Transparency

Lets talk about transparency today.

It's a fun subject if you are open to the world and a sore subject if you are trying to remain in control of your social media experience.

Why is transparency so important in social media?

The answer to this question is simple. It is important because it shows your fans that you are a real person, just like them. It makes them comfortable with you and allows them to see you as a real, fallible, complete human being. It helps them bond with you. It helps you bond with them.

The whole point of transparency in social media is that you own everything. Not in a literal sense, but in a sense that you own your success and your failure.

Why is this important? Because, owning both your success and your failure shows that you have integrity. Integrity is basically what transparency is, only transparency takes it one step further by you actually talking about the stuff you have integrity with.

Let me explain that last sentence. Since the whole debacle with @ThatKevinSmith and @SouthwestAir is still kind of burning in the background on Twitter, lets use that as an example.

If you take a look at Kevin Smiths blog and twitter posts, you'll see a man who loves transparency. I believe he calls it "owning it", but it is the same thing in all reality. We're talking about a guy who admitted that he sat on a toilet and it broke free from the wall. Not just admitted it to a few close friends, he admitted it to the world. Kevin has integrity and transparency with both his success and his failure.

Take a look at Southwest Airlines. They put on an air of transparency. They try to respond to customers in a timely manner. They try to do the right thing for the most part. However, they still fall into the corporate strategy of "we must control everything" and as we all know, that just doesn't work with social media. Southwest Airlines has integrity and transparency with their success alone.

Where did Southwest Airlines go wrong?

They took away a mans dignity and then tried to buy it for $100.00. Had it been anyone else, the price might have been right. The whole situation would have remained anonymous and the world at large would never have known. They would have controlled the situation.

Instead, as fate would have it, they did it to someone with approximately 1.6 million fans, and he was transparent about it.

Where they really went wrong though was to allow it to go on this long without an honest, heartfelt apology. You might wonder "Why should they apologize?". Well, for one, they did embarrass him publicly. Another reason is, it's the human thing to do in this situation. Who cares if he ranted and raved about it for 48 hours? Who cares if he is right or wrong? Who cares if Southwest Airlines was right or wrong for that matter? The bottom line is, Southwest Airlines embarrassed someone, got caught, and rather than owning it they passed it off as policy.

In Southwests defense, it sounds like the woman who contacted Kevin, Linda was her name I believe, was trying to be sincere and own the situation with Kevin. However, her second call to Kevin and subsequent blog post show that she was overruled when it came to having transparency in the whole issue. That is where Southwest really screwed up.

What did Kevin Smith do right?

I bet this is the part where you expect me to say "everything" right? Well, you'd be wrong. I don't agree with everything Kevin did. For one, he used is webcast (SModcast), a forum he previously told his fans wouldn't be used for rants, as a platform to hold an almost 2 hour rant about this subject. He even went so far as to apologize several time in that rant to those fans for doing it. Yet he kept doing it. So, in the end, he owned it, was transparent, and that is good.

What did he do right though? Well he didn't lay down and take it. If you are serious about being in social media, you cannot just lay down and let things roll over you. You have to speak about the things you love and hate. You have to talk about the things that make you happy and sad. The best, or possibly worst, part is that you have to do all of this WHEN it is happening. Or nearly when it is happening. No tweeting "I'm getting in a car wreck" while it is happening please.

Kevin, as he says, OWNED the situation and spoke openly about it. Yes, he did rant. Yes, he did rave. His fans loved it because, like him, they would want to rant and rave about it if they were in the same situation. They were outraged too and he was saying what he and they felt about the situation. That is what I am ultimately talking about folks. The bond between you and your followers. The synergy that exists where you feel "blah" , you write about it, and they feel it with you. They understand your thoughts and feelings. They may not always agree, nor will they support everything you do, but in the end they will see you as a person and not just a name. That is what social media transparency is and that is what Kevin Smith did right.

What should you do to be transparent?

Take a page out of Kevin Smiths book. Own everything that happens to you. If you sit on a public toilet and it breaks off the wall, talk about it. Laugh about it. Cry about it, if that's what you would do. No matter what you do, be open and honest at all times with your followers. Don't hide anything because, eventually, if you get successful, it will come out and it will not be good for you. Right now, Southwest Airlines is feeling the pain from not owning the situation. Learn from their mistake and own your social media experience.

