Below are a number of resources related to my talk, “Social Media: Friend or Foe?” given on November 19, at a marketing conference hosted by the Farm Credit Bank of Texas. I want to thank Stan Ray and Lora Blume for their tremendous hospitality and everyone who attended for their kind attention and challenging questions.

Key points

What is social media?
Thousands of web sites that allow individual users to create, share, and rate content — and connect with others who share common interests.

Why should you care?
1.    Rapid growth in use & influence of social media sites.
2.    Resulting power shift: individuals exert more control than organizations over content & message.

Top social media sites/activity include:
•    Blogs (77% of active Internet users read them)
•    User-generated content (photos, video, reviews, documents)
•    Facebook (276MM per month)
•    Myspace (124MM per month)
•    Twitter (7MM users)

Social networking by age/gender
•    35% of U.S. adults
•    65% of U.S. teens
•    85% of Gen Y (2% increase since ‘08)
•    28% of Baby Boomers (59% increase since ‘08)
•    35% of men*
•    35% of women*

Farmers & social media
•    55% of farmers online
•    27% have high-speed
•    65% of farmers* use Internet “constantly or several times a day at work”

How can you put social media to work in your organization?
•    Customer service
•    Market research
•    Employee communications
•    Community outreach
•    Public relations
•    Marketing

How to adopt social media in 5 easy steps
1.    Listen to the conversations.
2.    Determine how you want to engage.
3.    Set boundaries.
4.    Rethink your content.
5.    Embrace R&D as a way of business.

Links and references

Ag and Social Media

• Twitter Blog: Twittering from the Tractor
• NPR: A Farmer, His ‘Tribe’ And The Web That Brings Them Together
• TWEET CORN? Nebraska farmers sharing their experiences via Twitter – Free-Press-Release.com
• Farmers embracing Twitter trend – 14 News, The Tri-State’s News and Weather Leader-
• Twittering from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the farm – CNN.com
• In the Field » Agriculture and social media: Q&A with Sue Colucci
• The Voice of Agriculture – American Farm Bureau
• THINKeEXTENSION » Blog Archive » Can Social Media and Web2.0 save Agriculture and Environment
• Farmers for the Future

Internal Use of Social Media

• Social Media Policies For Your Company: Internal Policies | davefleet.com
• Transparency Not Technology: Internal Use of Social Media

Banking & Social Media

• Banks & social media: shred your marketing beliefs
• The Community Banker’s Guide to Social Network Marketing
• Banks try social networking, jump on Twitter wagon – USATODAY.com

Social Media Trends, Statistics & Demographics

• Overview | Pew Internet & American Life Project
• Adults and Social Network Websites | Pew Internet & American Life Project
• Twitter and status updating | Pew Internet & American Life Project
• twitter.com – Quantcast Audience Profile
• Mindblowing #IranElection Stats: 221,744 Tweets Per Hour at Peak
• Social Media 2008 Statistics
• Growth of User Generated Content Contributors in USA : TechCrunchies – Internet Statistics and Numbers
• 82 Million User-Generated Content Creators and CountingBlogging grows by 68% « Mind Juice
• New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets – Conversation Starter – HarvardBusiness.org
• Nielsen: Twitter Was Fastest Growing Community Last Month
  MySpace shrinks as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo grab its users | Technology | The Observer
  Domino’s Discovers Social Media – BusinessWeek
  Micro Persuasion: Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus

Resources mentioned in my talk

• Twitter search
• Google Alerts
• Google Blogs
• Google Trends
• Radian 6 – Subscription-based social media monitoring tool
• Techrigy SM2 – Subscription-based social media monitoring tool
• Filtrbox – Free social media marketing tool

Photo of the Texas capital building rotunda, by Flickr user jasleen_kaur

HOW PEOPLE APPLY THE BASIC SOCIAL RULE OF POLITENESS TO COMPUTERS

There is a well-known documented fact about human behavior: People will tell you what they think you want to hear. For example, if a waiter asks how his service was, people are more likely to give him a positive response. If a 3rd party asks about the waiter’s service, people tend to give more negative responses. Why? Because, generally, people want to be liked. And people feel they are liked more when they are being polite. (Certainly there are a few exceptions to this rule). You probably don’t need to think too hard to relate to this, your parents taught you at an early age the importance of being polite.

But did you know that people apply that same social rule to computers. I’ll wait a second while that sinks in… Yes, people are polite to computers! Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass, while professors at Stanford University and Co-directors of the “Social Responses to Communication Technologies” project at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, conducted controlled experiments to get to the bottom of this seemingly illogical idea.

