A New Level to FriendFeed: Confessions Room

Currently on the Confessions Room: 360 posts, 2815 comments today

I have been preaching about a new level of relationship building on social media. There needs to be a deeper connection between individuals on social platforms. Enter the Confessions Rooms.

Friendfeeder Shawn Farner started the confessions room as a way to share some deeper things in Friendfeed and post it anonymously. At first I was hesitant, shrugging the room off as just another way to spread myself farther across the wide expanse of FriendFeed. I decided to join the room after hearing a couple of excellent comments crossing the feeds.

I have not been disappointed. Other than the random meanderings of some complete idiots, the FriendFeed confessions room has been an excellent way to really get deeper with friends on an online platform.

Some Examples of the feeds in the Confessions Room:

“Honestly, I wouldn’t mind not having kids. It would really not be a big loss to me…”

“I was drunk the night I asked my wife to marry me. She was as well…and also on the other side of the country at the time. That was 10 years ago October ”

“I just had a terrible fight with my girlfriend. And now i feel like shit.”

“I want to make a big difference in this world, but my career goals and the fact that I’m lazy means I never will.”

The Confessions room is an excellent way to get to know your FriendFeeder’s in a more intimate way. Join the group. Start a conversation. If you want to do it anonymously you can sign in to the Confessions account and post.

I encourage everyone to check in and see what is going on. What a great way to make social media have deeper meaning!

Rebellion! Personal Branding and Social Media?

Social Marketing Journal had a post today called, Is Social Media Starting to Rebel. In general the post talks about the deletion of accounts at Facebook and the changing of names at Bebo.

Andy Beal was one of the members who brought the ‘profile changes’ on Bebo to the limelight.

He is quoted saying,
“Let this be a warning. Don’t ever rely 100% on your social networking profile for brand building. Bebo-and perhaps others-can and will change your profile without warning”

The Social Marketing Journal goes on to say that bloggers and social media users should be wary when it comes to using social media as a branding tool. At least not as your major tool.

I don’t completely agree with the stance of the Social Marketing Journal. Just because a website or social media community has the ability to change your information doesn’t mean you should be wary of using social media as one of the staples to your branding strategy.

The truth of the matter is this:

If you are spending time on your networks and investing yourself into the community will you not have a problem with the branding behind your profile. The people who have problems (when their profiles are changed) are the individuals who start profiles just to be ON the site and not INVESTING in the site.

Being on and Investing in a social media community are two completely different concepts. Anyone can sign up for a social platform but not everyone can spend the time and energy it takes to invest in the community of the site.

When you invest in the community you shouldn’t have a problem with the changing of a profile or your brand identity.

This does not go to say that you shouldn’t worry about your profiles online. Whether or not you should be wary of social media for personal branding is up for question.

My Social Media Mission 2008: Collecting Genuine Relationships

There has been a small buzz going around in the social media community pertaining to the quality of relationships being built online. What is the difference between on online friendship compared to an off line friendship? Can you build genuine relationships online?

I recently found a video from Gary Vaynerchuk via the ProBlogger post called, How To Get Noticed [The Art of Positioning]. In the video Gary talks about the importance of connecting to people and building relationships rather than building a bank account or a subscription list. As always, Gary never ceases to inspire. The video:

I have always been under the assumption that you can only build true, strong relationships if you combine online and off line activity.

So… here is what is going to happen. Social Media Mission 2008-2009. Maybe this has already been done, maybe it hasn’t. I am going to make it a point to meet with a social media contact, in person, once a week until the end of the year (week long Holidays may be out…we will see). I will be posting about the meeting and conversation either here or at another blog.

I am craving the leap to connecting my online with the off line. I figure this is going to be the best way to do. It starts next week. Got any ideas let me know! First one, Chris Hadley who I met on Seesmic.

When Does Subscription Turn into a Relationship?

Recently this has been an ongoing thought in my head:

Do online relationships have the same depth as relationships off line? Can they obtain the same meaningful purpose as your friends you see in day-to-day life?

I have had some interesting conversations recently with people on Seesmic and Friendfeed about the friendship dynamics between online and off line relationships. I have only been debating this because of the increased time I have been spending on social media platforms over the past few weeks. I have had the opportunity to ‘meet’ some interesting and extremely intellectual people through feeds at Friendfeed.

The problem that exists, for me, is the overwhelming urge to know more. The desire to get deeper into a persons psyche and actually understand where they are coming from and where they have been. I have had fun debating and sharing in conversations over the communications platforms and yet I am left with this undeniable longing for something more.

