Monthly Archives: January 2009

The One Thing in Social Media

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In the movie City Slickers, Billy Crystal’s character is told by Curly (Jack Palance):

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? [holds up one finger] This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?”
Curly: [smiles] That’s what *you* have to find out.

(Update: YouTube won’t let it be embeded, but the clip is there.)

I was on a client call, and they were asking for that “one thing” they could do to start in Social Media. I knew it immediately. And, unlike Curly, I’m here to tell you the one thing for Social Media….
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Pictures from the Social Media Jungle Event, The Ultimate Blogger Dinner, and CES

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You can see the photos of Social Media Jungle at CES (smjces photos), the Ultimate Blogger Dinner (ultimate blogger dinner photos) sponsored by Lenovo and run by Social Media Club, and the Consumer Electronics Show 2009 (CES09 photos) at my Flickr page. (If you’re a friend you can also see shots on Facebook).

Jon Lansner reviews the Social Media Jungle

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Online chats changed housing. Now the world? – Lansner on Real Estate – OCRegister.com

Your blogger spent Wednesday in Sin City, listening to “Social Media Jungle” — a workshop on how to best use online communication from relatively older blogging to newer Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc. These are tools that allow the audience to play a heavy role in the conversation — if not dictate the structure and content of the chats.

For the many of you who can’t fully get a grasp around the ever-morphing online world: Don’t worry! You’re not alone! Just think how blogging altered the discussion of housing markets. Then think of that expanding exponentially with these newer platforms touching various slices of humanity!

I’m quoted later on in the piece.

Announcing an affiliation with CommCore Consulting Group

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I’m proud to announce that in addition to my ongoing work, I will also be helping clients of CommCore Consulting Group learn about Social Media strategy, tools and methods for communication.

CommCore Consulting Group Launches Social Media Practice

CommCore Consulting Group announces a set of basic and advanced offerings on the concepts, tools and best practices for engaging online and wireless virtual communities. CommCore is a leader in executive-level communications training, messaging and strategy for corporations, associations, government agencies, and non-profit and advocacy organizations. CommCore has added Howard Greenstein, a recognized leader in Social Media, as principal consultant/program developer for this effort.

Newspaper Guys doing new media at Social Media Jungle

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Media Panel
Daniel Honneman – Works with Chicago Tribune, and LA Times @dan360
Etan Horowitz – Orlando Sentinal   @etanowitz
Kevin Sablan – Web Taskforce leader for Orange County Register – @ksablan

Dan: Journalism isn’t in trouble – it is going to change and adapt – you don’t necessarily need organizations, but orgs help. Reporters pitch editors, editors pitch other editors, and if you don’t make the cut you don’t get on the page.

Quote from Tom Friedman – amazed at number of Journalists who hate people.
Journalists are something of Entrepreneurs – they need to be willing to connect with people, with each others, and share ideas.

Etan: the idea of branding or self-promotion is blasphemy to many journalists. But, they need to make sure blogs cover their articles, articles should show on DIGG, etc. If it’s not good content, why not promote it?
Dan: But if you look at stats for stories some don’t really get read.

Kevin – Now with online you can really understand what is driving readership daily – and who those people are.  As opposed to Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers – which have less accuracy.

Journalists wouldn’t normally quote other paper’s articles – but now web properties would link to other paper’s stories if the story is relevant.

Etan- Twitter posts can point to blog posts that lead to hundreds of comments.  Once his blog is so well read, he can really have the discussion of “What is News” vs. What are people interested in reading.
Kevin Sablan – Didn’t start a new Twitter account related to the fires – they used their own followers and own audience . They also did a lot of listening.
They did create a page that aggregated Tweets About the California fires, and it was a useful resource for them and for everyone

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Susan Ettinger at Social Media Jungle

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Talking about practical ideas for helping companies relinquishing control, naked PR and the need for companies to develop social models for communication

Every company has to address the fact that Walled Garden PR is over  – except Apple. Until recently – the last few days – about his hormone imbalance announcement. Blogosphere created such pressure along with mainstream media that they had to disclose what was going on.

Corporate commnication can’t be closed off – when you open up to all other company areas – there’s major fear.

Top 10 list of things that need to happen:

Good conversation doesn’t scale – you need to accelerate it – let more people have relationships and facilitate more conversations.

Don’t forget to question tactics – embargos, ndas, etc – many of these things don’t work for bloggers, social media.

There’s an incredible amount of social media content creation right now – it is now a low risk thing to create content.

Social Media is called Social for a reason – put what you’re doing through that filter.

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Chris Heuer at the Social Media Jungle

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Need to understand and reembrace some fundamental principles related to social communications and social technologies.

Welcome to the Era of social conversation, people want to talk to people, not be messaged to.
The difference between “talk to the hand” and “what can I give you (handshake)” is the difference in most communication vs social communication.

There are no levers to pull to get more twitter followers and sales.

90% attitude, 10% aptitude.

Principles – be human, be aware, be honest, be respectful, be a participant, be open and be courageous.

Be human and be yourself .
Be aware and be smart – know what does and doesn’t matter – be a good filter for others – most people don’t scale.

Be honest and have integrity.
Be respectful and live by golden rule – disagree with respect.
Be a participant – and contribute value.
Be Courageous and be willing to fail.

How can we encourage more personal development and become more