Talk It Up!

Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone

It's the season. The best of the best in social media are creating fantastic materials to help you keep up with the waves of social media changes that keep crashing over us weekly. The newest is Six Pixels of Separation by the inestimable Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image, 2008's Canada's Most Influential Male in Social Media and host of the Six Pixels of Separation blog and podcast.

Yes, Mitch asked me if I'd give him a shout-out, and I'm delighted to. I've listened to his podcast for years, and his connectedness both inside and outside the social media space is a thing of beauty. I have just ordered the book--haven't read it yet--but I can say with confidence that you will learn something from it.

If you don't, I'll give you your money back. Seriously. Just email me if you read it and don't learn something new.

Not convinced? Stay tuned for a Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter interview with Mitch. Promise you'll learn something from that, too!

Book Review (in Tweets): What Would Google Do?

This book review is a bit different from the standard format, since I rarely review audiobooks, preferring instead the dead tree versions that can be highlighted, underscored and more easily summarized. And I did listen to Jeff Jarvis' new internet classic, What Would Google Do?, as an audiobook from Audible.com (courtesy of Grammar Girl's promotion). That means no scanning the TOC for basic organization, no thumbing back through the pages in order to pull out the underlined bits.

However, since much of what Jarvis outlined did resonate and should be passed on, I did Tweet my impressions as I read along. Yup. Like this, all with the #wwgd hashtag and with a note to @jeffjarvis:

 

So here are the Tweets of the most relevant points Jarvis made so well, broadly categorized:

How people relate to media and interaction

• People put themselves at the center if their me-spheres, and they expect you to come to them
  
• Don't "start a community"; bring an existing one "elegant organization"

How to situate your business in the trust economy

• Make the move from mass to niche
  
• Ask yourself: what business are you really in?
  
• Trust is a mutual relationship of transparency and sharing
  
• The more you control, the less you are trusted
  
• How do you determine what is interesting to your customers? Use metrics and measure behavior, not guesses.

How to approach change, turmoil and innovation

• New ethic: make mistakes well
  
• Cash flow can blind you to the strategic necessity if change
  
• If you enable people to follow their passions, they'll as much as work for free

How people absorb information

• Mass media has become a mass of niches.
  
• (I'm a little put off by @jeffjarvis' admiration of Howard Stern)
  
• Books are like a British accent: everything sounds smarter in them, even if it isn't.
  
• 70% of adults have not been in a bookstore in 5 yrs.
• The medium is the message, and the customer is the new medium
• Serve your niche instead of the mass. 

What fears lurk

• Privacy isn't the issue; control is (with respect to personal disclosure in social media).

Jarvis spends most of the book stressing making the move from mass to niches, focusing on innovation, and on the value of free as a business model, with plentiful examples. The last few chapters are imaginations of the Googlification of various industries: real estate, construction, law, most of which had me shaking my head in incredulity and a healthy dose of skepticism. (Personally, I think good realtors do deserve what they're paid; a home sale is a complicated thing and can't be returned like a Dell computer if it doesn't work as represented.) Those last few chapters had far less relevance for me than the main thesis of the book.

What about you? Have you read it? What did you think? And what are you reading next?

Book Review: Marketing to the Social Web by Larry Weber

Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business by Larry Weber

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
I saw this book on a client's shelf and thought, "Oh, goodie! One I haven't read!" I promptly ordered a copy, dove in... and was underwhelmed with a big side of "meh." I understand that social media changes daily, and hardcover published books can't keep up, bit this copyright 2007 book seemed out of the loop.

It's not that the advice is bad per se; Larry Weber does seem to say the right things (Wal-Mart Across America ampaign was bad), but he uses the word "control" entirely too much for my comfort level. I'm all for managing expectations and staying active in communities, but after a while, I began circling every time he used the word "control" to assuage the reader (presumably some terrified traditional marketer or CEO) that this crazy social media thing isn't a free-for-all. He seems to be quick to assure that you can still massage your messages (and people's responses) just as much as you used to.

For example, he claims "the objective is to have customers invite you to deliver the message to them. You just can't force them anymore." Um, no, you can't--did you used to? Is this the new way to "force" people to listen to your crappy message? And I disagree with the first sentence as well; I think this statement misses the point of social media completely, that it is about engaging in real conversations, not about "delivering messages" at all.

In short, the book seems to be looking at social media from a traditional marketing point of view and not quite getting it. (Sorry, Shel, for using "getting it.") :-)

View all my reviews.