I’m a little frustrated right now. Over the last several years, quite a few people have asked me for advice about getting into social media. Some of them are good friends, and a lot of them are people with a professional communications or marketing background.

My advice has been the same for the last several years: if you’re a professional communicator or marketer, you must understand and use social media if you want to stay relevant in your profession. Some of them have heeded that advice. Some of them haven’t.

And that’s fine. I have no problem with people ignoring my advice. I am far from always right. Just take a look at my resume. Or ask The Mrs.

Here’s why I’m frustrated: if some of those people had taken my advice when I gave it to them, I would be hiring them right now. I need to find smart, resourceful people who understand the enterprise business world, and also understand how social media fits into it. Those people are few and far between, and the really good ones have really good jobs.

The people I’m thinking of as I write this post have all of the requisite skills I need, except for experience in social media, which they could have developed on their own in the time since I first gave them that advice.

You don’t need to be doing social media as part of your job in order to build your own understanding of how companies use social media, and in the process make yourself more valuable as an employee. There are dozens of webinars, blogs, e-books and podcasts—free and paid—to help you learn more about enterprise social media.

When I am evaluating a potential hire for my team, I am willing to except a lack of professional social media experience if they can show me a well-written blog, a well developed LinkedIn profile with recommendations, and an active Twitter presence that addresses business issues. If you can show me that you understand business and know how to engage with people and to write, I know I can teach you the rest of it.

So here are my recommendations for any communications professional who wants to stay relevant:

1. Start a blog

Start a blog on WordPress.com and write about the industry you’re in or want to be in. I’ve said this before, but if you can show me a blog post that I wish you had written on our company blog, that carries more weight than all the superlatives you can cram into a static resume. I hired somebody this year in part because she had already written an informative, well-written post targeted at the audience I need to reach. I didn’t need to wonder if she could do the work; she had already done it.

2. Build your LinkedIn presence

Build up your LinkedIn profile with people in the industry you want to be active in. Get recommendations. Get active in the LinkedIn groups that discuss your field, and show me how you’ve added value in those groups.

3. Develop your Twitter, Facebook and Google+ presence

I don’t need to see 5,000 followers. I need to see you understand how businesses are using these networks to meet their bottom-line objectives. You can show me that by showing how you are using these networks to meet your career objectives. Then I’ll know you can do it once you’re hired.

4. Show a sense of wonder and curiosity

The people who are the most successful and interesting in social media are the ones who just know, without someone having to prove it to them, how cool this stuff is. They knew it the moment they first saw Facebook, or an iPhone, or Twitter. They hate the idea of being left behind. We are in the midst of a revolution, and I want to work with people who know that and are excited to be part of it.

If building your personal networks feels like a chore, either you’re in the wrong business or you haven’t dug in enough to see the real excitement, wonder and value.

Sure, go ahead and question if you really need to be on Google+. But get on it anyway and see what it’s like. No, you don’t have to be on every network. But the people who feel a tingle when they hear about a new network and think, “I really need to get on there before someone grabs my username,” are the people with the attitude I value most.

I know it’s a tough job market out there. I know there are a lot of smart, capable people who are unemployed, underemployed or in jobs that are going nowhere. Social media is not going away. Don’t limit your opportunities by leaving yourself behind.

I’m halfway through the new Steve Jobs biography and it’s really making me think. I never paid much attention to Jobs when he was alive, other than having a general sense of his brilliance and his mercurial, intense personality. The book is bringing me a new appreciation and I think it’s essential for anyone whose job involves understanding a marketplace and delivering a great product, or enjoys pondering what makes a great leader.

By no means am I endorsing Jobs’ methods and style without reservation. There are multiple tales of his managerial caprice, and his cruelty and childishness aimed at employees, industry leaders and, most distressing, his family. I truly believe that great leaders can be–must be–empathetic and respectful. But there is no doubt that Jobs had qualities that only come only once in a blue moon.

His singular focus on quality, for instance. He insisted that even the insides of Apples should be well designed and put together, even though no one would see the result. That kind of dedication to quality sets a standard that permeates the organization.

In an age where nearly every corporate decision is made by committees backed up by market research, Jobs pushed through decisions in record time, because he was absolutely certain he knew what consumers wanted, even if they didn’t know it themselves. While that attitude went hand in hand with his arrogance, there is no doubt he was right far more often than he was wrong.