As always, let me know what you think. I like to discuss this sort of thing and love to hear divergent views on my thoughts.

More to come...

Blocking your posts - Why and Why NOT to do it

I know I haven't talked much about transparency and why it is so very important to social media yet, but I think and feel that this topic needs to be mentioned first. My reasoning is that I see individuals and small businesses trying to start branding themselves doing this shortly after they get a few negative responses to their posts.

Why or when should you block your posts? Well if what you have to say is personal and you feel that the public at large doesn't need to read about what you have to say, then you should block your posts. To be honest, you shouldn't even put it on the internet at all if this is the case.

If you are only posting certain things to friends and family then this would be another case for blocking. However, there are better systems in place with better security than Facebook, Twitter, etc. where you don't have to block things. Email is a good example of this. Plus you don't run the risk of accidentally posting something personal to the world either.

Every other use you can think of, you should post to the world if you are serious about getting involved with social media.

Honestly, if you are trying to brand yourself or your business, you shouldn't block anything. The reason for this is very simply, transparency.

As a person trying to brand themselves or a brand trying to break into social media, you want to show your fans/buyers/friends/etc that you are a real, fallible, honest, person behind the brand, call-sign and avatar you have selected to represent yourself with.

What blocking your tweets and such does is cause you to hide who and what you are. This makes people not trust you, want to follow you, or even able to follow you. Because of this it is counter productive to what you are trying to do and will eventually, if not immediately, lead to failure.

You're probably thinking, "But I'm a business and I need control". Yes, blocking your posts does give you control, but control in social media typically means failure. As a business it is understandable that you want to control things. In a normal situation, control is how you tell if things are working right or not. In social media however, control limits your audience and quickly gives you a clear picture that things aren't working. This leads to most businesses giving up because they don't have the results they want as quickly as they predicted. Most don't even realize that it is their own fault that they have failed!

To get good results with social media, you want to get people following you. You do this by following them and responding to them when they speak about specific things related to you. It's even a good practice to respond when it isn't related to your business but it is something you are interested in and can talk intelligently about. When you have blocked your posts, you can't do this efficiently, or in some cases at all. Not to mention that people looking for you simply can't find you.

The bottom line is; If you want to get branded in social media, you need to make it easy for your fans to follow you. Blocking posts and controlling access is counter productive to this effort and should be avoided at all costs.

As always, if you agree or disagree with what I have to say please post a comment so we can discuss it.

More to come...

Seesmic Review

With the latest review of Seesmic listed on Google written almost a year (April 9, 2009) ago now, I thought I would write up a quick review of my recent experience. This is in no way a finished review, just my initial response after loading the apps and running through the tutorials. If you feel I have missed something, make a comment and correct me please. This is intended to help people not confuse them.

Seesmic Experiment

I downloaded Seesmic desktop and Look to give them a quick two day run through. My Twitter and Facebook needs don't really require a single app that does everything. That said, many of my friends and colleagues are new to the apps and looking for a better way to manage it all in one place.

Seesmic Look

The first Seesmic app I played with was the Look app. I must say it is pretty. I like the big letters and the smooth flow of how my local Twitter stream flows into the page. It's almost like reading a waterfall. I think my favorite feature in Look is the playback mode which looks a lot like rain drops of information landing on your screen. Very cool looking.

It has all of the actions you would expect a twitter account to have such as re-tweet, direct message, etc.

The downside of look is that the setting options are limited and the Advanced settings options left me saying "WTF?" when it was all said and done. I also couldn't find a follow/unfollow option anywhere in the app. Even when I went to the support page, the only place I found follow and unfollow command help was on the Desktop version.

Overall, a great application for seeing what is going on out there and just a fun way to view your twitter feed. If you are a basic user who doesn't mind logging in to another app to follow people and just want a fun way to view Twitter feeds, this app might be for you.

Seesmic Web

Seesmic Web is pretty cool. It allows you to follow your twitter account anywhere you have an internet connection. It is basically a clone of Seesmics desktop that only allows you to log in with one Twitter client.

It has all of the features you would expect for a Twitter app including the ability to Follow, Direct Message, lists, favorites, etc.

The only settings are to set the color of the page and how the windows are displayed on the page.

If you're on the go and you have a PC/Mac with internet that is maybe a work computer so you can't download stuff to it, this is a pretty good app for keeping up with your Tweeter accounts even if you have to log into them individually.

