As business has picked up these last few months, I’ve noticed my time spent online on social nets has dropped off. In some cases, significantly and in others less significant but still noticeable. The obvious reason (and easy out) is that I’m busy… working! Doing the things that earn me a living and keep my family warm, dry and fed. The time I spent on social networks from 2008 forward was always, in part, about building business. And it’s worked, of that I am certain. My investment of time and content in the ‘net is a very real part of the reason why I’m “too busy!” to tweet or post as frequently these days.

The real issue, though, isn’t whether I’m too busy today… it’s how busy will I STAY without continuing to invest time and content into my networks. What I’ve noticed is that the parts of online social networking that always felt like work I don’t miss doing. I need to do some of that “work” anyway, but I don’t miss making sure I post something valuable every day to LinkedIn, or that I’ve found, read, commented on and posted X number of blog posts in my field/areas of interest and expertise. I still do those things, but I do them as I have time at the moment.

I DO miss, however, the interaction and relationships I’ve developed over the past two, almost three years… and that is a sign of how necessary networks are for us. There are people I’ve met (mostly only digitally) whom I truly miss interacting with, and that I intend to change. I suspect that more regular interaction with some of the smart, savvy, challenging, entertaining and just downright cool people I’ve come to know will organically lead me to great content I WANT to read, comment on, and share with the rest of my network. It always has Thinking specifically here of people like Mack Collier, Bobby Rettew, David Spinks, Becky McCray, Amber Naslund…. people who make me think, who help me grow and who help me find and share content that’s worthy of a wider audience.

I’m beginning to realize that it’s not the networking I miss, it’s the key people in the networks. It’s not a news flash that relationships are the engine of social networking. Social networking took off in a time of recession, job hunting, and shared woes. What happens as things change? How do we continue to fuel that relationship engine? How will we hold on to our best digital friends when we get busier? Have you noticed a difference in your own habits, and are you planning any changes?

Yes, you read that right. Blogging is dead. Over. Done. Time to move on…

What's next?

(take that deep breath, now… and then read on)

My almost-16-year-old son enjoys teasing me whenever something happens in my life with the phrase, “Oh, are you going to blog about it? Better blog about it!” Today, I thought about what his general disdain meant, aside from the normal teen angst part. It’s not that he doesn’t “get” blogging or that no one around him (other than me, natch) has a blog. It’s that he doesn’t think that way about connections. Blogging is not real time, and that’s how he connects to his life and his friends.

Think about this with me… in 10 years, he and millions of other kids who were born at the dawning of the Internet age (1995… we got our first home computer and signed up with AOL), will be the backbone of the work force. And they aren’t going to wake up in 5 or 10 years and decide they’d better blog about it. Teens don’t connect the same way adults do today for the same reasons that have been true for, well, ever. The connections of your average teen are primarily to those people who are part of said teen’s daily life. Friends from school, work, church, family and extended family, neighborhood friends. These are the people a teen is able to see on a regular basis without assistance. They’re people he or she knows personally for some reason.

Today, the primary way teens connect seems to be mobile text. They don’t email, and they don’t IM unless its through an app on their phones. They don’t like being tied to their computer for connectivity and the phone is (perceived at least) to be more private. So, what happens when their world expands in a few years, and connections to people they may not know well (or at all) personally become important? And they will, of course… digital connection is highly likely to remain a staple of business and personal networks. I asked my son what he thought. After all, it was his comment that started this train of thought. He said he enjoyed talking with his friends through his Playstation 3. When I asked why, he responded… because we’re all talking on a shared line, and we’re playing the same game at the same time. In other words, I said, it’s a shared real-time experience.

That is the “next big thing” I think. Let’s fast forward for a minute. My son wants to be a cave biologist when he grows up. Let’s follow his older, employed (please, Lord!) self on a trip to South America. Somewhere in a remote cave, he discovers a new species of cave beetle. Excited, he pings his network of subscribers that he’s on with a live feed. Everyone, everywhere who subscribes to him (because they find him relevant to their work, life, love, or interest) has the option of joining in to see his find, talk to him and to each other, and drop off the feed whenever they choose. A shared, real-time experience with a self-selected community. The community might include colleagues, friends and family, co-workers, supporters, interested persons, or, if he’s allowed it for this feed, complete strangers.

