Zane Safrit

Overcoming Obstacles to Posting Your First Blog Post

This may be a late hour to address obstacles to blogging. There are maybe 125 million blogs in existence. This doesn't begin to include 500 million Facebook members, each with their own page, in essence a blog. Nor does it include the 105 million registered users of Twitter...in April of 2010.

However, only 24% of small businesses use social media. And that's double the number from last year.

Blogging is the foundation for any social media effort. (I hate the term campaign...) So, for more small businesses to embrace social media we have to find ways to overcome some of the obstacles to...blogging.

OBSTACLE: What do I write about? I don't have anything to say. That's what one employee said when I offered her the opportunity to blog on company time. I don't have anything to say. I knew otherwise. I suggested she start her day with 10-15 minutes of free writing. Just write. I checked back with her in another week. She'd discovered she did have something to say.

• SOLUTION: Try it. Write for 10 - 15 minutes a day. You'll discover you have something you really want to say.

OBSTACLE: Fear. Some executives may wonder if it's safe to blog. Is it safe to talk on the phone? Is it safe to send an email? Is it safe to have a meeting. People are taking notes, in writing or mentally. And often there is something lost in that translation between your voice and their notes.

• SOLUTION: You're safer writing it yourself.

OBSTACLE: I'm not a good writer.

That is not an obstacle for a leader; it's an excuse. And it's no longer an acceptable excuse. Today's world requires leaders, well everyone really, to have excellent communication skills.

• SOLUTION: Write every day for 10 -15 minutes. You do not have to publish it. But you do you have to write it. Write about anything you want. Just write. Pretty soon, you will see you do have a lot to say and you say in the most unique voice in the world: yours.

• Besides, writing everyday for 10 -15 minutes before you even publish a post is a great way to ...be a good writer.

• It's also the best way to systematically re-innovate your company. Blogging was the best way to do that, according to Tom Koulopolous, author of The Innovation Zone: How great companies re-innovate to bring amazing success and CEO of The Delphi Institute

OBSTACLE: Topics. Subjects. Content.

That's one of the biggest seeming obstacles both to potential bloggers and long-time bloggers.

• SOLUTION 1: List posts generate a lot of traffic. List posts are posts titled with something like Top 10 Ways to....x, and then the body of the post is compromised of that list of 10 ways and a brief explanation of each way.

Ultimately this is a list post.

I have a huge ongoing project of 52 ways to recognize employees. And each week I describe and analyze one of those 52 ways in detail. And at the end of these 52 ways I'll create a book that includes the result of my writing and analyzing each of these steps over the past year.

Already, I've changed my understanding, deepening and broadening it, for why each step works and why and how it connects with the other 51.

And I carve out tip posts from what my radio show guests share during our hour conversation. Those are like bite-sized snacks in between meals. They give some good content and entice you to eat the whole meal, read the whole blog post or listen to their whole show.

• SOLUTION 2: Compare and Contrast Posts. I lean more today towards compare and contrast posts. These require more time. To help me gather data, I use Evernote to help me clip notable news items from any online source. I tag them with key words. Then I review them weekly. Often I find contradictory data, arguments, positions, manifestos. Always, I find myself forced to clarify for myself where the gap exists and why. I write a post to explain the contradictions or contradict them again.

OBSTACLE: They may disagree with me. Hopefully, they will. At some point.

• SOLUTION: Don't worry about it. I learn more from those who disagree than those who say 'great post'. I enjoy the latter more. But those who challenge me, critique me, attack me are always my best teachers.

If you're not pissing somebody off regularly, hopefully your competitors, then you don't have much of a brand. And if people aren't disagreeing with your posts some of the time...you're not writing anything worth reading.

OBSTACLE: Writer's Block. This will happen.

• SOLUTION: Either go out for a quick run or clean-up your desktop. The first one relaxes the mind and stimulates the thinking and creativity at the same time. The second one brings a little order. Gotta have both: creativity and stimulation along with an orderly environment.

I hope this helps.

Should policy be debated in social media?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently appointed 200 people to read through the 50,000 messages he has received from his 250,000 followers since he opened a Twitter account. His critics complain that the rambunctious President should spend less time tweeting and more time trying to solve the country’s problems. But are the two mutually exclusive? via www.futuregov.asia

These conversations in-person, on social media, 1-to-1 or crowdsourcing, form a classroom.  That classroom can drive their culture of learning, a culture where they pull from each other the new knowledge and skills required to solve the next bigger challenge. 

Organizations, leaders, fans and followers, customers and associates, voters and pundits have two choices: 

Join this classroom. Be part of the solution. Learn and grow and benefit from and bring benefits to the members who care enough to debate the challenges. 

Walk past this classroom . Be left behind when the solutions are discussed, implemented, refined, improved, stirred and repeated.

There's a classroom for us all. It's one where not only can we pull much needed knowledge and expertise, but one where our knowledge and expertise can be pulled* from us to provide solutions from others.  The choice is ours.

* The Power of Pull: How small moves smartly made can set big things in motion.

Creating a Social Media Policy? Start with a Strong Foundation

Ok. Maybe you’re like many companies now who have acknowledged that social media is a real force. And after consulting with your marketing, legal and HR departments you want to venture out into this social media arena armed and armored with a social media policy. This policy will govern what can be said, by whom, under what circumstances and most importantly about what.

That last part is you, your brand, your company, your services and products.

That’s what this policy and its arms and armor is all about: protecting the corporate you from dangerous miscreants and unhappy customers who choose to rant their rage against your machine in sites with more eyeballs today, this minute, than your site has seen since its first day in the ‘sphere.

You’ve been told a good policy will protect you, the corporate you, and by default the professional and even personal you as its leader.

They’re wrong.

The best protection for your brand is the story you inspire in all your stakeholders from each and every conversation you have with these stakeholders.

No social media policy, no matter how stringently written, no matter how expensive the legal advice, can protect you from the bad story you create with your stakeholders.

A social media policy can only expedite, incrementally, the sharing of your story with your stakeholders and their use of social media.

A good social media policy is built on the good story you create with your customers and employees, partners and vendors... all the stakeholders of You.

Your social media policy should start with that:

Create and deliver an inspiring story that compels all of our stakeholders to use every media possible to re-tell it to their communities.

Every media means in-person, and face-to-face around the cooler media, email, forums, blogs, facebook, twitter, myspace (myspace...?), youtube, flickr, foursquare, google local, phone calls, articles, ezines...

Ok.

But, what is your story now? No, no. Don’t go to the marketing department. Forget your PR firm. Annual employee job satisfaction surveys...um, no.

What story do your stakeholders tell now when they tell your story?

Do you know?

This is your first step.

Find out what story you create now with your stakeholders

How do you do that?

Listen.

The easiest way to start listening to what’s said about You is to create a series of Google Alerts. It’s very easy:

1. Go to Google Alerts.

2. Type in your company name, your product or service name, your personal name.

3. Decide the frequency of updates. (I recommend daily).

4. Decide what media you want to review: websites, news, blogs, etc.

5. Then listen (or read).

6. Do this for 30 days.

While you’re at it, talk with all of your stakeholders. A good template for this conversation is the Net Promoter Score. There are 3 questions. The answers are in the respondents words. That’s key. The result is understanding what story they would tell about You to their friends and colleagues.

Start with your employees. If that idea makes your neck seize up and back spasms to return....stop. Go no further. If you cannot have an open conversation with your employees, if they do not recommend their company...do not go forward into the social media arena. Remember your employees create the story that arms and armors You.

