Answer Guy Central

Chris Brogan has spoken: the social crash is upon us. And “Ambient Connectivity” is the solution.

I can’t argue the first half of that, and I don’t; I’ve been telling you for quite some time that even as we look for new ways to do social networking and engage our clients and potential clients and enact the business change that this new world calls for we need to scale back on the volume of social networking we do. Quantity simply doesn’t equal quality.

If the story Chris told in his post yesterday wasn’t such a train wreck I wouldn’t be thinking about it or passing it along to you. As smart as Chris is, he hasn’t said anything new in about a year now and has fallen into a pattern where he does little more than scream “rah rah!“. I’m bored with it, and while I’ve commented on Mr. Brogan’s activities a few times I had pretty much decided that until he said something new I wasn’t going to talk about Chris Brogan any more.

Oh man.

Let’s remember that the point of social networking is to engage the people you’re “targeting”. I could use a nicer-sounding word than that, but whether it’s business, personal, or whatever the word target is about as accurate a descriptor as I can come up with.

In describing the in-progress “social crash”, Chris held his own situation up as an example. Fair enough; Chris Brogan is connected in ways the rest of us can only dream of, and I believe that his experiences are about as valid and representative as anybody’s. And the short of it is that Chris Brogan, social networking and business expert, is now suggesting that people who are in his social network shouldn’t expect to be engaged by him. Euphemistically, he referred to the need for “ambient connectivity” in a world where there are more people trying to get his attention then he has the time or inclination to interact with directly.

Here’s the problem: Chris is right. Neither he nor anyone in his position can possibly keep up with it all personally. But because Chris Brogan’s digital peeps BELIEVE they have a “real” relationship with him, he has no choice but to keep them thinking so, unless A) he just don’t care or B) thinks they “get it” when he floated his ambient connectivity idea.

Oh they got it. Brogan spoke the truth, and used that truth to disconnect from the people who thought they were connected.

I hate to use so trite an example as an Eminem song, but what Chris Brogan is suggesting smacks of “of course I want you as a fan, but you shouldn’t expect anything in return”.

And that ain’t “social”. It’s demagoguery. Good luck with that in a social networking world.

The real answer is that when your social networking needs outpace your ability to keep up with them you need either to start employing someone to handle the overrun, or stop acting in a way that is so clearly faux social. Or better yet, both.

By the way: I posted a response to Chris’ story that made many of these same points. While critical it was certainly on-topic, and polite. And it got deleted. Apparently “social” in Chris Brogan’s world includes editing what the world thinks of you. I retract this. My comment has been reinstated, or I missed it earlier.

But what do I know? It’s not like taking care of impossible situations like this is what I do. Ambient Connectivity. REALLY?

Oh wait . . . it is . . .

Two of my favorite marketing guys are Chris Brogan and Seth Godin. Both  occupy space in my personal Rolodex, and both are brilliant.

I’ve picked on Chris a few times lately, while Seth’s been largely missing from these pages for a few months. Well, he’s back: a couple of days ago, Seth told a story that got me thinking, and you should pay attention to the lesson.

While my natural inclination is to be as transparent as possible and do full disclosure pretty much all the time, Seth points out that sometimes full disclosure can hurt you, hurt your customer relationships, hurt your marketing efforts, and had it been employed would have added nothing of value.

It’s mind-boggling, and if you choose to go this way, I implore you to do it carefully; most of the time you’re much better off saying what your intentions are and then delivering on those intentions.

But remember that perception is reality. Lula’s Apothecary might well be the most delicious stuff on the planet, but there are people who won’t consider a frozen dessert that’s non-dairy, vegan, or anything else that “sounds wrong”. So who says you need to tell them in the big macro-marketing material?

Business Change comes in a lot of flavors, and most of them should be some variant of “transparent”. But since perception is reality, remember that if it tastes like vanilla, it might as well be vanilla.

I’m a nice guy. I swear, it’s true.

But I take the contrarian view on lots of issues, and that can make dealing with me quite a challenge. I know this about myself. And I lay it right out and accept that there are going to be people who like me and others that think I’m an arrogant, pretentious nightmare.

