When worlds collide - tagging in meat space

Only Jeff Pulver would fly around the world hosting “Social Media Breakfasts” and thank goodness!   This was a great event, lots of fun.   I don’t know if the concept is Jeff’s originally, but he has been going  from city to city on a mission to bring social computing techniques to real-world networking.   Using the web 2.0 metaphor of tagging and Facebook “Walls” you have a great icebreaker for starting conversations  and learning more about the person you just shook hands with.  The photo above is my personal tag cloud from about halfway through the event.

You need to be on Facebook to rsvp, but if Jeff brings one of these events to your town, definitely check it out.   If not, host your own and send me an invite!

A seven-point tune-up for your personal brand

My friend Mike just sent me a link to a nice article on personal branding: Maintaining your Personal Brand Online by Jonathan Snook.  First of all, I happen to think it is one of the more attractively and readably designed blogs that I’ve seen lately, but I’m recommending the article for different reasons. Seven reasons to be exact.  Actually seven very practical tips for stepping up your engagement in your personal brand, that Mr. Snook has thoughtfully provided.   I won’t spoil his thunder, but I will say that I think these are good, easy to do steps that will help raise your recognizability online. And as you know that is the first of the three Rs of branding.

Visit: Maintaining your Personal Brand Online

You Can’t Swim on Dry Land

Have you ever tried to walk across the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool? It may have been fun bouncing along under the surface, but you certainly didn’t get anywhere very fast. What works very efficiently on dry land is almost completely ineffectual under the water.

Now imagine trying to swim down a sidewalk. Sounds painful doesn’t it? Without the buoyancy you would just grind in place. Change your medium and what was once an asset can become a liability, a successful tactic might just be limiting your progress or bringing it to a grinding halt.

I’m a big believer in paying attention to context, what works in print may not work in radio. What works on the radio, might not work for TV. The big new swimming pool is social media. Not every marketing tactic is going to work the same in the social web. Some old standbys may not work at all. Trying too hard to control the message and interrupting people will leave you bouncing in one place running out of air. Sharing, educating, listening and participating seem to be the better strokes in these new waters.

Social Media is Already Inside Your Organization…

….you just might not know it. Sherry Heyl writes an insightful post, Social Media Affects Every Department Within Your Organization, which points to the ever-broadening reach of social media and its power as a resource for all disciplines within the modern corporation. I think this is an important observation, but the post also implies an issue that I think should be stated overtly: the social media contagion has already infiltrated your organization. Chances are, even in the most buttoned-down and security conscious corporate culture, that social media is gaining a foothold. Why? Because the vector for this infection is people. People recognizing the power of communication on their own terms, people increasingly aligning themselves to transparency and authenticity in their choice of community. People like the Generation Ys/Millennials who have made distributed communication their natural mode of interaction. You can try to shutdown the blogs, vlogs and podcasts, you can ban the IP addresses of every wiki, but you can’t change the fact that every day the people you hire, the people who are already in your organization, are becoming acclimated to a new set of communication tools and are hitting the reset button on their cultural expectations for integrity, immediacy and empowerment. I think the call for smart companies is to embrace this new connected, community-oriented, and empowered corporate citizen and do what is necessary to learn from the best of their skills, to nurture environments that will attract and retain the top talents, the most effective distributed thinkers. The challenge will be to adjust the top-down management styles and to educate this new employee on the ethics of corporate communication in a world where information is permanent.

You Can, SoCon

Just wanted to throw in a plug for a great conference coming up here in Atlanta:  SoCon08 February 8 - 9, 2008.  I attended SoCon07 and thought it was an awesome opportunity to meet progressive and innovative people shaping the social media landscape.  The “unconference” format attracted a broad array of practitioners, pundits, purists, theorists, and beginners to dialog on blogging, vlogging, virtual worlds, podcasting, and design for a connected world.  This year I would anticipate that the conversations will also include Enterprise 2.0 - issues surrounding the impact of social media technologies and culture on the corporate landscape, as well as plenty of discussions of best practices, anecdotes and lots of smart, community-oriented people to discuss them with.  I hope to see you there, but hurry registration is filling up fast.