Deconstructing Social Media mentorship

In my last post, I mentioned the value of mentorship in the long term success of this now loose conflagration of  ”social media” and I felt it appropriate to elaborate a little more on this topic.   After some inspired conversation with some good folks this week, I wanted to crystallize my thoughts just a bit more.  (And, yes, as with all blog posts, these are my opinions, and you’re free to disagree. Cool? Cool.)

First off, it’s important to realize that social media, if it means anything at all, means people.    There’s segmentation among the ranks, but I think we can all agree that the best way to define social media is using tools/services/marketing/apps/fan pages/campaigns to reach people.  And that when we’ve actually reached them, we want to have as much conversation as time/resources/goals/objectives allow.

So, let’s continue down the thread of people.    There’s the “US” and the “THEM”.  Here’s two examples of US vs THEM, both of which, turns out, have very similar relationships.

US VS THEM

Now, when I use those labels, I understand the negative connotation there, as if the “THEM” are the enemy, and we are the visitors.  But, in my mind, the “US” vs “THEM” equates to two different struggles.

“US” - typically comfortable with technology, communication and solutions.  We see “social media” as a business.  A communication channel.  A way to build relationships with our company/brand/client.

“THEM” - an ordinary person, who has their own affinity groups, relationships and friends, but thinks social media as “something to do”.  Often, waiting to be given incentive or entre into a world they know little about.   Many are consumers, some want to be heard.   Many are technophobic, and afraid to try new things.  They got pulled into this because their friends pulled them in. At the end of the day, they all want to BELONG.

Our goal, as “US” really is to make people feel important.  Like they belong with our brand/client/product.  Like their feedback is useful and welcome.

How do you make people belong? You listen and understand and the other biggest words here … EMBRACE and CONNECT.   Understanding people for who they really are and accepting that.  We are their mentors.  We should never take this responsibility lightly.  Belonging is a trust equation.  And as we know, trust, when lost or violated is rarely regained.   Mentorship implies a level of caring.

US VS OURSELVES

Now, the “US” versus “THEM”, is the knowledge and experiences of how to do it.  Those who know are mentors to those who don’t.

I’ll go on the record by saying this - no one person knows everything in Social Media.  Or, in technology.  Or, in life, for that matter.   Experiences are instant, and daily.  Education is ongoing.  Innovation is ongoing.  We need to continue to band together.   We should welcome those who want to learn intothe fraternity, and continue to push each other to “do the right thing”.

I know, that and a token/swipecard/pass gets you on the bus/subway/ferry.

But, where I think this differs slightly from what has been widely reported, is that social media specialization is starting to really develop.  To me, the skills break out in to three major areas:

• Customer support/relationship/community management
• Marketing and advertising
• Development and implementation
• Public relations and dialog management

Many organizations have people who wear all of these Social Media hats.   But, as the expected soon in Social Media dollars continues, each one of these will require more custom skills, and individuals to man these jobs.   The “lumping of Social Media” into one bucket needs to end, and the fostering of these skills need to be separated.  Much like the early days of the World Wide Web, specialization allows everyone to win.    Most early websites were static HTML, handcoded to display information with limited standards.   And, that was pretty much about it.

Now you have web designers, front-end developers, back-end developers, user experience designers, analytics specialists, SEO, SEM, Internet Marketing people, AJAX, CSS specialists, etc, etc, etc.

And, in much like the current situation in Social Media, many of these are often performed by one person.   But that doesn’t make best practices any less important.

Here’s where mentors really matter, because defining these specialization needs leaders to light the way for those who are learning the space, but also to communicate this split of form and function.   Right now Social Media is seen as quick fix done by a few people that produces huge results (remember the early days of “we have to have a website”?).

But we can mentor those who don’t know the skills involved, who want to learn, just as much as we can those who don’t understand the impact.  These are the “THEM”.  We should want them to become the “US”.  We should want them to BELONG.  Because they will teach us as much about the craft as we will teach them someday.

How do you make people belong? You listen and understand and the other biggest words here … EMBRACE and CONNECT.   Understanding people for who they really are and accepting that.  (sound familiar?)

I think both sets of relationships are the definition of who we should be as “social media” people.   It’s my hope that you who read this feel the same way.

Social Media 2.0, 2.0.

After a while, it becomes painfully obvious to me that the first phase of “social media” is ending. File this post under the chorus of dozens of people who’ve said the same thing in the past year, and I know it becomes a very rich choir indeed.

But the truth is, “social media” is not “new”, no longer a “revolution”, or just a “fun thing to do”, or a buzzword for snake oil salesman. It’s a now way of life. And it’s the way the Internet was designed to be used by Tim Berners-Lee when he created WorldWideWeb, the DARPA teams who helped to develop early network standards that became the backbone of the modern web.

But, as “social media” works into “social media” 2.0 (Web 2.0, 2.0? I shudder at the metaness), some critical changes need to be made to buy longer lasting relevance to the topic, without feeding the buzz words.

Definition. To me, social media IS people. And giving people easy to use tools to share the content they like is entertainment. And giving people the voice to shout back when they’ve had an unpleasant brand experience is powerful. And giving people the ability to create their own content is landmark. But what happens when people don’t care anymore? Apathy beyond just early adopters puts serious holes in the growth model of this thing called “social media”. And for those who want to use the medium for these uses, we should no longer put SM on a pedestal. Let’s change the definition to “people using the Internet”.

Standards. Without standards, how can people share their knowledge, and learn skills? Wwhat was online advertising like before the invention of CPM (cost per thousand), CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per acquisition), the 468×60 (now more commonly the 728×90 or ROLLOVER ad)? How did people operate? Inefficiently. Social media needs to adopt the simplest solutions possible for business needs.

