Justin Kownacki’s post, referenced in the video, can be found here (and seriously, if Justin isn’t on your daily read list, you are missing out).

Douglas Rushkoff’s book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back
can be purchased here (affiliate link).

And last but not least, a link to the Pick My Brain experiment, for those to pressed for time (or lazy) to scroll down.

*the legal beagle yelled at me for not inserting something about “rates may change” in future. (I mean, duh, right?) So, there ya go, to make the legals happy.

As outlined over on the Epiphanies blog, Allen Voivod and I had an interesting conversation recently about ISMA and certification in general. Some of the things that made my conversation with Allen different than the knee-jerk responses that had been given in the past were perspective and a much more big picture conversation. Big picture conversations open up dialogue, and dialogue is how you effect change.

The perspective of someone who is not a part of ISMA, but who chose the course, was a valuable one to hear. It told me that while I don’t see this field as something ready for certification or even able to be certified yet, there is a significant subset of people out there who are not ready or able to think in such a dramatically new way, who are more comfortable with rules, regulations and guidelines and who feel a need for credentials that mirror traditional industries. I get that. This new and malleable adaptive media plane can seem scary, and is rife with underqualified people.

This is nowhere more evident than in the rise of full social media degrees or simple courses offered by colleges and universities, from Georgia to SNHU and UNH right here in NH. I think I’ll write a separate post next week on how to vet that professor or program to make sure the college is teaching best practices, but for now, we’ll just say that this rise in degree offerings showcases two things. One, that this field is here to stay (we as practitioners knew this, but the public is seeing the validity now). Two, that people really are clamoring for a better way to do due diligence and the tried and true degree method is one of the first places they turn, mentally.

The interesting thing to note about all of this is that when this new playing field is allowed to work in a thriving, rule-free environment, things sort themselves out. I don’t mean that in a kumbaya, “Twitter is Love” kind of way. I mean that people are smarter than we give them credit for, and that the online social world has an uncanny knack for sorting out the wheat from the chaf quickly and effectively (and publicly).

I can assure you, having a badge or certificate is not a guarantee that you won’t get scammed. Doing due diligence is the only way to choose who to ask for help. There are plenty of people sporting a “certification” that are fully unethical and underqualified (for what it is worth, I don’t think Allen and Lani are among those people). The same thing goes for lawyers, accountants, and many more professions, but you know all of this. I’ve talked about it before, both here and in person, and nearly everyone has at least one “I can’t believe I got suckered by…” story to tell.

One thing I admire about Allen and Lani is how they approached this as an education. New to the space, they went to as many sources as possible to learn as much as they could about this space that they wanted to work in. As evidenced by my continual integration of free and low cost learning opportunities for everyone (PodCamp NH, Social Media Breakfast NH, S•Cub3d Conference, Strong Women in Tech, the Pick My Brain Experiment, and many more) I am all about people who genuinely want to learn. While I’m somewhat disappointed that their quest for knowledge exposed them to some bad practices, if you look at the roster of places they sought knowledge and talk to their clients, they were able to get a level of balance through variety and it shows.

Has my opinion changed about the organization since that original post? No, if anything I think it may have solidified. But I like that Allen and I were able to open up a dialogue, and I’ll plan to continue going back and forth with him via blog post so we can keep the dialogue going and loop all of you into it as well. We can’t learn and grow and shape this space we’re in if we don’t listen to each other, after all.

So, you asked for it, you got it. As an experiment, I blocked out what free time I can to make this a service. We’ll start with this week and next, and we’ll see how it goes. If you are one of the people who has always wanted to take me to coffee or for a beer to pick my brain, now’s your chance. My advice? The software I found doesn’t let me put an end date on the project, so pick a time early in the experiment to allow for possibly not continuing it.

BOOK A TIME TO PICK MY BRAIN

When you get there, you see times first, then once you pick a time you see the description (copied below for your information) pop up with all of the legal mumbo jumbo. Or you should – if the long description form doesn’t pop up for you after, let me know. Please note: I am looking for a better system for handling this: this one does not allow for a lot of customization. Until I find a better system: If for some reason I am not available on a date you choose (e.g. if I have a speaking gig, etc), I will contact you to pick a different day.

“Let me take you out to [insert beverage type or meal] and pick your brain about something” has to be the thing I get asked the most.

I’m flattered to be considered pick-worthy, but one of the reasons you want to ask me questions is that I’m good at what I do and that takes time, which leaves little time for the simpler requests. So many people suggested I make the request into a service, I thought I’d take them up on it. At the moment this is a limited time experiment. We’ll see how it goes and if it makes actually doing my job more difficult, or if it is something we all enjoy. See below for cost.

