Posts Tagged ‘social media’

A reminder that on January 27, I’ll be hosting the first edition of the FIR Book Club.

This is an outgrowth of my position of Book Reviews Editor for the wonderful podcast For Immediate  Release, created by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson.

In a quick 30 minutes, we’ll have a chat with an author and a call-in so that you can ask the author questions.

Our first guest on the FIR Book Club will be Christopher Barger, author of the new book “The Social Media Strategist.”

Join us on Blog Talk Radio on the 27th.

And two other book-related notes:

1. If you have a book you would like to hear reviewed — or if you’d like to do a review yourself! — get in touch and tell me about the title.
2. If you’re interested in being a guest reviewer, let me know what book you’re thinking about. In the past, we’ve had folks like Shel and the mellifluous Donna Papacosta do reviews. More voices are better.
3. If you’re a book publicist or an author of a book that is related to public relations, social media, communications, marketing — get in touch with me. I’d like to hear about your book and perhaps review it.

It’s a little surprising (maybe not very surprising, actually) that I don’t hear very often from authors or publishing companies asking me to review books. Try me.

Algonquin College social media class (may not be exactly as shown)

After some time working on the staff side of Algonquin, I’m returning there as a part-time prof in the Social Media Certificate program. The program offers people an elementary education in social media. And I get to do the introduction to social media course.

While Joe will be teaching online, I’ll be sweating it out in the classroom. I suppose it’s fitting that the younger of us will be teaching online, while the … not so younger… of us will be doing it old-school.

Some might think an introductory course is not the most exciting. But I disagree — I think that the introductory course is the place where people should be coming in with questions and perceptions that challenge the status quo. I’m looking forward to providing a basis for the rest of their courses and to maybe even having some of my sacred cows given a bit of a going over too!

It’s been a while since I’ve taught on a regular basis, but doing training and guest lectures has kept me fairly sharp. If you want to subject yourself to me blathering on… Do so at your own risk. Hope to see you in class.

I’ve been writing over the last couple of days about how ideas — and those who create ideas — need to be stronger, more resilient.

But I think there’s one thing that those blog posts didn’t address that needs to be — the responsibilities of the critic.

If social media is to advance, we need to be vigorous critics of the ideas we see. Unquestioning acceptance of what someone says doesn’t advance thinking at all. But there are some ideas that I’d like to put forward that I think should guide us:

1. Punk the idea, not the person. There’s a difference between criticizing an idea and casting personal aspersions.
2. Think before you type. If you see something you want to respond to, don’t do it right away. This is (a) a good way to train yourself against social-media-attention-deficit-disorder; (b) a chance for your brain to actually think about the idea in question. Neither of those are bad things.
3. Choose your words carefully. I know how easy it is to scale the peaks of invective. The relative impersonality of online life allows us to forget there are other people on the end of our slings and arrows. But even if you follow the “punk the idea” rule, you still need to choose wisely. When writing a comment, blog post, or something that qualifies as criticism or debate, why not give yourself that extra opportunity to re-read it before hitting
    ”send” or “publish.” Walk away, then come back. One thing that I do — I’ll actually write in my word-processing program. Then I have to cut, paste, and hyperlink stuff. Those added steps are opportunities for me to rethink what I’m saying and ensure it should be said.
4. Don’t hesitate to contact the object of your critique. If you have a concern about something you read, why not contact the writer and ensure that your understanding is clear. It’s easy to misread things, especially if someone isn’t a good writer. That in itself might be a reasonable criticism, but if you do ensure that your criticisms are founded, you save a humiliating climbdown later, a la Emily Litella. Being in contact with the person whose work you’re going to criticize can also ensure that you’re not writing things you wouldn’t say directly to the person.

None of this should stop people from being critical. In fact, I would argue that if people only did things as I commanded, we’d have a more robust, topical, and PRODUCTIVE discussion of how this big thing called social media works and how it should work.

I look forward to you criticizing this — and anything else I write.

Zap Brannigan, nobody's idea of a strong leader. Except his.

After I posted my little rant about social media ideas last night (Sunday late-night posting bad for traffic? IN YOUR FACE), there was some Twitter talk, including this from Scott Monty: “Au contraire. Social media *leaders* need to be strong enough to withstand criticism. #socialmedia”

I agree. Let’s test this: Scott Monty, YOU SUCK!!! Just kidding.

I think that Scott Monty and I are actually in agreement (as you’d expect from a guy who does a Sherlock Holmes podcast and a guy who does a Stephen King podcast), but that we’re coming to a place of agreement from two different directions.

While I argued that ideas must be strong enough to stand up to criticism, I read Scott’s tweet as saying that those who make the ideas must also allow their ideas to stand on their own merits.

There was a medeival French philosopher named Michel de Montaigne. He once apparently wrote “We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship.” 

