positive disruption by: Tom Martin | New Orleans based Social Media Consultant

How Not to be "That Guy" in Social Media

Sometimes it's hard to do it right online. You don't always have the time. So you cut corners. Personally, I"m awed by guys like Chris Brogan and Peter Shankman who seem to always be everywhere, yet still maintain a life, hobbies and in Chris' case, a family.

Personally, I struggle and too often cut corners. I shouldn't, but I do. Like a few weeks ago, during the SXSW Panel voting fray, I see a link to a post over at Communications Overtones promoting a few SXSW talks. So I go pop over, skim the post and see that the author is inviting readers to suggest other panels in the comments. I had a panel submitted in the SXSW picker that I desperately want to host because I think the topic is one that is one we should all be paying more attention to, so I drop it in the comments, thank the blogger for the opp and move on.

About five minutes later I feel my first "that guy" pang as I chastise myself for not taking the time to read Kami's session proposal and/or vote. It got worse when I read the comments on her post and saw this one. Talk about feeling like "that guy."  So I stopped what I was doing, and went back to the post. And I'm so glad I did because I found one that I loved. I voted, commented and meant to write this post the next day to encourage everyone else to vote. But like I said, I'm trying but often suffer from bandwidth constriction. So, on that last point, my apologies to Kami I kind of let you down on that part.

Long story long... you gotta give a lot to receive a little in Social Media. Like it or not, giving is the currency here. All the great ones do it. If you don't believe me, spend some time with Chris or Peter's stuff... sure they get from this space, both earn a good living from this space, but they give so much more -- some of which you never even see. I'm fond of telling companies how much Google loves social media, but honestly, Karma loves it more. So if for no other reason than Karma can be a bitch or a goddess, give more than you get here.

But as I noted, that's hard sometimes. So my thoughts for making sure you don't lapse into being "that guy" are this. Feel free to add, detract or just discuss in the comments.

1. If you don't have time just don't. It's better to speak less often but provide more value when you do. If you only tweet when you have time to talk, you'll be a better tweeter. If you only read blogs when you have time to comment, you'll be a better member of the blogger community. And you'll make your favorite bloggers better and their community richer.
2. Be patient. Another one I struggle with ;-) We all want to be a Brogan. Not in the "I have to have 100,000 followers" kind of way but in the Godin "I've got a tribe that values my opinion and me" way. But Chris didn't get where he is and neither did Seth by focusing on promotion. No, both got their by focusing on giving, sharing and helping others to see a worldview they (the reader) liked and wanted more of. It's easy to be a person or worse, a brand, that is just now entering this space and wanting to be "big" fast. In fact, lack of patience is probably one of the primary reasons that people and brands fall into the "that guy" trap. But do yourself a favor, chill. 
3. Be thankful. Don't just thank people because it's the right thing to do, be truly thankful. Each and every person that comments on your blog, tweets your stuff or re-tweets your stuff is doing you a favor and spending their very valuable time on your stuff. So if you're a blogger, say thank you. If you're a brand say it twice! But most importantly, mean it. You never know where your "tribe" is going to come from, you never know who they'll be, but once they raise their hands and identify themselves, you'll be one step closer to achieving whatever it is you want to do here. And I'm guessing the desire to achieve some goal here is what causes most of us to have "that guy" lapses.

And while I'm not sure this is directly related to not being "that guy" -- I think it's a helpful hint none the less so I'm tossing it in here.

Be humble. I don't care how smart you are, I can find 10 people that are smarter, probably with one Google search. Keep that in mind as you write or comment. Don't preach, just talk. Be Socrates not Cesar. Yea, yea, Greek vs Roman -- but you get the picture. This is hard, especially when you're passionate about the subject. But take it to heart. If the tone of your tweet or comment subtly sends the message that you're more interested in being smart than getting smarter, people will be less likely to respond. Which, if you're truly trying to be a good member of the community and learn from others, actually runs counter to what you want. This one is my personal demon as my debating style tends to run towards the aggressive side which some interpret as trying to prove smarts vs engaged debate...but I'm working on it.