To those who think those bad things about me, the REALITY is that I am those things, because their PERCEPTION makes it so.

Everybody “is” a “way”. And if you’re going to effect real business change you need to embrace that way, whatever it is, and build on it. You can, by the way, choose to change your way, but that’s a lot harder than changing your approach and working with what you have. I, for example, wouldn’t be happy pretending to be a New York Yankees fan and don’t want to be one (Let’s Go Mets!).

As a contrarian I sometimes make my points by picking apart the points of others or comparing my position to theirs. I’ve said nice things about Seth Godin on several occasions, for example. And lately I’ve picked on Chris Brogan a few times.

You know where this is going. Chris, I apologize ahead of time.

A few days ago, Mr. Brogan wrote a dissertation on who he is and what he does. The occasion was explaining the redesign of his logo after quite a few people told him how much they disliked it. And while I happen to be on the “don’t like it” side of things, I totally agree with Chris’ ultimate point on the subject: he likes it and he has to be true to himself.

So why does Chris Brogan want us to think he’s not a social media guru and not a Twitter star?

As of this writing, Chris Brogan has almost 140,000 followers on Twitter. He’s also being followed in over 12,000 lists. When Chris Brogan says something, the twittersphere notices, and reacts. Chris Brogan IS a Twitter Star.

Chris calls himself a marketing consultant, and earns what I can only believe to be a very nice living as one. Social Media is a huge part of every successful company’s marketing plans today. Chris Brogan is a Social Media Guru, or he couldn’t do his job.

So why does Chris Brogan deny these things?

Because Perception is Reality.

Chris Brogan has decided that he wants the world to see him in a particular way. That’s a smart business decision, and maybe a real business change. If You Don’t Tell The World Who You Are, They Won’t Know How To Work With You. Seth Godin, by the way, does similar things. Like I said, Smart Choice.

But in with creating business change comes managing business change. And if the perception you create is that your words don’t mean anything, the (ultimate) reality is that they won’t.

Say who you are. Mean it. Own it. Your business can only grow when you do.

A couple of days ago, while talking about about planning and genuine, substantive business change, I told you about Dan Barber. Dan’s the chef/owner of Blue Hill Farm in Westchester County NY, where for a mere $650 or so you and a friend can have dinner.

If you haven’t read that post, I encourage you to do so now, and most important, watch the video of Dan talking about fish.

Fish could be your biggest business change. Ever.

My mind was wandering this morning, and I skipped back to something Dilbert creator Scott Adams wrote almost a year ago. Scott’s a very smart guy, and I’ve mentioned him here several times. Last June, he shared his thoughts on several earthly crises with a common theme: think better, act better, do better.

When Dan Barber talks about the idea of feeding chicken to farmed fish, my head just about explodes. He’s against the practice, of course. And let’s be honest; if the price of truly fresh fish becomes $650 for dinner for two there aren’t can’t be very many buyers.

But you can make change that matters to you and to your business. And it starts with thought.

I’m not going to get all touchy-feely here. Aside from being the polar opposite of my regular smash-you-over-the-head style, that would be a business change in direct conflict with some of the other things I’ve said recently about people like Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk. But I will say this:

When your mind wanders, take the trip.

It’s Friday. I’ve had a long week. I’m tired. My mind is wandering but I need to stay productive. I could beat myself up, but that won’t work. But I can think about fish, business change, and Dan Barber. And I can tell you about all those things and why it’s OK.

Go eat some fish. It’s good for you. And if you eat at Dan Barber’s Blue Hill Farm, it’s business change, too.

Yesterday I picked on my buddy Chris Brogan. Again. A genuine social media guru and one of the great successes in the field, Chris, like wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk, has become so much a victim of his own success that his missives lately have been reduced to Tony Robbins-like epithets:

Do Good Things, People

Yikes.

Now I swear I don’t actually want to pick on Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, or anyone else; that’s just not productive. And let me repeat that I believe that both Chris and Gary’s recent pablum is more about feeling a need to KEEP PUBLISHING!!!! now that they’re so successful, their followers expect/want more and they expect the same from themselves—and because they preach continuous communications as their gospel.