My favorite example so far is the decision to produce the iMac in multiple colors, which added considerably to its production cost. But when I read that section, I knew without a moment’s hesitation that it was the right decision. (I have the benefit of hindsight, of course, but I like to think I would have known it at the time.) Too often in corporate America, we’re afraid to make decisions that we know in our hearts are the right thing to do, because we can’t prove the decision empirically, and thereby avoid the potential of risk. That fear stifles innovation and kills passion, both inside a company and with customers.

Apple’s marketing and messaging, which Jobs drove with daily attention uncharacteristic of the average CEO, lifted Apple products above the usual purchase decision process. When I bought my first MacBook, I didn’t compare specs with other non-Mac laptops, the first time I’d made a major tech purchase without exhaustive research. For a variety of reasons, some practical and some emotional, I just knew I wanted a Mac. The “Apple-ness” of Apple products, both tangible and intangible, is the company’s most valuable differentiator, and exists because of Jobs’ vision and stewardship.

Perhaps Jobs’ most significant quality was his unwavering certainty that he and the people he worked with were doing more than building products; they were changing the world. This philosophy influenced his decisions on product design, marketing strategy, advertising and, really, everything. And the fact is, he did change history. (I’m reading the book and wrote this post on my iPad.)

If you have a hard time remembering what it was that attracted you to your job or your field, if you’re stuck for ideas of how to excite your customers, or if you’re feeling uninspired as a leader, this book could help you find a new spark.

I picked up my iPhone 4 yesterday and one of the coolest new features is the Siri personal assistant. A lot has been written about this already, but I discovered something cool about the speech to text feature last night that I thought I would share.

Siri lets you compose Twitter updates, Facebook updates, notes, text messages and even blog posts (I’m using it to write this) by voice. When I first tried it, I was disappointed to see that it didn’t include any punctuation. As a writer and former English major, that bothered me.

Then I tried the approach that I’ve learned to use with all Apple products; I tried the simplest thing I could think of.

To add punctuation, just speak the punctuation you want to add.

To compose that sentence, I said “To add punctuation comma just speak the punctuation you want to add period.”

It’s an extremely elegant solution, and one that has allowed me to write this (properly punctuated) blog post in about three minutes, almost exclusively using my voice.

Last week, Jamie Sandford began the day with what I’ll call a “metatweet.” I responded. It took off. Here’s how our conversation evolved throughout the course of the day:

@jsandford: <something about coffee>

@davidbthomas: <something about Mondays>

@jsandford: <inspirational way-too-much vim and vigor tackling-the-week tweet>

@davidbthomas: <excessive use of motivational hashtags>

@jsandford: <ending of day tweet>

@davidbthomas: <expressing an interest in a particular foodstuff and/or alcoholic beverage>

@jsandford: <general agreement and/or countering with alternative item which is more complex or uses rarer ingredients>

@davidbthomas: <enthusiastic agreement, onomatopoeia representing consumption of said foodstuff>

@jsandford: <comment related to upcoming TV show, hashtagged>

@davidbthomas: <parenting anecdote>

@jsandford: <emphatic sport event comment!>

@davidbthomas: <support for the opposing team expressed as ridicule of your character>

@jsandford: <denigration of your team based on menial historical statistic relating to prior triumph in the series>

@davidbthomas: <rejection of the importance of your quoted statistic, followed by equally trivial statistic from earlier contest>

@jsandford: <commentary on the difficult nature of putting small descendants to bed and/or humorous pre-slumber saying>

I just got a call from my local Subaru dealer. “We notice it’s been four years since you bought your Subaru and we just wanted to check in to see how everything is going.” It doesn’t take much to translate that into, “It’s a slow sales month and we’re going back through our records and calling people who might be ready to buy a new car.”

This is the only time in that four years that anyone from the dealership has contacted me, other than to send oil change coupons or follow up on service visits. Their attempt to “engage” with me felt spammy and one-sided, in no small part because it came out of the blue. I’m sure the strategy is “contact customers who might be ready to buy,” but in practice it becomes “contact customers every four years and start over again.”

By the time the sales process was complete, I had spent a fair amount of time with the salesperson, and we’d developed a bit of a rapport. That vanished the moment I drove off the lot. I can’t remember his name. If I wanted to buy a new car today, I wouldn’t have a clue how to find him. “Hi, I was in here four years ago and bought an Outback from a white guy, kind of young, about yay high, blue shirt. Is he around?”

The fact is, I did buy a new car about four months ago. And I test drove a Subaru. I suspect, knowing me, I probably talked about it online. If Whitey McBlueshirt had stayed connected with me, I might have bought a Subaru WRX from him instead of a VW GTI from another guy who dropped off the face of the Earth as soon as the ink was dry on the contract.

