We, as members of Generations X, Y and the Millenials, wish to communicate the following message to the Babyboomers running this planet.

We begin with respectful gratitude to you, our parents and grandparents, for conceiving and birthing the bodies and world we thrive and live within. We respectfully honor all of the incredible advances in every discipline that have led to better lives for every one of us on this planet. We attribute our own creativity, knowledge and burgeoning wisdom to the truly incredible education system built and paid for by you, our predecessors. We honor the way you have defended us against violence and opened new possibilities for peace heretofore unrealized.

At the same time, we announce to you our wholesale rejection of your conflicts, prejudices and entrenched interests. Our current experience of the negative results to our eco-system, communities and economics from these shadow aspects of your generation’s psyche require us for the sake of our children and your grandchildren to now step forward and alter certain paths elected by you and The Traditionalists since the major world wars in the early 20th century.

Now that a majority of you are reaching retirement age and what the Hindu system calls “the forest-dweller stage”, we as The Central Householders on this planet require a set of fresh perspectives in the major disciplines and verticals, such as politics, economics and environmental policy, so that our planet, communities, food sources and children are protected.

Due to the severity of events in several significant theaters of action, particularily finance, political-process and ecological preservation, we respectfully ask that you join us to hear some fabulous ideas from the forward thinking leaders of our generation. We want you there because you gave us the foundation for this thought and invention to come about. We want to show you, Mom and Pop, Grandpa and Grandma, Uncle and Aunt, Mentor and Teacher, what we have come up with as part of our assignment to make a better world. We hope you’ll come and we think you’ll like what we have in mind.

Our goal is a healthier, wiser and more effective human family, well-equipped to heal, guide and protect our children and your grandchildren into a fabulous and exciting future that will contain astounding technologies, well-woven/integrated communities and children motivated to live and thrive. As we see it, this is truly possible and we have seen a glimpse of it through the rapidly expanding communities of thought, invention and innovation in our online and offline worlds. These worlds are increasingly being woven together globally through the social fabric of the internet, through technologies in multiple verticals and through our innate drive to survive as humans.

We characterize this drive to survive in our generation primarily through meaning. The social fabric of the internet, our primary vehicle for communication, is driven by a search for meaning. In fact, studies show that The Millennials, the latest generation on this planet to hold credit cards and turn in resumes, are characterized as the generation in search of Meaning. These torch-bearers of humanity want work, communities and activities that amount to something more than accumulation of wealth and property. Their definition of wealth is spiritual, emotional and communal.

Understand that we have no choice at this time but to ask you to step down from those aspects of your leadership that involve the wholesale raping of this planet and one another FOR THE EXPRESS INTEREST OF OUR MUTUALLY SHARED CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN. Understand also, that for those of you who cannot or choose not to hear us due to greed, entrenched interests and general allegience to an out-dated paradigm of consumeristic accumulation, we may need to remove you by force. We honor your courage and vigor in building the worlds you have built…these edifices are truly monumental. But now, in this time, we require that you re-orient toward the survival of the planet, its species and the beautifully woven cultures of the world.

With Kind Regards and Good Intentions,

GenX, GenY and The Millenials

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Excited to be included in JWT’s Social Media Checklist 2010 at JWT Intelligence.

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The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ~ RACHEL NAOMI REMEN

Listening is one of the most attractive traits in a fellow human being. Interest is sexy, and shows that you want to see into the other person. Learning another’s likes, favorites and passions transforms the relationship into one of transparency and intimacy. A classic rephrasing of intimacy is In-To-Me-See.

In the world of social media marketing, listening is a critical element to the humanization of a brand, the discovery of key influencers, communities and conversations where your product or service has an audience. There are loads of tools for listening, all with different slants on the art and science of gathering intelligence. But a critical aspect of this equation is the EQ (emotional intelligence) of the analyst looking at the data (even if the tool has already performed some intuitive filtering).

To use a dating metaphor: when your date really listens to you, he/she will be tying his/her chosen topics into what you are saying, weaving the two hearts at the table, on the blanket, or on the beach together. This weaving of hearts is just as important in social media marketing, where community managers and small business owners have the mandate to engage in one-one dialogues with customers or segmented niches. Such dialogues are not simply about opening up and letting things go on a natural course. As Charlene Li says in her latest book, Open Leadership, “Being open requires more —not less—rigor and effort than being in control.” The best relationships are ACTIVE!

