-Update-

In my best pirate voice all I can say is ARGH! So I was trying to link these posts to my LinkedIn status and wouldn’t you know it, the only way to update your status is via Twitter. So, for the sake of full disclosure, I went back and created a utilitarian Twitter account so I could post there, no “followers” please… now I’m a hypocritter Twitter would-be quitter <sigh> …the seeds of the empire have been planted…

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Yep, I did it. Actually, it’s been a couple months now, but what’s the dif? Did you notice? Probably not. There’s so much rubbish on Twitter that’s it very, very hard to find anything of real value. Ok, to be fair, maybe their redesign will make this better, but I doubt it, and so I flushed 2,000+ “followers” – a troubling bit of verbiage, anyway — I mean who wants to be a “follower”  – down the drain.

Working in Web services and electronic communications some of my friends and colleagues think that this is a nutso move, but Twitter has just never panned out. It’s also something that only in the  rarest of circumstances can I recommend as a tool to an organization.

Now, it’s not my intention to hate on Twitter. A lot of people have found something of value with Twitter and maybe one day, I will, too, but I don’t now and haven’t in the handful of years of years I’ve tried to make a go of it, personally. I even used to believe that somehow that Twitter might actually bring some readers to my site, and at times there were spikes, but mostly it was a bust. You want real content, pick up my RSS feed or visit the site.

For entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters of any kind I would say that you should get started using social media. In fact, this should have been the first post in the Social Media Take Away series, but hey I’m improvising and making things up as I go here…

What is social media?

Social media is any web tools that allows groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content (examples are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc…)

Social media is particularly valuable for entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters in-general, I’m thinking artists – painters, musicians and the like, because it gives them low cost, high value, far reaching exposure for whatever they’re doing. As I write more about the social media value, I’ll cover some of these. For starters, I would say see this post on Twitter or items tagged with social media on this blog. Though, I’ll be covering stuff more in-depth, and high level, alike as I develop this feature of the blog.

Update: It’s been two years since I wrote this post and with Twitter, the hype has increased, but it’s value is still very much in question. I continue to watch what they’re doing, but I’ve since deleted my Twitter account because the signal:noise ratio is very low and that only contributes to what it offers in the way of value. For me, it doesn’t offer much value, but I’m eagerly awaiting a change on this front, though, it’s unlikely one will come.

I talk to a lot of people about Twitter. I was a serious non-believer in Twitter, for a long time. I registered an account not long after they opened up shop, and I just didn’t get it. I mean, I got it, but the idea of micro-blogging, and “What are you doing now?” seemed to be creepy and narcissistic, actually I still feel that way, but I have found value in it.

It’s not that I care so much about what somebody just ate for breakfast, or that they’re stuck in traffic, or “so excited for the weekend!” which may have some value among groups of Twitter users, but next to none for the general Twitter pool. However, it’s the quick blurbs of information with links to articles I’m interested in, interviews, and other information that has really pulled me into being a user.

The take away: If you’re looking for articles, information, breaking news and the like, I would say that Twitter has dp,r value. I would also say that if you tweet about your work, your interests, etc… and it caters to the sort of PR and tech folks that are on Twitter then they might get the message, and you might be able to build interest in what you’re doing locally; eventually making real-world, physical contacts.

It used to be that you would find special niche businesses with an exceptional online presence. This was especially true with record labels, niche book publishers, used book sellers, such as Powell’s and a variety of other businesses that found great growth opportunity through the interconnectedness of the Web when they couldn’t find sustainable means in their respective locale. However, things have begun to shift in recent years as energy and sustainability issues have become more and more of an issue.

Scientists, universities, and businesses alike are all investigating sustainable means for producing energy and/or just making less expensive and less environmentally toxic means of transport. However, on all accounts we’re a long way from the energy silver bullet. What’s happened because of this is that local has become the new exotic. As we move towards this emphasis on local goods and services, including locally grown food, locally made goods, local entertainment, stay-cations and the like, small business is faced with huge opportunity on the Web.

Historically only a precious small percentage of small, local, businesses have bothered with the most basic Web presence. The thing is as more and more folks are using iPhones, Blackberries, Twitter, Facebook, and Google to find family restaurants rather than national franchises, and small boutiques over big-box stores, or just trying to find something unique and different in their locale they’re turning to the Web. More and more, I’m telling small business owners and would-be small business owners to get their company online before you worry about the Yellow Pages and the like. Even a basic, professionally done Web presence is better than no Web presence at all, especially if you’re doing something truly local and truly unique to your community.

A lot is being said about “free” these days, especially with the release of Chris Anderson’s book on the subject, but ever since I came online I’ve been interested in the economics of free, whether it was freeware, free music, or free information.