True, dat.

When you’ve worked to develop a concept, a program, a web site, something — it’s hard to hear it criticized. The natural tendency is to protect it. And sometimes, the most accurate critiques are those that sting the most. We clutch our ideas in our metaphorical arms, desperate to keep them from harm. And we sometimes lash out. Or, in the case of social media, our friends lash out on our behalf.

I think we need to ensure that if we’re the target of criticism, we first take the time to recognize whether the criticism is of us or our work. Then, be courageous enough to decide whether the criticism has a basis of truth. If there’s something in it, then USE it. If there’s nothing, then choose whether to ignore it or to respond.

I think there’s one more post in me about this — about the rights and responsibilities of critics in social media. Maybe today, or possibly tomorrow.

Are our ideas just a house of cards? Image from Flickr user Privatenobby

There’s a technique in improvisational comedy called the “Yes And.” The “Yes And” is a principle that states that if two people are in a sketch, each line they create should build the sketch up, not block its progress. Here’s how Wikipedia defines it:

“In order for an improvised scene to be successful, the improvisers involved must work together responsively to define the parameters and action of the scene, in a process of co-creation. With each spoken word or action in the scene, an improviser makes an offer, meaning that he or she defines some element of the reality of the scene. This might include giving another character a name, identifying a relationship, location, or using mime to define the physical environment. These activities are also known as endowment. It is the responsibility of the other improvisers to accept the offers that their fellow performers make; to not do so is known as blocking, negation, or denial, which usually prevents the scene from developing. Some performers may deliberately block (or otherwise break out of character) for comedic effect—this is known as gagging – but this generally prevents the scene from advancing and is frowned upon by many improvisers. Accepting an offer is usually accompanied by adding a new offer, often building on the earlier one; this is a process improvisers refer to as ”Yes, And…” and is considered the cornerstone of improvisational technique. Every new piece of information added helps the improvisers to refine their characters and progress the action of the scene.” 

And there’s a similarly familiar concept in brainstorming that states that “There are no bad ideas.”

Social media is neither of these things, and we who work and think about it do ourselves a disservice when we pretend otherwise.

At this point, you’re likely asking “What in God’s name are you talking about, LeDrew?” Fair enough. There have been enough incidents in within earshot of me recently where criticism is construed as insult very quickly. There was the Gini Dietrich-G+ contretemps. Then there was the Neicole Crepeau-Copyblogger kerfuffle. Now there’s the Olivier Blanchard-Social Media Club shitstorm, er, foofaraw.  I could go on a lot longer, but you get the idea. I’ve heard it said that some of my book reviews here and on For Immediate Release have raised hackles (although I’ve never been contacted by anyone about them to complain.)

I am partial to the idea of debate. In fact, I love it. My partner and I met at a debating society meeting in university. She claims that the relationship won’t end until one of us acknowledges defeat. She could be right.

But I am getting the feeling that debate, criticism, and argument are becoming the “fights that dare not speak their name” in the world of social media. And that feeling was strong enough that I horned in on a BlogTalkRadio show hosted by Joe Hackman and featuring the aforementioned Gini and all-round pot-stirrer Danny Brown last week called “If you’re not making enemies, are you really doing it wrong?” to blather about debate for a while, until everyone got bored of me.

What does all this come down to? What am I saying? Here’s my manifesto:

1. You are not your ideas. If people criticize your blog post, program, sales offering, etc. — they aren’t by definition criticizing you.
2. If your ideas are challenged, don’t shut down the challenger, and if you are the lucky person who has fans and supporters, police them.
3. If your ideas are so delicate and filigreed that the merest critique will cause them to crumple into a 52 pickup… maybe you need to have some better ideas.

If we’re going to tell ourselves — let alone our employers or our clients — that social media is robust, that it makes sense, that it’s worth going into, we bloody well better be able to defend our ideas amongst ourselves. Because if we can’t convince our comrades in arms, how are we going to convince the CAs, the lawyers, and the CEOs?

There might not be any bad ideas in a brainstorm. But there are in real life. And we need to do to put those bad ideas out of our misery. We need strong ideas. Weak ones won’t even support… a house of cards.

I’ve seen it. I’ve suffered from it. I’ll bet many of you reading this have too. I call it… launchitis.

It’s a terrible malady, suffered from by those who toil in the trenches of the social media salt mines. The symptoms include depression, burnout, hair loss (from people tearing it out by the roots), uncontrollable anger, and addiction to Dilbert cartoons.