Build your social media policy on this foundation.

Then worry about the cosmetics of grammar and department head approval and what resource to use. The hard work will have been done. Your stakeholders will be inspired now to lead you.

4 Steps to Better Blog Titles Engaging More Readers

1. Spend 40% of your time picking the right titles

2. 10 words or less so Google doesn't truncate

3. Always include the key words your customers use to search for your products and services

4. Make it catchy like the headlines of a newspaper or CNN.com

These aren't my insights. But, I'm sharing them.

They're the insights shared by Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot and author of Inbound Marketing in his presentation at the Fortune Sales and Marketing Event hosted by Verne Harnish, the Growth Guy and CEO of Gazelles. (Verne's one of the smartest, most helpful people for businesses of all sizes.) You can read more tips and insights Verne shared from some of the speakers at this post: Biggest Sales Mistake; 40% No Decisions; 5 Rules for Readability; Easy Videos.

Who controls your social media policy?

The CIO Jury offers an interesting post: Should the CIO be in charge?

As the use of social media - including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook - grows, organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the potential risks posed by the use of such sites.

With companies' reputations and corporate secrets potentially put at risk by thoughtless tweets or other postings by employees, businesses are putting in place policies setting out recommendations for how staff use social media...

Therein lies the rub, as they say. Top-down, command and control, structures are being upended by...bottoms-up, collaborations and conversations, made possible in real-time with resources (technological and people) outside the control of the corporation. Neither one rubs the other the right way.

For many organizations becoming increasingly aware of the potential risks there are three surprises:

Surprise 1:

Employees, partners, stakeholders, vendors, shareholders, executives (yes...executives can be thoughtless, too) are talking about ‘their’ company, and have been talking about their company, in their own words, unscripted, spontaneous.

Surprise 2:

Their conversations are not always the glowing conversations heard in the corporate hallways. Sometimes they are.

Surprise 3:

You cannot run. You cannot even hide.

For many companies, then the only option is to forbid the use of all social media or in polite company...create policies setting out recommendations for how staff should use social media.

Shoot the messsenger. Fire the employee if they fail to comply with ...recommended use of social media.

The media is the message. And if we control, er recommend how the media is to be use, then we control the message. Problem solved.

Not really.

1. You’re too late. Forbidding or recommending the proper use of social media is like shutting the barn after the cows are out...the chickens, roosters, pigs, combines, trucks, tools, winter feed, hay...everything. (I live in a rural community; I use rural analogies.)

Stakeholders have been talking about their experiences with their work since 3 people were on this earth and two of them worked together.

The majority* are using social media with no need for your permission. That includes gossip in the workplace, talk at home with friends-family-colleagues, email (personal or work), telephone, letters, chat, IM...

What you should really be worrying about are those in your organization:

• not talking about how they spend the majority of their waking hours.

• not using social media.

2. Their conversations are a mirror for you and a megaphone to the world. What's shared, what's rubbing companies the wrong way, is:

3. You create the message they share. You give them the story, every day in every way, they share with their friends and the world. Sure, they bear responsibility for what they say. But you insist on total control of what they do, how they do and when they do.

Turn this upside down:

Create a story together worth sharing. Trashing a workday on twitter, facebook, youtube...boring. It’s passe’. Been there, seen that.

Why not instead create a story together worth sharing? Why not engage and inspire all stakeholders to create an inspiring story from their collaboration? A. you get a better ROI for your investment; B. that story has legs. that story is different. That story is a purple cow.

Give content to share. The authors David Meerman Scott and Seth Godin are huge advocates for giving away their content. As a result, their book sales are huge.

Correct. David and Seth are excellent authors who include their readers n their story and as a result have a huge audience of fans who volunteer with their tweets and blog posts to promote the works of David and Seth. No policy required.

Correct. You are not a book producer. However, you do create stories. Create ones worth sharing, include some content to add with their stories and...who knows? Maybe you won't need a policy and you have a huge audience of fans, aka, customers.

Encourage them to talk to strangers. We’re adults now. As children we’re taught to not talk to strangers. But in a global marketplace, strangers are where the ideas and resources are to grow their brand. Encourage them to talk to strangers.

When you create a story together worth sharing you also created a brand worth owning. Ownership encourages proper decisions, inspires great conversation, brings more discretionary effort, generates a better ROI. At the very least you won't need wardens to keep the employees in line.

5 Sure-Fire Ways to Measure the Result of Using Social Media

Tom Koulopoulos inspired this post when he published 5 Sure Fire Ways to Measure Innovation. His list was simple and clear, even clean. The parallels to measure social media's impact seemed obvious.

We start first with the inspiration: 5 Sure Fire Ways to Measure Innovation

1. What percent of your revenues come from products introduced in the last 3 years?

2. Are you growing faster than the market you serve?

3. What percent of your Patents and IP are actually being put to use?

4. How many ideas did you generate per person last year?

5. Do your customers tell you that you are innovative?

Now the results he inspired:

5 Sure-Fire Ways to Measure  the Result of Using Social Media

1. What percent of your new customers and their revenues come from using social media resources in the last 3 years, or 2 or 1 or last quarter?

2. Are you reaching your goals quicker since you began using social media?

3. What percent of your growth comes from using social media?

3a. Which metric are you using to measure this growth?

• Leads
• Conversions
• Revenues, topline, bottomline or both
• COGS
• GS&A
• Upsells, crosssells
• Customer retention
• Employee retention
• Employee training
• Market share
• Others

4. How many [of the above] did you generate as a result of using social media efforts?

5. Do your customers describe you as a savvy user of social media?

What do you think? Would you use this list to measure the results of using social media?

3 Steps to Daily BP or Blogging Practice

Recently I talked about the parallels between daily blogging and daily batting practice. What Batting Practice Offers Business Bloggers

For those who were left inspired by the parallels but still wondering how to incorporate a daily session of BP in your busy day here’s three steps that should take you up to plate.

1. Prioritize it.

Schedule it on your calendar or to-do list.

Schedule it for the same time every day.

Make it the first thing you do each day.

Take your daily blogging practice at the start of every day. I find myself a little brighter, sharper, more creative and inspired at the start of every day. Blog before the rush of distractions interfere with writing anything of more substance than a 14-character tweet.

2. Prepare for it.

Batters warm up before they enter the batting cage.

Bloggers warm up before they begin to write. A blogger’s warm-up is reading, listening.

Reading, listening, can take place anywhere: at your home, at a restaurant, media of choice, books, ebooks, blogs, tweets, youtube...the key element is listening. There are tools like Evernote, delicious, favorites on twitter, your facebook friends and their updates that make it easy to start the day with listening. Use them.

Don’t know how? Ask. Ask me. Ask Google. Ask those you trust who use those tools. We all have had to learn and we like to help.

3. Don’t stop until you write.

Some days the ideas and the writing will all come together in a beautiful two-part harmony. Flow. Joy. Happiness. Productivity.

Other days, they act like two strangers who can barely speak each other’s names. And on those days it’s your job to bring them together. Hand-eye coordination is mastered in the batting cage. Idea-writing coordination is mastered on the daily blogging practice.

Don’t stop until you write does not mean you have to publish. It does mean you have to write. Save those posts where you struggle as drafts. Come back to them later. I guarantee there will something useful gained from not only saving them as a draft, but reviewing them.