Story: I ran a series of free Mp3 downloads back in 2003 at mattborghi.com, and those downloads brought in more hits to my Web site than being featured on the nationally-syndicated space music program, Hearts of Space. To be fair, the program didn’t feature my music, exclusively, and no link was included to my site, but I thought that it would at least have generated some inquiries, and it did. However, I didn’t see nearly the response that I thought I would from that exposure compared to the interest generated by the free monthly download series.

It’s with that experience in mind that I released a variety of my long-form ambient music tracks to be freely available (some of which are from that monthly download series). Here’s the official announcement from my homepage at mattborghi.com:

Freely available Mp3s of long-form ambient works

I have freely released several hours worth of my long form works in mp3 form here, approximately a dozen tracks. Most of these tracks haven’t been available in quite a long time. Some go back as far as ten years and my early Mp3.com page, some were out-takes from records, and the 2003 series was a monthly download series that I did throughout 2003 during a particularly prolific period. I hope to add other long form works over started adding these tracks.

My reasons for doing this are two-fold. First, these tracks haven’t been available in a long time, and to me it makes more sense to put them out into the universe, where people can enjoy them, than let them take up space on my hard drive .

The second reason has to do with my how I measure the success of social media. Social media metrics and measurements are something that many folks talk about, and ponder but I think that good social media metrics aren’t in hit rankings or page views, but rather in how many people you are getting your ideas out to. The more people that download you free ambient music tracks, watch your videos, read your blog, etc… and comment on, think about, bring up in discussion, include in status updates or generally take an interest in your ideas is the best way to measure the success of social media.

There’s a lot of talk about social media and the role that companies can and/or should play in social media; but the one thing that I’ve learned is that there’s almost no place for social media in the closed organization. Companies that aren’t transparent and are secretive don’t have much of a chance with social media because social media really requires you to put it all out there, and open yourself to public scrutiny. With that said, it’s important to note that if you’re a closed company then your employees and customers are probably already out there in the social media sphere talking about you.

This is where I qualify the first sentence where I talk about there being “almost no place for social media in the closed organization”‘; there’s always plenty of room for “reputation management” or as it was called in the bygone days of yesteryear damage control. However, this part is also likely lost on the closed organization, because they believe that keeping their head down and going with the flow is the best approach, and sometimes it is, a little passive for my taste, but I could see how some might view it as effective, at least from the perspective of ‘if you ignore something it will go away’.

However, I would submit that in the age of social media, or the Web, in general, an organization that tries to live under those old rules is really just signing their own death certificate. It may not happen right away, but like so many great companies that have crumbled, it will happen slowly, until all falls apart, and everyone stands around in the aftermath scratching their heads and asking how this could happen. Yes, it’s a leap from not using social media to an organization’s foundation crumbling, but it becomes less of a leap when the organization has closed up so tightly that they’ve turned their back on their customers.

Social media is a new term for a concept as old as the Web itself. As long as the Web, as a network of connected users has existed, it’s been a social medium. So when you have folks sharing things in a variety of formats (i.e. still images, audio, video, etc.) somehow it becomes social media. That’s it. It’s really that simple. There’s no mystery or secret to what marketers and communicators are calling social media; it’s what the Web has always been from YouTube and Facebook, today, to pimply-faced teens swigging soda on Dungeons and Dragons BBS’ (Bulletin Board Systems) all through the late 70′s, 80′s and early 90′s.

Social media has evolved, the technologies have changed, and the user-interfaces have gotten better, but the core of what the Web is, has changed very little. In recent years, particularly since the Web 2.0 hype began, marketers have tried to frame social media as something else, some kind of communications or awareness panacea whereby you herd your fans/customers into some kind of digital stable, and get a direct, captive audience. This has worked to a very limited extent because as soon as there’s somebody building a fence or stable, there are ten other people building wide open pastures where users can roam free. I’m not sure a model that promotes captivity over freedom will ever exist, online or elsewhere.

That’s the gist of a post I read on Twitter this morning. I laughed out loud when I read that, because social media can be a real time suck, and I know I’ve used those words myself before.

The fact is social media is time and labor-intensive, worse still is if you don’t have any idea where you’re going, or what you’re trying to achieve. You can post on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, write a daily blog, etc… but that’s hours of work, that needs to be done on a daily basis or at least a couple times a week. Without a plan or a goal there’s also no way to measure if the work is a success, and should be continued.

The fact that tools like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are free and blogs can be added to any Web site with little work, and no cost combined with the potential of these tools (to say nothing of the hype factor) has a lot of organizations eager to utilize them. However, because there’s no capital investment organizations aren’t prone to developing a plan or strategy for implementation. Often, I hear of communications managers, web designers, or copy writers inheriting the “social media” piece because organizationally they seem to be the best fit for it… equally often this inheritance comes with no plan, strategy or awareness of how much time the implementation, but more importantly the upkeep of social media takes.