Here’s how a typical case of Launchitis usually goes:

1. an organization gets super-duper excited about some online social media tool or trend that involves interactivity — Foursquare, communities, bulletin boards, Facebook pages, augmented reality. Yay!
2. They task staff to put the project on the to-do list.
3. Staff get moving. Sometimes they hire consultants to help out.
4. The project creeps. Let’s do THIS TOO! And this! And let’s make it glow in the dark!
5. People start getting tired. Deadlines loom. Sometimes budgets start to get dicey.
6. The project launches with attendant hoopla. Ribbons are cut. News releases go out. Everyone congratulates each other, whether or not it was on time or on budget.
7. The landscape is then suffused with the gentle sound of crickets. Nobody posts in the community. Nobody joins the page. Those who do don’t say much. Nobody checks in.

What’s happened here?

The organization forgot that it’s not enough to launch. It’s easy to believe that  all you have to do is build the tool and it will rise like Frankenstein’s monster and live. But to keep on with that monstrous metaphor, Frankenstein didn’t just assemble the parts — he added electricity. That belief is dangerous to the success of your projects.

If you’re a communicator and you’re tasked with a new project, do yourself — and your organization — a big favour. Write an element into the project charter, the project plan, the communications plan and any other document related to the project that identifies the resources that will be necessary to nurture the product through its early life. That might be a month or two, it might be a year; it might mean part of someone’s job, or hiring a contractor to manage the product.

If it’s blog-related or relies on written content, ensure part of the plan coming up to launch is pre-writing content that will either get finished and posted in the early days; if it’s video-based, have some video ready. You get the idea.

And don’t stop talking about it the whole way through the project. The best way to ensure that your project will survive the launch is to keep people focussed on the fact that the goal is not to LAUNCH something. It’s to BUILD something. Social media sites should not be envisioned in Ray Kinsella mode, as in: “If you build it, they will come.” It’s more like George Burns mode: “I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.”

You should also think about adding in measures in your evaluation plan (you HAVE one of those, RIGHT?) that make it more likely that you’ll nurture the project post-launch.

Preventing the spread of launchitis is a great way to make the likelihood of your social media initiatives succeeding greater. Thinking past the launch is important. Don’t miss out on the chance to scream, just like Dr. Frankenstein, “It’s alive. It’s ALIIIIVE. AAALIIIIIIIVE!!!”

And now for something mostly unrelated to launch-itis, a little LOVE-itis from the J. Geils Band:

A tip of the hat to Ottawa Citizen blogger David Reevely, who inspired the thinking behind this post.

I had a quick chat with Robert Janelle yesterday, who was writing an article for the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce‘s member newsletter about social media for business.

One of the things I talked about was learning from others, and building on their ideas. In folk music, that’s “the folk tradition.” But given that you can’t copyright an idea or a concept, there’s no reason that businesses embarking on a social media initiative — or any sort of communications, for that matter — shouldn’t learn from others.

And case studies can be a powerful way of doing just that. Conveniently enough, there are good people who are compiling lists of case studies online. Some of these lists are in wiki form, so you can easily add your own; others are more conventional sites. Either way, use them. Why not save yourself making the same mistakes others made, and find brand new mistakes to make! As Samuel Beckett so famously put it: No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Here are some places to find useful case studies in social media:

Penn Olson’s 30 social media case studies

Web 2.0 examples in Canada wiki

Peter Kim’s list of over 1000 social media “examples” (the inspiration for Web 2.0 examples in Canada)

Tod Maffin‘s Case Studies Online site

UPDATE: If you prefer your case studies in the live and in person format, and you’re in Ottawa, you should check out Case Study Jam, a little meetup that I’ve been helping to organize with a cast of ones, including Joe Boughner, Amy Boughner, Melanie Bechard, Della Siemens, and Nick Charney. You can get a sense of what a CSJ is like from Robin Browne’s handy-dandy audio playlist!

And one more thing to think about: If you have an example of how your company or a client did something interesting, why not write something up about it and submit it to one of these lists? Sharing is caring.

Photo credit: The Cake Engineer on Flickr, licenced via Creative Commons

We’re coming up on the third Case Study Jam in a week. I’ve been involved in these events since Joe Boughner brought the idea to me and a few other people (Della, Nick, Melanie, and Joe’s wife / co-conspirator Amy), and now that we’ve had a couple under our belt, we’re hitting that gawky adolescent phase, I think.

Case Study Jam is a simple concept. The site describes it like this:

Case Study Jam is a place for communications practitioners to come together and share their stories – successes and failures. How are on-the-ground, front-line folks using social media and, more importantly, how are they integrating these tools into overall communications strategies and practices? Oh, it’s also an online repository of these stories. But more on that later.

The idea for this meetup was to set ourselves apart from events like Third Tuesday, Social Media Breakfast, Ignite, and professional development events organized by IABC, CPRS, Canadian Women in Communications, etc. After all, why do the same thing as something else?

The difference? One, the world-cafeish format. Another, the focus on presentations about failure as well success. And third, a focus on case studies, as opposed to theory and principle.