Tell me a bit about you, and about why you want to Pick My Brain. Then schedule one of my available appointment times.

Legal stuff:

1) This is advice only. I can’t be held responsible for you deciding to use my advice for nefarious deeds and schemes. It’s intended to help you be better at what you need to be better at.

2) Sometimes I won’t be able to answer something if it falls under an NDA. Some of my clients require these little gems of legal silence. I’ll let you know that’s why if this happens and the genie will grant you another wish. Er, I mean, I’ll answer a different question.

3) I can’t create an entire strategy for your organization in an hour knowing not much about how you work as a whole, what your goals are, etc. That’s not what this is for. This is intended for questions I *can* answer in an hour. Think ahead to what matters most to you to know RIGHT NOW.

Cost

Here is where I get really experimental. I’ve set the cost at zero United States Dollars for now. Most people want to pick my brain over lunch because they think they can’t afford my consulting fees. They’d be surprised, I try to keep it reasonable, but that’s a discussion for another time.

For this: Make one of the first appointments. After we have our appointment, go to PayPal and send whatever amount you think the advice was worth to my business PayPal address. Or not. That’s it. It’s that simple.

I hope this helps you out and allows me to give some nice people the advice they need in a way that doesn’t eat my schedule alive.

Why adaptive media? Because in the end the platforms and applications are just tools, and they are adaptive. They require the user to adapt to a more inclusive set of societal rules, to get back into a communication mode instead of a sales or quota mode, to relearn how to be human even in promotion or business, more. They also adapt constantly, changing almost daily. Some live in a niche (Twitter), some fall out of fashion (MySpace) or lose funding or close for other reasons (TipJoy), some grow exponentially for a while only to begin to fade away (Friendster), some seem to eat the rest of the tools alive (Google), but in the end – they are only tools.

If you call it what it is and work on changing the midset behind the use of the tools, it’s easier to create an atmosphere where you can ride out the volatile nature of the social web and find growth no matter what happens to the tools you use to do it. The social mindset isn’t going anywhere, but it will become a more connected way of living and doing business that will outlast whatever tools you use to do it. Adapt in this age of adaptive media, and don’t trip yourself up by attaching yourself so firmly to one tool you can’t float if it sinks.

How to find the right person changes as these new agencies learn to game the system, but here are my slides from my most recent presentation to help you choose a good match for you and your company, band or film right now. I hope this helps you navigate the choppy waters and find your perfect social media match.

Have you ever been to meetings of social media groups and wanted to leave because they felt like a Home Owners Association for Social Media? Or read an idea on a blog and thought to yourself “Why is this person or company trying to lay claim to this idea people are already doing on a local level and stifle its growth with rules?”  It seems to me that people or companies strive for rules and regulations for two reasons: a desire to validate their presence in a space, and fear.

Every good social media campaign needs a backbone. It needs a concerted, well-conceived goal set. The right tools (this includes the people actively acting on the campaign). You need solid strategy in place to get you to wear you want to be. At the same time, you need flexibility. If everyone is given a proscribed set of rules on the national level, all we’ll get is an impersonal, HMO style social media experience. This will only serve to drive people away from the platforms you have invested in. If you are going to spend the time, energy and effort (and trust me, a great social media campaign does take effort, time and energy) in this space, why would you shoot yourself in the foot by creating a situation where you can not innovate?

Don’t fall prey to false metrics. Eschew extensive rules. Avoid boilerplate social media campaigns. Leave yourself the ability to respond, to think actively and proactively about the results you are getting. Leave yourself and your company the room to do what needs to be done, and where, in real time. Practice a few common sense guidelines (Listen, Engage, Listen, Be Human, Don’t Tell The Internet If You Wouldn’t Tell Your Grandma, Listen, Share, Help, Be Trustworthy, Listen) and you’ll be fine.

It continues to amaze me how many fly by night pseudo “gurus” of social media don’t monitor who is keeping an eye on what shenanigans they are doing online, however. There are so many people trying to jump on board the bandwagon of social media now that it is reaching mainstream proportions, and they are willing to do anything shady to get client attention. I’ve covered a few tips on avoiding scam artists and bad strategy in previous posts, including one on avoiding “twinfomercials“, one on “stunts vs experiments” on Twitter, a post about false metrics distracting your from your goals in social media, and many more.

I didn’t blog last week. I was wrapped up in several large and exciting things – the launch of the Twitter for Dummies book I wrote with Laura Fitton and Michael Gruen, a television interview about it, new clients (including new film Crooked Lane under my side project, Film Pop!), a radio interview on LifeTips and more. Just because I’m not blogging on occasion doesn’t mean I’m not listening. I monitor my business and my clients daily. This means that I see scammers in real time, if someone is trying to pull a fast one (it also means I see good things too, but this post is about the issues surrounding fly-by-night hustlers).