Think of your Google Reader, except the feeds are now opting-in to notifications of shared experiences happening real time, or the option to review and comment or share later on, or one-to-one. You opt in to someone’s life, in other words. Whatever portions of it they choose to share, and you choose to see or experience with them.

That all said… my son’s school is now incorporating blogging into the regular curriculum. When public education embraces a cultural movement and begins to teach it, it’s the death knell for the cool factor. So yeah, blogs like this one, and like yours… our days are numbered. But don’t stop blogging, because it’s going to take a good long while for the millenials to figure out how exactly they want to communicate with their expanding worlds, and even longer for the rest of the world to figure out how to harness the idea for business and for Google juice. Not blogging now would be like going back to 1985 and deciding that because cable TV was gaining ground, no one should advertise on broadcast TV ever again. Blogging is one of the best ways, today, for people, businesses and brands to build community, share expertise, listen, learn and connect. But tomorrow is coming, and we should already be thinking about what’s next, AB (after blogs).

What do you think… what is next? How do you see tomorrow’s connectivity happening, and how long is the horizon before we get there?

NOTE: This post will be the framing for the #SMchat on Twitter on Wednesday, August 18th, from noon to 1 PM CST.

Or…. Why winning new clients, friends or donors is so much easier when you do the hard work of investigation, positioning and delivering, and how to do it better.

Get going on the path to community and conversion.

First, some quick definitions:

I’ve written about Complacency before, and how complacency breeds contempt for your audience. In this case, I’m talking about having a George Lopez-like attitude of, “I GOT this!” when it comes to making sure you’re offering something of value to people who have the ways and means to buy it and that you’re operating in the right venues to get their attention.

Context is the real and the digital landscape we operate within. It means all of the influencing factors we consciously or unconsciously take into account when we evaluate the potential, intent, or veracity of a bit of data. Context is what changes data into information.

Collaboration is purposefully working together with another entity… person, place or business, to achieve mutually beneficial goals.

Conversion is the golden moment when a prospect becomes a client, a shopper becomes a buyer, or an idea takes hold and becomes a movement.

Now… here’s why all this matters and why you should consider the “Four Cs” of doing business in 2010.

Today context (all those influencing factors) changes more rapidly then ever before. If you assume, as a business or brand, that what worked last month or even last week, will work this week… you allow complacency to frame your offerings and your engagement.  Better to seek feedback, monitor and listen actively, find new ways to be relevant and timely through smart collaboration and the use of tools like social media, integrated marketing, relationships and networking, dashboard-type web monitoring applications, community (meatspace or meetspace) to keep tabs on context. Conversions aren’t permanent since context is always influencing customers. Building community in whatever way is most appropriate for your brand, business, idea or personal cult is a long-term way to collaborate directly with your most important audience. If they think you care, and are actually listening, they’ll  tell you what they want and need from you. All (ha!) you have to do is deliver the goods… whether that’s information, product, services, results-as-promised is what converts a customer into an advocate and someone who’ll want to be in community with you.

When you become part of the context of your customer’s lives to the extent that you’re in community with them, it’s much harder for you to become complacent…. would you let down your friends? Lie to them? Make assumptions and not even bother to beg forgiveness? Of course not. You won’t want to let your community down, either.

Bottom line? Remember that complacency breeds contempt for your audience, and that audience uses the ever-changing filter of context to determine who gets their attention. If you want to stay relevant and get through the filters, spend some time collaborating with people, offline and online. Use social tools, use engagement mechanisms like web sites and email, use old-fashioned suggestion boxes if they work. Because conversion, in the usual sense of the word in online circles, isn’t the ultimate goal.It’s just a step on the path building the kind of contextually relevant community that leads to long-term brand or business success.