Listening IS Invitation

Active listening has long been a practice amongst psychologists and psychotherapists, and is no less important in the realm of social networking. To actively listen one might consider the following important actions (adapted from the Council Circle tradition of co-listening):

1) Maintain eye contact with the person speaking (In cyber-space, this means using the filters in the listening tools in an intuitive manner so as to properly segment your audience based on keywords, keyphrases AND other verticals that are attractive to that niche. sCRM is all about this CONNECTION of information from databases to extract precise lists of keywords relevant AND resonant to your audience).

2) Be relaxed but present. (Check out Jet Blue’s twitter account. Their staff are interacting with customers in an uplifting, humorous manner).

3) Be still.

4) Listen from the heart. (The heart is THE most important muscle in social media marketing!)

5) Allow the story to unfold. (The Nestle Facebook fiasco is a classic example of a Community Manager rushing in prior to thinking the consequences through).

6) Listen carefully and the person speaking will always tell you what they need.

7) It’s not your job to “fix” the person who’s working.

Common mistakes to avoid:

DON’T give advice (unless asked for). (In social networking, Community Managers/Business owners have the mandate to be problem solvers. To truly solve a problem one must listen first. The key distinction between an Advice-Giver and a Problem-Solver is ACTION!)
DON’T “swap stories” to reassure the person who is speaking
DON’T interpret the meaning of his feelings
DON’T interrupt discharge of emotion (laughter, tears, etc.)
DON’T talk very much
DON’T ask questions for your own information
ONLY ask questions to lead the person deeper into feelings & his own re/solutions.

The most common mistake: Trying to show the person speaking what a good, understanding, perceptive, kind, helpful … person, counselor, leader … you are.

Listen, listen, listen! (That’s really what we all need!)

To return to the weaving metaphor, when one weaves strands of past subjects into the current conversation, a common point of reference is established. The social fabric of the internet is one of the most dynamic environments humanity has EVER engaged in…having the tools to listen is critical (science), knowing how to listen is an art that takes practice or comes naturally. Good community managers are EXCELLENT listeners who hear the heart of their audience and give the customer what he/she wants. And that is what makes GREAT customer-centric business, the current HOT method of marketing.

David Deida, the relationship author, writes, “Who we trust in a business situation is based on how open we are. Openness is bodily openness, muscular relaxation, heart openness as opposed to hiding behind some emotional wall, and spiritual openness, which is actually feeling so fully into the moment that there’s no separation between you and the entire moment.” Openess, feeling and intuition are INHERENT traits of the successful social media marketer/networker.

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Who Owns Social, Anyway?
Beats Me, but There Are a Ton of Things to
Figure Out Before We Settle on the Answer

By Pete Blackshaw

So who the heck owns social?
That’s a tricky question, not only because every business stakeholder — marketing, PR, IT, research, investor relations, media, consumer relations — seems to have a piece of social baked into their new DNA and delivery road map, but also because its definition and scope keep getting pulled in new, arguably more complicated, directions.

Indeed, take a gander at all the new terms being used to describe our new world order — social CRM, social commerce, earned media, CRM 2.0, enterprise social — and you’ll quickly find the social juggernaut becoming synonymous with that broader umbrella term known as “digital.”

Indeed, I just dug up some notes from a consulting initiative I led at Nielsen for a major marketer. Digital, I noted, “is a new enabling framework for business and marketing grounded in four related characteristics: on-demand, interactive, sensing and connected.”

Still, legitimate schizophrenia reigns around the ownership question. After all, as marketers we want leadership roles clearly defined (usually in our favor). We’re restlessly — and rhetorically — impatient with silos and the “lack of organizational integration” — even though our “what’s next” appetite inevitably feeds the frenetic front line of fragmentation.

The good news is that social media appears to be softening organizational silos, ostensibly laying a runway for that coveted yet elusive marketing goal of “integration.”

In my pre-call for the Ad Age Digital Conference panel I’m moderating — featuring NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, Dell CMO Erin Nelson and Combe VP-Director of Interactive Communications Tom Cunniff — the vexing “integration” came up repeatedly. Much of this owes the furious pace of “social innovation,” which Schiller reminded us is still in early innings. Put another way, we might need to turn over countless new rocks before we find our stride.