Seesmic Desktop

This app is everything I could want and more in a Twitter app that also lets me post to Facebook. I really like that it doesn't just re-tweet my tweets into FB. I can tell it to post to FB as well as to twitter by adding the #fb to the end of the stuff that I type. Instant segregation of what tweets go where.

The really nice thing about the desktop version is that it allows me to see all of my twitter and facebook accounts in one place. I can have it all show up in the one window or break it out into multiple windows as I see fit.

Overall it's a very easy to use app that allows you the flexibility of not having to have Facebook, Twitter, and Seesmic open so that you can manage all of your accounts. That's a huge plus for me since it means I can close a ton of browser windows that I would normally have to keep open just so I can stay up to date with what is going on.

Bottom Line
The bottom line, I think Seesmic Desktop is my new app when it comes to social media and me. It does everything I could ever need and allows me to manage all of my accounts without having to log out and back in again multiple times throughout the day.

Since my mother wants to get into social media a little more, I will set her up with Seesmic Look and let her have fun with that, since that is more what she is looking for in her experience.

Overall, some pretty good improvements and new apps from what I was reading about back around April 2009. Seesmic is a decent platform that supports a user who is multi-tasking their social media experience and needs to see it all in one place.

Social Media Meetings

Hello, and thanks for reading my first ever personal blog post.

Now I have made many blog posts in the past, but this is the first blog and post I have made for little ole me.

Yesterday I had a meeting with my business partner and long time friend Silran666, a.k.a. Manny and my new friend and Social Media Guru 365daygirl a.k.a. Apryl.

We talked for almost 3 hours on how social media has worked for other companies, how we are using their stories to mold our efforts, and what we think the future holds for us and how we use social media.

One of the primary things that I took away from that meeting was that it is imperative that you brand your business in such a way that you can't lose that brand. Specifically we were talking about companies and how they hire people to do their social media activities for them and some of the pitfalls that come with that versus those that handle social media directly.

The biggest pitfall to hiring someone to do it for you is that you run an extremely high risk of losing that person and all of the investments in time, funds, resources, etc. that allowed that person to be successful. Basically, when they walk out the door, all or a large portion of your social media following will go with them. Another pitfall of having someone else do it for you is that they may not know what they are doing and will unwittingly sabotage your business from within.

In many ways, doing it yourself has the same pitfalls to a degree. Say you are partners with someone and they break away, you can't split the social media fans as if you were parents in a divorce. Fans will go with the people they love and leave the ones they don't care for. They may even leave your product or brand forever because of the drama involved. The other problem, as I have stated above, is that you can be your own worst enemy.

Lets talk some more about being your own worst enemy. One of the things that Silran666. 365daygirl, and I discussed yesterday is being your own worst enemy and how to handle that. Specifically we talked about a recent post that Silran666 posted and some of the flack he received for making that post.

Here's the short story. Silran666 posted that there was an 8.4 earthquake in China. He had seen it directly from the seismic stations website and believed it to be true. He posted that on Facebook and Twitter to see if anyone else knew anything.

Let the post bashing commence.

Shortly after that post it was published by that station that it was a faulty sensor and that there was no quake. Silran666 took a beating from a few people that he knows because their parents, grandparents, etc were scared. He heard from other friends about how useless his efforts were because "most of the time it's misinformation that causes more bad than good" and many more comments like that.

So, how do we handle that? Simple, with transparency and integrity. In social media, you are naked to the world. Everything you write is basically a global post that anyone with a computer, phone or other form of data capturing device can see and, in most cases, comment on. Being transparent and acknowledging your mistakes with integrity is the first step to being able to survive in this new social media world.

There were many more topics and discussions similar to that yesterday but they will have to wait for another time. Because of that, we decided that we will start having these discussions on a regular basis and record the results as a podcast or something similar.

It was great fun and you should follow @365daygirl and @Silran666 on twitter if you like witty comments, tips on fashion and beauty, and just seeing what's new in the world from two people who seem to have their fingers on the pulse of social media. I should add that we held this meeting at Coffee Connection in Salt Lake City, Ut. You can follow @coffeeconnection on twitter and you can find it in SLC at 1588 South State Street, it's on the west side of the street and parking is in back. Give them a try if you haven't already.

More to come...