What do you think? Do we need “4 Cs” along with the “4 Ps” these days? Give us your best examples of relevant communities creating their own context? Am I just nuts?

photo credit: Landscape_Photography on flickr.com (some beautiful work there!)

QUESTIONS we’ll be considering:

How do you guard against complacency?

How do you determine contextual factors? How can SM affect or provide context?

How can you collaborate with your audience through SM?

(and others, as the discussion develops)

I live a digital life. I don’t mean that I’m involved in digital media, though I am (hey, you’re reading this, right, and you probably got here via Facebook, Twitter, or Google). I mean that my first instinct to discover, research, connect or share now involves digital platforms. Cases in point:

I saw a tweet by Heather Caliendo on Twitter about the movie Inception last Friday. It was positive, and I know and like Heather and more importantly, respect her opinions and know she has high standards for smart stories. So, when my husband and I considered a movie on Saturday night, guess what we saw? Yep… Inception, based in large part on Heather’s tweet to the world. I’ve not seen Heather in months, since she’s moved to Colorado, but our relationship matters to me regardless of our “face-to-face” interaction (or lack thereof).

I recently dropped my iPhone into a toilet. It suffered a severe case of PTSD (Post Toilet Submergance Dysfunction) and then died. Through my digital friendship with Bobby Rettew, who sympathized with my phoneless plight and had also recently upgraded to an iPhone 4, I became the very happy owner of his lovely 3G S phone. I’ve never met Bobby in person, though we keep threatening to make that happen. However, I consider him a friend, not just a “friend” in the Facebook sense of the word.

On a trip through southeast Kansas over the weekend, we stopped in Pittsburg to eat dinner. I used my UrbanSpoon app to check out possibilities and we discovered some awesome Italian food at a place called Napoli’s, located on Broadway in Pittsburg. I posted via Foursquare & shared the post to Facebook that we’d really enjoyed our visit. A FB friend, local to the area and someone I’ve not seen in person for many years, said they’d been hesitant to try it, but now they might after hearing our experience.

What is the point of all this? Digital relationships matter. People do pay attention. The relevance quotient for digital relationships is high…. I didn’t do a Google search for restaurants in Pittsburg since I didn’t want to know about all of them… just the good ones. I didn’t buy a phone from Craigslist because I depend (and Crossroads Communications depends) on my phone for my business and I trusted Bobby. And the movie… we see maybe two or three a year. So we choose carefully… and Heather is a writer. She knows a good story when she sees one. Her recommendation elevated Inception to the level of “worth spending one of our two movie nights left this year on” status.

Relevance is the engine that drives our digital decisions. The future of the web as a connection medium  lies not in creating more information nor in more platforms for sharing information. It lies in better ways for relevant information to be funneled to the people who care about it. When you think about how to use the web to drive business, or use social media, or anything else “2.0″ related, start with answering the question, “Who cares?” because that forces the question of relevance. It’s not about creating buzz, or getting hits, or driving traffic… it’s about nurturing relationships that allow your offering, be it information or an iPhone, to become relevant to a very specific set of consumers at exactly the right time. THAT is what translates digital interest into business or brand success.

Reflections? No time for that!

It’s almost my blog-o-versary… I started this blog on July 23, 2009. I have seen many-a-reflection post from other bloggers about their first year, or their fifth, for the ones who’ve been around a while. And this isn’t one of those posts. Mainly because I’m not one to do a lot of looking back… when you (or I) screw up, we need to absorb those lessons where we are and then move forward. Take the time you need to feel the pain and then, Just. Move. On.

So, in the spirit of moving on…

I’ll continue to write about relevance, digital convergence and future trends that connect people to other people, places, spaces and ideas, because that seemed to resonate with many of you who took the time to comment on a post or retweet it.

I’ll ramp up my posting frequency. Yes, yes I will. Even if it’s a short post… if it’s relevant to this blog, I’ll get it up here more quickly.