The sharing of information and idea generation has always been a staple in the increased support of social media. I started using social media as a way to gain more insight into technology, entrepreneurship, and the overall aspect of viral marketing. What I have found is (while all the information is great) there is a point where a person stops and wants something more from a relationship or an acquaintance.

I have had extreme success in meeting people in my area off line whom I had the first interaction online. The relationship factor grows exponentially when you are sharing both online and off line forms of communication. I am relating more to the people I have met online who do not live in my vicinity.

I know research and data is a prerequisite to have in blog posts pertaining to an opinion. In order to support an idea it is always better to have others opinions to strengthen your own. Unfortunately, I am running off the cuff here and spouting words over a virtual page.

When is the right time to want more from an online relationship? Is there a need for it? I love the information super highway sometimes more than the road outside of my house and that is what bothers me the most.

How do you strengthen online relationships to the point where you can say they are a friend? Where does a follow or a subscription turn into a relationship?

Are we meant to delve deeper? We should be.

Social Media: Ideal for Branding and Not Sales?

An interesting post flowed through my Google Alerts email this morning from Digital Response Media. The post was entitled: Social media ‘ideal for branding.’ The point of the post was to explain how the digital marketing manager of British Airways, Chris Davies, uses social media to raise the profile of his brand online. Basically, he finds extreme value in user generated content on the web.

There was an interesting quote in the piece from Mr. Davies:

Most UGC site users are wary of big brands coming into what they conside to be ‘their space’…. But if you are giving them something that helps then, some sort of social currency, then they’ll likely thank you for it.”

I found it interesting that Mr. Davies thought of a social media strategy as a COMPANY enterting into a space of individuals. I find that branding/communication strategies in a social media environment obtain more useful information and build BETTER brand value when personality is added to the mix. A good example of this would be Comcast. Whether or not you agree that Comcast is an excellent services (sometimes they are far from it) they have done a great job at using twitter for customer service. You can connect to Comcast on twitter @comcastcares.

Comcast did it right. They entered a space where individuals were sharing information and they added content themselves. When I ‘tweet’ @comcastcares I do not think of it as messaging a company but messaging an individual.

A brand can no longer enter a space as a ‘sponsor’ throwing up their adds all over the page in an attempt to gain recognition. We can see this through Myspace and Facebook. Does it work? You might get some click throughs. You might even sell something!

When it comes down to it you are not really building a lasting brand image.

You are building a weak wall that will crumble and fall.

The post ended with a quote stating that 27 percent of companies use social media as part of their communications strategy. I find that hard to believe.

The Paradigm Shift of Social Media and Time Management

It has been a pretty busy week around here at Brandswag. Projects have been piling up and there never seems to be enough time… for anything. The past 48 hours have been pretty efficient in terms of business and extremely inefficient in the realm of Social Media. I have been writing posts every day for the better part of a month and yesterday was the first time I have missed in awhile. Truthfully it upsets me.

I thought about continuing the posts on Being Productive in Social Media but I ran across Andy DeSoto’s new post entitled, Observations on Social Media Compression. I found myself reading exactly what I was going to write today! Amazing how these things happen.

Andy has been extremely busy with starting up classes in his fourth year of school and hasn’t had the time to really invest in Social Media.

From Andy:

Social media becomes something to be attended to when all other responsibilities are fulfilled, kind of like an ever-present background process.

When time is tight, not only do we rely on applications and services to filter for us, but we also engage in a more implicit, natural filtering of our own: discovering what does, and what doesn’t, work for us when free time becomes considerably scarcer.

When I am talking to small business owners about social media and being productive in online communities there is always the issue of time. “I don’t have time to manage social communities.” “I don’t have the time to write three to four blog posts a week.” “I have clients that demand my attention. I feel like I will be left out in the cold if i ignore a network for a couple of days.”

The last statement is where the curse of knowledge will get the best of us. In everyday life there seems to be an underlying belief that if you do not keep up, you will be left behind. If you do not attend a social networking function regularly the members will forget all about you and your business. In some cases this is true but, in my opinion, it is the exact opposite in the social media world.

A paradigm shift needs to occur in terms of time management and social media. Frequency of posts and over-commitment to social media communities does not necessarily mean you will be noticed. There isn’t a measurable ROI when it comes to time and social media.

The beautiful thing about social media is that you can leave and come back, save and rewrite. In a world in which content changes every second of the day it is not hard to re-join the conversation.

Don’t get discouraged if you do not have time to update a network for a day, two days, or even a week! I have to keep telling myself this as days become busier and the work gets deeper. If you are committed to staying in the conversation the members of your group, your social posse, will understand. They will remember. They will contribute and grow with you.

As Andy has shown, most of us are busy. Most of us have the daily routines which fall precedent over our social media community involvement.

