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A couple days ago, I posted a comment on a very popular blog. A few minutes after that, the blog owner commented briefly on my comment more of an acknowledgment to say, “Hey, I see you” rather than to support or refute my opinion. A few minutes later, a reader posted a comment that ran contrary to my opinion and more aligned with the blog owner’s post.

So, I commented on the reader’s comment and the blog owner then commented a bit more. The reader hopped right back in and commented on my comment. I then walked away.

I won.

My personal comment policy is two-deep and only if the reader asked a question or appears confused about my point of view. That is as much energy as I am willing to put out on a blog.

Most readers comment on popular blogs to be seen. And when the blog owner comments on a comment, that means s/he has seen the comment and think it worthy of their time to comment. Savvy blog readers know this and many jump at the opportunity to get seen more by commenting on a comment that has been commented on by the blog owner. It’s a game of “I know more than you” that many people get sucked into. It never ends as this reader will always try to one-up you.

The way to win a comment war is to be the first to shut up, walk away.

As long as you asked, the blog was Chris Brogan’s. You’ll have to dig further into the posts and comments if you care that much. And then, after you’ve done that, ask yourself why you cared enough to waste your time hunting down what I said.

I have an iPhone and I frequently tweet from it. When I’m at @target or @oinkadoodlemoo or when I am drinking a @jonessodaco green apple soda, I’ll tweet using their twitter accounts because I know them. But when I am at #kroger or #acehardware, I am not really sure what their twitter accounts are, so I just hashtag them and move on. There is no elegant way to look up companies or brands using mobile apps, especially with the pokey AT&T 3G. So, I just don’t bother.

I saw this tweet from @alotofnothing come across in my twitter stream tonight:*

and it occurred to me that the test of true brand loyalty and awareness was if a user was able to type in the twitter account of a business or brand flawlessly on a mobile device as part of a natural conversation in twitter. (I would have struggled with @TijuanaFlats and even had I looked it up, they have a Flash site, so iPhone would not have been able to see it. Besides, they only show a Facebook Fan Page.)

Think about that for a moment and realize what awesome power that means for your company or brand, good and bad. Then think about how much you need to brand your twitter account.

*Used with permission.. Thank you Angie!

It’s Monday and my twitter stream is filing up with tweets from business people just getting into the office and tweeting out news and links that I’ve been seeing all weekend. These folks work for companies that shut down on Friday afternoon and come back into work on Monday. For most who are connected into twitter, these tweets are really, really, really old news.

Social media works 24/7/365. That means nights and weekends. And it is creating a donut hole for small to medium-sized business, making them seem out-of-touch instead of connected. Follow me on this.

For twitter to work well, someone has to be at the switch pretty much 24/7. The old adage, “A lie will make its way half way round the world before the truth even gets out of bed” is fairly accurate. Ask Dominos, Amazon, Target or any other brand that has suffered a twitterstorm (though less in vogue nowadays) if they wished they worked weekends. Amazon does, but their lawyers don’t, at least not for the normal day rate.

For one-man shows like most of the twitter and social media elite, social media is not an issue. They are on 24/7/365 anyway. The cost of their labor is cheap and they are able to monitor their brand whenever, wherever it is being discussed. They are also the ones quick to berate brands for not responding sooner, by not making their brand more human, etc, etc. For the very large brands who have money to staff up 24/7/365, the issue goes away just by making someone a Community Manager and staffing up a department.

But for small to medium-sized companies, we’re out here kinda screwed by the Social Media donut hole. Sure, you can hire someone to be “on call” and mandate they check the social media accounts regularly on evenings, weekends and early mornings and many will gladly do it, relishing their flexible work conditions. But, as anyone who has ever work “flexible hours” knows, it becomes apparent that the flex is all about the flexibility for the company, not the employee. If flex favored employees, then they would have the option of NOT being available to respond.

And resentment builds and somebody somewhere has enough of being taken advantage of and calls in a State labor board who has an entirely different view on what constitutes “working hours.” That flexible position that you created in response to the market need quickly becomes about the most expensive you’ve ever created with lawyer fees, labor board responses, unemployment hearing and eventual back taxes and overtime pay. What you see as flexibility, the State see as indentured servitude.

The current expectations of social media are unsustainable by small to medium-sized companies. In response, most just do nothing as the return is not worth even the labor investment. And labor laws are not flexible enough to make human 24/7/365 social media monitoring a viable option for many. Some resort to automated response which exacerbates the issue in the minds of the social media purists.