Batters bat their way out of a slump. Bloggers blog their way out of a slump.

3A. Keep writing...

On those days where the ideas and the writing will all come together in a beautiful two-part harmony...keep writing. Keep writing for the time set aside...or longer. You can publish all your results that same day. Or you can schedule them for a later date(s).

A batter keeps batting when his bat is hot. A bloggers keeps blogging when their brain is hot.

Reminder: Blogging aps let us blog from home, the airport, from our offices...anywhere, offline or on. Blogging practice is merely writing practice. Unlike batting practice, you can take blogging practice from almost anywhere.

What Batting Practice Offers Business Bloggers

Spring is coming...I hear.

That means baseball teams and players are getting more serious now about bat speeds, bat control. And batting practice gets more serious.

Batting practice...all those easy pitches that produce fly-outs and in-field dribblers, singles and pop-ups, strikeouts and the occasional triple or home-run...is in full swing.

For the great players, batting practice takes place all year. Maybe less, maybe more. But the greats are constantly honing their skills, regularly, quietly, consistently.

The results begin to show up even from the first day. The skills and the skills needed. A pitch low and away and that’s going downtown, out of the park. A pitch high and inside and the batter is going down, hard. Opposite field, not so good. Pulling hits? Very good.

The crowds are small. The comments are comments, not cheers and jeers. The followers aren’t strangers.

Then the batter is in front of a crowd. The crowd’s grow. The comments now are cheers or jeers. More strangers. And some new, genuine fans and friends you would never meet otherwise.

Blogging works the same way. You have to take your turn in the blogging cage. Take your pitches, your ideas, and swing away with blog post or two.

That’s the daily blog post.

Some are hits. Some are fouls (some of mine may have been very foul...). Some are strikeouts. And every so often...you write a home-run piece. Some stints, some posts, reflect a blue-collar day. You took the pitch, published your post. And blue-collar days are the unpleasant steps to the days where you hit a post out of your blog-park, or a series of posts out of your won park.

Accolades come from near and far, followers and strangers, readers and those who found your post with a random search. Sure, a few spammers show up. They are blogging’s equivalent of the drunk and obnoxious fan yammerin’ crap that makes no sense, but gets people to look. Free speech and internet anonymity.

But pretty soon you’re hitting home runs regularly. Those are the posts of clarity that help people with tips or ideas pushed forward. You turn to other batters, er, bloggers for their tips on how they became such home run hitters.

Now you’re on a roll. Now you’re invited to the big leagues as either a guest blogger or traffic to your site makes you a star.

But it all comes back to that daily blog post, your batting practice. Practicing, practicing, practicing. Writing, writing, writing. Every day.

* Photo: Renphoto from istockphoto

Partners or peasants?

USAToday reported last week that Employee benefits bounce back....

That’s great news for the companies, the employees, the economy.

And the article continued:

The benefits-bolstering sounds benevolent, but the moves aren't all altruistic.

"There is a need to motivate and engage people," says Fred Crandall, a Watson Wyatt senior consultant. A decent benefits plan helps retain staffers who are considered valuable. Even in a down economy, "There is always a market for high-quality talent," Crandall says.

"When you start coming out of a recession, people remember how they were treated," he says. "Some people who feel like they've been given a raw deal will jump ship."

Interesting.

He’s right. People will remember how they were treated.

Were they treated as partners or peasants?

Were they recognized as assets, with solutions and resources, or liabilities with expenses and headaches.

Were their ideas sought on how to survive, even prosper?

Or were they told this is how you will survive?

Did management lead by example or edict?

Did the discussions answer these 3 questions from everyone’s perspective:

• What’s in it for me?

• Why should I care?


• Why should I believe?

If the answers weren’t offered then, how can they be offered now?

If you treated your members as peasants, why should they see themselves as partners?

The irony here is that money is near the bottom of the list of motivators that engage and inspire a workforce. The top motivators are those that engage the hearts, the minds, the dreams, the passions and then, only then, the wallets of any talent, high-quality or not. In fact, high-quality talent is only found where leadership recognizes and implements those priorities for everyone in their organization.

So. As your company rebounds, and your cash-flows rebound along with it, ask yourself:

How did we treat everyone in our organization this past year: as partners or peasants?

Your answer will foretell how well and how long your company will enjoy the economy's recovery.

Shooting the Social Media Messenger

Back in the day...Kings AND Queens were known to kill the messenger if the message they carried was to the Royal Person's disliking.

Corporate brands may be our royalty today.  Because it seems we may have a similar situation today.

BusinessWeek had a post titled Beware Social Media Snake Oil.

It's well-written as you'd expect from an article at BusinessWeek. It starts with the pros of social media:

As millions of people flock to these online services to chat, flirt, swap photos, and network, companies have the chance to tune in to billions of digital conversations.

Starbucks (SBUX), Dell (DELL), and Ford Motor (F) have all testified to the magic social media can create.

Then it follows to the cons of social media:

But the same tools carry risks. Employees encouraged to tap social networking sites can fritter away hours, or worse. They can spill company secrets or harm corporate relationships by denigrating partners. What's more, with one misstep, one clumsy entrée, companies can quickly find themselves victims of the forces they were trying to master. Thousands of bloggers attacked Motrin last year because of an advertisement from the Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) brand they found demeaning to mothers.

It was interesting that the examples included were from only Fortune 500 companies as if their use of this tool gave it validity. But, then again, Fortune 500 remains our country's royalty in many respects with special privileges (affordable healthcare, tax breaks, anyone?)

But, that's not what I found most interesting.

The most interesting part of the paragraph warning readers of the perils in that bottle of elixir titled social media was its encouragement to shoot the social media messenger. Don't like the message being shared about your brand on twitter, facebook, blogs, etal? Shoot 'em. Shoot the social media tools.

Social media is merely the messenger. And a very effective messenger it is, too. In an instant, one clumsy entree from a brand that should know better, can create a global community of customer vigilantes more than willing to share how insulting is one clumsy entree from both a well-financed (at least financially) brand and its ad agency that consisted of ads and sites and messages that were not only truly clueless but amazingly insulting in both tone and message. ( And I'm not a mom and I found Motrin's ads patronizing to an astonishing, self-congratulatory,aren't we cool, degree.

But social media only carried the message inspired by the creation of that ...one clumsy entree. (That term...makes it sound like a pickle was mistakenly placed where the olives usually are on a Perkins buffet.)

Social media only carries a company's secrets that one of its stakeholders has been inspired, motivated, to share. The problem is not social media or its ease of use. The problem is why that stakeholder was motivated to share those secrets or why that stakeholder was a stakeholder when their loyalties were so clearly absent. Surely there were clues that should have been noticed by other stakeholders if they cared their brand.

Social media doesn't denigrate partners or their communities. Childish, churlish, petulant employees denigrate partners and their partners' communities.

Clumsy entrees, disloyal stakeholders, and pouty employees have always existed. And so have their decisions and their impact on brands, communities, careers, partners and vendors.

The difference now is that brands are being embarrassed publicly, globally.

And that means managers and supervisors, leaders and their ad agencies, are being embarrassed. A brand's patronizing attitude towards their customers can now be seen globally and discussed globally. Social media didn't make that Motrin condescend to its most fervent, connected, vocal customer group: moms. Motrin and its agency did that all by their lonesomes.

Social media did not insist the employee or agency of a major company headquartered in Memphis go out and dis the town of Memphis in a tweet. That employee, agency, did it on their own.