Be efficient with your time. Find the best way that works for you and if you need help….ask. You have a community of people spread all over the world who would love to help YOU in this ever-changing process.

Why am I Neglecting FriendFeed? The Rebirth.

Recently I wrote about my neglect of FriendFeed. I had been having issues with using the platform and spending time on the site. When I first joined I hit a firestorm of posts and comments only to explode into a sense of disenfranchisement.

After I wrote the post, I surprisingly garnered some attention from FriendFeed followers, as well as, some outside hosts. I began to realize that FriendFeed wasn’t just another social network. It wasn’t just another LinkedIn, Facebook, or Myspace. I decided to give the site another try and actually INVEST in the conversation and content in the feed.

Something happened. I would imagine it was a sense of realization, an epiphany of sorts. FriendFeed has a lot of power when it comes to the idea of collaboration. There is not a platform on the web that gives the simple and yet undeniable sophisticated arena for community thought generation. I started learning things and “meeting” people that were changing my perspective on everything from politics to art, technology to web application.

And so it went. I started spending more and more time on FriendFeed. Subscribing to individuals that have view points, opinions, and ideas similar to mine. And then it happened…

The Rebirth.

The new design for FriendFeed was launched and I had a reinvigorated interest in a platform I was already becoming obsessed with. I am not going to attempt to breakdown the new FriendFeed design. I will leave that up to FriendFeedBlog, Read/Write/Web, and AJ Batac.

Some of you reading this post have not ventured into the FriendFeed waters. To that I say: Try it.

Here are a few people you should subscribe to when joining the “feed.”

Louis Gray, Zee, Mona, Rahsheen, Hutch Carpenter, Shey, Justin Korn, Mike Fruchter, Mark Trapp, Lindsey Smith, and Alex Scoble.

There are plenty of others that bring something new to the table every minute of every hour. The list above is only a representation of the people I have spent the most time with in communication. They represent a good database of other people with the same ideas and preferences.

Jump in the water! Dive over the edge! Get inaundated with an amount of information you could never possibly comprehend. Most of all, communicate. Join the conversation and thrive.

For more tips on FriendFeed visit Louis Gray’s blog.

Through the Doors and Beyond the Lobby…Welcome to the New Company

Recently, Vincent Hunt of SurfaceBurn wrote an absolutely brilliant post explaining Social Media entitled There is Nobody in the Lobby…Intro to Social Media. When I say brilliant, I mean absolutely, positively without a doubt brilliant. He explains social media with a visionary, and yet simple, scenario of an office building.

From his post:
An orchestration of web services all tied together, powered by the individuals who have something authentic to say, and are not afraid to say it. Each door on this corridor represented a service. MySpace was room 101 and Facebook was room 102, Twitter was full of clamor, it was room 105, and with THIS revelation I understood even the more, that IF we do not get off the couch – and start walking into these rooms and saying something, we will be left in the lobby.

I found myself envisioning the office building. This massive steel structure filled to the top with people. People of all ages, race, personalities, opinions, and ideas running from room to room in an exuberant, mind-altering speed… Conversations bouncing from wall to wall… Ideas forming in one room, only to disappear and explode in another.

I wanted to expound upon his idea of the office building analogy. I wanted to put more thought into the idea of Social Media being an endless steel structure jutting high into the sky, the steel and glass glistening in the sun before pushing into the clouds above.

Welcome to Social Media Corp. The largest non-Fortune 500, non-commercial, non-capitalistic, and utterly EXPLOSIVE company on the planet.

You can leave your money outside because ideas, content, community, and collaboration are the currency. It is the only company in the world where you are CEO and deep-pocket commercialism is clamoring to get inside. Where they find themselves handing each other business cards in the lobby and trying daily to join in the hallways.

You will find that every room and every floor is different and yet oddly connected.

We are all employees of this new company. We choose to spend time investing in the rooms we deem fit. There is no upper-management or lunch break. There is no 401K or vacation time. There is only the content and the community behind it.

And the community is building… stretching…expanding. There are daily breakthroughs in architecture to build it higher, stronger, and wider.

We are the employees, the architects, the CEOs, and the investors. We are the company.

I cannot do Vincent’s post justice. He wrote with a touch of clarity that I could only hope to mimic. Read it. Write about it. Build on it.

This is where we become explosive…through the doors and beyond the lobby.

The Beauty of Viral and FriendFeed

I am a frequent follower of Mike Fruchter’s Shares on Google Reader via his FriendFeed stream. I am inaudated hourly with Mike’s recent blog favorites. He shared a blog post today called: There is a Down Side To Viral Marketing from the people at the Social Marketing Journal. The central concept of the post: you can’t control viral marketing. If you try to control it you fail. If you ignore it, you fail.