I’d love for some of our brands to be more real-time with social media, but until labor laws catches up with the real world realities of the modern workplace, those social media plans are on hold. Monday mornings will just be very busy here for a while.

NB: As I was writing this, a tweet came over from @JenKaneCo on twitter customer service. Thanks, Jennifer!

I had been eye-balling An Event Apart in Minneapolis for a few months as a cool conference to go to. It finally sold out, saving me from actually having to make a decision. But I still looked over the agenda.

And it suddenly occurred to me what really kept me from pulling the trigger. It wasn’t the price (over $1,000) or the travel costs, but the long speeches and the thought of sitting through Powerpoint presentations, knowing I would probably not learn anything new. No offense to Zeldman, he is one of my heros.

I think it may be time to start re-thinking conferences. Think about how we work every day. Most of us do in short bursts; twitter, email, multiple projects going on, snippets of information coming in through cable news. We can Google solutions to design or software problems on the fly from our desks. So, why are conferences structured as long keynote speeches and presentations? Why are they not bursty?

Here would be a cool thing. What if each presenter was tasked with giving a ten minute sales pitch for his/her content for the first half of the day. Then, they would retire into a group room where they could conduct a workshop Socrates style with more of a one-on-one with the attendees who were intrigued enough by the pitch to participate? Then, instead of giving a canned presentation, the “expert” could drop anything the ad hoc audience already knows and explore that which they don’t.

It would take more of an effort by speakers to be involved in the conference and some traditionalists may not want to participate to this level of personal engagement. For me, it would make that conference worthwhile.

Just thinking out loud.

PS I think I’ll go to 140conf in Detroit Oct 20, 2010. It appears this format is about as close as any get to different.

Seth Godin wrote a blog post today about being slick. He claims the way people judged high quality was the degree of “slickness” that was put into a piece, like a business card, website, brochure, etc. I think he is wrong.

I think it is and always will be about craftsmanship, i.e., how “tight” the piece is. Was the logo crafted or was it grabbed from a clip art book and had some extrusion slapped on it? Does the brochure tell a story or is it merely a collection of color photos with a bunch of words wrapped up in a glossy cover? Are the lyrics tight (American Pie) or are they sloppy and lazy (Tik Tok)? Do the blog posts contain typos, split infinitives, jargon, tense shifts, subject-verb disagreements, unnecessary words and half-developed ideas or are they edited and tight? Is the CEO always on time for meetings, does he always knows the numbers and can he clearly articulate the vision?

A good plumber will be proud of his solder joints. Rarely will you see uneven globs of solder or drips on the pipes. A painter will practice for years to be able to cut in on a corner and make a straight freehand edge. Mike Holmes is very proud of his ability to caulk even as he runs a contracting empire because he knows that a straight, even caulk line is the crafted touch that points to everything else he does as solid. I’m certain you can find all sorts of “caulk lines” in companies you’ve done business with. Most were probably uneven. Most were abutted to expensive slick tile or trim.

We’re not now seeking “transparency and reputation and guts” as a replacement cue for slick as we have always been seeking craftsmanship. Poor craftsmen will always wrap bad work up in slick packaging just as they will attempt to pervert and subvert “transparency, reputation and guts.”

But you can’t fake craftsmanship.

I had the opportunity to speak at the 15th annual NARMS Spring Conference last month. It was a workshop on using social media to leverage a membership with the association. Check out the agenda; my slides and workshop recording are linked up there. (Sunday, April 18 1:00pm)

Over a month has passed and I still have one question a participant asked, playing over and over in my head. It went something like;

I don’t have the time to wax philosophically about the retail marketing industry. Why do I need a blog?

I answered his question as I do anytime someone tells me they don’t need a blog or have time to write a blog. The short answer goes something like this: Your blog is your web site and your web site is your blog. Quit making the distinction.

Your primary audience is now a machine
It used to be you marketed your web site to customers and other human beings. Now, you market to search engines (SEM — Search Engine Marketing) as most searches now start on Google or Bing. Your primary audience in the search engine and your end audience is a C-Suite executive. In order to be a visible business, you have to show up first on the search engines and then punch your way out of that to a human being. If your website can’t do that, you just don’t make the short list of vendors.