In fact, I agree with them. You have to keep getting your message out there to be successful in social media.

But there needs to be a message. “Do Good Things People” is no more a message than “just ate a sandwich“. These are the experts?

Yesterday, I came across a couple of messages by Jeff Jarvis. Jeff is another one of those “man of the moment” types, and has a long impressive pedigree suggesting enough common sense about publishing and social media and behavior that when I saw these I cringed. In order:

• Darn, I do like Canadians.
• Ottawa cabbie really did say “eh?” in every other sentence. I wanted to ask whether he knew he was a cultural cliché. But he was too nice

Dear Jeff Jarvis: I agree. Canadians, as a group, are nice, especially when compared to arrogant, judgmental Americans. And they know that we think they’re way cute. And they just don’t care. They have better things to do than worry about people from The States making jokes about them. YA HEAR ME, DUDE?

Once again, though, there’s no message, other than one that sounds like “Jeff Jarvis is an ignorant American” . . . which I know isn’t the case.

On to business change:

Social media serves one of two purposes, and if you do it right and are lucky, both. It’s either about getting a message out (lets call that the business part), or it’s about embracing a new way to make and maintain friends. I don’t believe Jeff Jarvis’ on-line friends, social network, or whatever are of a mind to hear him sound ignorant about Canadians. So was he going for funny?

Yes, I believe he was. And he missed.

Jeff’s  a frequent guest on the Howard Stern show. He’s a funny guy, or The King of All Media wouldn’t keep asking him back. But 140-character Tweets aren’t the same thing as being on the radio. Or writing articles.

Social media isn’t going away. And Jeff Jarvis, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Chris Brogan have achieved critical mass, so they aren’t going away either, even if what they say is no more meaningful than what comes out of Kim Kardashian. YOU, on the other hand, have to do the social media thing, but not tick anybody off. It’s work. It’s hard. It’s Business Change of the highest order.

There’s an old saying: the only bad press is no press. I hope Chris Brogan believes in that because as much as I like the guy personally and think the focus behind his work is solid I’ve found myself criticizing him more and more lately.

Chris and I aren’t competitors, although I do so of the same kinds of things for my clients that Mr. Brogan does for his. I point this out because I don’t want anybody to think that my point is to cannibalize Chris Brogan, Tom Peters, Tony Robbins, or anybody else (not that I could).

What is my point? In an age where business change is all happening on social networking sites like Twitter you need to get real. You need to be honest.

And honesty doesn’t happen in platitudes.

A couple of weeks ago, Brogan wrote a piece on whack-a-mole marketing. It made a great point: when we’re all on Twitter, Facebook, and a thousand other social networking sites, using them as the tools of our marketing efforts, then much of what we say will sound like marketing.

As I said, I’ve found myself picking on Chris Brogan lately. He recently wrote about how he doesn’t actually read his Twitter stream, and while I understand the issues it’s hard to have sympathy for Chris; this is where he makes his living and he simply needs to find a way to walk his own talk.

And so do I. And so do you.

When you put out a message, marketing-focused or otherwise, you need to own it. There’s a restaurant in Westchester County New York where for about $650 (tax, tip, and wine included—hey, did you think I was completely insane? ), you and a partner can have a meal like none other. The chef and owner is a man named Dan Barber, and if you have about twenty minutes you should watch this video of Dan:

Dan Barber walks his talk.

You may think you can’t afford to do things the way Dan Barber does them. What he’s left out of his speech is that even though the long-term result of doing things the right way is a win-win-win for everybody it’s incredibly expensive to get started doing things the right way.

That’s fine. But you can buy your eggs brown instead of bleached white the way they are in supermarkets in the United States, and the extra cost is close to zero. And when you’re on Twitter, and you’re engaging as a form of marketing you can actually be engaged.

It’s not as expensive as it might seem. Big companies employ teams of people who do nothing but watch social media sites for mentions of them and engage people who mention them, but until you’re a big enough company to justify that expense you won’t have enough mentions for it to be a problem keeping up.

And until you start, you’re falling further and further behind everyone who has.

We’ll help, by the way. Just call and I’ll tell you how. Personally.