Nelson, who leads an impressive medley of activity from community platforms to service innovation, suggested that Dell’s biggest need is “where to place bets.” Digital and social media, she said, offers countless possibilities, but in the end you have to make choices. And boy, is she right. Combe’s Cunniff concurrently hit the integration need hard but also suggested new centers of gravity would emerge in our socially enabled world, like consumer relations.

Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with “integration,” calcified by 15 years of marketing experience, from “best practice”-heavy P&G to “start with a clean slate” web startups. Two conflicting rules reign supreme in my head: One, that which forces integration and coordination, or prematurely synthesizes, inevitably slows things down. Two, that which liberates, loosens, decentralizes and draws inspiration from external sources, or walks off the beaten path, speeds things up.

Alas, such is the dualism of social media. We want order, but we can’t stand order. Jefferson-Hamilton reincarnated.

I mean, it’s not that corporate stakeholder groups don’t trust one another. It’s just that the group typically holding the social flag most firmly thinks the other groups are too slow, have no business running the social-media show, and are putting the enterprise on the precipice of disaster through naïve embrace of social silliness like transparency and “be yourself” authenticity.

Meanwhile, agencies and supplier networks are all storming the “social media” center: PR firms see social as an extension of their birthright in influencer marketing; ad agencies see it as a new frontier of high-impact ad impressions (for example, earned media); the growing crop of word-of-mouth agencies and buzz-monitoring firms see this as birthright. It’s almost as though we have the “internal” version of Bob Garfield’s “Chaos Scenario.”

Two recent developments really up the ante for both the ownership and integration questions: social HR and social CRM. For all our hype about the wonders of managing influencers and blogger outreach, the folks scoring the biggest wins in social outreach are the HR teams leading recruiting. Indeed, for those struggling with “social ROI” look no further than the fertile fields of open-source, “all content’s a resume” web.

Then again, the HR dynamic can also muddle the marketing track, especially when the flow of a Facebook fan page quickly shifts gears from an on-equity brand message to a college recruiting pitch, or vice-versa.

The rise of “social CRM” further complicates the ownership question. Perhaps the IT or tech experts do have a legitimate claim to a space that’s increasingly ornamented with enterprise software, cloud computing, scary-sophisticated databases, and scary-high consumer expectations (mostly set by the “marketing guy” freelancing “social engagement”) regarding customer service. Social CRM is also introducing aspects of “business-process innovation” (cost-efficient crowd-sourcing, internal collaboration, integrated listening platform, and the like) that halos well above the marketing space.

So what’s a CMO to do amid all this? We’ll set some of these questions in tomorrow’s panel, but in the meantime, don’t naively assume you’ll solve the social-media “ownership” and digital “integration” questions overnight. Your best bet right now is to manage the flow, sandbag unruly currents here and there, and do everything you can to “path the passion.”

Moreover, we all need to become better internal curators and “community managers.” Not unlike a devoted greenie, we need to work really hard to manage our social “ecosystem.” This is probably less about command-and-control than in establishing thoughtful guide rails, tempered by experience, good judgment, and even the lessons of a few legal hard knocks.

We can also get a few things going that will cultivate more meaningful ownership or cooperation in the enterprise. In my experience, the leader who gets the best (and most inclusive) listening dashboard or radar in place quickly accrues the most organizational legitimacy. Listening pipes, after all, feed many mouths and can drive unity around a common purpose. (I see this all the time — especially in crisis situations, where everyone has a stake in the outcome.)

Related, credible ownership also accrues to those who start making sense of the madness through smarter metrics. I’m particularly fond of the “paid/earned” model (even in my dialogue with in Nielsen) because it lowers access barriers to social media and speaks a language others in the organization can easily understand versus “shiny new object” gobbledygook.

Lastly, CMOs can make a world of difference rethinking incentive models. We have silos because we’re all fighting for a limited budget, often at cross purposes.

So who owns social media? Beats me, but there are a ton of things we can figure out before we settle on the “silver bullet” answer.

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by LeeOdden

The benefit from a firm grasp of social media for companies is impossible to ignore. Whether you work in marketing, advertising, public relations or interactive, there are distinct competitive advantages for both individuals and businesses from a better understanding of the social web.

This post provides specific advice from in-house social media marketers including: Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Intel, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil and a mix of SMM consultants/agencies: Altimeter Group, Crayon, Ogilvy 360, Future Works, Doe Anderson, New Marketing Labs and others. Advice includes justifying investment in social media, strategy, how to decide on tactics and measuring success. (read more)

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by Dave Jackson

Last week, social shopping site ThisNext announced plans to buy smaller rival StyleHive; that announcement came after news from Time Inc. last month that it would buy social recommendation engine StyleFeeder as a way to incorporate ecommerce into its online fashion magazine properties.