It is not uncommon to see people scraping my content from one of my many blogs and calling it their own, to see people creating false RTs on Twitter crediting me and other social media types with things we never said, or to see people trying to pawn off something I said in a presentation as an original idea of their own. I handle all of this on a case-by-case basis. Last week unearthed a variety of interesting and annoying things surrounding the book, however. My personal favorite was the woman with a horribly designed Blogspot blog who is “teaching” a “Twitter for Dummies” class and sending people to Amazon to buy the book with the implication that she wrote it. She was very surprised I commented in a very tongue in cheek manner before the ink was even dry on her post. That’s the value of monitoring – being able to nip issues in the bud quickly.

The point I’m getting at is that you should use reverse monitoring to check out your social media consultant. There is some fantastic advice on this in a post over here (Caveat Emptor). I recommend checking out the “guru”’s social media presence. Look at Twitterholic to see how long they have been on Twitter (it should be at least 24 months give or take, eg since Twitter was in early stages) and what their activity looks like (should be an ever increasing stream of activity and follower/following interaction). Check them out on Google and see how many of their other social media profiles come up, and then go to their pages to see how they interact – are they a link farm? A spammer? Or do they really converse back and forth with people and offer good information and help. Look at their offline activity – do they do more than attend the party-style events? Do they run events to help businesses? Speak? Teach classes? Remember, monitoring works both ways, and you can ensure you are getting a good consultant or presenter if you do a little bit of legwork first!

What is a RT (retweet)

Retweeting is a way to expand the reach of a thought, link or idea. If someone with a network of 20 tweets about something brilliant, I can retweet it to my own network of thousands and help get their idea heard. The intent is to save the retweets for the truly valuable, humorous or newsworthy items, and not for things like Magpie advertising links and the like.

You know you are seeing something being retweeted when you see RT (conventional abbreviation) at the beginning of the tweet. The reason the RT is at the beginning is both to clearly indicate up front that the idea is not original and to escape the cage of the @ reply. By prefacing an @username with an RT (or any other character, for what it’s worth), you allow your network to see it whether they follow that person or not. If you start your RT with the @username only those who already follow the person can see it, defeating the purpose.

As with anything, when an idea is working perfectly well as it is, people feel the need to mess with it and “make it their own” or “become a thought leader in their space” or whatever horse nugget reason is currently being brandished. To that end we now have a variety of ways to introduce a retweet in addition to the simple, and short, RT. You will also see tweets with the word “via”, “from”, “auth” etc in them. These are all fine, and also indicate who the originator of the idea was. They just waste more characters doing so.

RT Etiquette

There are a few traditions around the art of the RT. Mainly these are intended to give the author credit in a clear way, and to keep the content of the RT in its original context. The first and foremost of these traditions is to always keep the original author username in. Often, you’ll get a RT that has been passed on several times. Some people may want to get “kudos” from whatever “big name” tweeter who is part of the RT chain by leaving their name in instead of the originator. Not cool! If you find that you have to delete @usernames to make room, the one who said the original tweet is always the one you leave in.

Shortening a RT is often required. If you learn to tweet in 120 character nuggets, you are easier to RT, but often a thought is more comfortable when it takes up more space. To that end, people who RT you may have to do some abbreviating. When in doubt, always keep the context! Do not abbreviate a RT in such a way that it supports your view as opposed to the author’s. Not cool! Some suggested abbreviations: using the number 8 for the “ate” sound in a word; using TwitterKeys pictures in place of some words; using U (you), B (be), 4 (for), 2 (to, too, two) and other text message abbreviations in place of some words; using contractions where possible (and removing the ‘ if needed), etc.

A question I get often is “what is a ratio of RT to tweets”. My answer there is that your stream should feel engaging and conversational if possible – if it is a wall of RTs it looks like you never have an original thought in your head. Space them out a bit.

RT Problems

Recently, the popularity of Twitter has led to some interesting RT issues. A few to look out for:

The tendency for spammers and fake conference throwers and other nefarious characters to RT a fake RT as if it came from a “thought leader” or someone they think is an influencer for some reason, when in fact the person never said that at all. So far this has happened to me twice, to Chris Brogan a few times, and to a handful of others. This is done to give false validity to their site, which usually is selling something. Think about it – if you see one of these and know our usual tweet style, you’ll know if the person would have actually said that or not. Most of us watch for these and try to reply with an “oh I don’t THINK so” of some kind when we can as well, so watch for those also. Chris is the only one I know of who got a RT that he’d be a speaker at a conference before he even knew the conference existed.