It’s ALL whack-a-mole, isn’t it? But you can fill in the holes, too. And that’s what social media and business change are all about.

Yesterday I received an email from my sister. She had come across this video from CBS News:

(if you don’t want to watch the video you can read the accompanying story here)

The point of the story is simple: almost every copy machine in service today has a hard drive in it, and every copy that gets made gets saved to that hard drive. This means that when you take personal documents to a copy center to reproduce them you’re leaving a copy behind, and it also means (for example) that when your personal information is used in completely normal and legal ways at insurance companies they are leaving copies behind unless they take steps to do something about it.

And they aren’t always doing that.

To be fair, the people who use these machines don’t know what’s happening, but  it wouldn’t matter if they did know, since they have no way to control the machines’ actions. So the issue lies with the owners of the machines knowing enough about the machines. Good luck with that one.

Is the solution legislation aimed at users? In the case of insurance companies and others who can handle the burden and have existing privacy obligations, probably so, and if this piece creates enough outrage to create some action on that point, then great. But relative to self-service machines in who-knows-where . . . I’m afraid the only realistic choices are for those places to stop providing their services or people to stop using them. And both are bad choices.

What follows could sound like a pitch for what we do at PC-VIP and The Computer Answer Guy, and I suppose it is that if you’re running a business and reading this makes you realize that you can use help with your computers. But I have two points to make that will matter to anyone:

First, CBS News ran a story that could cause out-and-out hysteria, and failed to temper it in any way. This is irresponsible. And before you jump to their defense consider: there wasn’t news being reported; the story was about an ongoing problem. Be it for news, business, or anything else, it’s vitally important to remember that pointing out a problem without offering a solution is worse than keeping your mouth shut. It actually creates an extra problem.

Second: there are solutions to problems like this, and whether you hire us, another company, or handle your problems internally you must have plans. It’s like data backup; you are doing it, right? And you have redundancy and disaster recover plans in place at your business?

Business Change comes in many forms, and some are no more complicated than keeping your eyes open. Shame on CBS News, though, for thinking they can create change by pointing out a problem but offering no solution.

The shoemaker’s kids don’t have shoes.

I’ve been known to apply that old saw to lots of situations. Friends get angry at me when I do it, clients pay me to teach them about making sure they have shoes of their own, and because I’m human I’m as guilty as anyone; the things I’m best at teaching to others I don’t always handle well for myself.

What do you do when Google shuts you down?

Chris Brogan, one of the business-gurus-of-the-moment, is going through it right now. I’ve scolded him in a comment on that post, and now I hope I can teach you something that Chris really should have known:

In business you always need to have a backup plan.

Chris has every right to be frustrated by all of his stuff suddenly not working. And hey: Google really does owe  us a way to recover without having to cross a border (Europe for a week, anyone? At least Chris Brogan’s story has him in driving distance).

And Google could even make money at giving us a backup plan for when they screw up, although I’m sure we’d all then accuse them of breaking things on purpose so they could charge for premium support on something that we thought was free.

But at the end of the day the story is that any time you put all your eggs in one basket you’re asking for trouble. I’m not just talking about data backups, by the way; I’m talking REAL redundancy. What Chris describes is like a company having one connection to the internet and then trying to blame the ISP for lost business when service goes out.

With so much of your business now run “in the cloud”, do you have a plan to keep moving if things stop working? And a way to implement that plan?

That’s what Business Process is all about.

Reality: Social Networking Matters. Twitter is important. It’s an old story by now, and one that I tell over and over.

This morning, I read this in my Twitter stream: 

Wow. I’m like the only one who doesn’t really go back. I read whatever the 10 are visible when I load Seesmic.

Uh-Oh.

The words would disturb me no matter who wrote them, because they’re either a sign that the author doesn’t know how Twitter works, or that Twitter simply doesn’t work at all. But they really bother me because of who wrote them: Chris Brogan, one of the most “influential” people in all of the Twittersphere isn’t reading what the people he follows are writing.