I’ll use Twitter more strategically to gather ideas, feedback and take the temperature of the audiences out there. Little less arrogance, little more serving the readership.

I’ll continue to tweak the blog and the site to better serve the readers… sharing integrated marketing insights, strategies, tips and foibles, seasoned with my Tulsa perspective. I’ll include public relations content more frequently and I’ll be inviting guest bloggers to post this year. I use this blog as my front door… people hire me because they want help thinking about, strategizing and implementing integrated marketing solutions. They want -need- to know how I think… and I want to attract potential partners, clients and build relationships with others who get, or at least are intrigued by, how I think and who see the value in relationships and connectivity. I want to connect with people out there who will challenge what I think, who will share what they think, who will help me grow and bring all of their goodness to bear on this blog and community we’re building.

So as I said… Reflection doesn’t suit me, but red does… and we’re going full-on, redlined into the future here, and I hope you’ll not only come along for the ride, but help build the engine.

Photo Credit: flickr user becksshaw

My Gowalla Page

The mantra in real estate has always been, “Location, Location, Location!” Over the past year, since the advent of  location-based apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla, it’s seemed the plugged-in community has adopted the location motto as its own. Predictions were made, and disputed, about how important these apps could be.

I resisted the allure for a while but succumbed to the new avenue for connection. I’m a sucker for connecting. After several months of using both Foursquare and Gowalla… here’s what I think about the potential and the problems:

Problems I see:

Spam abounds. (It’s possible to drive by a strip center slowly and “check in” to a dozen places in a few minutes.) I’ve “turned off” several people on either service who did this routinely and made my phone go nuts with their check in message. And their poor Twitter or Facebook friends! *shudder*

Stalker potential is high. Early on, I was enamored with the newness of it all and checked in to both services most everywhere I went. Then the sobering reality of just how much information I was giddily sharing with the known world made me pause… and rethink a bit. I still check in often, but not usually if I’m traveling alone. And I keep many of my check ins off of Twitter and FB…. only the connections I’ve accepted on the location services see where I’m visiting.

Reward factor is low. I’m the Mayor of 18 places on Foursquare. Yes, it’s true… 18. And the rewards for that, so far? Nil. Nada. Zilch.

Connection potential is limited. Yes, I can see the possibility of real-world connections happening because of online posting. That’s why I’m still using the services. What bothers me is that when I see someone has checked into St. Francis Hospital, for instance, there’s no mechanism through the service for me to say, “Hey, you OK? Need anything?” or, if they’ve checked into my favorite Mexican restaurant, to say, “Hey, ask for Melinda’s section, she’s fabulous!”

What I’d like to see happen, in order to make location-based services really take off:

Stop the spam. Limit the time between check-ins, perhaps? Reward frequency at the same venues rather than overall number of check ins?

Build actual rewards into the service… Oh, my… the potential here is incredible. Location based apps are the digital convergence of direct mail and intent-based web search. Take for example Pei Wei Asian diner… no dessert offered there. In Tulsa, one of their locations sits adjacent to a Maggie Moo’s store. When I check in to Pei Wei, I ought to get a coupon or offer sent to me from the app for 20% off my order THAT NIGHT at Maggie Moo’s next door. Why, oh why, don’t they do this? They know where I am, they know what I’m doing (location, intent) and the potential to offer me something that is timed perfectly and co-located is huge. Why limit the rewards to free fries for the “Mayor?” Seriously… the data they are developing on customer behavior is worth lots of money and can be leveraged in so many ways. Would bring new meaning to point-of-purchase advertising.

Add connectivity. Let me respond to the shout-outs of my friends. Actually foster real-world connection. What about a badge that’s earned any time 5 people simultaneously check in to the same venue? (the Lemming badge?) Or maybe a trigger for free fries if you and 3 of your friends all check in to the same venue within 20 minutes (long enough to get the ping, decide to go, and get in the door)?

Those are my thoughts… what did I miss and what do you think?

