itself is still a buggy, empty platform, and it might never succeed. But it represents a potential new approach for journalism: Bringing readers and citizen journalists into the process, and making the developing story a product.

There are at least four deliverables from a transparent, collaborative reporting process: The immediacy of tweets and other social media updates; incremental short pieces in a Wave-like approach; what we now consider to be the finished product; and a kind of scrapbook of the pieces that is archivable.

Here's why journalists should care: It can make money.

By aiming this process-is-the-product strategy to mobile, we can hit a marketplace and audience that is willing to pay. It took many big companies years to make money online, but consumers have been far more willing to spend money on the devices and services associated with the mobile Web.

But they won't pay for tweets, which are free and omnipresent. And they won't pay for what print journalism has always considered to be our final product, because years ago we committed ourselves to the philosophy that information is free online.

They will pay for incremental breaking news multi-media stories that come in waves from events that they care about. It's a product they've never seen on their mobiles, and they can take part with social media. Web 3.0's geo approach can target users, and pair mobile advertising with stories.

This would look like a user in Chicago getting an alert on their mobile that the Olympic Committee was about to announce the selection of 2012's host city, with a short video, print story, photos, and the ability to share the story with friends, and an ad from Olympics sponsor Bank Of America.

The user could be updated every 15 minutes, and share the story while commenting. If they committed to the developing story, location-based ads could be attached to the story. ("Sad the Second City didn't get the Games? There are beer specials right around the corner...")

There are many moving pieces, but this pulls together some promising strategies. Journalism needs to take on the challenge.

How much time on social media?

2009-10-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

How much time do you spend on social media? Too much?

Nielsen Online reported over the summer that Americans people spend more time on Facebook than any other Web site. The study noted that 87.25 million U.S. users visited Facebook during June, and each of those spent an average of four hours, 39 minutes and 33 seconds on the site during the month.

More recently, Nielsen reported that time spent on social network and blogging sites accounted for 17 percent of all time spent on the Internet in August, nearly triple the percentage of time spent on the sector a year ago.

"How do people work a full-time job and manage all their social media accounts?" an old-school communications guy asked me recently. It's a good question. Social media users might argue that the sites make them more productive, helping them quickly gather information, connect with colleagues and stay plugged in. But there's some goofing around that goes on, too.

Here are my opinionated suggestions for how to limit your social media time to a well-spent hour a day:

Direct messages: Whether on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, read and respond to these as they come up. These are like answering the phone. This isn't so much social media as direct communications. If you get dozens of these a day, you're either so successful that you need a personal assistant, or you're a teen-ager. Either way, I don't feel sorry for you. Time spent: 10 minutes, as needed.

Twitter: Tweets are like Tic Tacs. You always have time for one, and they can be refreshing and fun. But if you're popping a Tic Tac 30 times a day, do you have a problem? Your mobile device should be your main Twitter interface, and you should tweet, and post pics, as they come up. If you see something or hear something great -- and especially if you witness news -- whip that phone out and tweet. (I enjoy people's mobile tweets far more than the jabberers who sit home or at work and post all day long.) Twitter is also the ultimate dentist-office time filler. When you get a break in your day, nothing wrong with checking Twitter. (I've wondered recently if Twitter users would have been heavy smokers in a previous generation.) Time spent: 15 minutes in the form of daily gap fillers.

LinkedIn: I think you should check in with LinkedIn for 10 minutes every day. That is, unless you're rock-solid confident about the economy, your job and peace and prosperity in general. Work today is all about networking. LinkedIn is not a place to park your resume. Drop a key contact a message, reach out, and see what colleagues are doing. You might need their help someday soon. Think about LinkedIn as like watering a plant or brushing your teeth. It's a healthy habit that pays off. Neglecting to do this has sad results. Time spent: 5 minutes in the morning.

Facebook: Biggest time suck in the universe right now? Nope. Not even close. Nielsen reports that the average American TV consumption remains at an all-time high of 141 hours per month, more than 30 times the average time spent on Facebook. But I think a good way to think about Facebook is like your favorite TV show. If you sit down for a half-hour in the evening and check out what's going on in your friends' lives, you'll catch many of them at prime time. If you have friends lists, which I highly recommend, you can sort of DVR your experience by focusing on separate areas of your life. Time spent: Half-hour in the evening.

Please understand me: I am NOT recommending everyone spend an hour a day on social media. If you spend less, or don't use these sites at all, more power to you. But if your time on the sites is growing, and you're not evaluating or monitoring it, I hope this helps provides some perspective.

Now get back to work.