In this study, one of their many studies on the subject of people’s social response to computers, participants were split into two groups. They asked the first group to sit at Computer A and participate in answering questions about a series of facts. They were told that they would evaluate the computer’s performance at the end of the session. The computer would state a trivial fact and ask the participant if they know about it, giving them three choices: a lot, not much and none. Based on their answers, the computer would offer additional information about that fact. At the end, the computer would test the participants retained knowledge and let them know which questions they had gotten right. After each reviewed question, the computer would state that it had done a great job. At the end of the session, Computer A asked the participant to rate its performance.

The second group worked through the exact same process on Computer A as group one, answering the same questions about the same series of facts. At the end of the session, they moved to another identical computer (Computer B) where it asked the participants about Computer A’s performance. Hands down, group one had far more favorable responses towards Computer A than the second group.

Mind you, there were no graphics and everything on the screen was text-based (copy and standard UI buttons). During the exit interview, the participants were asked if they provided answers that were polite to the computer. All of them confidently dismissed that notion–they said that they were not being “polite” to the computer in the least [insert image of them rolling their eyes here]. So that means, consciously, that they considered the computer to be an inanimate object. However, their actions obviously tell a different story. You might be thinking that the participants were identifying with a “programmer” behind the computer. But even that theory had been ruled out through the experiment. There can only be one reason for their reaction: people subconsciously apply the social rule of politeness to computers.

Knowing that we treat computers as social actors, what could this mean for your organization and the connections you make with your customers, patients or students online?

1. First, know that feedback solicited on your site (like a survey) will be more positive towards you than if it is solicited through a 3rd party (like a review site). Those 3rd party evaluations will tend be more honest (or at least more balanced) than the feedback solicited on your site.
2. More importantly, turn the study around. Ask yourself if your web site is “polite” to your visitors. Is it nice and is it helpful? For example, when a visitor is presented with an error, does your site take responsibility (“Sorry, I can’t find what you’re looking for [insert helpful instructions here]) or does it make the visitor feel like a criminal ([ERROR: Access Denied! You have attempted to modify your access to the secure Web site. As a result, your session has been terminated. This attempt to falsify your credentials has been logged to our files.] This is an actual message given to a user after he forgot that his username was case sensitive).
   Too often, Web sites speak the language of the organization, or the programmer, which is almost always very different than the visitor’s. If a visitor doesn’t feel connected to your site, they won’t feel connect to your organization or it’s products and services. (This idea actually tips into the social rule of “likability” which I’ll write about in a future post.)
3. Taking it a step further, consider putting a polite human face (or voice) on your product or service. Make a human connection. Don’t speak about features, talk about how this will make their job, health, life better. A more human tone in your copy will increase the likelihood that users will have a more positive, more personal experience.

Mark Dunst, a partner of Polymer Studios, is a Web strategist, interaction and interface designer in Portland, OR.

For those of you who read about last summer’s visit to  Corazón de Ñaupas in Peru, I’m pleased to report that Polymer Studios is the proud sponsor of the town’s soccer club.

On my last night in the village, the club presented me with a formal request for sponsorship, typed up on the only typewriter for miles around, signed by the officers of the club and stamped by the local notary. Who could say no to such a proper business proposal? We’re contractually barred from disclosing the details of the sponsorship, but let me put it this way: in the past, the guys played in the clothes on their backs and the other teams made fun of them. Especially those jerks down in the rich city of Vinchos. Who’s laughing now, Vinchos?

We’re hoping to have a skybox installed in the coming year. Until then, our preferred seats at the home pitch are located on top of the big rock outcrop above the field. (No, not the one above the outhouse, but the other one near the cornfield.)

We wish the Ñaupitas the best of luck in the coming season, especially against those dirty dogs down in Vinchos.

You can find wisdom in the most unlikely places. I found this gem in a research paper about Warren Buffett by Michael Mauboussin of Legg Mason Capital Management (in which he references Nassim Taleb’s book the The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable).

Humans have a near insatiable desire to link cause and effect. Unfortunately, causality is often very difficult to deconstruct, even in retrospect. But coming up with a cause and effect story helps settle our minds, and provides a greater (albeit false) sense of control as we face the future.

What’s your story? How do you explain your success or your failure? I know I’ve got mine

Talk of the recession is, well, everywhere. And it can get depressing.

So, where are the contrarians? Who’s looking for (and telling others about) the silver lining in this grey economy? Who’s trying to describe an alternate reality?

Well, here are a handful for you to consider.