Performance. What happens when advertisers realized no one would click through on their banner ad that they’d paid a $65 CPM for? That industry collapsed, and was reinvented as “display advertising”. Google saw opportunity and reinvented the wheel, bought out competitors (including an About.com product I had worked on called Sprinks), and developed a self-service Cost Per Click engine that became AdWords, and is still responsible for the vast majority of their revenue. But, how can you measure performance if the vast majority of tools don’t have standards, are too costly, or are ill-suited to the task? The scalability on a campaign-by-campaign basis becomes difficult. And the race to develop one will give the “winner” a huge opportunity to own a niche space.

Analytics. When brands and campaigns want different things every time, the science of social media analytics fractures. How can you optimize against a campaign if there isn’t precedent? This is where the world of digital marketing and social media need to collide better, and putting social media out on it’s own makes it even more difficult. Do digital marketing stalwarts like “conversion rate” really have a place when you’re trying to increase fan count? Or do a new set of metrics need to be defined and standardized? Right now, it seems to be me that neither is happening in any realistic way, or is being well publicized. Without standard metrics, you end up with the same sort of digital doomsday described above. And the fallout triggers a bust-time, much like the dot-com bust of the early 00s.

Platforms. In all honestly, does everyone believe that in 10 years, we’ll still be seeing serious traffic on Facebook fan pages? No. This is the Internet — everything changes. The hardware, the platforms, the people who innovate. By then, it’ll just be one device, probably mobile, that allows you to filter as much or as little content/activity/events as we want.

“Filter failure.” Never have I heard so many people say “I need to unplug” as I have in the last 6 months. Simply put, with the flood of content now available, and the failure of filters to help us figure out what we want (see Clay Shirky’s piece on Filter Failure) leaves it up to us to decide too often what we want to care about. And more often than not, it’s easier to unplug completely than to subject ourselves to this “information overload”. People are turning off in bigger numbers to “always on”, and software solutions need to be increasing cognizant of that. “Spam the news feed” isn’t a growth strategy.

Mentorship. Right now, social media knowledge is held and used by a comparatively few people as compared with, say, people who can write HTML? Or people who can design a web page. But specialties only grow if people are able to learn them, and mentorship and dialog are the two quickest ways to share the love. This is a big reason why I teach “PR 2.0” at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies and helped to organize SocialChangeCamp at last fall- because I don’t feel like it’s fair when knowledge that can be shared isn’t. Some call it competitive advantage. I lean towards the egalitarian approach. When knowledge is shared, everyone wins, and profit comes from delivering products, not buzzwords.

I think these are a small selection of things I think we can to build the fraternity of “experts” in the narrow niche of Social Media. What are some of yours?

On Leno, and Conan and what really matters

Leno gets cancelled. Conan strikes back. Kimmel piles on Leno. Letterman piles on Leno, too. NBC flies in the face of logic by giving Leno another shot.

Enough? No wait. Here’s more rich white guys to pile on - TV legend Dick Ebersol does the “classy” thing, and throws Conan under the bus (he probably should really stick to money-losing adventures such as the Olympics, and ruining Sunday Night Football with Toyota ads no one cares about. But I digress).

And in the end, an entire generation who’s basically ignored Late Night TV (at least in real time) finds it a part of their lives again.

Fascinating.

But what’s this really about? A television show. Millions of dollars in revenue split between 4 or 5 rich white guys trying to make us laugh.

There’s no TV in Port-au-Prince tonight. Or water. Or medical supplies. People are dying by the hundreds in Haiti - where the earthquake there has reduced cities to mass chaos. Fifty thousand people or more gone. In seconds.

Craig Ferguson, the forgotten man in all of this, finally acknowledged what’s important.

Diversions are healthy. Our lives all have their own difficulties. But perspective is important. Never forget what really matters.

How to help in Haiti

One year later

One year ago today, you left us unexpectedly and somehow I put it together long enough to write this. I think today on the anniversary of your passing, I’m sort of caught with a bunch of conflicted emotions that I don’t know how to make sense out of. I can’t believe it’s been an entire year. I can’t believe all of the things that have happened that I want to tell you about. I can’t believe I didn’t buy you a birthday present for the first time this year, and that the trip to Home Depot to get your live Christmas tree won’t be happening. I can’t accept your playful guff about how your Yankees won the World Series in their new stadium.

When I went to go see you a few weeks ago, I knew that you were still with me. The place where you lie now is peaceful, and brings me peace and solace. When we talk, I know you’re listening. When you brought snow last night, just like you did on the day you left, I know it was because you wanted us to remember again. And when you brought us a beautiful winter day to remember you again, I know it’s your way of saying “I’m ok”. And it’s not like we’ve ever forgotten.

We’re all ok too. But we miss you. And next time I come to see you, I’ll have a Yankees World Series cap in tow. Just because.

And you’ll always be riding with us - I named my new car Deb, because it’s going to keep us safe, and take us to great places. Something I know you would have always wanted.

We always love you. We’ll always remember.

Thank you for all you’ve done for me.

It is…

Never forget. It is, all at once:

• a lost second, a minute, or an hour, but also timeless
• a short day, a long day, or something in between
• predictable and unexpected
• opportunity, success, failure and rebirth
• failure and success, at the same time
• a glance, a stare, a smile, a wink
• a scowl, a smirk, or indifference
• being familiar with who you are, who are you were, and who you think others want you to be
• happy, sad, content
• tragic, unfair and unrelenting pain
• frustration and stress
• hopeful, hopeless, and hoping
• never scared, never failing, but never there.
• gracious, grateful and grandiose
• everlasting, as long as you believe it is.

It is life. And it’s always what you make of it.