Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

If you follow the world of social media, you could be forgiven for thinking that the bloggers and the public-relations folk have descended into the same sort of East Coast / West Coast feud that turned Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls into martyrs at young ages.

The gauntlet thrown.

Earlier this week, Gina Trapani of the popular Lifehacker blog issued, shall we say, a beatdown to the p.r. firms that she thinks have been irresponsible in their pitches to her. She set up a wiki (find it here) that lists all of the firms — not just individual p.r. practitioners — that she has now blacklisted from her e-mail inbox.

This is just the latest salvo in a war between p.r. folks, who say they are just trying to do their jobs (but who are sometimes tone-deaf to the ways that the social media operate) and bloggers, who say that they can’t stand p.r. spam (but many of whom are just as open to a good p.r. pitch as any old-school magazine editor).

A voice of reason.

Into this chaos rides Mike Chapman of the Every Dot Connects blog, who hoses down the respective parties with a cold blast of common sense:

New Rules

” . . . No standard set of rules applies. For the millions of blogs now in existence, each is their own nation, with their own local laws and customs. If it sounds like too much work, then it’s probably not the work you should be doing.”

That sounds remarkably like common sense to me.

My own experience.

As I said in the comments to Mike’s post, this makes me think of two things:

1. In my bachelor days, I came to the not-very-groundbreaking insight that different women liked to be approached different ways. Some women didn’t want to be flirted with, ever, even if you were dating them. Others would flirt with you while they were holding hands with their boyfriend — not because they were unfaithful, but because they liked the playfulness of it. Some would only date you if they knew you very well; others might go out with you if they barely knew you. The point: PEOPLE VARY. [Wait, where have we heard this before?]
2. In the business world, I’ve had bosses who wanted airtight documentation to back up every decision, and I’ve had bosses who would never, ever read an e-mail that was more than six lines long. Which way is right? DEPENDS ON WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH.

Honestly, you’d think it wouldn’t be this hard. Kudos to Mike for the note of sanity.

~

More context:

• Brian Solis: Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations
• David Parmet: PR vs The Bloggers part XXVII
• Yours truly: Hell hath no fury like an editor bombarded with p.r. spam.

~

(Image of the Battle of Najera from Wikipedia.)

Front to back: Hugh MacLeod, Tara Hunt, Chris Heuer, Deb Schultz.
(Jeremiah Owyang is obscured behind Hunt.)

One of my favorite panels at this year’s SXSW festival was “Self-Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing,” which was chaired by my pal David Parmet, who does social-media-savvy p.r. work from the New York City area. (He also took the picture above.)

The panel featured three social-media pros whose work I read regularly — Tara Hunt, Hugh MacLeod, Jeremiah Owyang — as well as two who were new to me — Chris Heuer and Deb Schultz. Whether before or since the panel, I’ve gotten to talk with all of these people at least a little bit; they’re good folks who know what they’re talking about when they talk about social media, social networking, and online community. My notes for this panel are long and a little freeform, which is probably appropriate since the panel itself was free-flowing like a good group conversation.

The first question that Parmet threw out to the panel was this: How do you market into a community without coming across as totally skeevy? Someone made that point that, most of the time when we say “marketing,” we actually mean bad marketing — the kind we don’t like having aimed at us. You don’t mind the good kind of marketing.

It’s Not about the Technology

Deb Schultz made the great point — which I think can’t be stressed enough — that marketing, even in its newer, social-media-enabled forms, is not about tools or technology, but about the way you look at your customers. She said that this regard for customers has to be in your DNA, such that you face the hard work of getting out in the trenches and embracing the feedback your customers give you to drive your marketing, customer service, and product development.

Chris Heuer said that he hates the idea that companies (including, occasionally, his own clients) would say, “Build me a community tomorrow!” He thinks that we need an attitudinal shift, to shift people’s mindset from “Stop trying to sell me!” to “How can you help me buy?” Like Schultz, Heuer also commented on the technology angle: he said that social media isn’t new just because it’s a new tech platform, but because it changes the ways that companies relate to customers, suppliers, employees, and local physical communities.

Turn Your Best Customers into Your Advocates

Jeremiah Owyang chimed in about what he’s found out by interviewing companies, Read more

(This post is about social media and the overly confident predictions that people make about it. Please bear with me a second while I lay some groundwork.)

One of my favorite Usenet-style acronyms is “YMMV.” It means “Your Mileage May Vary,” and when it’s used right, it’s a friendly way of indicating to others on a discussion list (or blog comment thread, etc.) that you recognize that what you’re saying is your own take — a matter of your own opinion — and that whatever you’re talking about is likely not going to be to everyone’s taste.

Part of the reason I like the expression is that it’s humble. We all have opinions; some of those opinions are more grounded in facts than others; even some fact-based opinions have a lot of room in them for personal variation.

All of this is why I rebel against word-from-on-high pronouncements* about the “right” way for social media to be used, or the way social media “ought to” or “has to” develop. This leads me to formulate an alternate definition for “YMMV” as it applies to social media:

You’ll Meet Massive Variation

I had the bizarre experience last month of sitting on a panel with a guy who blithely asserted a key, crucial, fundamental, unbreakable difference between “real” friends (i.e. friends IRL, “in real life”) and people you meet online. Three of us on the panel just stared at him as he kept making this point, before we finally regrouped and started picking apart his assumptions.