Graeme Thickins, in The Clear and Simple Solution to the Current Downturn: The Entrepreneurial Economy,  at Tech~Surf~Blog sees salvation in good ol’ entrepreneurism:

The big answer to our current economic plight is not a new one: it is staring us right in the face. It has brought us out of many a recession before this one, and it will do so again. It is simply this: the ingenuity and perseverance of the American entrepreneur.

Graeme also points us to two particularly relevant posts:

• The “Downturn” — Keeping Things in Perspective, by Jay Turo at the growthink blog.
• Fear Kills Businesses Dead, by Brian Solis at TechCrunch

Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer suggests that the downturn, if anything, presents an opportunity for marketers to try ideas they might not have been able to successfully champion during the last boom. Among his more intriguing ideas:

Adopt the simpler and affordable Net Promoter Score.

Evangelize the benefits of Twitter-driven customer support.

Build a customer, supplier, vendor or employee social network on Ning.

Host internal seminars about design thinking.

Speak out against testosterone-driven “barbarian” mission statements. (ed: Kinder, gentler mission statements? I’d like to see that.)

Underlying all this talk of the recession is the question of fear. As Brian Solis’ post puts it, fear kills. It sucks your soul, at at time when you need all the energy and optimism you can muster. If you find yourself losing sleep over the economy, I highly recommend this post by Robert Middleton on his More Clients blog.

Finally, if you’re seeking out the brighter side of the economy (and happen to live in the Twin Cities), be sure to attend the next UnSummit on Sat., March 7. The theme is “Hacking the Recession” and we’ll be discussing ideas and tools that will help us improve our economic well being individually and collectively. Some of the proposed sessions include:

• Social media survival kit — a workshop to get you up to speed
• Getting good ideas when times are tough
• How to increase your employability using community and social media
• Blogging for fun, profit and survival

Photo credit: Alternate realities by James Jordan

At first glance, you could be in any classroom anywhere. The kindergartners are restless. Some have loud sniffles. A few of them crack jokes and laugh until the teacher asks everyone to quiet down and recite their vocabulary words.

Only the vocabulary words are in Quechua. The And outside the one-room schoolhouse, hovering in the doorway, actually, are all the parents. Mothers and fathers are beaming with imperfect smiles as they peer through the doorway, waiting expectantly to see if the kids need anything—a notebook, a pencil, perhaps a reminder to behave.

Even though we’re in the tiny Peruvian village of Hatumpampa, I immediately recognize what these parents are doing. They’re doting! It’s what my wife and I do with our kids back home in Minnesota. Now, I don’t speak a stitch of Quechua, nor raise llamas at 12,000 feet, but wanting to see your children succeed — that I can relate to.

I’ve come with my 10-year-old son Sam to Peru to see what life is like in the remote villages where Comunidad has been working. Places with names like Paccha, Culluhuanca and Corazón de Ñaupas. Places that are barely on the map, and after decades of neglect and civil war, just starting to claw their way back to normalcy.

After a day-long tour of the kindergarten classes at each of the villages, meeting teachers and parents and their adorable children (and eating the filling, multi-course meals that are proudly served to us at each stop) we settle in for a weekend in Corazón de Ñaupas.

“Corazón” is a cozy little town. Except for the three public buildings erected by the government and the oddly-angled soccer field that was literally quarried out of the hillside, it’s a collection of a two-dozen adobe farmhouses.

Hovering over the town on one of the hills are several rock outcrops whose eroded cylindrical shapes loosely resemble human figures. Someone suggests that the rocks gave the town its name, which means “Heart of the Ancestors.”

These “ancestors” have indeed helped keep the town safe over the years. During the civil war of the 1980s and 90s, villagers camped out in the hills above the rocks to avoid nighttime raids by guerrillas.

Today, this part of Peru is peaceful. The hills above Corazón aren’t for hiding, but for sunbathing and napping, as we discover on a lazy Saturday. From the hilltop, we can see the Paccha Valley spread out below us and eagles drifting on air currents above. Occasionally, the braying of a donkey or the bells of a llama caravan drift upward from who knows where.

Back in town, the soccer field is no longer a place for rounding up frightened villagers. It’s for soccer, volleyball and recreation. Over the course of our stay, we enjoy several heated volleyball matches that pull in seemingly everyone from the village as either player or spectator. To our surprise, the grade-school teacher is one of the most feared opponents. Her withering serve usually causes one of us to flail about and fall to the ground in a spectacular but failed defense.