Likewise, the customers and fans of those Fortune 500 companies showcased as social media successes, used social media to share their experience. Neither did social media insist that supporters of democracy, human dignity share the stories of how Iranian authorities abused their own citizens who wanted...democracy and human dignity.

Social media didn't make them do it. But people were inspired to use social media to share their experiences and those of others.

The common principle here, overlooked by the article's author, is that social media is but the messenger. The message, its content, is inspired by brands and our experiences with those brands. Social media's use is inspired by our experiences.

Some brands provide positive experiences for their stakeholders. And those stakeholders use social media to share their positive experiences.

Some brand provide insulting, patronizing, experiences to their stakeholders. And those stakeholders share their experiences.

Brands (and traditional media): Don't shoot social media. It's only accelerating the spread of messages deliver or inspired by your actions, campaigns, customer service, employee policies, layoffs, motivations, leadership, vision, purpose and articles.

***********************************

Likewise social media didn't insist I write this critique of the article. The article amused, inspired, me to write it. At other times, BusinessWeek articles have inspired me to praise their content. Either way, I'm accelerating the spread of the conversation about their content. And we're all learning.

Being There

( Did you see that movie? Being There? Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas. Great movie. See it if you haven’t.)

Being there may be social media’s greatest contribution to our ability to innovate our way out of this recession. And innovate our way out of our cubicles into a life of meaning, where work and home do blend, where ‘personal’ and ‘professional’ brands mesh smoothly, where our values align with and allow for us, individually and collectively, personally and professionally.

Hutch Carpenter, VP of Product at Spigit, tweeted this today.

He’s right.

Can you show me anything else that kills an idea faster than like lack of interest? This is not a rhetorical question. Can you? 

Passively or aggressively, an idea needs interest to grow. And it needs it...immediately, right from the start.

Beating a metaphor to death, you don’t plant a tree by just dropping it on top of the ground, do you? (Ok. Some may. ) You dig a hole, you throw some mulch or fertilizer, aka food, in that hole and you water it...and you do all this immediately.That is because you want it to grow. You want it to grow enough to do what's necessary to immediately provide it the attention and resources it needs to grow.

We all want ideas to grow. And up until recently, the means has been missing for being there when someone has an idea.

That has changed, will continue to change, now with social media. Social media’s instant reach, instant broadcast, globally, is a great first step in being able to give immediate attention to an idea. Any idea shared on social media like twitter or a blog or youtube or, maybe not facebook, a podcast or a wiki, is like the tree being planted on fertile soil, in a hole dug to proper depth, with proper food and watered properly. The follow-up conversations and collaborations made possible by social media, by its members around the globe, are like the water and mulch/fertilizer/food that grows this idea, sustains it, nurtures it.

(Ok, this is a riff, a rough draft.)

But, the bottomline is that now with social media’s tools and features we have a better chance of giving ideas the immediate attention they deserve, we deserve, our communities deserve. And any idea to improve this will find us all just...being there.

Thanks, Hutch.

Social media is a digital social lubricant

Steve MacGill, my friend and founder of Peersight Online, said earlier this year that social media is an accelerant for word-of-mouth. It speeds the spread of word-of-mouth. It’s a vehicle for our words and ideas, rants and raves, insights and sometimes TMI, too much information.

I liked that. He’s right. Social media is not word-of-mouth. It’s not even marketing, really. It’s really some resources, some tools, some cool features and colors, that merely serve our purpose. No ideas. Social media will spread that reality very quickly. Great ideas? Well...those will spread very fast with social media.

But, social media is more than an accelerant. It’s a digital social lubricant.

There’s a reason why social media’s more popular resource, Twitter, is referred to as a cocktail party that never ends. It is because social media functions the same as alcohol at social events.

It lowers our inhibitions. It’s relaxing. We’re more likely to relax our own barriers to communication and connection.

Common bonds can be found with greater ease.

It’s easy to access, very affordable.

There's a resource for everyone. Some people prefer beer, wine or mixed drinks or things that make me shiver when they're described. Some like blogs, twitter, facebook. Others like StumbleUpon, YouTube, podcasts or MySpace (shiiiiver).

And shoot, everyone’s doing it now. Even my oldest sister has sworn herself to beginning to use... email by possibly the end of this year. No, seriously. And that’s been a good first step for all of us, hasn’t it? 20 years ago, sure. But, the first step has to be taken sometime. I digress.

Like that other social lubricant, too much of a good thing is, well, too much. Consider these parallel behavior patterns when social media'ing too much:

Strangers become BFFs. And we sometimes remember their username the next day.

It makes for strange bedfellows. Consider tea parties and birthers. Honestly, any social media in their hands is equivalent to binge drinking.

We share too much information. Pictures and Facebook. What about the person suffering from depression whose photos of her celebrating at the beach were found on her facebook profile. Not a good decision for her disability claims. It was all made possible by the easy access to social media and not knowing when to say no.

Consider hecklers. Nothing fuels a heckler like too much alcohol. Ever been to a football game, college or NFL? Ever been to a Yankees’ game? Then you know. A side comment gets picked up, becomes a chant and then the fans start throwing things.

The social media version is twecklers*. These are people drunk with the power of being able to broadcast their ideas immediately to a global audience. They attend a presentation. They don’t like the content, the presenter, the AC, the chairs, the lights...whatever. And their side comment in the form of a tweet becomes a chant and then others are throwing digital versions. Ugly.

Confession: I’ve made these mistakes. ( Ok. I’ve never been to a Yankees’ game.) But, at college football games parents have taken their children away at crucial points in a close game or after a bad call or play, all the time glaring at me. (“What?!? F bombs aren’t apprapro at your dinner table? Whatever.” ) My family won’t sit near me at basketball games.

And, I’ve tweeted and blogged and commented when, perhaps, I could have waited a moment. Or forever.

With that in mind, here are a few tips to make use of the connective power of social media to add value to others and accelerate the spread of your ideas, build connections with those you share common bonds even after you’ve left the cocktail party and effectively collaborate on important projects.

• Don’t social media and drive.

• Know when to say no.

• Social media responsibly

• We’ve all annoyed others under the influence of social media. Don’t take it seriously.

• We’ve all delighted others under its influence. Don’t take that seriously, either.

• Have you ever seen yourself when you've been social media’ing too much? Is it pretty? No?

• Would you want to read your tweets? Maybe you should. I did and it changed my world. I think my followers quietly say thanks.

• Schedule your expressions for publication at a later date. That gives you time to reflect.

• Be prepared to regularly say “I’m sorry”. Do I need to explain here?

• Don’t blame social media. It wasn't the social media...

• Would you want your parents to see it? Because they will see it.

• Would you want...your children to see it? Oh yes, they will see it.
  

• Would you want your grandparents to see it? It is more and more likely that they will now.
  

• Would you want your siblings to see it? Note: I don't worry about my sister seeing it.

• And, would you want your boss to see it? Because they will.

All these can be condensed into one rule: just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

Now, let's go on in and enjoy the cocktail party. And, let's help each other if we see we're social media'ing too much.

* twecklers. See what I mean? You have to be drunk on social media to come up with the term twecklers for those who use twitter to heckle. Clever. But, you know, outside the cocktail party no one understands it.

The new rule of social media

Just because we can doesn't mean we should.

Just because we can:

• update our facebook page during a panel presentation
• check our email while a speaker's presenting
• chat, skype, tweet at anytime anywhere.
• stream media for our listening, watching, pleasure anywhere, anytime
• read and comment on blogs
• read and comment on community forums,
• comment anonymously
• all of these, anytime and anywhere

Doesn't mean we should.