So am I the only one with this lapse problem? Have you lapsed lately? What did you do and more importantly, what are you doing differently to keep it from happening again? Let me know. Maybe we can start a program or just meet up at a conference to chat over cocktails.

Where do I bill "getting smarter"?

Are you smarter than you were yesterday? The day before? How about last year?

Seriously, are you? Why do you think so? Is it because you've been doing what you do for a day, week or year longer and thus you are more "experienced" and thus smarter or did you commit yourself to learning via blogs, articles, webinars, or a conference?

One of the biggest gripes I have with the hourly billing model that most agencies are adopting or being forced to adopt by clients is that it doesn't leave room for "getting smarter" time. Add in a purchasing agent or two and you get a total cluster$#%k of a contract because all they focus on is activity based billing. Every line item in a time sheet is scrutinized to make sure the activity is billable under the contract and "getting smarter" isn't one of them.

But here is the rub... part of what clients should be paying agencies for is getting smarter. As a Brand Manager, Marketing Director, CEO or Owner, you have a pretty broad spectrum of things you need to cover. Your agency has one: communicating to your customer/prospect. Because of that, they need only really stay abreast of that one vertical (primarily but not exclusively) to remain smarter. And because they are smarter, they can make you smarter.

It's a shame really. Personally I just find time to do it because frankly life would be boring if I wasn't constantly learning and sharing. I've talked about creating services that keep you smarter and at our agency, Zehnder Communications, we instilled ThinkAbouts in an effort to ensure our workers stay smarter. But what do you do? How do you ensure that you, your staffers or co-workers are getting smarter? Where do you bill that time?

Virtual Table Hopping

Last night I had the pleasure of sharing my thoughts around how restaurants can use Social Media to grow their business. I didn't have much time so the deck was short but the key idea was there.

The most powerful marketing tool any restaurant owner has is table hopping -- you know when the owner or chef works the room saying hello to guests, asking about their meals, etc. Here in New Orleans it's an art and the great chefs/owners use it to their advantage.

And that is the power of social media for restaurants -- it virtually eliminates the Achilles heal of table hopping -- that you can only do it with the folks in your restaurant. With Twitter, Facebook and the like, you can table hop whenever you wish to. Drop by a patron's Facebook to congratulate them on the birth of a new child or invite them to spend their birthday with you at your restaurant. Use Twitter to say hello to your guests and keep in touch with them. Maybe even use it to notify them that you're got a that special "off menu" item they love, tonight only. You get the picture. I think I might be on to something as I saw a lot of light bulbs going off last night and no, they weren't cameras!

Anyhow, like most decks, you lose a lot without seeing me present it live but I've uploaded the entire thing to slide share so that all of you can see it. Let me know what you think and if you have a restaurant friend, send them the slides and let me know what they think. I'm seriously considering blowing this up into a more formal, one day training class kind of thing so I'm really interested in seeing if folks, especially restaurants, would be interested.

Moving Beyond Scan and Spam

I'm seeing more and more of this on Twitter, so I thought I'd share my two cents here and see what y'all think.

Mostly I'm noticing this Scan and Spam approach when I look at CVB Twitter accounts. They're not all doing it, but by and large you see a replication of approach. Specifically:

• They have more followers than they follow
• If you look at who they do follow, it tends to fall into three areas -- local member company Twitter accounts, media outlets, and various web 2.0 "must follows"
• When you look at their stream you see a lot of @TwitterHandle Glad to see you're coming to [name of city] be sure to check out [name of local establishment] for a great lunch or [name of establishment] for great kid friendly activities. 

What you don't see, and this is where I'm thinking CVB's and other "destination" driven Twitter brands (hotels, restaurants, city entertainment brands) are missing the boat, is true engagement.  The kind of true engagement I'm talking about starts with following back consumers that follow the CVB. Here is why I think that is an important first step.

Once you've identified that I'm coming to your city, wouldn't you want to follow me so you could see what I'm tweeting while I'm in town? If you did, you might see me asking for restaurant locations, or you might see a TwitPic of me and realize I have young children (which means you can tell me about your great children's museum) something you'd neglect to tell me if all you did was respond to my tweets that contained your handle or the name of your city. You'd get a chance to learn about me and help me by providing real-time concierge services and not just canned Twitter responses to anyone that happens to tweet they are coming to your city. 