And those government buildings are for schooling. As we learn during our stay, many of the parents of school-aged kids missed out on their chance at education. They grew up during the war, a time in which survival was a higher priority than arithmetic.

That might explain the high attendance in Corazón’s first-ever kindergarten class, which Comunidad has funded. Or the high participation in the breakfast program for kids all ages, which Comunidad also supports. These parents are hungry to see their children do better. It’s like they’ve been given a second chance. And they’re holding on for dear life.

On our last night, we’re asked to sit as guests of honor at a town hall meeting in the school building. The classroom is crowded. Many of the adults are squeezed into children’s desk-chairs. Others stand in back. Yet more adults—many of the same parents who sit outside this classroom every morning while their six-year-olds attend kindergarten—wait expectantly outside the door.

We listen to several speeches, some in Spanish, some in Quechua—nearly all of them emotional and teary-eyed. The speakers describe what the people of Corazón have been through these past years. “Many people have promised many things over the years,” the president of the community says. But with Comunidad it’s been different. As promised, Nancy Maldonado Cárdova, Comunidad’s kindergarten teacher arrives every Monday and stays all week to teach class. And when the kids of Corazón arrive in the morning (some of whom have walked two hours to school on an empty stomach), there is hot breakfast waiting. Most importantly, the kids have begun to show progress in school. It’s no exaggeration to say that many of them can now read better than their parents.

All this, he says, is just the beginning of a long and slow journey. But in this forgotten corner of the world, it’s what passes for hope.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider making a small donation to Comunidad.

So, what’s a vigilant corporate lawyer to do? Nothing, according to Bruce Johnson, partner at Davis Wright Tremain, LLP, in this video interview from MyRagan.com.

+++

First of all, it’s important to be clear with your boss on what social media is. It’s definitely not advertising or something disruptive. It’s not one-way communication, like most corporate web sites. At the core, it’s a participative medium, like a big democratic marketplace. Which means you can’t buy your way in. Just ask the many companies that have tried and failed at creating “viral” videos. (Viral successes don’t count, just as you shouldn’t ask lottery winners for advice on financial planning.)

That’s not to say there isn’t participation inequality. On the social Web, some participants matter more than others. Take the woman who I just started following on Twitter, who, as a guru, has 11,000 followers while she only follows about 2,000 people. That makes her an influencer whose endorsements result in lots of attention. But she had to earn that power. Just as your organization will have to.

Indeed social media marketing is low-cost or no-cost approach, which makes it very tempting in this economic downturn. But it comes with the price of being engaged, accessible and human. Because it is a voluntary medium, people won’t show much interest if they think you’re just working it like an ad channel. People who do that get shut out pretty aggressively.

Instead, people need to feel like you’re offering something of value (inspiration, information, insight, entertainment, humor, etc.) — in other words, you gotta bring something to the party. Otherwise, nobody’s interested.

What excites me is that there are so many ways to create something that will be seen as valuable in the communities you choose participate in. The possibilities are endless.

But rather than start with what you want to say, it’s best to do some homework, find some potential communities and see what kind of participation they would be most likely to appreciate.

Regardless of what you end up doing, I think your efforts will need to reflect (actually, they should be fueled by) your organization’s philosophy of practice. It should come out of your DNA.

What probably seemed clever in the mind of a 23-year-old, childless copywriter turned out to be quite offensive to many moms (and dads, to be sure) and unleashed a social media firestorm.

Within a few short hours, a movement was born, complete with its own #motrinmoms hashtag on Twitter, angry blog posts, video rants, CafePress stores, Flickr groups and parody videos. In less than a day, Motrin was forced to take down the ad and apologize.

• Morriss Partee has published a chronology of events.
• Enterprise Social Media has assembled a Harpers-like index of Motrin Moms activity, which also gives a good sense of how quickly, from Motrin’s point of view, this whole thing got out of hand.
• Jack Neff covers the incident in Ad Age.

Update:
My biz partner Dean Gulstad points out an article by Jakob Nielsen on participation inequality, which supports Neff’s view that Motrin acted too hastily in responding to the social media uproar. Nielsen points out that “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.” Therefore, he says, “If your company looks to Web postings for customer feedback on its products and services, you’re getting an unrepresentative sample.”

Yet another update:
Seth Godin pans Motrin’s apology for its lack of humanity.

• NYTimes: Jobless rate at 14-year high
• WSJ: Labor data show pain across economy
• AP: Running on fumes; GM could soon run out of cash

By these accounts, we are headed toward a period of significant unemployment or are already there. Either way, if you don’t already, you will soon have a number of colleagues, friends or relatives who are looking for a job. There’s a better chance than ever that you could soon join them.