Results from my Social Circle for "Marketing"

I noticed yesterday that new results were on my Google results page (entry on the page, above?).  A bit stalker-ish, I guess, but its the beginnings of mainstreaming the relevant web the way we’ve been talking about on this blog and many others.

Google’s take on Social Search mirrors what I’ve been saying (or my thoughts mirror theirs, I guess… probably should go ahead and assume they thought of this whole relevance thing first… ) for a while: Results from people we’ve chosen to connect to are more relevant to us. Now that Google is showing me results from people I’m connected to online (Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, etc.) the size and quality of that network matters more than ever.

The search page above is one for “Marketing.” Since I am connected online to a number of talented, prolific, smart and creative marketing people, the results returned for me were a list of awesomeness I could peruse. Blog posts I missed, white papers, web sites, all sorts of goodness. From people I’ve already chosen to listen to. In one place, regardless of how I’m connected to that person and where the content resided originally.

Some of the "Marketing" results from my social circle via Google

If I were only connected to a few great marketers, I’d miss out on some of the great resources I found. Social search filters the web through my definition of relevant and shows me more of who I trust. I am very, very happy.

Where do you see this going? How will it change how businesses view connecting with people? How they treat their web sites? Social results are on the bottom of the coveted first page… maybe the best new way to get first page placement is to be (drum roll…) RELEVANT to your prospect rather than merely the best SEO-’d web site out there. Here’s hoping.

Yeah… bubbles. Stay with me… you’ll see

After another furious #blogchat on Twitter where smart people were discussing the differences between passion and influence as it pertains to blogging and why (if?) it mattered, some things I’ve been thinking about began to crystallize. And because it’s what I do when that happens, here I am writing about it.

Before we dive in, thanks to @spikejones for inspiring some of this, @MackCollier for #blogchat (and lots of inspiration over time) and @edosegal, who wrote the ambient streams post I read recently.

First, some definitions (well, mine, anyway):

Passion (in the marketing sense) = commitment to/attachment to a brand, product, idea or position regardless of compensation.

It’s a feeling, an internal condition. It cannot be manufactured or externally created. Passion is a choice the individual makes… I choose to love Godiva dark chocolate. Godiva hasn’t asked me to love it, paid me to love it, and doesn’t particularly care that I do so… I, on an individual level, am not influential in their marketing planning. (Oversight on their part? Perhaps… )

Influence = ability to affect other’s perceptions or awareness.

Influence CAN be purchased/created. It’s an external perception… Billions of ad dollars are spent every year trying to influence the awareness and perception of potential customers. Is it possible for an individual blogger to have influence in a space he or she is not passionate about? Long term, I think the answer is no. Bloggers who have influence in a particular space usually have earned that right through good information, solid community, earned respect. Not always… because, as we’ve already said, influence can be purchased. Programs and tools and schemes exist to “grow your blog” and “get thousands of followers” to jump-start influence.

At least initially. Some of the current “stars” of the social media world, for instance, may not be around in a year or two. If they aren’t passionate about the relevant, interactive web, they will run out of things to say that resonate with the community marketers are hoping to reach through their influence. If they stop resonating, they will lose influence, and their relevance.

Someone who is passionate about an idea or product or brand keeps on learning, and loving, and sharing experiences and interactions born of the love affair. And those shared moments will typically only resonate with those who are interested in the same brand or idea. Maybe the audience isn’t in love yet… maybe just experimenting or looking for a first date. That’s where passionate people and influence intersect.

I can be influenced only by those people or messages I choose to pay attention to. Repeat… I can only be influenced by those people or messages I choose to pay attention to.

Why do I care what TechCrunch thinks in general about [insert brand here]? I don’t. I don’t care about what TechCrunch thinks about a lot of things. But I <3 Apple products. I tend to pay attention to what TechCrunch says about all things Apple… I am passionate about that brand and TechCrunch’s opinion is more relevant to me when they are talking about Apple than when they are talking about XBox360. I choose to pay attention… and then TechCrunch has a chance to influence me and my opinion.