It turns out that blogging software like WordPressor MovableType is set up to easily work with search engines by being SEO and SEM-friendly. It is also easy to quickly and prolifically add optimized content to your website. In fact, if you go out to the Internet right now, it is hard to tell a “blog” from a “web site” any more as many “blogs” function primarily as CMS (Content Management Systems) ICC/Decision Services (iccds.com) is one such site. My employer’s web site Rivershark Inc (rivershark.com) is another example.

It’s all about the keywords
How do potential clients describe what you do? In plain language, please. For example, a plumber does not “provide a comprehensive whole-house fluid distribution and waste removal solution.” He unclogs drains and toilets, installs faucets and fixes leaks. When determining keywords, think like a potential clients trying to find a solution to their problem in ways they identify the problem.

Everything you write for your website — from press releases to about pages to articles — focuses on those keywords.

Adding content rapidly and frequently is critical
A search engine indexes pages, not web sites. Once your services, about us and contact us page is indexed, that pretty much it. With nothing left to do with your site, the search engine indexing robot moves on to your competitors’ web sites. And the sites that keep adding content and keeping the search engine indexing robots busy by adding new stuff wins. The easiest way to jolt a search engine robot out of dormancy is to add new stuff.

And you don’t have to wax philosophically about your industry. You can share your opinion on a recent news story that affects you. Your can write a news release. You can welcome a new client. Whatever you do, focus on keywords and keep the content flowing. Building your web site on top of blogging software allows you to do that easily, all the while creating content that search engines know how to process quickly. 100-300 words is all you need for most articles.

But stepping away from the defining what is a web site and what is a blog is the first major step.

Chris Brogan coined the phrase “grow bigger ears” and for the past two years or so, as brands got comfortable with social media, it was more important for them to listen more than it was to jump out and converse with us. For those brands that got social media early on, they are already listening in more places and with larger ears than their customers are probably comfortable with. For brands that are just starting out on the social media path, start running; you’re already behind.

But it might be time to stop growing bigger ears and start growing bigger hands. It might be time for brands to start integrating social media within their operations and not just their marketing or customer experience departments. We don’t really want brands to “converse” with us; just do for us.

What do I mean by this? A couple of examples.

CPG Brands at Retail
Many brands pay merchandising service organizations to go into retailers and perform audits, new product cut-in, restocking, point-of-purchase placement, etc. What if one of the point of purchase placards just had a @twitter address and said something like: “Tweet you are here, take a picture of the 8oz bottles of BrandX and get a coupon for a buy one/get one free.” How many time-stamped, geo-tagged photos and fan tweets do you think that CPG brand would get? Would this create more demand for at retail service due to an increased turn on the product? Maybe, but until someone tries it, we’ll never know.

Pizza
On Tuesday afternoon, about 4:00pm, Papa Johns sent out a tweet something like “Hungry? Order a Papa John’s pizza.” Oh, man was I ever. It was a long day and I did not have time to eat. So, I clicked on the link. Bang, right to the front page. So, from there, I had to log in.. can’t remember my password… looked it up.. got to the order page, had to decide… oh, y’know what, I’m just not that hungry.

What Papa John’s could be doing is give me the option to save a Twitter preference. Next time they send me a tweet, all I have to do is reply to it and my preferred pizza has been ordered, paid for with my save credit card, in the oven and on it’s way to my front door; all just by replying to the tweet. (I know, there are some issues with privacy/security and such, but maybe they could send me a DM or an email confirming I did indeed reply to and order a pizza.)

What’s missing in social media right now is that last ten yards of connection to the customer. Sure the smart brands are listening with big ears but until they start growing bigger hands and integrate social media into their operations, social media will be the stuff of late night jokes and CNN scare stories instead of Harvard Business School case studies.

UPDATE: @Neenz just published the Paralympics page at Alltop.com last night, Mar 5. If you know of or write a blog on the Paralympics, submit it here to be included.

I first got schooled in the Paralympic Games from Kim* during a telephone conversation my first week on the job back in 1996. For those who don’t know, I used to sell exercise bikes to paralyzed people. True.

“I am a tennis player,” she said.

“You mean you used to play tennis?” I asked.

“No, stupid. I play tennis. Wheelchair tennis. And I’m training for the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney.”

“The Special Olympics?” I said.

“No, I’m in a chair, not a f***ing r*tard!” she shot back angrily.

She was not one to mince words. She had also served four years in the US Navy and she swore like a sailor.