RT spam. I hate this one. I have actually fallen for it once now in spite of all my time on Twitter because I’m so darn busy. What happens with this is a link will be prefaced with something in front of it that sounds like breaking news, and get picked up by someone in your stream. If you are like me, you have a small, small number of people whom you trust so explicitly you grant them your trust and may RT them without reading the link until later. In the case of my RT, it was “news” about the iPhone 3G S, which I follow as a Mac user, and it was in a very trusted friend’s stream. Turns out it went to a site selling some fly-by-night pills. YUCK. I am fortunate that I have an involved and active network who alerted me immediately to what had happened, generating an immediate take down and correction from me, but if you are just starting out, you may not have built up that help yet. To that end, read the links first.

RT flash mobs. This often, but not always, falls under the bitchmeme category. A bitchmeme is when a large number of people “pile on” to an issue without fully understanding the facts, then cause it to spread like a nasty little virus of negativity across the internet. Examples of recent bitchmemes include things like Motrin Moms. The RT flash mob is not always negative. Often, the intent behind it is a good cause, like the recent support for #iranelections on Twitter. You can see this in the many, many hashtags (and sub hashtags, now, which is a whole OTHER post coming later) and green avatars popping up.

Most of the time the RT flash mob is totally harmless – the first wave of unchecked information flies past, then about 12 hours later the second wave of corrected or enhanced information comes by, then you can expect at least two more floods to your Twitter stream as the correct information and the emotional reactions occur, all spaced out in 12 hour intervals, and varying global time zones. It tends to take about 4 – 5 days for the average RT flash mob to dissipate (a current example is Steve Jobs’ liver replacement, which I am affectionately calling the iLiver, and which is nearing the end of stage one. Expect corrected information to flow along today). For some reason, unless the RT flash mob is based on a breaking news story during the week, like the #iranelections, these seem to happen most often on the weekends.

In the case of #iranelections and other sensitive global events, the RT flash mob can cause problems. People were retweeting sensitive information without thinking, like the Twitter names of the people who were tweeting from inside Iran, for example. Then in the second wave, people on Twitter were changing their location to confuse Iran officials who were monitoring. This mainly served to confuse third party apps who depend on the Twitter location to work well. Then we had a wave of green avatars in support of #iranelections. Although these are intended to show solidarity with all of those in Iran seeking change, the color is party specific and has caused a stir because of that. You can see how each wave builds on the last.

I think the RT has value in drumming up immediate global awareness and support for both local and global issues as they occur. I love the attention and support the people of Iran are getting for their cause. My words of caution for the next RT flash mob is to do five minutes of research before you click that RT button in your Twitter client, or before you copy paste on the web. Just the briefest of pauses can help stop bad information from going out. Also, if you see a good RT flash mob happening, like the #blamedrewscancer movement (which has moved from “flash mob” to “meme” now, and will have a longer shelf life because of it), spread it around. We need more good things.

I didn’t talk much about the book while we were writing it, on purpose. Having three authors plus feedback from Wiley on a project was a fun, sprawling process. Toss in a few “minor” Twitter changes over the course of writing it and you have some added challenging components to the mix.

I am very excited to have the book in stores, finally. We will each be (and in fact, have been) doing some promotion for the book individually and together when possible (we are spread out over three states). If you want to order the book, please feel free to click the link in the side bar, this link here or visit your local book store. If you want to talk to one or all of us about doing events or promotion around the book, you can contact us individually. Find the spearhead for the project, Laura Fitton, @pistachio on Twitter. Find Leslie Poston (me), co-author, @geechee_girl on Twitter, and find Michael Gruen, co-author @gruen on Twitter. You can also drop me an email for promotional activities.

What have we done to promote the book so far? Laura is speaking at Jeff Pulver’s #140conf today, and has several promotional and speaking events planned around the country. Michael has spoken at the NYC Book Expo recently. I’ve just been filmed for a new TV show in Maine which will air July 1 or thereabouts (most likely on WPXT, but stay tuned), and will also be on another station here in NH soon (project not wrapped yet, will announce here once I can). You can also hear me speak at the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce on June 18th. I also have some blog and print interviews lined up that I will link here as they happen.

Also, many, many thanks to Laura Fitton for wanting me on her co-author team with Michael Gruen. It was a blast to write a whole book about my favorite tool and favorite toy. It was even more fun merging our very different uses into one book to help YOU, the reader. If you look at our Twitter accounts, you can see that you are getting the blended best out of three ways you can use Twitter for yourself and your business – I think that ended up making the book a richer, more comprehensive guide (and proved a point I make often about Twitter use being a la carte).

Enjoy!