So I was asked to shoot aerials of the GoogleOnMain event and capture the tremendous turnout for the event. Here is a short part of all of the footage that was aquired during the event!
I want to extend a big ole “hats off” to Aaron von Frank with all of his efforts to bring this event to fruition. Aaron along with Russell Tripp at Infusion Web &Video will be putting together a final presentation/proposal to submit to Google. This aerial footage will be a part of the package.
With the awareness and interest raised for location based Social Media platforms/technologies like Foursquare and Gowalla, I have jotted down and exploration of thoughts. These thoughts and questions I have to think through myself; I have to answer these questions critically before moving forward with the use of these new location based platforms.
Some Thoughts I have been pondering and synthesizing:
Social Media outlets added to the “open source” movement that gives “small” people and organizations a voice.
Social Media transformed us (small people/organizations) as “thought leaders” to drive Internet traffic to our “motherships” for information.
Social Media platforms provided the “small” people/organizations an opportunity to create robust web properties competing with “big box” organizations.
Social Media platforms provided the awareness necessary to create a “mothership” portal where the majority of the marketing messages “flow” through driving traffic to engage with a consistent message.
Social Media technology and open source platforms allowed and empowered “small” people/organizations to compete in the messaging landscape with “big box” organizations.
Social Media has allowed those to use technologies to build “Tribes” creating movements to distribute a message around a community.
Some questions in my head personally and professionally:
Why must “small” people/organizations be willing to use Social Media technologies to disclose locations?
Does Social Media technologies disclosing locations hurt/degrade the value of the brand of the “small” people and organizations…or reinforce the brand of the “big box” organizations.
Does location based Social Media technologies reinforce the “small” people/organizations as “thought leaders” empowering the reinforcement of the “big box” organization?
Does location based Social Media technology reinforce the small individual people and organization “thought leaders” as “thought leaders” since they are proportionally the influencers for “bog box” brands?
Have small people and organizations using Social Media platforms and location based technologies created a paradigm shift in perception transitioning those “small” people/organizations onto the same platform as “big box” organizations. Where does the influence lie and where will it lie in 10 years?
Who are the thought leaders?
Who really maximizes the true benefit of these location based platforms? Is it the groups publishing where they are located or is the organizations that are being recognized where this constituency base has chosen to locate and ultimately publicize? Some organizations are providing “rewards” for those soliciting their location using these technologies, but who is the thought leader here? Or do we care? Or is it just fun to say we are going to a movie and then to another place for a milkshake?
Organizations like hospitals might frame the benefit from these platforms with their marketing support staff providing their location especially for small doctors offices that lie under the umbrella of services. This is where organizations, “big box” organizations could benefit from internal staff providing location based advertising and raise awareness both from a public (business to consumer) and internal (business to business) position, informing other internal groups where and what is offered internally.
So what is the story behind these location based platforms? How are you using them? Are you doing more that just adding to the fad of saying what you are doing and where? Have you thought about the true marketing implications of these technologies and platforms? Are you telling your story or helping others with a bigger message? What are your thoughts? And will this become another place like Twitter where people get excited and then the honeymoon stage drops off like a bad relationship?
I received an email today that challenged a remark I made during a meeting. The question asked about the importance of listening and asked for tips/thoughts/advice. This made me think, what makes us good listeners and how can we become better listeners in-order to engage with our audiences.
Here are some thoughts that I used in response to my friend!
To know your audience, to effectively communicate…we must listen so that we may adjust/address our discourse.
To listen, we must ask. We must be willing to empower our audience and engage their conversation. So we ask questions to learn about our audience.
We are observant, we look at our surroundings where we communicate so that the visual cues provide context to the conversation.
We find a connection point. People exchange in conversation because of some common ground. We look for these commonalities and use them to form reflective conversation.
We bite our tongues. When we listen, we do not try to complete others’ sentences but provide simple gestures so that the audience feels us engaged.