Interestingly, this rule has applied always applied to ethics in business or personal life. Just because you have the power to x, doesn't mean you should.

Discretion is the better part of valor. So it is with social media.

Disclaimer: This may come across as preachy. I'm known to preach. In this case this is not a sermon. It's written more as a marker. I'm circling around less is more.

• Less noise, more silence.
• More silence, less distraction.
• More silence, less distraction...more meaning.

I don't have a ratio, a formula. I don't think there is one except that which works for each of us only today.

Tip of the hat to Samantha Rufo (blog and twitter) for the link to this article Social Media Challenges Social Rules. I'm not sure social media challenges our social rules as its freedom challenges our willingness to apply them.

6 Steps to Overcoming Writer's Block

You blog, you tweet, you podcast, you youtube...you encounter writer’s block. All of these social media resources turn us all into...writers. And writers face writer’s block eventually.

I’ve blogged almost daily for 4 and 1/2 years now. There are a few things I have found work to overcome writer’s block. Here they are:

Write: There’s only one way to overcome writer’s block and that’s to write. Bring up your word doc or bring up a sheet of paper and pen/pencil. Then write on it.

That act alone gets me out of my head. It stops the I don’t have anything to write. I’m not inspired...Can I have some cheese with this whine. Ok, I don’t say that last sentence; my wife does. Deservedly.

Now I’m looking at, in my case, the screen.

Now I start to write.

Write the keyword. Not sure what to write? Write the keyword. If the topic is innovation then write the... innovation.

Now, write the first thing that comes to mind. I write a few sentences. Now, usually, I am off to the races.

Gather your sources

To do that, I scan through my twitter lists and groups on Hootsuite.

I have gathered tweeters into either Twitter lists (big list) or HootSuite groups (filtered list). Each list/group is organized for the daily meme on my blog: healthcare, small business/leadership, social media/marketing/branding, innovation/collaboration, failure and its role in our success. That’s the memes Monday - Friday.

Each day I can scan that group for their links and conversations.

I favorite the tweets of interest. Favoriting, in either the Twitter or Hootsuite, works and feeds to both.

I also review my rss reads. I have them sorted by categories of interest: social media, small business, leadership, innovation. These are some of the daily memes for my blog posts.

Identify a common thread.

I always find 3-5 favorites around a common theme. It could be several perspectives with the same opinion. Or it could be same issue, differing opinions.

That begins to jog my brain. Either I see conflicting opinions, contradictory data or consistent data and conversation on that common theme.

Drill down.

Now I click on the links in these favorited tweets. That step is to gather more detailed information, supporting quotes, broaden my perspective and educate both myself and my readers. It definitely works for the first and I hope the second.

By now, I have the content I need and my brain and fingers are now engaged.

Some other steps and resources.

Caffeine: Tea, coffee, espresso, whatever. They are called stimulants. They stimulate. Sometimes a little mental stimulation from my favorite wonder-drug, caffeine, is all I need.

Aerobics: Same principle is at work here. The increased aerobic functioning is stimulating. Heart beats faster, pumps more blood, delivers more oxygen. And where is the biggest train station for the greatest amount of blood newly replenished with oxygen? The brain. Think about it. Or go for a run.

Deadlines: Deadlines push me out of the indulgence of obsessively word-smithing. And, I do write better, often, under pressure. Many people do.

Sleep: None of this works if we are chronically sleep-deprived. Do not pass go, do not waste time on anything else than this issue. Do this first. This is a systemic issue. The points above are tactical steps you can take to solve an immediate challenge. Sorta like having good tactics and a bad strategy. See the difference? No? Get some sleep.

I'm done.

Try these, some or all of them. Let me know if they work for you.

Got better ways to break writer's block? Share them in the comments. We all need all the help we can get. We all have great and wonderful ideas waiting to be expressed.

Photo credit: iStockPhoto, Joe Cicak.

This Guy Gets the Basics of Social Media ROI

I love this presentation from Oliver Blanchard. It made my morning.

Olivier Blanchard Basics Of Social Media Roi

View more presentations from Olivier Blanchard.

Why do I love this presentation? Why does it make my morning? Slide 10. It shows the boss and he lists 2 reasons why he should invest in something:

1. It will result in a cost reduction...

2. It will generate more revenues...

That's the basics of ROI for business: social media or not. An investment will generate either a cost reduction or more revenues.

As social media begins to grow up there, will be more talk about these 2 things, cost reductions and more revenues, and social media's role bringing those to the business.

Hat tips to the following blogs:

Adam Cohen

Social Fish

And, hat tip to Maddie Grant for her tweet.

3, just 3, Tools to Filter Twitter’s Noise.

Twitter. I love Twitter. So do millions of other folks. That’s its glory and its headache. Imagine a cocktail party with millions of people talking, shouting, celebrating, arguing, slamming, praising, wondering, breaking news, globally, locally...tweeting. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. What a glorious party! The fun that happens every day, hour, every instant. You can stop in any time. (Unlike Hotel California you can leave..) And join the party, add to its revelry.

And, you can stop in any time and waste any time. Idly ‘listening’ to the tweets pass by. Or, worse, missing the conversations from the people you want to hear from, want to join because you both add to your days.

What to do? How do you manage your time, this party, for your life and goals?

I asked that of Drew McLellan, Top Dog of McLellan Marketing Group when he was a recent guest on my radio show. Drew’s earned a reputation with his clients for savvy, smart, practical ie doable social media strategies that deliver tangible results.

I asked:

What kind of resources are you talking about with your clients as social media becomes more mainstream?

The most interesting trend that people are talking about is the volume of noise. It is no longer this fringe thing for tech heads. It is very mainstream. Today you can tweet questions to MSNBC. Many people participate so there is so much noise. What we talk to clients about is how to filter out the noise.

Twitter seems to be one of the places where the noise is so incredible. One of the tools we use a lot is Friend or Follow. This lets you see who is following you back. Another favorite is HootSuite – it lets you scan searches and schedule tweets. Another is ShareAholic which is a plug-in for your browser that is a better, quicker, easier way to share, e-mail, tweet, and bookmark stuff you care about online with friends, family, and co–workers. It is based on your usage.

3, just 3, resources to manage Twitter’s noise.

• Friend or Follow
• HootSuite (I use it, love it)
• ShareAholic

You can listen in streaming on-demand at this link to more of Drew’s thoughts on social media, its use and why it’s changed over the past year.

Follow Drew:

• Blog: Drew’s Marketing Minute
• Twitter: Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan: Highlights From Our Conversation

Drew McClellan, is the Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group. He's achieved that status for not only surviving the past 20 years in the advertising and marketing arena, but thriving in this arena. After working for several other agencies, including Young and Rubicam’s CMF&Z, Drew created McLellan Marketing Group in 1995. Considered a national branding expert, Drew is a highly sought after speaker and has given about a zillion presentations at national conferences, key note addresses, training for his peers in the profession, college students and even his daughter’s tenth grade class.

Drew and I discussed what's changed over this past year in social media and marketing and the Dodger's chances for World Series glory. (I'd say they are pretty good, based on the first game.)

You can listen in streaming on-demand at this link.

What are your clients saying to you these days about social media? What are you doing to help them?