This recent rush of consolidation points to a trend that’s evident no matter where you look: Consumers have flocked to social networks as an easier way of communicating with friends and peers, getting information, building relationships and participating in community. Activities that used to take place in the physical world — in shopping malls, over the phone, at restaurants and at neighborhood events — have rapidly moved to places like Facebook, Twitter and countless other third-party networks like StyleHive, ThisNext and StyleFeeder.

Most brand marketers have realized this shift and have stepped into these new “common spaces” of the 21st century. They’ve created fan pages on Facebook, accounts on Twitter and channels on YouTube, and have replicated offline marketing tactics, like advertising, coupons and promotions to engage online fans and gain new customers.

With the exception of a few innovative brands like Mattel and Charlotte Russe, however, the majority of online businesses have yet to take the next logical step and allow this social interaction to take place at their own online stores. To continue the common-spaces analogy, imagine if a downtown store only let one customer come into the shop at a time, while the customer’s friends waited on the street. The shopper could go outside every few minutes to get opinions on the outfit or finish a conversation, but had to return to the store alone to browse or make a purchase. (read more)

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Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines rich with customer engagement and insight that companies wouldn’t likely have otherwise. Companies like PepsiCo are going to extensive lengths to foster this type of collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big.

The company’s Mountain Dew division is several stages into its DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavor with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process, and PepsiCo also just launched the Pepsi Refresh Project on January 13th. Rather than spending money on Super Bowl television ads this year, the company is spending $20 million on a social media campaign. read more here

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7 Takeaways From #BDI: Social Media As a Marketing, Branding & Service Platform

by Sarah Caminker

This week, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar in New York City on Social Integration: Harmonizing Social Channels into the Marketing, Communications & Service Platform. The Business Development Institute put on this fantastic event that included case studies and roundtables for social media marketing, PR and communication professionals. Top-notch speakers included:

Michael Mendenhall: CMO, HP
Joshua Karpf: Digital Communication Manager, PepsiCo
David Patton: VP & EIC, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
Brian Kenny: CMO & CCO, Harvard Business School
Lynn Mann: Director of External Communications, Michelin
Richard Pesce: Social Media & Digital Communications, Sprint
Michael DiLorenzo: Director of Corporate Communications, National Hockey League

They all stressed the importance of not seeing social media as a separate entity, rather viewing it as an integrated part of your marketing, branding and customer service. The list below details the top 7 takeaways that were discussed during the seminar.

*Note #BDI stands for Business Development Institute and is the event’s hashtag on Twitter that you can search for real-time insight from attendees.

1. Technology is NOT Social. People Are!
Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other social media sites are just tools. They are only *SOCIAL* if you engage and interact with people on them. Technology is great, but it is about the relationships. Note: these tools are intended for two-way communication and not as a megaphone for your next sales pitch.

2. Feeding the Beast: An Insatiable Appetite for Content
The beauty of the social mediasphere is that anyone can publish, edit or distribute content. We are going through a renaissance of how consumption of information and content is being managed and distributed. Social media has enabled a constant mobility meaning that people expect to receive information 24/7. There is a never-ending hunger for quality content, hence the expression “feeding the beast.”

3. The Era of the Advocate
Mass communication is dead, rather it’s about building personal connections with consumers. The more you serve and support your customers, the more likely they are to recommend your brand to their network (both offline and online). It’s more credible to have an outsider toot your own horn than to have the CMO do it. Remember to thank your “advocates” and make sure they know you appreciate them taking the time to support you and your brand.

4. Digital Newsrooms Are No Longer a Resource For Just the Media
We’re all content creators, and it’s unrealistic to assume that journalists are the only ones seeing your content. Company and industry news needs to be integrated, aggregated and curated for a broader audience. Press releases are just the tip of the iceberg. Begin incorporating multimedia like podcasts and videos and re-purpose content (in the form of white papers, E-books, articles) to tell your story.

5. Transparency and Authenticity is the Only Way to Go
Whether you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur or marketing professional you must communicate who you are, what you do and who you serve right off the bat. It’s also critical that you are upfront and transparent about the content and advice you are giving. If not, people will see right through you, run screaming in the other direction and land on your competitor’s virtual doorstep.