We provide emotional reinforcement. It is okay to laugh, cry, and even get mad during a conversation. Emotion is the result of a successful conversation.
We make our audience feel important, we make them feel like they are the thought leader. This requires us to do a little homework and understand who will engage in conversation; so that we can be prepared with questions about that person so we can make them feel important.
We create a silence so that the audience feels the need to fill the void. Sometimes we ask questions or even prompt discussions, but we are not willing to let the person answer. Create a silence in the discussion that provides a rigid opportunity for the audience to feel the need to remove the silence.
Most importantly, be genuine and honest with the ones you are communicating. Honesty provides connection and builds credibility.
Lastly, tell stories, good stories. People connect with stories, rich stories with layers. When you tell a story, people want to share their stories. Then just sit back, listen and enjoy the moment.
Listening is one of the toughest things to do. It is a skill that can be refined during an interview process. When I worked as a journalist, I learned the hard way. I would have to go into households of families who had lost a loved one with cameras and equipment to get an interview. I learned to make them feel comfortable enough to share their deepest moment of lose with the camera recording. I learned to find something in common so that the conversation was not empty and provided context, plus I wanted to earn their trust. I would look around the room and find a picture, book, something that I could identify so we could establish some common ground. Then, I was honest in my intentions, and allowed them to make the decisions how the interview/conversation would continue. I made them feel like the gatekeeper, empowering them as the dominant in the conversation.
Listening can be fun, learning from listening is powerful. If we looked at engaging in conversation as an opportunity to learn from those whom we converse with daily, we could create a bigger knowledge economy.
OK…I figured it out after chatting with the people from Hootsuite how to add the a Fan Page to Hootsuite.
Open Hootsuite (log in)
Go to the bottom and click the Settings tab
Go right under the update/status bar and click Social Networks
Go to the right hand side of the screen, right under your Avatar and click +Add Social Network
A pop-up menu will appear and right under Facebook, you will see Pages (You probably need to add your personal Facebook profile to Hootsuite first)
Click Pages and then select Connect with Facebook
It will ask you again to Connect with Facebook, click it again when prompted
Another pop-up window will appear to ask you to log into Facebook, provide username & password and click Connect
Another pop-up window will appear listing all of the Fan Pages your are a part of, select the Fan Page you want to add to Hootsuite
Another pop-up window will appear that asks you if you want to allow publishing for Fan Page you want to add to Hootsuite, click Allow Publishing
It will then take you back to the pop-up window that lists all your Fan Pages with the one you want to add to Hootsuite selected, click Add to Hootsuite
Here are some notes that I use when working with groups to create a new media strategy, most of the ideas come from Seth Godin‘s “Tribes.”
——————
“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.” ~ Seth Godin – “Tribes”
Creating a Micro-movement
Publish a manifesto
Make it easy for your followers to connect with you.
Make it easy for your followers to connect with one another.
Realize that money is not the point of a movement.
Track your progress.
Identify the Brand (The Context)
Audience
Purpose
Delivery
What is your Mission Statement?
What is your communication strategy?
Who are you trying to reach?
How to create reach? How to build the Tribe:
Build the Digital Media Presence:
Web has become more than one-direction
Create rich media for all audiences to engage
Create portals of conversations
User created content
Content Management System (CMS), Twitter, Facebook, Picasa, Flickr
Build the Events
Create events that engage students, industry, and academy in one conversation.
Create events for each group to engage internally & empower conversation.
Build a Community
Build the digital platform where students, faculty, staff, industry can engage, connect, and build relationships.
Use this digital community provide regular information about the community.
Use this digital community to create profiles for all to connect.
Build regular events around the intellectual engine.
Have thought leaders, entrepreneurs share innovation.
Provide a platform where students and industry can engage on common ground.