It ought to be obvious that different people will have different rates of “permeability” between their online and offline worlds. My mom, who’s past 60, spends lots of time online — reading the news, corresponding with family, and so on — but no time on social networks. She has, I’m pretty sure, zero online-only or online-first friends. Me, I’m well over at the other end of the spectrum. There are lots of points in-between.

These thoughts arose as I read this little post from Kent Nichols:

Offline becoming more online

Kent is one of the creators of my personal fave video podast, Ask A Ninja. The simple experience he related in his post — about finding a good podiatrist online — offers yet one more data point that we have ever-increasing opportunities to choose how much permeability and interconnection we want between our online and offline worlds.

Tara Hunt made a similar point in this post:

Yes. Internet Friends can also be Friends IRL

Tara recently went through a difficult breakup, and she chose to be quite open about the negative feelings she experienced around it. She was rewarded with many statements of support from people like me who “know” her either exclusively online or because we first encountered her work online. (I had the delightful experience of sitting down to brunch with Tara when she was in town a few months ago; I’m hoping we can touch base again when she’s in town for South by Southwest Interactive this week. Come to think of it, I met Kent Nichols and his Ask A Ninja partner-in-crime Douglas Sarine at SXSW last year, but I wouldn’t have known to seek them out if I hadn’t already been addicted to their podcast. It would be great to see them again, too — they’re cool guys.)

Different people will explore these supposed boundaries between online and offline — or simply jump right over them — at different rates. I doubt my mother will take up Twitter, just like I doubt Hank Paulson will suddenly take up using e-mail at this point in his life. There’s not a simple rule to it — and it’s silly to think, as that guy on my panel did, that there’s some bright line that applies to everyone.

And is this any different than IRL? A crazy comparison should hammer this point home: This morning I trimmed my fingernails — took about 30 seconds. Yet I have a friend who’s been getting an acrylic set-and-fill every other week since we were in college. Is it wrong (or right, or inevitable, or regrettable) that she chooses to spend that much time and money on her nails? Or that I don’t? Here’s a better question: Who cares?

The point is that — even in this crazy-wacky-boffo “new” world of social networking — we can confidently predict . . . that people will continue to express the giant array of behaviors that they do in other areas of life.

In other words: YMMV.

~

* Have I ever made any of these pronouncements myself? Oh my, yes. But that’s the beauty of being a blogger, right? Everyone is entitled to my opinion . . . ; )

[Photo by dayzeday.]

Cartoonist Adam Koford has made a (made-up) name for himself online as “Ape Lad.” Through his Hobotopia blog, his Twitter updates, and a Flickr photo stream, Koford spreads the cartoon adventures of the two hobo Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, Pip and Kitteh.

Pip loves Caturday (a.k.a. Saturday).

The whimsical cartoons are loaded with running themes, including Caturday (i.e. Saturday), Kitteh’s favorite cigars (”stogees”), Pip’s love of leaves (or “leafs,” as he would say), hobo stew, boxcars, and the proper contents and use of the hobo’s bindle. Both cats speak in the misspelling-laden lolcat dialect enshrined by I Can Has Cheezburger?.

Besides simply enjoying the comics, I’m struck by how “virtual” Koford’s LOLCats business is: the cats’ way of speaking arose from the Internet, and the project itself arose from an Internet-distributed project (see below). Moreover, social media technology means Koford can promote and distribute the comics without the intervention of any agency or syndicate.

Read more

Chris Brogan — events planning pro, Twitter influential, and all-around good guy — tweeted something recently about his long daily commute into Boston. When I followed up with him, he was nice enough to answer my questions about balancing work and “real” life in the face of hard-core commuting. My questions and his answers follow:

How long is your regular commute these days, in distance and in time?

It’s 64 miles one way, which is anywhere from 1 to 2 hours, depending on traffic.

Why do you live where you do and work where you do?

I live in a beautiful mill town in view of a river where ducks come and eat from my hand. All the major needs are walkable. The school system is nice, and I’m happy with everything about where I live. I work where the job was. In this case, one of the smarter guys in the events and media business called me onto the team. I couldn’t say no.

What do you find are the biggest disadvantages of a long daily commute?

Besides knowing that I’m killing a dinosaur a day myself, it’s time that I could be doing work instead of looking out the window at the backs of people’s cars.

What do you find are the biggest benefits of a long daily commute?

I can listen to more podcasts. I’m enjoying the hell out of learning more from all kinds of great sources.

What would you change about your commuting / working routines if you could?

Actually, I’m glad to say that I’m going to move to a 3 days on-site, 2 days off-site situation in the next week or two. So that will answer most of it. My job is primarily about the web, except when I’m meeting people at events, so why should I be driving all over the place?

What stands in the way of these changes?

Nothing. It’s just a matter of figuring out team dynamics, and helping teams understand how to measure impact instead of measure by seeing my butt at a desk.

How do you think social media can evolve the way that you (and people generally) pursue optimal working routines?

I think the value of work will move towards those things we can accomplish remotely, and those things we have to be there to manage. I’m excited about this future, because though I love people, and interacting, and the environment of a team, I also know that a lot of what we do in an office is fluff, and I want to focus on the things that matter.

Thanks again to Chris for his feedback on this. I think he’s on the leading edge of changes that will be affecting many more of us in coming years.

If you want to improve your own social-media understanding and practice, by all means be sure to read Chris’s blog.