We are seeing a fading skepticism that is being replaced with a little bit of fear with a “I’ve got to be there”. I am not sure which is worse – both, fear of using social media and fear of not using it, can put a company at great risk. Our stance has remained the same: first you need to decide if it is the right place for you to be because it isn’t the right place for everybody in the world. Every business does not need to have a social media strategy that involves actively creating content. If it is the place you need to be then you must create a strategy so you are not out there floundering.

What are you doing now with social media that has changed since last year?

It is interesting. One of the things that our clients are realizing is that social media is not a 2 sided coin; them and their customers. There is a third side, their employees. We are beginning to talk about both the risks and rewards of your employees using these social media tools, both on your behalf and personally and how the two worlds collide. There are examples out there of how employees have either tweeted or posted on Facebook that was really detrimental. We are spending time with companies to create in-house policies regarding social media. This is creating some very interesting conversation in terms of privacy of individuals or if we work for a company and we are speaking about our jobs, is it required that we friend them on Facebook? There are lots of interesting discussions about this. There are many real life scenarios out there that are causing businesses to pause about how they want to talk about social media with their employees.

Last year I remember you saying that many clients were shocked and dismayed about what customers were saying about them online and now it sounds like the clients are shocked about what their employees are saying about them online.

It even goes beyond that. It is a sticky situation. For example, if one of my employees took a client out to dinner and got absolutely toasted in front of the client, I would fire them. BUT, if an employee posts stories on FB about themselves being drunk, do I have the right to fire them if some of their friends are clients? The gray area is how do we have a private life anymore when we live it so publicly? And how it impacts the company and its reputation. The desire to listen and monitor is even bigger.

Social media just brings the community closer and there are repercussions.

The beauty of all of this is that it just reiterates the power of social media and the ability to magnify your voice. We need to be mindful of what we say or do because every word is out there for our 500 friends or 2000 followers and all of their friends.

What kind of resources are you talking about with your clients as you discuss this? Are they asking you to craft a social media policy for their employees to follow?

The most interesting trend that people are talking about is the volume of noise. It is no longer this fringe thing for tech heads. It is very mainstream. Today you can tweet questions to MSNBC. Many people participate so there is so much noise. What we talk to clients about is how to filter out the noise.

Twitter seems to be one of the places where the noise is so incredible. One of the tools we use a lot is Friend or Follow. This lets you see who is following you back. Another favorite is HootSuite – it lets you scan searches and schedule tweets. Another is ShareAholic which is a plug-in for your browser that is a better, quicker, easier way to share, e-mail, tweet, and bookmark stuff you care about online with friends, family, and co–workers. It is based on your usage.

When did you start using these applications?

I have been using HootSuite for quite awhile. I was looking for a way to manage Twitter. It is hard to keep a handle on the conversation. You don’t want to miss anything and HS lets you accurately track this. I have been using ShareAHolic for a couple of months. I was right on it and it is a great time saver.

Is there a social media resource or tool that has been lost in the shuffle this past year?

Social media tools can fade away from lack of use. The perfect example of that is MySpace. Today there are many dormant accounts from people who opened their accounts five years ago. I would say everybody but bands has migrated to Facebook.

Facebook is a place where their personal and professional life come gliding together. Your friends are split among business colleagues, high school friends and family. That is where the whole personal/ professional life thing gets gray. The reality is that it is happening in our lives as well. We tend to mix the two together and social media reflects that.

Last year we spoke about the good news about social media that is not just a fad. It is a powerful resource. Now you said many corporate brands are throwing money at Facebook and Twitter due to their fear of lack of involvement. Is this a good thing?

22:37

In some ways, I think yes we are out of the early adaptor phase and no we are not. social media is absolutely mainstream. At the consumer level, people are getting used to it, but I still think we are in the early adaptor stage and people are doing it, but doing it out of fear and not always properly. Without a strategy and the tools some people end up bailing on social media. How many are coming back?

It depends on their experience. If they felt unheard and that it didn’t pay off, we have to coax them back in and help them understand. Having some presence in social media, listening and monitoring what is being said are just basics now. You have to be doing at least that. Eventually most will come back. This doesn’t happen overnight. It is an evolution rather than a revolution. Companies need to be strategic first and then jump in. They can’t just slap something together.

Social media is growing and maturing. As it becomes mainstream, will it have the same impact?

I think we are at a point where with all of the noise level and craziness, the good ones stick. I think we will see that pretty soon social media will evolve into a stable usable platform. It still may take another five years for people to figure it out and truly understand the capacity and benefits.

Can you give us examples of brands that have used social media for the right way, for the right goals?

Grayco Baby: the company that makes things for babies. They recognize the mommy bloggers out there are a force to be reckoned with and more and more moms are going online to get information and resources. One of the things that made them successful was that for the first six months, they listened. They were very strategic about it. After listening, they created a blog. They married social media activity with offline activity. It is great to be Facebook friends with someone, but when you bring people together and they can share experiences it takes it to another level. Grayco Baby created events with parenting bloggers to create a community and asked the bloggers to teach them how to be good community members. They then launched a blog which is authored by a team of employees who are totally engaged with one another. They are driving thousands of people to their blog every month. They have really grown a nice community. Bloggers are a generous people and are happy share what they know in a respectful way. This is what Grayco Baby did and as a result it really brought a lot of fans to their site when they launched.

Another great example is The Best Western Hotel chain. (Best Western...?) They have launched the fan pages, have a video channel on You Tube for people to upload their vacations, and they have launched a couple of blogs. One of them is a travel blog. They are not writing about what they sell. They are writing about things that their audience cares about. It is not about a sales pitch. You have to write for your readers.

Being American we all like to see the fall. What, if any, big brands have stumbled with social media and what can we learn from them?

If you are launching social media tools, think of it as going to a cocktail party and you are going to everybody talking about yourself, and soon there is no one to talk to anymore. This is the attitude of a lot of corporate brands are bringing to social media. They also don’t think about their behavior from their audience’s perspective. The Motrin Mom's story is a great example. Motrin wanted to garner attention from moms. They did a YT Video with babies that were perceived to be fashion statements and the mommy bloggers had a fit about that. Motrin had to do a big apology and this bit them in rear end. They did not think about their audience. Most of the mistakes we made happen when we are self-centered.

Last year you shared four steps for starting a social media campaign. The first one was, ask yourself why you want to do this. The last three steps were about setting up and building a blog. Does the blog still remain the foundation for a social media campaign?

Yes! There are lots of ways to blog. We believe that the blog is still the crown jewel of your social media strategy because it is the one place you can really establish your expertise, share resources, educate, and build a community and connections. It is really like while it’s great to visit other people’s houses and party there, but if you really want someone to get to know you, you invite them into your house. Your blog becomes your social media home. As long as the content is strong and adds value to the audience, it will be successful. If I don’t think my readers will care about it, I won’t write about it. It has to reflect the very best that the readers want to read. The other reason blogs are the jewel of social media is due to the impact it has on Google and the search engines.

One of the key elements of social media is the ability to or to mandate to be quiet and to listen more. Use the tools and resources to learn about what people are saying; what they are interested in and priorities. Are brands getting more comfortable with the customer’s input with the creation of their brand? Are they learning to let go?

It all depends on the company. If the company’s culture is a collaborative one, then yes. This is another channel where they can learn about the customer and better serve them. For companies who hate it, then they may acknowledge that they have to do it, but are not crazy about it. Some companies are in the middle of these two. I think the bigger companies are embracing social media. It is sometimes a confidence issue. If you are a little local bookstore, you may not be sure you have anything to say, but when you are a large company, like Grayco, whose products are carried nationwide, it is a little easier. Small and medium size businesses really need to jump out there and use these tools, but listen first.