“A movement is thrilling. It’s the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better. The new highly leveraged tools of the Net make it easier than ever to create a movement, to make things happen, to get things done. All that’s missing is leadership.” ~ Seth Godin – “Tribes”
When you are walking to your office, or walking to grab lunch, through a crowd of people…do you realize that you are surrounded by some smart people? Everyday we probably come in close contact with more than 250-300 people, as we walk from one place to the next. If you live in New York City, Chicago, LA, or other large metropolitan areas…we probably walk pass thousands of people a day. Imagine if you took the time everyday to find one person, one that you have not met and introduced yourself..then bought them a cup of coffee?
Imagine being a student again on college campus, getting up every morning to go to class. It is 8:45am and you are on your way to you 9am class. If you attended a large university with over 15,000 students, you probably pass close to 1000 to 2000 students on your way everyday. Imagine if you left a bit early and picked one person a day and bought them a cup of coffee. You might start a conversation with the next President of the United States, the next GM of Ford Motor Corp, the next religious leader of our time, the next Defense Secretary, etc. What if that person turns out to be a business partner, your lawyer, your minister, your accountant, someone you might do business with one day. College campuses have the greatest potential for human capital and also the greatest potential for building long term relationships.
Now if you take that same principal and place it into your everyday work routine. Imagine taking just a few minutes everyday and meeting someone new. The cup of coffee is just a pathway to a conversation…it is a connection point. So is thaa game of golf or other relationship building tool…just a connection mechanism. But do we really foster those relationships?
Some people are coining this economic situation as one of the worst in decades. Many people are looking for work, struggling to find jobs, resorting to paying people to write resumes or lots of money on technologies like LinkedIn. But do we really get jobs or forge business deals solely on a piece of paper that holds our credentials? People that excel in tough economic times are those who have forged relationships and can pick up the phone to call for help or a favor. They have been building their human network for years and years. All it takes is a cup of coffee.
So each semester, I take one day and make my students follow me to the coffee shop on Clemson’s campus. Today was that day. It was a day to forget about proposals, projects, and grades…it was a day to talk about what it means to leverage those relationships and the greatest potential that walks by them each day during class change.
Are we building our tribe? Are we building our network? What are we passionate about? Everybody has a story to tell…even over a cup of coffee.
“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”
~Seth Godin
It is all about connecting to your audiences…your constituency bases. Stories create identity between and organization and those who have the greatest potential to engage.
Stories are finite, clear, concise messages that uncover the layers of information that give the audience the true perspective of an organization. These stories are not one-dimensional, there are two streams of consciousness within one story: the facts (subject) and the supplementary position that brings color to the facts.
It is easy to pick broad general ideas to write about; but the stories that people connect with are the ones that people will share (repeat). So how do organizations find and create stories that are repeatable? They must first understand their brand and the umbrella message. This is the rhetorical position that shapes the messages and how the layers of information are organized.
So what are the stories within organizations where people will connect? Hmm…people. People connect with stories about people. People are the faces of an organization. Each person has specific stories how they help shape, support, and build the foundation of an organization. People tell their stories best. People have layers of stories, ones that are connected by the “red-string” that represents the brand of the organization.
Use frequency when telling these stories. Find the people that have stories that change a view-point, raise someone’s’ awareness, or reveal a new idea…and tell those stories. Tell them on a regular basis. Identify the layers of the stories and use those layers as the frequency. Each time you tell a story, peel away one more layer…one more piece of the bigger story. As one more piece is revealed and each micro story is told…the audience gains a bigger insight into the “red-string”.
Think of it this way…if you use Twitter or Facebook, you are making regular posts or status updates. Those are the micro-stories about you; and ‘your personality’ is the red-string. The more you post, the more you connect, the more your audience gains insight to who you are and your personality. People begin to peel back the layers into you and your daily context. Use the same approach when telling and delivering stories. Give people little stories frequently, ones that peel back the layers and allow the audience to see the bigger idea. Do it frequently and efficiently.
The more stories you tell, your more layers you reveal, the more the red-string is reveal…which is the heart (or the core) of the bigger story.