I don’t take any of this lightheartedly. I have a deep pang of sympathy for people who are out of work because my father was a victim of the 70s malaise and was chronically underemployed for much of my boyhood. I know from first-hand experience that behind all these grave headlines and numbers lie families and parents who are frustrated and stressed about not being able to fulfill the most basic need of providing for their loved ones.

If I can preach for just a moment, I strongly encourage every one of you who are still gainfully employed to reach out to your unemployed friends and at least offer some words of encouragement. Or how about a free latte? It’s good karma

At the same time, don’t forget to consider your own job security. How safe is your job? How safe is your industry? What should you be doing to increase your “employment security?” (To clarify, employment security is about making yourself more employable and different from increasing your security in your current job, which you may not have much control over). How can you manufacture your own luck in a tight job market?

If you haven’t heard this enough over the years, it’s all about who you know. It’s about the quality of your personal network. According to Paul DeBettignies, managing partner at the Minneapolis IT recruitment firm Nerd Search, between 50% to 80% of jobs are filled based on personal connections.

Fortunately, thanks to new social networking tools, such as Linked In, Facebook and Twitter, among others, you can easily build up a network of colleagues, friends and acquaintances that can help increase your luck in the job market. And the good news for those of you who hate schmoozing, you don’t need to make small talk at cocktail parties to take advantage of these tools. (Check out Commoncraft’s “Social Networking in Plain English” for a great intro to social network tools.)

Five steps to greater employment security

1. Get a personal home page. The domain isn’t critical, although having “www.bobjones.com” could be easier for your contacts to remember. The important thing here is that you have a consistent place to send your contacts. On your home page, you can provide links to other places, such as your social network profiles, your resume or curriculum vitae, your blog, articles you’ve been quoted in or samples of your work. Please note that you can use your blog as your home page. Update: I just found a great service called extendr which lets you build a free home page like I described above. Check out my page as an example: http://donball.extendr.com
2. Create an online resume – As this article explains, your resume doesn’t have to be a highly-crafted Word doc that you send out to prospective employers as an attachment. Instead, your resume can exist as a page in your blog, where people (and Google) can find it easily. You can even consider the entirety of your Linked In profile to be your resume. Bottom line: you have no idea who is going to find you and your experience relevant, so get yourself out there where you can be found!
3. Get on Linked In – As a business owner, this site isn’t my cup of tea. But I do keep a profile there and it seems to have quite a bit of currency among Baby-Boomer, white-collar professionals (in other words people who are further along in their careers and in a better position to help you), so you probably need to be there.
4. Get on Facebook – If you’re already on Linked In (or, like me, find it a bit to sterile), then you might want to expand your network by joining Facebook, where you will find not only professional colleagues, but friends and relatives. Facebook lets you show more facets of yourself, including personal tastes, interests, hobbies and (if you dare go there) political and religious affiliations.
5. Create a blog – This may be the biggest step in the list because it takes time to write for a blog (this article is taking me well over an hour). But think of a blog as a way to help people get to know you before they meet you. A blog gives potential employers the opportunity to see your views on your industry and your profession. More importantly, it shows them that the front porch light is on and someone’s home. As an employer, I can tell you that I would much prefer hiring someone who demonstrates that they’re actively engaged in their work. The best part about blogging is that it’s really easy to start. I started my first blog at Blogger.com and it took me all of 15 minutes to set up.
6. Get on Twitter – (Hey, what about 5 steps? Well, when you have your own blog you get to make up your own rules! And one of my rules is to provide my followers with a laginappe, a little something extra.) Twitter is turning out to be an incredible networking tool that lets you potentially interact with thousands of people in yours and related fields — instantly. It’s also a great way to tell your contacts about any changes in your situation, new blog posts or to request information on a prospective employer. But there’s a catch. If you create a Twitter account and do nothing else, you’ll be underwhelmed. You have to take the extra step of searching for and following people you know (and then, perhaps, some of the people they know). Feel free to follow me. I’ll follow you back and even ask my Twitter friends to connect with you. Want to learn more? Again, Commoncraft has a great video intro.

Of course, it’s never to late to start, but these are steps you should try to follow BEFORE you are laid off. If you suddenly become the recipient of a pink slip, you will wish that you already had your network in place. And you could lose precious time trying to get all the pieces in place.

What are you doing to soften the blow of a potential layoff? Or, if you are looking for work, what techniques are you using to make yourself more employable? Please share in the comment section below. Good luck!