44:38

It is so important for these smaller companies to have a presence as it will give them credibility and the audience can connect even stronger.

Are you still finding that clients are shocked about what customers are saying about them, not always in the most glowing terms.

What they are shocked at is that this conversation is going on and they had no idea. One of the beautiful things about social media is that you can listen and join in the conversation with your customers. Get out there and join them. Interact. You can’t do that though if you don’t know where they are. Find them.

You talked about three tools to help manage the conversation on Twitter. What are some of the best tools to listen online in social media? Why are these best? If you could choose only one, which one would it be?

Sometimes simple is best. I would still go back to Google Alerts. Anytime anyone says anything about your search terms you will receive an email. Google scans the entire web and sends you a digest of the conversation. If you combine that with a Twitter search that you check every day, you will be able to listen to the entire dialog about your company and brand.

What about the new search engine from MicroSoft called Bing?

I think Microsoft is a great company, but there is always a catch. They just don’t seem to play well with others. I am wondering what the catch is. I think it is interesting, but I think it will be difficult to compete with Google.

Steve Farber, world expert on leadership and has written 3 books recently told me that you had created a series of events for SF and his clients and community in Des Moines. I think that was a fabulous thing that you did. What was the response and why did you do that?

When I read Steve’s first book, I immediately knew I had a kindred spirit out there. I have been a raving fan of his for many years. We had a client who was having a very prestigious event, 40 Under 40. This year was the tenth anniversary of this event-so there were 400 of these people that they were going to bring to lunch. The event just grew and he was so gracious with his time. The audience in Des Moines loved his energy and passion. It was a thrill for us to help coordinate that. He absolutely walks his talk. He lives it. Note: Here's Drew's blog post on his day with Steve Farber.

Give us one great piece of advice for social media and business.

Listen first and ask a lot of great questions. If you do that, people will gladly welcome you into their homes and inboxes.

Thanks, Drew!

You can follow Drew online here:

Blog: Drew's Marketing Minute

Twitter: DrewMcLellan

Personal Brands: Leveling Our Own Internal Playing Field

Social media is lauded as the ultimate playing field leveler for brands, big or small. The playing field leveled is the playing field of honesty and integrity. It is a big story, an interesting story.

But honesty and integrity are personal attributes. What’s more interesting is social media's role leveling our internal playing field of honesty and integrity. When social media levels the playing field for our personal/private and professional/public brands...things get interesting.

I read a steady stream of dialogue about the erosion of personal privacy in our digital media age. Coupled with this is the ever-growing blend of professional and personal personas. Each week is another example of an employee, contractor, consultant, CEO, political leader...sharing a heart-felt, personal and private opinion on x social media which is strikingly inconsistent with their professional and public roles.

The stories race through the blogosphere, twitterville, facebook communities. Tales of woe and tales of warning follow. Each new story makes the subject the poster-child of the instant for not recognizing the power of social media and the internet to expose our private lives, to overlap private with professional.

All the points are excellent. The warnings should be heeded.

But is the cause of concern the loss of privacy or the exposure of the inconsistencies in our lives? When an employee is paid to smile and promote a brand whose promises fall a few undotted i’s and uncrossed t’s short of honest and then chooses to bash that same brand on their facebook page...where is the failure of judgment? Where is the indiscretion? Sharing a few snarky threads on Facebook, etal or spending the day betraying one’s principles and personal integrity.

I can’t remember a single story saying maybe the indiscretion was in first compromising their principles at the job. Granted we all have choices to make and different standards upon which we make those choices. But at the point where you stand for a brand’s misrepresentations during the day (and take the paycheck) and then stand against them with your community (and take their applause) the issue isn’t exposing your private life to your public life. The issue is you expose your public life to your private community.

And the anger that arises seems to be the anger where the veil of a community’s illusions, delusions, are ripped unwillingly from our eyes. Maybe the more appropriate metaphor is that of a mirror. These examples scare us because we see our selves in them. And that view of ourselves isn’t so becoming. And, the social media mob turns on the exposed member and cries foul and banishes them into oblivion with the resulting deletion of their profiles.

As the line between fades between our personal and professional, private and public, lives, our own internal playing field of honesty and integrity will level. THAT’s when we’ll see real change, constructive change, sustainable change. Until then we’ll keep hearing the sounds, in the form of these stories, of these obstructions crashing down around us.

Radio Show Guest Highlights: Steve Nipper, Partner with Dykas, Shave & Nipper, LLP

Steve Nipper, Partner with Dykas, Shaver and Nipper LLP, specialists in IP protection, joined us recently to talk about intellectual property and its changing world with digital media, social media, bloggers and small business.

Steve Nipper's practice covers a broad spectrum of intellectual property work, of patent and trademark work, including counseling clients on means of protection, preparation and filing of applications, prosecution, licensing and enforcement.. His background includes the mechanical arts, agriculture and the biological and chemical sciences. He is the author of The Invent Blog®, technology blog covering news, technology tips, and other information relevant to attorneys (particularly patent and trademark attorneys), independent inventors and small businesses.

You can listen in streaming on-demand at this link.

Can we start with a comparison of the IP culture in agriculture, biological and chemical sciences and mechanical arts and the IP culture with digital media. I have the impression digital and social media may be a more free wheeling cowboy culture.

One of the big differences is the age. A lot of the people that are in social media, that technology, tend to have more of a open source creative commons mentality and that has a pretty big impact how those arts are treated vs other arts. They tend to be more opposed to patent rights or trademark. There is constant head butting with reform and change with the new guys and technology and the older generation.

Social media allows anyone and everyone to be designers and publishers on the fly in real time. What is the perspective from an attorney of this new horde of designers and publishers? Is it chaos, disruption of the world or opportunity for business?

The whole free aspect of things works really well in most industries. Anti-virus software used to be all free, but things change and evolve. Things need to be monetized and not just throw an ad in the mix. They have to find some way to make money on social media.People are used to things being free.

You write about independent inventors and entrepreneurs in your blog – you saw early on the power of blogging. When did you begin blogging as a business partner with your law firm? And why?

My blog has an interesting history. Five to six years ago, there wasn’t a great list of links or websites for IP attorneys and I created my bookmarks and saved it as an html file. I put it on the server for everyone in the office to use and then added news items. I soon realized this was really a blog. I then created a blogging account. There weren’t many others at this time and I aggregated any information on patents and related info on the blog.

It sounds like you started your first blog as possibly a promotional resource for the public to promote your knowledge and connection in the IP field. Is that right?

That was the original intent.I was posting information hoping it would help others and eventually result in business. Blogging encourages you to read more, become more educated and also to grow your network and that network assists in potential business. It is a great tool to build your credibility, to get out there. It has changed over time from when I was the first or only blogging attorney and now there are 100 to 150 trademark and patent blogs out there.

Your audience or intent has changed as it relates to your blog from being a prospecting tool to one of networking with other attorneys and providing a resource.

That is true. Just because there are so many others out there, it really isn’t such a good tool for prospecting anymore.

Some people have written that blogging is dead and you shared a story about fewer attorney blogs are being started. Your blog’s not dead. What are these people missing?

