Facebook: It's The Little Things that Count

I resisted Facebook for years. What a waste of time, who cares, why should I bother, a bunch of trivial non-news -- I had lots of reasons.

Now I find myself logging on daily, even more than once a day sometimes. I update my status and check the status of my Facebook friends (not all of whom are "actual" friends, of course). I even comment on the status of others, look at photo albums and give a thumbs up now and then, and once in a while take one of the stupid quizzes.

So I'm asking myself now, why the shift? What has changed my mind, or at least my behavior?

Well, it wasn't really a conscious decision, so here are the reasons that I can think of off the top of my head right now:

1. A number of my Facebook friends are clever and interesting -- reading their status updates is amusing and informative. Good content draws repeat readership.
2. It's making me feel more connected to people I rarely or never see in person: people from my distant past (high school classmates, long-ago neighbors), work colleagues in far-flung offices, people I've met once or twice socially and those I've only "met" online in some way. Facebook friends aren't *real* friends, but being part of a virtual conversation with them on Facebook is a form of social interaction that I enjoy.
3. As a full-time telecommuter/home office worker, I miss out on the routine office chatter with all the day-to-day chit chat about colleagues' kids, weekend adventures, the ups and downs of single and married life, and career successes and setbacks. Facebook status updates fill that gap shallowly, true, but broadly. I'm current on many more people's status than I would be via in-person contact alone, even though only on a surface level.
4. People like to talk about themselves, and I am no exception. I find it mildly satisfying to share simple thoughts, observations or insights by updating my Facebook status. And when someone comments upon it or gives it a thumbs up, I like seeing that someone is listening. There's a connection that has been made or strengthened, even if only so slightly.
5. I am constantly seeking out and learning about news and ideas, and I like to share what I have found. I use FriendFeed as well as Facebook's own system to post links to articles and occasional videos. I used to do this in my personal blog, but I don't find time for that much anymore. It's much faster and simpler to share the link and make a very brief comment -- plus, it's going to be seen by a much wider audience than it would be on my personal blog. It's fun to spread the word about things that interest me, and I like it when people comment upon or even debate my views.
6. Just about everyone seems to be on Facebook. Resistance is futile. It has become a commonly accepted way to acknowledge and continue even casual acquaintance-ships. Why be anti-social?

There are probably more reasons, but that's enough for now. It seems to come down to the little things that have sucked me into the Facebook universe. But all those little things do add up.

In the end, Facebook is one of the largest and most well-known social media sites, so lessons learned there should be considered for our own online communities. My Facebook lesson for today is that it's the little things that count.

Accentuating the positive

Online communities and marriages have one big thing in common: They take work to be successful.

Actually, I think they also need positive attitudes to remain successful. I don't know about you, but I have those days when I look at our online community and get a bit discouraged. The reasons? You name it -- not enough time, not enough help, limits to the software, user complaints, etc.

I'm a huge fan (and user) of Ubuntu, probably the world's most popular flavor of desktop Linux. I'm also a huge fan of Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu community manager, and what he has done to make the Ubuntu community such a big part of Ubuntu's continued success. (Jono has a must-read new book coming out this summer called The Art of Community, and he's releasing the content for free under a Creative Commons license.) Here's how he answered an interview question about the Ubuntu community culture and why it works:

I am a firm believer that positive culture is largely driven by positive personalities. Communities are vessels of dependent relationships: we have thought leaders for the entire project, sub-communities with their own thought leaders, people who follow those leaders and people who listen to those followers. At each step in the chain we need to encourage positive participation both in the cogs of the machine, but also in the personality and outlook of the those who drive those cogs. It has been an explicit desire of mine in the Ubuntu community to not only ensure that the machine is simple to interact with, but to encourage people to bring their positivity, excitement and enthusiasm to the machine so the community feels like a fun and inspiring environment to be part of.

It takes what Jono calls lots of "care and feeding" to make this happen. In online communities, as in the rest of life, success doesn't come without sweat.

As Ted mentioned, our wiki -- our online community -- has reached critical mass, and the next step will be working hard not to rest on our laurels, but to think harder and more creatively than ever to make our wiki community "a fun and inspiring environment to be part of." What additional value can we deliver?

I'm looking forward to the creative challenge and opportunity. Are you part of the Ubuntu community or another online community at work or in your spare time? What challenges is your community facing now, and how will you overcome them? Please comment to share your thoughts.

Internal Social Media Sites Are Ant Farms

I live on a horse farm, and at lunchtime I walked down the hill to get the mail. When I opened the mailbox I found that ants had decided it seemed like a good home. 