Second, you'd get a chance to continue the conversation after I'd left your city and gone back to mine. Why would you want to do this? Well ask yourself, when you come back from vacation, what do you spend most of your time talking about with co-workers and friends? See the connection? By making sure you're still talking to a visitor AFTER the visit, you get a chance to make sure they left happy, had a good time and didn't have any open issues. If they did have any open issues, like safety concerns, cleanliness, traffic, etc., you could address or mitigate those concerns before the visitor proceeds to share their latest vacation story with friends.

Third, it's free research. Not only can you get a pretty good post-visit survey, you can continue to "monitor" the visitor to see where else they travel to in the future. This can help you better understand your true competitive set, not just who you think your competitive set is. It may also help you to better categorize your visitors to create profiles and then market to those profiles.

Fourth, you get a remarking opportunity. By following back and building a relationship with a visitor you get permission to talk to them whenever you want. So the next time you lose a big citywide convention and the hotels in your city drop 30-40% occupancy because of it -- you have a built in, happy customer base that would likely welcome a "last minute Twitter follower only" deal. Will you replace all of that lost business, doubtful but hey, every bit helps right?

And lastly, if you can round up some pretty smart programmer types and marry them with linguistic and data analysis types -- I think you'll find that you can take those profiles I mentioned a minute ago and start to create proactive Twitter efforts that will help you find and follow Twitter users that will be predisposed to want to follow you back AND be open to your messages, if delivered properly. 

All of this to say, that if you're current Twitter strategy is to scan and spam using Search.Twitter or some other type of search tool, I contend you can be doing a whole lot more if you'll just invest the time and effort to create real relationships and not just transactional ones.

But like I said, I may be off base. Y'all tell me. What do you think?

A Blog A Day

Will do more than keep the doctor away... it will make you smarter and ensure you are nurturing relationships. A common theme I'm hearing these days is one of "I don't have time to do it all." or "I'm behind on my blog reading." I know, as I too struggle with staying up on all the great, smart people whose blogs I've found over time and truly value.

I read a lot of blogs on my iPhone, which is great but I find that I tend to default to Google's "home" view which shows the latest posts first. This is great for staying up to date but does allow more active blogs to drown out less active ones resulting in my missing a few great posts now and then.

So I've developed my "blog a day" method. It's not perfect but it is succeeding in keeping me in touch with all my favorite bloggers more frequently. Today I'll share it with you and you see if you like it too.

It's simple really. Use an RSS reader and put all of your favorite blogs into a single folder. Then each morning, visit one. Read what's there, leave a comment or two, and get back to work. If you have a slow day and you can read more than one, great do so. Otherwise, just go back to work and tomorrow morning, do the same thing. I've got about 20 or so bloggers that I really dig and have grown to know on a personal level. So for me, this assures I'm stopping by their place at least once a month and saying hi. Which when you think about it, is more often than I see a lot of my offline friends that live in my same city!

That's it. Give it a try and let me know what you think. Better yet, if you have a good strategy for reading more blogs more often without giving up even more sleep -- could you drop the idea in the comments section here? I know I'd appreciate it and I'm sure your fellow readers would too.

ADDED: This morning, I received a great idea from @dariasteigman. She takes my "blog a day" attitude and applies it to Twitter. On the days she's too busy to really tweet much, she makes a special attempt to reach out to at least one person and nurture that relationship. Fabulous idea and I wanted to share it here with all of you. Thanks Daria!

photo by bunchofpants

A Man. An iPhone. And a Dream. The Movie.

Download an iPod friendly version to watch later. (MAC users, place mouse on link and hold down Control key, then select Save Link As. PC peeps: right click link and select "Save as." Both should allow you to download the file to your hard drive.)

Well not exactly a movie but the video of my Social South Conference presentation of the results of a Twitter experiment I ran over Mardi Gras this past February. If you're interested in learning how to use Twitter to change brand perception or if you're a destination or event that is wanting to better understand how to use Social Media to market yourself -- you'll probably find the 30 minutes time well spent.