I think there are just so many of them or people are sold on them because so many people are pushing the blog. Just because you start a blog does not mean customers will be knocking down your door. Any form of social media is a long term investment. It is not a magic mill for new business. You have to use it as a tool to build confidence, credibility and networking.

If a small business owner came to you and wanted to start a blog, what tips would you share with him/her?

I think it is useful but it depends on why they want to do it: self promotion and a sales tool – I would discourage them for doing that. It does make sense to generate content in terms of SEO rankings though. But to some extent, if you want people to engage with you, you must engage from the heart, talk about what you are passionate about. Use it as a tool to connect with people, not sell.

22:42

Where is the most common IP pitfalls for newbie social media czars?

It is harder for a SM czar to violate some of these patents. Copyright can be a little tougher to infringe. You need to understand how copyright works and what you can and cannot post. The EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has a great guide for bloggers.

What are some of the worst repercussions or costs for a SM Czar to fall into one of these holes of copyright infringement?

Trademark is the easiest one to infringe. People were registering user names that weren’t really available for use but they were not Trademarked. From the Trademark owner standpoint, they would like it. You would really like to be in possession of that user name.

When facebook came out you couldn't pick your user URL. Twitter wasn’t really thinking about Trademarked names when people register their accounts. Even in their Terms, they're software guys, they hadn't worked through the ramifications...

In the case of domain vs trademark, are there any rough guidelines for determining which trumps the other?

I would have to look at the rules, but the Trademark owner would have to show intent for use to approach the domain owner if the domain owner registered it first.

Where does the creative commons license fit in this picture?

In CC, you have a sharing mentality and people reusing the material. Most of us love open source and the ability to do those things. The problem arises when you have something unique and distinctive, and someone shares or posts your content. Your opinion changes. Weren't you mister open-source yesterday? It's an interesting transition to see. Some people will add to their blog: “This blog is protected by my publication policy.”

You spoke at a recent event hosted by AIGA and the title of your talk was Ten Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Copyrights and Trademarks. What are those ten things?

By the time I ended up preparing I had 10 things for trademarks and 10 things for copyrights and I thought I'd be the guy in the old Fed-Ex commercial. Some of the important things to remember are:

1.Incorporation with your state is not a Trademark use. It doesn't give you any incorporation protection. Talk to an attorney about what you need to do. If you have Trademark rights, you want to do the best to protect those rights on a Federal or State level. Sometimes the state registration is all you're going to need. If you're a restaurant in Iowa, you don't care about a restaurant in Maine with the same name. 

2. The use of the TM symbol vs the Circle R symbol. If you have a Trademark, use the TM. TM means you consider it to be your trademark. Let your competitors know this is your trademark. The Circle R means you have filed a federal registration and received a preliminary registration

3. The Trademark office presumes the first person to file an application is the first or senior user. If you have been using it for 20 yrs and someone files a TM application yesterday, the junior users application will be processed first. Can sometimes trump, or fence in, the original user.

4. Copyright is one of those things that changed in the 70’s, when a work is fixed in a tangible medium, copyright applies to it. If someone infringed that at that point, the copyright owner is entitled to their loss or the other person’s gain. If you file a Copyright before that first infringement takes place, then you have the ability to incur statutory penalties (attorney's fees, minimum amount of infringement per infringement, penalties). The game changes with respect to going after that person for infringement. You want to set up a policy on your works that are most important to you. Protect what is most valuable. So if someone does infringe it makes sense to go after them.

42:42

Which one is most frequently ignored?

That's kind of hard to say. The main thing was to help the designers spot the issue before it comes up.

People need to understand the basics of intellectual property and how to protect themselves, the better off they'll be.

What are three things a company can do to best protect their IP?

1.Learning. Issue-spotting. Understand what rights you have.  Pick up the right book. Know the difference between CT, TM and patents.
2. Know your rights and defend them. If you have Trademarks, get out there and protect them. You have to.
3. Copyrights: recognize where you have works that need to be protected. if you have core works, get those applications filed. And then you can get them, infringers, on the hook for statutory damages.

What do you see is the biggest change likely to take place in IP protection over the next year?

There is a case pending in the Supreme Court called the Bilsky case. Ray Bilsky- Bilsky was an interesting case that had to deal with software patents in general. But the reality was Bilsky dealt with a narrow subset of software patents. It will be interesting in what the Supreme Court does with the types of protection out there on terms of Federal and State levels.

It had to do with physical change and process.

Physical change is the first one.

The change has to be tied to a particular machine is the next one. And Bilsky's process was one you could do in your head.

It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court defines what is a patentable process business method. The magical words were missing. Overnight a lot of businesses and the IT realm re-examining their processes and policies to learn if they needed to re-file...and boom here we are a year later and the Supreme Court is stirring the pot again.

What about Cloud Computing and a patent application is effected by the use of a particular machine and all these applications hosted on shared servers?

Apparatus, claims, and process.

Apparatus is like the arm, shoulder on our body. Apparatus is so easy. When you move towards claiming a method, it all changes.

When you move towards claiming a method you move into the realm of 'ings. You're selecting a group of users and ing words that define that claim.

You don't have that hard hardware that ties a claim to a particular machine.

Part of that is how you look at the claims and how they are worded. When you have patents, you have apparatus claims and method claims.Bilsky is in that process. There isn’t necessarily the hard hardware that ties you into a machine. Today people are looking at ways to add something more tangible. In cloud computing context, you are storing that on a could, but you're storing it on a server which is the physical structure, this may act as the machine.

You work in a fascinating field; I would be willing to offer that your day is one of intellectual surprises on an hourly basis. Is that accurate?

If you were on Gilligan’s Island, the person you would want on there with you is the patent attorney that has been in practice for 50 years. He has dabbled in about every technology that's out there. It's great. We get to work with absolutely brilliant people who have worked in so many applications. We get a great feel for technology...We get to work with the brilliant and scary smart people and people that are scary as well. It is exciting. With IP law, you can work with people across the board. We are not limited geographically either. We are different. When we have a license to practice, we can practice anywhere in the US or internationally. You have no idea what the day is going to bring.

You can follow Steve Nipper online at these resources:

• Blog:http://www.inventblog.com
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/nipper
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nipper
• FaceBook: http://facebook.com/nipper/
• Work contact info:http://www.iMetNipper.com

Radio Show Guest: Drew McLellan, Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group

Drew McLellan is Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group where he writes excellent posts on...well, marketing and social media and word-of-mouth and branding. Drew has not only survived 20 years in the advertising and marketing arena, he’s thrived in it. After working for several other agencies, including Young and Rubicam’s CMF&Z, Drew created McLellan Marketing Group in 1995. Over these years he's attained a reputation, well-deserved, as a national branding expert, highly sought after speaker with about a zillion presentations at national conferences, key note addresses, training for his peers in the profession, college students and even his daughter’s tenth grade class. Drew's offered his expertise to clients like Nabisco, IAMS pet foods, Kraft Foods, Meredith Publishing, John Deere, Iowa Health System, Make-A-Wish, University of Central Florida, SkiDoo and a wide array of others.

Drew also organized 2 editions of The Age of Conversation, a collaborative book project with a few hundred bloggers and proceeds for its sale going to charity.

Drew and I will discuss what's changed over this past year in social media and marketing and the Dodger's chances for World Series glory.

The show is Friday, October 2, at 9:30 AM, Central.

Join us in either of these ways:

LIVE

1. Call-in. Dial 646-915-9212
2. Live streaming at this link

ARCHIVED

1. Streaming on-demand at this link