What is missing from all this influence and passion is a way to filter relevance. It’s a fact that humans filter information and stimuli all the time. The web’s current model is based on active search:

Random thought triggers question…

Brain can’t supply answer…

Enter phrase into Google, or more typical for me, Twitter (or your weapon of choice)…

Scan results… (FOR WHAT… ?)

Click on choice that seems THE MOST RELEVANT to me (I trust the source/know the source or believe Google’s method for determining importance and value)

The future of the web, I believe, won’t be based on active search, but on ambient streams. Already, who I choose to follow on Twitter creates ambient streams that bubble up the information I care about. As more and more of the web dabbles in relevance… more information will find us rather than us going to look for it.

Who we choose to be influenced by (who we let control our information streams) will matter a great deal more than it does now. I suspect we’ll get more picky, too. More fragmented as a marketplace, more determined to know what we want to know and not see the rest. How will we determine who makes the cut? Passion… who we believe. Influence… who we trust. And relevance… who we perceive to “understand who and where we are in life.”

Already, the web can tell where I’m located, who is tweeting or geotagging near me, what sites/locations/stores I’ve visited recently (and if I positively or negatively reviewed them), and who I’m choosing to be influenced by (who am I connected to on Twitter, Facebook, Ning groups, LinkedIn, etc). How far off is that one app/program/site that will analyze that info, assign relative relevance scores to the possible streams of info, and show me what is relevant to me based on ME, not on Google’s basic algorithms?

Heady, and scary, stuff. What do you think… what’s next?

Google's Real Time Search is the "oh, Shiny!" topic we need to talk about.

I don’t claim to be an SEO expert…. But I DO know something about marketing. This post is about the future, the possibilities, and what people who are using any form of online marketing need to be thinking about NOW to get ready for what is coming. And it’s coming much faster than you might think.

Buzz is beginning about Google’s search integration deals with Facebook and Twitter… here are a couple of other people’s posts with more of the details, if you wanna know the specifics:

Info from Mashable

More, especially about Facebook

What does it mean for marketing? It means “integrated marketing” can’t just be about cross-platform and multi-channel. It now has to be about timing and velocity, too. If enough people on Twitter and Facebook are talking about your company’s product release, blog post or other shiny new thing, will you achieve the golden Google award of auto-real time search? What drives Google to choose which search terms/items get an auto real-time feed? I (obviously) don’t know the algorithm. But I bet it’s got everything to do with velocity and relevance. If Mashable tweets a post, and lots of people retweet it, is that out of the ordinary? Or a “blip” in the search world? Not really. If I tweet a post, and two hundred people retweet it, is THAT out of the ordinary? uh.. yes. Quite. It makes a blip on the search radar. It means something that WASN’T relevant a short time ago (my blog) is now relevant to (proportionally) many more people. Maybe I get my own Google live feed for a bit while people are tweeting, facebooking and commenting on the post. And then it goes away… rather like the auto live-feed for “Tiger Woods Mistress.” Was there… then not. May be again when another “revelation” breaks from someone else.

The point? “Buzz” has another dimension now. Real time matters because it gives the whole world (well, the whole Google-ized world, anyway) a snapshot of what’s important to EVERYONE, right now. Think of it as Twitter trending topics, writ large. Companies need to be ready…

Imagine a major hail storm hits the midwest in the United States. Guess what would suddenly start being very relevant?

“Roofing damage”

“Hail damage”

“local roofing in [city]“

These searches would all gain immediate, non-characteristic, traffic. They would form a blip, and the real time, relevant web will respond with live updates. If you’re a local roofing company, will your tweets/FB page/web site/blog be ready to take advantage of the traffic potential?

What do you see as the dangers? Benefits? Strategies needed? Future? So much to discuss here… looking forward to your thoughts!

UPDATE >> the number of results on Google for “Mandy Vavrinak” has jumped by about 1,500 since I last searched, about a week ago. THAT is what adding results from Facebook and Twitter means…