I have been thinking lately about how we get our stories to people…distribution points. The one thing that I consistently preach to my students and my clients:
Audience – Who are the audience(s) you are trying to reach..list them ALL!
Purpose – What is the sole reason you have something to say or tell.
Delivery – What are you going to use to get that message to those audience(s).
These points create context…context for the message. As you notice…they are intertwined. Well, you may have a great story, but if you do not know how the audience can access the message…then you might be creating the best Super Bowl message for an audience who does not have a television. You might be creating the most unbelievable email marketing campaign, and your target audience does not open emails.
We have to think about distribution…yes, it comes down to delivering the message. Here is a list of distribution methods:
Web
Blogs
Television
Home Phone
Mobile Phones
PDA’s
Text Messaging
Twitter
Facebook
Fax
Mail
Brochures
Business Cards
White Papers
Annual Reports
Online Video
Mobile Video
Newspaper
Radio
Satellite Radio
Now let’s look at major “Anchor” tools where stories can be told, the beginning of the food chain:
Web
Blogs
Newspapers
Brochures
White Papers
Annual Reports
Television
Radio
Satellite Radio
These places are where the stories are produced and created for audiences to eventually find themselves enjoying content. But, we have different distribution points to bring these audience back to the original source…teasing them with a hint of what’s to come:
Twitter
Facebook
Mail
Fax
Business Cards
Radio
Text Messaging
Mobile Video
Home Phones
Mobile Phones
The point here is when we create stories, we can use these “Anchor” tools to place our stories and use the distribution points to bring audiences back to this place…to learn more, read more, or hear more. The new face of our organizations is our “Web Property”… our main website.
Organizations are learning that they must invest just as much time, effort, energy, resources, and money into shaping their main web property as the major distribution point of information. The organization internally must support this new media and begin using the distribution tools necessary to funnel audiences back to this portal.
Organizations are also learning to re-shape marketing budgets, pr budgets, and IT budgets to allow resources necessary to create, provide, and drive traffic to a web portal and IT providers are learning to build robust systems to support this audience base.
Organizations are also starting to learn that Social Media Technologies are just as efficient as other distribution tools to gain audiences attention with “Teasers” of content, finding new ways to tell stories in a distributive method. This distributive method is now the online community building technologies. Providing portals of conversation where people can engage and connect…and allowing the “Tribe” mentality to shape the community which becomes the online cheerleading section.
So now that ealier way to analyze context of a story is starting to take new shape:
Audience(s) – Name all the audiences
Purposes(s) – What is the purpose of the over-arching message and for each distribution points
Delivery – What is the main point of delivery and what are the sub-distribution points that will tease audiences back to the mother ship.
To me…this is a game. How do we tell one story with multiple layers. Allow the audience to follow the “red-string” along the many paths of distribution points to ultimately get to the main story. What is your story, how are you telling that story, how are you reaching your audience(s), well…I am listening!
This is the first time I am teaching Technical Writing at Clemson University, which is based in the Department of English. It was a last minute request by the department since they had a full time lecturer give their notice on January 1 of this year. Years ago, I took Technical Writing as an undergraduate and Technical Editing as a graduate student.
There are two classes wrapped around professional, advanced writing based solely on the type of students and the academic curriculum. You find more science based students (engineering, sciences, etc.) in Technical Writing and more business and liberal arts students in Business Writing.
So I decided to build the class around the needs of the students, where the students could take on ownership of the curriculum and I would provide the direction and professional instruction. So, I gave them a few example syllabuses from other Technical Writing classes at Clemson. I asked to to take the syllabuses and the book that is required, separate into groups, and build a syllabus based on their needs and wants. I gave them two days to take this information, collaborate with their group members to write this syllabus, and then be prepared to propose to the class what the syllabus would offer. Then, the whole class would vote which syllabus to use.