The Three Down Sides of Viral Marketing according to the Social Marketing Journal:

1. Viral Marketing is Hit and Miss

2. Viral Marketing Has No Control Measure

3. Viral Marketing Can Go Negative

After reading the post, I found myself thinking about the concept of viral marketing and conversations on FriendFeed. Usually the conversation wildfire is centered around politics (most recently a convo started by Alex Scoble around 9/11.. I think we are approaching 60 some comments?). There is a massive viral opportunity on FriendFeed for the Tech community to embrace. The best example I have of a viral campaign in the works is my post recently on FriendFeed regarding the new social media site, Yokway.

I had received an email from Stephan Osmont at Yokway inviting me to try out the service. I had no idea who he was or how he had my email. I decided to post to FriendFeed to ask if anyone had heard of Yokway. Here is what happened.

Louis Gray picked up the conversation (after making fun of me, mind you) and eventually Stephan from Yokway had joined the conversation. A simple question had turned into a firestorm of debate over social media services. With Stephan defending the Yokway…. way.

What would have happened if Stephan had not joined the conversation? I probably would have still checked out the site (thanks to Louis) but the rest of the group involved in the conversation would have been left with questions.

Whether we are talking about FriendFeed, Twitter, Rejaw, Strands, Plaxo, LinkedIn, or Facebook, (not to mention the 30000 other networks in existance) it is important to remember to be IN the conversation. If your demographic frequents any social network GET INVOLVED. This might mean hiring a part time employee or spending some extra time yourself. SUCK IT UP. This is not something to be ignored and as we approach the next couple of years, it will become an even stronger force.

Honestly, you don’t have to suck it up. Maybe I was a little harsh? You could keep on ignoring the conversations and drive your brand into the ground. Your choice.

I’ll buy you a shovel but don’t expect me to help you dig.

Taking Advantage of Twitter and NOT Getting Arrested

Hat tip to Shel Israel on his post, 7 New Tips for New Twitter Users

Social Media can be cumbersome for some to understand. Most of the questions center around large sites like Facebook, Myspace, or LinkedIn (especially in my small business environment). Recently, there has been an increase in questions regarding Twitter. Most of them center around, “What the hell is the purpose of Twitter?” or “I just don’t understand why I would want to know what you are thinking 24 hours a day.” OR “Why waste my time? Does it help my business?”

It took me awhile to finally understand the importance of Twitter. Other than the daily updates from friends and business acquaintances, I started seeing importance in community development. After using the tool over a couple of months I started forming relationships with the people I was following. I would be driving down the road and get an update on where someone was nearby. I’d stop. Talk. Relationship strengthened.

For those of you wanting to get into the Twitterific world, or what Shel refers to as Twitterville, here are a few steps you can take to get acquainted!

My opinion of Shel’s Most Important Twitter Guidelines:

3. Celebrities don’t count. You can always start by getting followed by a few celebrity Tweeters like Scoble, Calacanis and Loic. But they give you no credibility at all because they simply follow everyone. Their purpose is to be a new media star and it works well for them.

5.Have favorites. When you are new to Twitterville, you may not even notice that little star icon to the right of each tweet. You can use it to make that post a “favorite.” ….. It shows your sense of humor and your passion points.

6. Take your time. Twitterville works like any other neighborhood. People start by chatting about weather, lunch–silly little things. Sometimes the conversation goes nowhere, tapering off into cyberspace. Other times, the conversation deepens. It evolves into a real friendship or a business opportunity.

My 3 Tips of Using Twitter

1. Mix Personal and Business: The Social Media world is huge on the concept of being authentic on the Internet, whether it is blogging or having a profile in a social media community. Twitter is a form of micro-blogging and it deserves the same respect. When I decide to follow you or vice-versa I expect meaningful content. I don’t need to read a feed about your latest sales pitch. If I wanted sold I would walk into a Cutco Knife Convention. People want some authentic. They want to feel the personal side and the professional side. “Oh he has a business and a dog! That’s nice.”

2. Tweet and Meet. I take advantage of using twitter as a social stream and a information stream. I have met a couple of people off of twitter. I met BradJWard yesterday at Paradise Cafe! When you combing the online and off-line you gain an even HIGHER rate of relationship growth. I had never met Brad but felt like I knew him.

3. Relationship Building Leads to Business: In every aspect of business networking, a strong relationship usually leads to referrals and project collaboration. Why not use Twitter as a one of the relationship building tools? Start to follow your friends and you will run into like minded people.

Shel is a freaking genius, read the rest of his post for the rest of the 7 tips.