I highly recommend that anybody getting into social media ask themselves what success would look like, then survey the time involved, and most importantly figure out whether there are resources to support it. Once you’ve got these in place then you start thinking about a plan/strategy.

For many years, I’ve been inspired by the Taoist concept called Wei Wu Wei, doing by not doing. This philosophy can be applied in many ways, but since the focus of this site is digital strategy, let’s focus on that: When you’re doing digital strategy the greatest success is found when you’re working with the Tao, or loosely translated, the unseen current of the universe. If you’re working against the Tao, then somehow, you just won’t succeed, or succeed for very long. Why? Because you can force anything, but forcing, by its very nature infers opposition, or opposing something… many dollars and much energy can be spent to force things, but eventually dollars and energy run out and whatever was being opposed prevails. If you’re working with the Tao, then there’s no need for force, because there’s no opposition.

You only have to look at what drives and what’s driven the Web to see that this is true. Whether it’s open source projects like Unix, Linux, Apache, or openness and sharing that occurs naturally on the Web, think Twitter, Facebook, or earlier BBS systems, or the approach of company’s like Google who’ve tried to harness these open source, sharing models. They’re successful, because, mostly, they work with the Tao rather than opposing it. Microsoft is a good example of an organization working counter to the Tao, specifically now, as they try to use dollars and energy to push their Bing search service to overcome the natural and organic (or Tao-centered) adoption of Google.

If you want to succeed, be concerned less about being a success, and more about how you can add value, centered in the Tao the rest will surely follow.

Note about Taoist references.

I’ve been a student of Taoism and Zen Buddhism for nearly 15 years. Early Zen was influenced greatly by Taoism, which preceded it, philosophically, in China, and so much of what’s been written in both schools of thought is complimentary. This isn’t always true, but frequent enough to mention. Taoism isn’t a religion as much as it’s a life philosophy. I’m wary of mixing anything that be construed as religious with my professional work, but I’ve been working on a translation of the Tao Te Ching, and I’ve come to see many examples of how working with or against the Tao can predetermine success or failure. In fact, patterns were so great that there was a point when it was hard to not correlate success and failure to how centered or uncentered in the Tao a given organization or service was. Anyway, there are sure to be more references to Taoism as I move through the translation and come to understand more of these small and ordinary mysteries…

This press release that the IABC – International Association of Business Communications issued yesterday is very interesting to me. It’s titled: Two Out of Three Communication Professionals Don’t Think Twitter’s Popularity Will Last…

To be sure, this is a bold statement, not because I’m a super Twitter user, though I did crack 100 followers yesterday (not much in the scope of @Oprah or @APlusK (Ashton Kutcher)), but because this statement positions itself to be some kind of pronouncement about Twitter as a communication tool. Twitter, or any other Web/electronic communications vehicle is temporal at best, and subject to the natural evolution that has affected communication methods since the dawn of the Web.

With the Web communication approaches are always changing – Usenet, BBS Systems, and Listservs were improved upon by OneList, eGroups and later Yahoo, Google Groups and AOL Instant Messenger. Yahoo and Alta Vista informed Google, which Google improved on. AOL Instant Messenger laid the ground work for ICQ, and Facebook, or semantically different, but no different really, Twitter and micro-blogging. Live Journal laid the groundwork for blogging and MySpace which laid the ground work for Facebook, and Facebook was informed by Twitter when they integrated a Twitter-esque piece into Facebook, which actually was more reminiscent of AOL Instant Messenger status messages… Anyway, you get the point.

Facebook, if they’re still around in ten years, will be radically different. Twitter, if they’re still around in ten years, will be radically different. This is the evolution of sharing ideas, information and our lives in our community, while the definition of community, and what it means to communicate with that community, continues to change.

The bone that I really have to pick with IABC’s press release is their choice of wording in the title. Many communicators don’t get Twitter especially in the context of business. So in some ways this title, from a leading communications organization creates the appearance that they’ve washed their hands of the value that Twitter could add to communications, and the subtext is that communicators should, too… Maybe that’s unintentional, but from my perspective that’s how it comes off.

I’m assuming that IABC considers themselves to be experts in communications, as it is they’re business and issuing this press release could support this theory to some, but truly, if they were they would understand the history and context of not just Twitter but the history of communicating on the Web in general and fold some of that history, if only a couple paragraphs, into the release. They didn’t, though…

Twitter is a tool, and tools become outmoded and improved upon. Anybody trying to harness the power of these tools needs to recognize their temporal nature. Neither Twitter nor Facebook are here to stay in their current form; if they stayed in their current form they wouldn’t exist at all in ten years… MySpace stuck to their “current form” for too long and they’re foundering because of it, replaced by Facebook; same with Yahoo! who were improved upon so long ago by Google that they’ve become the de facto cautionary tale of why you have to change (Read: evolve) or die.