I'm not keen on ant-covered mail, nor having them crawl onto me while I carry the mail back to the house, so I pondered what to do about them. I removed my mail and left the door open, idly watching them while I considered my options. And as I watched, the ants became alarmed and started picking up eggs and moving them. Since the mailbox was no longer closed and dark, it must have triggered a reaction to look for another place.

Suddenly the ants' activity looked really familiar, and I recalled the ant farm I had as a kid, with the glass walls so you could see how endlessly busy the ants were. 

And then I made the connection: no one was telling the ants what to do, yet their separate activities were nonetheless self-coordinating and effective... just like what happens in our internal online community. This may not seem like a compliment (although I would argue it is), but internal communities are actually like ant farms.

The insect world is full of examples of amazing collective intelligence that we superior, intellectual humans struggle to understand and explain. With our social media software, we're helping organizations become as smart as ants are. In our internal online community, our employees are self-organizing, responding individually and rapidly to the stimuli that affects them, efficiently coordinating with others as needed, and busily going about getting the "farm's" business done.

In some ways it really is as simple as that.

Social media isn't everything

At work I wear several hats, but I’m generally known as either the “wiki guy,” the “social media guy,” or the “community guy.” Mom just calls me Matthew.

I spend quite a bit of time using newer forms of social media, which I define as everything from Twitter to wikis to online customer communities. Yes, I check Twitter and Web 2.0 blog feeds on my iPhone every day. I even contribute to this blog (sometimes). I’m always thinking about how we can use social media in better ways to better serve our customers. It’s really a labor of love.

But I have a confession to make: Even I have to choose my battles. Some weeks I spend a lot of time on Twitter or our wiki, but other weeks my various other duties limit my tweeting. It’s all about priorities – what’s hot at the moment.

Given the state of the economy, many organizations today are hopping from project to project like a barefoot beachcomber walking across broken shells. They need to identify and press those projects – sometimes on a daily or weekly basis – that will bring in much-needed revenue. Sometimes that means there’s less time for Twitter because more client calls or new marketing materials are much more vital at the moment.

As I like to say, any method you use to reach out to customers and prospects is, in a very real sense, an exercise in social media. Sure, you might be talking on the phone or doing videoconferences with customers instead of spending time on Facebook. But you know what? You’re probably doing the right thing under the circumstances. The other stuff can wait.

There has to be a balance. We shouldn’t neglect the newer forms of social media or walk away from our current investments in new media, but sometimes we have to be realistic and focus on the proverbial low-hanging fruit. Of course that low-hanging fruit could be leads generated by social media, but it might also be meeting with current customers for lunch and restating how your company can help them. Sometimes lunch trumps LinkedIn.

So don’t feel guilty about not using a particular form of social media today, at this moment, just because the cool kids seem to be on it 24/7. Feel guilty if you’re not showing value to your customers and giving them a reason to continue to do business with you. Just do what you need to do for your customers in today's shaky economy, and you’ll live to tweet another day.

How We -- and Online Community Members -- Decide

I just finished a terrific book last night: How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer. It's one of those books that I believe everyone in marketing, sales and management must read. It's darned relevant for one's personal life, too, in fact. Maybe it's a stretch to include in a social media blog, but social media is all about people and how they interact with each other, and I'll argue that communities are massive pools of individual and collective decisions.

Doesn't living your life really mean making an endless series of decisions? Lehrer draws heavily upon the latest in neuroscience research and behavioral economics (see, Predictably Irrational, another great book), as well as fascinating interviews and case studies ranging from Tom Brady's decision-making process in the Super Bowl to airplane pilots coping with mechanical failure. This isn't a dry science textbook. It's compelling reading, with the hard science explained smoothly and clearly.

I want to share the principles of good-decision-making from How We Decide's final chapter.

"SIMPLE PROBLEMS REQUIRE REASON"

One of the drawbacks of emotions is that they contain a few obsolete instincts that are no longer suited for modern life. This is why we are all so vulnerable to loss aversion, slot machines, and credit cards. The only way to defend against such innate flaws is to exercise reason...

Nutshell: for easy decisions, rely on reasoning, not emotion. For complex problems, listen to your emotions more, since the brain's reasoning capacity gets overloaded and reason alone leads to poor decisions. (Lots of explanation and examples of these concepts in the book, of course.)

"NOVEL PROBLEMS ALSO REQUIRE REASON"

Before you entrust a mystery to the emotional brain, before deciding to let your instincts make a big bet in poker or fire a missile at a suspicious radar blip, ask yourself a question: How does your past experience help solve this particular problem?

Nutshell: Mysteries are problems that reason alone can't solve, but reason is a vital checkpoint to avoid the errors that emotional decision-making can be prone to.

"EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY"

There are two simple tricks to help ensure that you never let certainty interfere with your judgment. First, always entertain competing hypotheses.... Second, continually remind yourself of what you don't know.

Nutshell: When you feel absolutely certain about a decision, watch out -- certainty produces poor decisions more often than not.

"YOU KNOW MORE THAN YOU KNOW"

The emotional brain is especially useful at helping us make hard decisions. Its massive computational power -- its ability to process millions of bits of data in parallel -- ensures that you can analyze all the relevant information when assessing alternatives. Mysteries are broken down into practical feelings. The reason these emotions are so intelligent is that they've managed to turn mistakes into educational events.

Nutshell: Trust your emotions -- they are telling you the outcome of your brain's sub-conscious processing of the situation (but, see above, use reason to fact-check).

"THINK ABOUT THINKING"

Whenever you make a decision, be aware of the kind of decision you are making and the thought process it requires.... The best way to make sure you are using your brain properly is to study your brain at work, to listen to the arguments inside your head.

Nutshell: Since there's no simple, reliable way to make decisions, the best approach is to hone your awareness of all you are thinking and feeling -- take it all into account and beware of lightly dismissing those feelings or thoughts that don't immediately fit.

It's a lot to think about. My mind is still buzzing with all of the implications, and I expect it will be for some time. As I make decisions about our online community, I'll be watching myself to see how and why I'm thinking. I *think* that sounds like a good plan...

Getting social like it's 1899

(Add usual disclaimers about being busy here. This will also be posted on EverythingChannel.com later today.)

No, that's not a typo. I would never have written 1899, though, unless I'd had the chance to listen to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's keynote address, "Delivering Happiness," at this year's SXSW Interactive conference. Do yourself a favor and listen -- you'll be pummeled by common sense (even his slides are interesting).

If you've been paying attention to Web 2.0 over the past few years, you know all about Zappos. They're the "shoe guys" who are wiping the floor with their competitors, moving over $1 billion in merchandise in 2008. And they're selling a lot more than shoes these days (they're evolving just like Amazon did). They have big plans to make the Zappos brand synonymous with superior customer service, whatever they happen to sell.

Back to 1899. According to Hsieh, what's Zappos' top customer service tool? What social media option gives them the most mojo for their brand? Here are your options:

A) Twitter

b) Facebook

c) blogs

d) the telephone

If you guessed a), b) or c), you're wrong. Sure, Zappos does use new social media methods to connect with customers, but Hsieh insists that d) the telephone is far and away the most effective. He considers every customer call a customer service opportunity, and he believes that customer service opportunities are synonymous with marketing and branding opportunities.

His reasoning? Hsieh points out that a customer service telephone call is initiatied by the customer, so you have a captive, focused audience. They want to talk to you about their experiences with your company -- whether good or bad. It's therefore your best opportunity, in that 5 or 10 minutes, to make sure they leave with a positive impression of your brand and want to shop with you in the future. Compare that to a direct mail piece that often ends up unread, or an email newsletter caught in a spam filter.

Hsieh is clear that such customer service calls aren't intended for hard sells or even upsells, but to show the customer that Zappos puts a priority on putting the customer first. Not surprisingly, word-of-mouth advertising has played a key part in Zappos' growth. Oh, and Zappos gets a lot of business from repeat customers -- those same customers who tend to shop more often and spend more money than one-off customers.

The telephone is taking something of a backseat to new forms of social media these days, but it might be time for you to make "old school" new again. Why not pick up the phone more often and talk to your customers? When's the last time they heard your voice?

After all, social media wasn't invented this decade -- and it was never intended to make your company anti-social.

Is Your Community Manager Your Admin, too?

We're running lean and mean in our online community. Our community managers do double-duty. Not only do they have responsibility for developing their online communities, but they serve as admins, too.

It's really not difficult to do the admin tasks needed in our social media software (or social business software, as Jive calls it). But I'm starting to wonder if there's wisdom in dividing to conquer.

The skills and traits of a successful community manager don't necessarily map over to those of an ideal administrator. Would we be better off splitting up these roles?

How do you do it in your community?

Welcome, Jamie!

We've got another author here now, I'm happy to say. Jamie Heckler is another one of our local community managers, and she's responsible for the largest, most active member community we have. They are pushing the edge for us, always challenging our assumptions and leading us to come up with better and better approaches to building and developing our community.

Jamie guides them with a gentle hand -- except when the iron fist is needed -- and has developed many wiki champions in her division. It's all led to a vibrant and engaged online community.

They've got an interesting, evolving story to tell, and I look forward to Jamie's sharing it with you as the chapters unfold.