By the time I left the company several years later, we had gotten to be pretty good friends. I wish I had kept in touch, but that wasn’t what Kim was all about. She was one who lived in the moment, curious and anxious for the future with no regrets for the past. She never made it to Sydney, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

That was my introduction to the Paralympic Games. They are held two weeks after the Olympic Games everyone knows about and gets broadcast on TV. Here is the Web site for the Games in Vancouver.

Eventually, I hope the Paralympic Games are played alongside the Olympic Games as paralympic athletes are every bit as tough as their able-boded counterparts. It seems to me that even when NBC doesn’t see the value in broadcasting the Paralympic Games, Social Media should be all over it. The Paralympics are like a really cool blog that you accidentally stumble into that you didn’t know existed, but changes your world view forever. If you want to see some real athletic ability, I encourage you to watch this year. And London. And Russia. And Rio.

Get involved on twitter. Encourage Guy and Neenz to establish a blog directory for the Paralympics on Alltop.com that doesn’t lead to disability. Write a blog article about how you feel about the Paralympics.

Do something inclusive. We’re all in this together.

*Withholding last name, but in case she ever reads this and I have permission to fill in the last name, I’d be happy to.
**Please don’t contact me about ELA being out of business. That happened way after I left.

It started this morning with a simple tweet from Shannon Paul:

Airports really aren’t as fun as they could be :-/

More accurately, I tweeted back, that airports aren’t as much fun as they USED to be. And then it hit me that they aren’t fun anymore because we have made travel all about the destination rather than the journey. In our quest for über-efficiency and profit, we have stripped out everything fun about what happens between point A and point B. It’s not a bad thing; it is just who we are.

But the human being needs fun. It needs a place to experience and enjoy the journey, the process.

And right then and there, the whole purpose of social media became clear to me. In the absence of a journey between the handshake and the close, human beings have created this thing called social media where we have permission to enjoy the journey. The rules are clear; be kind, be friendly, help others, don’t self-promote, don’t hard-sell. In a culture that seeks to carve away all the human inefficiencies of getting from point A to point B, nature has found a way to adapt.

And what frustrates the closers and the efficiency experts is that the journey takes too long. It wanders from the path too often and doesn’t close a sale with deft. They demand an ROI.

But, sadly, like airports, social media way stations will eventually become an efficient place to transact stuff. I wonder where else we will find a place to hang out, enjoy the journey.

Shannon Paul can be found hanging out online, enjoying the journey at her blog, Very Official Blog. Pull up a chair; her door is always open.

It’s been a couple of months now since the life coaches and go-getters pushed out their brand of RAH RAH RAH and GO! GO! GO! for 2010. We’ve seen folks choose keywords for their life, new resolution for the year, non-resolution for the year, themes instead of resolutions and all sorts of various predictions and start-up dreams, etc.

And very little living. Only doing.

When I worked at a newspaper a long time ago* I spent about 70% of my time wandering around with my cup of coffee, talking with other people in the building; Gary in accounting, Ted, John and MB in editorial art, Jeff in photo and all the print shop and pre-print guys. Before that, when I worked at SPAR Marketing, most of my day was spent wandering around talking to people with my coffee cup. And before that, I did the same thing at Huffy.

And I got a lot done as a result.

But every year during my performance appraisal, my boss of the moment would take the opportunity to chastise and berate me on how much time I wasted walking around, talking to people instead of spending that time at my desk “producing.” And yet, each boss was amazed at my ability to produce a ton of work. No doubt they reasoned that if I could produce this much work walking around socializing, think about how much they could get out of me if I didn’t walk around.**

Here was the secret. What they saw as me wasting time, I saw as gathering stories about what mattered to people. I saw impromptu conversations over a cup of coffee as inspiration for change. I took away their frustrations and ranting as opportunities to solve organizational problems, to remove barriers. I saw my wanderings as keeping in touch with what mattered to people most, what worried them, what gave them fear. When I did “work at my desk” I worked on proposals that solved real problems and helped the organization become more efficient. I presented budget proposals that produced much more than busy work or boondoggles for management. I produced writing that talked to real issues that real people were feeling. The work seemed more real because it connected with real people, not just caricatures or stereotypes.

And that I think is the real value of all this time-wasting social media. To many, it looks like foolin’-around-time. But to those of us who know better, it is the inspiration and fuel of innovation and productivity..

*A long time ago = When the year started with 19
**About half as much, maybe less.