6. Social Media as a Listening Tool to Feed Innovation
Take a step back and listen. Whether that’s monitoring a dialogue on Twitter, following a blogger in your industry to see what conversation they’re sparking or hosting a focus group, you never know when you might get the next big break from just LISTENING to your fans/customers. The #NHLTweetUp is a perfect example. Guess how they got that idea??? By listening to their followers on Twitter! Bottom Line…. Stop, Look and Listen. Then Respond.

7. Crossover From Online to Face-to-Face
Twitter and Facebook are excellent relationship building tools, but there’s something to say about in-person communication that makes that connection even stronger. Take the time to go to industry events, conferences and networking groups to put a face to the avatar. On the business end of the stick, host tweet-ups in different cities, so your can connect with your followers.

I’m interested to hear your feedback and any trends/topics you think could be added to this list. …read more

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10 Must Read Social Media e-books. Check them out here.

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You have at least two tribes you can be a leader to RIGHT NOW: the tribe associated with your pain and the tribe associated with your joy. Both need you and social media IS one of the most powerful mediums to lead through. This is THE safest, fastest, most rewarding methods to find your inner leader: 30 second videos on a YouTube channel, an eBook of your thoughts, a blog re-purposing the thoughts in the eBook, tweets that condense these thoughts, an landing page announcing your vision/ideas, an aStore through Amazon where you make commissions on products aligned with your tribe, a NING social network where you invite your tribe to interact, a Second Life account where you dress yourself in the world you imagine and find others like you there. Study the Conversation Prism tonight and select the petals of the flower that you belong in and populate those social media properties with your gift to the world…NOW is the time! – Nathaniel Hansen

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http://bit.ly/twitter_dell

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Michael Stelzner, author of the book Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged, commissioned a recent study that simply asked, “What question about marketing with social media do you most want answered?” From that study here are the top 10 questions your clients want answered regarding social media marketing. …read more

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Facebook’s Big Changes: Action Items for Marketers
Social-Media Site Streamlines Apps Before Fanning Across the Web

Facebook’s latest round of updates announced this week will affect everyone: marketers, developers, publishers, consumers and anyone else remotely connected to their site and platform. And some of the changes will especially impact marketers.

In a rare move for any company, Facebook not only announced what changes will take place, but it publicly offered a timeline for when it will happen. Of course, the timeline may shift, and some specifics have yet to be ironed out — I’ve found in consulting both with Facebook executives and analysts covering the announcements that, many of the details aren’t yet known and a number of important questions cannot yet be fully answered. However, marketers should still appreciate the wealth of information Facebook has provided on these changes, including a gallery of screen shots. …Read more

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Jane’s video below demonstrates some important possibilities in SMM:

1. If you have a niche, begin marketing to it via short, punchy, informative videos NOW.
2. Don’t wait to get it perfect. You are already an “expert” in something. Get yourself out there.

Watch Jane here for inspiration: http://bit.ly/video_converts_to_fans

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Go Graham and Lorrie! http://bit.ly/2Fca0o

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Howard Brown of Circle Builders attended a presentation last evening from the Midwest director of ad-sales for Facbook – Tom Chisholm

He covers 5 Midwest states and accounts for advertising like 3 autos, PG, Kellogg’s, Compuware, Quicken Loans

Social graph (you at center then family, college, work) of connection, sharing and conversations:

•92% of ALL college students have a FB account
•1 million new registered user a DAY (1/3 US / 2/3rds International)
•74 languages (more native tongues on the way
•324 million total users up 100m this year (1/3 US / 2/3rds International) (intense infrastructure to handle this never been done before bandwidth, storage, processing power…)
•70 million photos posted a day (largest photo sharing site in the world – all others combined do not equal FB)
•4 times the amount of events than evite
•Avg stay time (stickiness) 19.6 minutes
•Analytics – 200 data points per user profile (data is Trojan horse to revenue with advertisers)
•40% of all user profiles public ally list cell phone #
•FB connect has been a game changer
•Best advertisers – Virgin, Addidas, Starbucks
•No plans to charge users – FB will monetize by acting as ad agency:

national accounts
regional / small biz
online

FB considers:
Web 1.0 = static
Web 2.0 = interactive
Web 3.0 = sharing

Just became cash flow positive last month

FB is content to become the worlds largest monopoly / utility

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