I knew that each group would propose different approaches but ultimately there would similar themes which would lead to having a hard time to vote on one particular syllabus. The consensus…well the favorite syllabus had nothing to do with curriculum but how the group wrote and clearly communicated in the document an obtainable plan. So, we decided to take the core consistent elements, and put them into the well written syllabus structure one of the groups created.
But here is what they learned…this group of engineers, mathematicians, and scientists learned how to write, communicate, and sell their vision. While they presented, other class members had questions and concerns. These ideas were voiced and at sometimes, heated discussion took place over a project that some did not feel comfortable taking part…live interviewing.
The first day of class, each student just wanted a syllabus. They wanted a “professor” to just tell them what to do so they could read the chapter, study for a test, and move to the next task. They were quiet, reserved, and un-willing to voice opinions. What has happened in just two weeks…a group has taken ownership of the time they are investing in three hours a week. Ownership in class instruction and all the outside work associated with this semester.
They are not only thinking…but taking ownership in their future. They are acting like entrepreneurs, visionaries…those who want to engage and take an active role in the educational experience that they are investing.
I love teaching!
This is the first time I am teaching Technical Writing at Clemson University, which is based in the Department of English. It was a last minute request by the department since they had a full time lecturer give their notice on January 1 of this year. Years ago, I took Technical Writing as an undergraduate and Technical Editing as a graduate student.
There are two classes wrapped around professional, advanced writing based solely on the type of students and the academic curriculum. You find more science based students (engineering, sciences, etc.) in Technical Writing and more business and liberal arts students in Business Writing.
So I decided to build the class around the needs of the students, where the students could take on ownership of the curriculum and I would provide the direction and professional instruction. So, I gave them a few example syllabuses from other Technical Writing classes at Clemson. I asked to to take the syllabuses and the book that is required, separate into groups, and build a syllabus based on their needs and wants. I gave them two days to take this information, collaborate with their group members to write this syllabus, and then be prepared to propose to the class what the syllabus would offer. Then, the whole class would vote which syllabus to use.
I knew that each group would propose different approaches but ultimately there would similar themes which would lead to having a hard time to vote on one particular syllabus. The consensus…well the favorite syllabus had nothing to do with curriculum but how the group wrote and clearly communicated in the document an obtainable plan. So, we decided to take the core consistent elements, and put them into the well written syllabus structure one of the groups created.
But here is what they learned…this group of engineers, mathematicians, and scientists learned how to write, communicate, and sell their vision. While they presented, other class members had questions and concerns. These ideas were voiced and at sometimes, heated discussion took place over a project that some did not feel comfortable taking part…live interviewing.
The first day of class, each student just wanted a syllabus. They wanted a “professor” to just tell them what to do so they could read the chapter, study for a test, and move to the next task. They were quiet, reserved, and un-willing to voice opinions. What has happened in just two weeks…a group has taken ownership of the time they are investing in three hours a week. Ownership in class instruction and all the outside work associated with this semester.
They are not only thinking…but taking ownership in their future. They are acting like entrepreneurs, visionaries…those who want to engage and take an active role in the educational experience that they are investing.
Now if you take that same principal and place it into your everyday work routine. Imagine taking just a few minutes everyday and meeting someone new. The cup of coffee is just a pathway to a conversation…it is a connection point. So is thaa game of golf or other relationship building tool…just a connection mechanism. But do we really foster those relationships?
So each semester, I take one day and make my students follow me to the coffee shop on Clemson’s campus. Today was that day. It was a day to forget about proposals, projects, and grades…it was a day to talk about what it means to leverage those relationships and the greatest potential that walks by them each day during class change.
Use frequency when telling these stories. Find the people that have stories that change a view-point, raise someone’s’ awareness, or reveal a new idea…and tell those stories. Tell them on a regular basis. Identify the layers of the stories and use those layers as the frequency. Each time you tell a story, peel away one more layer…one more piece of the bigger story. As one more piece is revealed and each micro story is told…the audience gains a bigger insight into the “red-string”.