As I said, I’ve written many time about Twitter, how it’s used, how it should be used, and that it’s pretty much impossible to interact in a meaningful way with thousands of people, unless by interaction you’re referring to a one-way “I am a celebrity or brand” kind of relationship. AND THAT’S FINE, AS LONG AS YOU’RE CLEAR ABOUT YOUR INTENTIONS.

Large companies, to their credit, are taking the ideas behind my words and using Twitter as a customer service tool, watching for everything said about them and responding. But this takes manpower. The question effecting business change as it relates to Twitter for the rest of us is: are you really trying to network socially, or are you just a user?

Back to Chris. Mr. Brogan is a very smart man, and truly a gentleman. He’s one of social networking’s biggest stars, and deservedly so. And when someone like Chris Brogan, who made his fame and fortune by telling people that they need to engage admits that he simply doesn’t read what his people have to say, I have to be concerned, maybe for Chris, and certainly for what it says about the medium.

There are a couple of different schools of thought on the “right” way to use Twitter. Some experts believe that following and being followed by the largest possible number of people is the way to make Twitter work, while others try to keep up with the information in their streams by only following people whose thoughts are pre-screened as “important”.

If you’re a celebrity and (sorry, celebrities) and don’t care what your people have to say, go with the former. But if you’re trying to build real community, you need to do the latter. Yes, that’s hard, and gets more so as you succeed.

Business Change has to be executed the right way. Drop me a line, and I promise I’ll read it . . .

Last December, I had the opportunity to interact at a webinar with Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, the authors of Trust Agents. This book has been a New York Times Bestseller for months, and I can tell you from my subsequent contact with them that both Chris and Julien are stand-up guys who say what they mean, mean what they say, and in general seem to be about as trustworthy as authors with an agenda to push can be.

I genuinely mean that as a compliment. It sounds measured, right? That’s today’s subject. On his website, Chris Brogan has written a great piece on the execution of social media. Ostensibly, it’s about scaling, but I see something else, and I’m disturbed.

Chris is now doing most of his formal preaching to larger business and social groups. That’s fine, of course, it’s his market and where he makes his living. At the same time, though, Chris’ Twitter Account is replete with quick messages like “Do Good Things“. It’s the kind of woo-woo rah-rah that we’re most used to hearing from the Tony Robbins’ of the world, and while it has a place (and Twitter sure is a great place for such drivel), it feels like a disconnect.

Allow me to repeat: this isn’t an attack on Chris Brogan. I think Chris is one of new media’s real stars and deserves his success. But I’m reminded of one of the things that Chris and Julien said at that event last year, and that I’ve told my own clients for a very long time, too: there’s a top end to the number of people (relationships) you can manage. Most experts, including Chris Brogan, agree that the number is somewhere around 150.

When you get to a certain size, you need more people to manage your operations. Let’s assume that when a large company gets serious about social networking and social media they figure out that there are going to be “x” number of potential customer touches per day in the social networking space, allot a certain number of minutes per interaction, and decide from there how big a staff needs to be created to handle the company’s social  activities. That’s a start, and there might even be some variant on the “150 people theme” that we can apply. But . . . when it’s just a formula, hasn’t your social networking become nothing more than that rah-rah stuff? The engagement is . . . false. In truth, it’s not social at all; it’s practically anti-social.

Bring it back down to a more personal, more manageable level: social networking, like all business change, doesn’t just happen. You need to plan, to need contingency options in place, and then you need to be ready to make new, unexpected, and even unwelcome changes on an ongoing basis. Social networking, at the end of the day, is a lot like being someone’s friend.

Or customer service. But the term can’t be a oxymoron.

So I’ve just listened to Chris Brogan and Julien Smith on a webcast talking about the subjects in their book Trust Agents. These guys are amazing communicators, and the book is . . . nice. But here’s the question:

How do you REALLY create trust?

If it’s true that we can each be really connected to only 150 people (a theory both Chris and Julien subscribe to), then how do we do business in a world where the game has become “have a brand and make sure anyone who could benefit from it knows that brand” ? Think about it: the “action” is on Twitter, where you seek huge audiences. But . . . then doesn’t the trust go away as soon as people realize you’re just broadcasting?

Keep talking. Even more, keep listening. And that’s the real story: to create business change, listen.