And if you were at Social South but you chose to sit in on David Griner's excellent presentation or the wonderfully smart Christina Kerley's session, which based on the post reviews of both sessions -- I can hardly blame you -- now you can see what you missed.

As always, I'd love to hear what y'all think of the presentation and the experiment. Thinking about doing it again this year but bigger!

Design the Experience

Yesterday, I read an article in the WSJ. which talked about how restaurants are reinvesting in their kiddie menu -- both in terms of having one and in terms of adding healthy options to those menus. The catalyst for this move? An effort to regain parents dining with their family, which results in higher ticket values.

Now as a parent, I applaud this move but honestly, if you're a restaurant owner or know one -- it's not enough. What these businesses are missing is that my decision as a parent, whether to go out to eat or eat in, is not just about a menu, it's about a cost-value equation in my head. Basically, I can project how much it's going to cost me to take the family to dinner and I can determine how much "enjoyment value" I'm going to get from that expenditure. Then I can cost-benefit my way to a decision.

For instance, if the kids want to go to a restaurant that is notoriously slow with service, I know there is going to be a fair amount of "Dad, I'm hungry" whining that will occur, which will lower my value equation and make it more likely that I'll decide that money can be spent on other activities that will be more fun. Toss in a down economy and you can see how this kind of parental analysis can quickly cut into things like eating out.

So, restaurants, and really any service oriented business... here are a few thoughts that you might want to consider.

First, if you want parents to bring kids be sure you have kid menus and preferably have something on them that is remotely healthy.

Second, create an environment that communicates that my kids are welcome. That means align your humanic (people's actions) and mechanic (things like having crayons and coloring sheets at the hostess stand) clues to ensure that when I arrive I sense that my family is welcome. 

Third, design my dining experience to minimize possible pain points and maximize pleasure points. For instance, while I'm fine taking an hour to have a meal complete with properly timed appetizer, main course, dessert service, my kids are just hungry. So be sure they can be served something quickly. Maybe it's a special kids appetizer that is automatically served upon seating or a kids buffet versus a kids menu, so they can get up and serve themselves. This gives me a chance to sit, have a cocktail and review the menu without my kids hassling me about how hungry they are. See where I'm going with this?

Fourth, design a way for the end of the meal to progress quickly or better, entertain the kids while I sit and have another cocktail or a glass of wine in peace. Remember, people tend to remember the first and last thing in any sequence... so make sure my entry/exit from your dining experience is stellar. This isn't really that hard... invest in some cheap DVD players or if you have the room -- set up a "movie theater" in one of your private dining rooms and invite the kids to hang back there when they're done with their meal. Just be sure to tell them, you have a rule, no kids can watch the movie unless they finish their entire meal -- save Mom and Dad from being the heavy. The cost to do this is negligible but the value it will create is priceless. Not to mention, my wife and I may order yet another cocktail/wine or decide to actually have that dessert if our kids are entertained.

Fifth, think about the final price point of the experience. Families are expensive. Chances are, your family diners have a price point in mind when making the go/no go decision to dine out with the kids. Do a bit of research. It's pretty easy really. Buy a couple of iTouch iPods and set up a simple online survey using a free research service like Survey Monkey. Then, when you deliver the bill, give the iTouch to the family too. Ask the parents to please take a moment to fill out the brief survey (totally confidential) so that you can better deliver a quality family dining experience to them in the future. It's a great no fuss way to collect real-time data from those diners.

Lastly, as I said, while this post is written to restaurant owners, I think a lot of this stuff can apply to any business that wants to target families. Just consider your experience through their eyes and don't be afraid to get creative.

Anyone else have an idea or two for the restaurants of the world? Let me know. I'm giving a talk to the Louisiana Restaurant Association in a couple of weeks and I'd love to include your ideas alongside of mine (with proper attribution of course). 

photo by Wade From Oklahoma

Get the 411 on Social Media - Video

This is the video of my Get the 411 on Social Media presentation that I gave at the Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans on August 13, 2009. Would love to hear what you think in the comments below. And if you'd like to talk to me about speaking to your group, please contact me.