The first two jams have been successful on a number of counts, I think. People have met there, ideas been exchanged, some interesting presentations made.In fact, there’s talk that the model may start up in a second city soon.

Cheryl Gain of Ottawa Tonite emotes at CSJ1

We’ve also found a number of things that we’re tweaking as we go along. For example, we’re giving presenters more structure to follow in their presentations, and we’ll be pushing for more table hopping and shifting in the upcoming jam to encourage discussion.

But one thing we’ve noted is a certain topping out on attendance.

A week out from Case Study Jam 3 (or should I go with the Super Bowl Roman-Numeral Scheme and make it Case Study Jam III?) and we’ve got about 15 people registered. The room holds quite a few more, and we’d quite naturally like to see a full room. And my competitive spirit looks at more mature events like Third Tuesday or Social Media Breakfast and their full rooms and goes waaahhhh!

A bigger crowd would be great. But So there are a number of things that come to mind as to why we’re not filling our rooms yet.

• We’re new, they’re not.
• We don’t have super giant name speakers
• There’s not an infrastructure behind any one of the organizers pushing attendance from colleagues/clients. It’s organic in the extreme.

I suspect that we may be a little impatient. Or you may think we’re missing something. If so, tell us. Or if you want to make me feel better, why not come by next Thursday? I highly recommend the Lindenhof Apple Fritters for dessert and the conversation for a main course.

Case Study Jam 3 will feature Constable Nathan Hoedemann (right) of the Ottawa Police Service, Theresa Woolridge and Jennifer Jager of Emergency Preparedness Canada, and Dan Blouin of National Defence as they talk about the successes and failures they’ve experienced in their projects, and as always, you get to pick their brains afterward.

See you there?

I don’t often pile on. But I can’t help myself. I have to take a couple of kicks at  Angelo Persichilli’s latest column in the Hill Times.

Angelo Persichilli is the Politics Editor of Corriere Canadese, a national Italian-language newspaper, and a dedicated opinionist, with a column in the Hill Times and in the Toronto Star besides his work for Corriere. And he got himself some significant attention recently when he wrote in the Star that a group of Liberal MPs had met in the bar of the Chateau Laurier to discuss getting Bob Rae into the leadership of the Liberal Party, and Michael Ignatieff out.

The column was roundly criticized for its lack of attribution for quotes, among other things. So reading (thanks to Chris Selley’s National Post column) that according to Persichilli, the Internet and politics means that

a lot of information might reach millions of people unfiltered. While this provides a great opportunity for the truth to reach millions, we may also be flooded by faulty, incomplete and outright wrong information, as well as malicious attack and some plain lies.

This will clog the system making it hard to see the difference between truth and lies and justified and unjustified accusations. Essentially, without the filter of editors, producers, and responsible journalists, what exists now is a jungle of bloggers. There is no doubt that the internet has and will continue to let the truth reach people, the problem is that we no longer know what’s true and what’s not.

Later in the column, Persichilli suggests that

I don’t know how many hits websites of the major political organizations have every day. Given the ease with which people can access them, I hope there are millions. Otherwise I think they should take them down and completely refocus their aim. The only time we hear about them is when they show controversial items that systematically create problems for the image of their own political organization.

I don’t know where to begin with what Persichilli writes and appears to think.

First, his focus is almost entirely on mainstream media vs. bloggers and particuarly those affiliated with the mainstream political parties.

Second, it’s impossible to ignore the irony of Persichilli criticizing bloggers after being roundly castigated for his Star column, which it should be assumed benefited from the “filter of editors, producers, and responsible journalists” he writes about.

I think the great frustration of the last decade in Canadian politics where it meets the internet has been the lack of trailblazers who are using the tools of social media to really make a difference in the process of government. Look, for example, at David Miliband in the UK, who as Foreign Secretary is at the head of a line of dozens of bloggers, both politicians and public servants.

What is needed in Canada’s political scene are places where people put forth thoughtful and reasoned opinions that become the basis of informed discussion. Slagging bloggers won’t do it, nor will uninformed journalism.

What will do it is a commitment by political parties and by individual politicians to begin engaging in conversation, not just continue using social media channels to re-blast the same old messages down a one-way street. What is also needed is a commitment by government to support responsible bloggers within its departments, and a decision to stop blocking the use of social media tools by its employees.What’s happening right now is that social media engagement in much of Canada’s federal government is spasmodic and project-limited, not defined by conversation and engagement.

There are a lot of smart, competent politicians (my MP Paul Dewar, for example, who I think is a diligent and serious-minded parliamentarian) AND public servants here in Ottawa working for the feds (Nick Charney and Colin McKay come to mind), as well as in the provincial and municipal governments. Let’s turn them loose a little bit.