If you engage with your customers in an honest and mutually-beneficial way, they will appreciate it. If you build a relationship, there are many tools available to help you maintain it. If you repackage traditional, hackneyed, one-sided sales techniques with a veneer of “engagement,” all but the most naive will see through you.

image by s myers

Disclosure: Post title is fatuous linkbait.

I was on vacation last week when Google+ happened. I kept my email inbox in pretty good shape when I was away, but when I returned I felt like I was a week behind on creating circles and +1′ing and learning all the new stuff. Some folks dove in head first. Chris Brogan, for instance, is all over Google+ and has even replaced his Facebook icon with a Google+ logo with the phrase, “I have moved,” and unless I’m missing something, he’s shut down his personal Facebook wall. He really has moved.

I’ve seen lots of useful how-to articles, and lots of posts from people pondering the significance of Google+ for social media in general, business in particular and, inevitably, whether or not Google+ will replace Facebook. That’s a big, thorny question. So I’m going to ignore it.

I’ve joined quite a few new social networks over the last decade and a half, starting with a (pre-WWW) forum on the old Delphi network (a competitor of AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe) called “The UK American Connection.” It consisted mostly of Yanks asking Brits questions like, “I watched Cracker last night. What the hell does ‘naff’ mean?”

I joined Friendster just in time for my girlfriend (now The Mrs) to tell me it was dead. I joined Twitter in May of 2008. I still remember the first person who followed me (former colleague Jeff Batte), and pondering my next follower, an American journalist living in Germany. I spent hours trying to work out how I knew him and why he would follow me.

My point, if there is one, is that I have yet to see a new social network take off as quickly as Google+. I’m sure there are statistics that either support or refute that, but for me it seems that my nerd friends (and I have created a circle for you called “Nerds”) are taking to Google+ extremely quickly. (Cynical Girl and Pixie of the Apocalypse Laurie Ruettimann linked on Facebook earlier today to a Mashable post that said Google+ was about to hit 10 million users, so as you can see, I’ve done my research.)

It takes me a while to work out how I feel about a new network or online tool, and I’m the kind of person the slow, dull-witted “how to” videos were created for. Unlike Brogan, who within minutes had written a post outlining 50 ways Google+ could be used, I have to be shown it, and shown it again. And again. Then I will become a violent convert.

So far I think Google+ has tremendous potential to unite messaging, photo sharing, video calling, chat, document sharing and other features. This may be the locus that brings the value of Google’s various services and applications into one place. But here’s why I think it’s gotten so popular so fast:

This morning I was flipping back and forth between Facebook and Google+. I have lots of good friends on Facebook, but also a lot of people I’ve accepted as friends who I don’t actually know, or know very well. I accepted some of those out of politeness, and I haven’t taken the time to hide or unfriend the people or companies who clutter up my stream. I scroll for a while before I come to an update from someone I really want to keep in touch with, or something I really want to read.

My Google+ stream, on the other hand, has been filled with interesting posts and long, enjoyable comment-thread discussions with clever people. It feels the way I’ve heard other people describe the early days of Twitter. Everyone I’ve added to my circles so far is someone who I know personally or have built an online relationship with.

So maybe we like Google+ so far because we haven’t cluttered it up yet, and because it’s easier to keep tidy? Time will tell. Just like Twitter, it will be months (years?) before we know the real value.

Should you join now? You don’t have to (and Doug Haslam has posted a cogent argument in favor of Google+ patience), but so far it’s fun. And if you’re a marketer or communicator, I suspect it will become mandatory before too long. Google’s previous attempts at social networking (Orkut, Buzz, Wave) didn’t take off, but Google+ is so much more than even the sum of all three.

image by me

I’ve been tired of the arguments over “social media experts” for a long time. There’s also the recurring meme about people with unusual titles (ninja, guru) and that one bores me as well. If all you have to write about is semantics, dig a little deeper.

But here’s a nomenclature discussion that makes sense to me. The PR firm GolinHarris has tossed out their old title scheme and adopted a new one:

Strategists, who analyze a client’s business;

Creators, who develop new ideas and engage in brand storytelling;

Connectors, who reach target audiences through media and other channels;

Catalysts, who manage client relationships.

(Thanks, and a tip of the blog hat to Publicity Club of New England, where I found out about it.)

I’ve always been a big fan of clarity and saying what you mean. Those titles seem to me to say pretty clearly what those people do (with the possible exception of Catalyst—that one seems a little less descriptive and more like marketing speak).

With the speed at which things are changing in the communications and marketing world, and the different ways we are pursuing those activities, it makes sense to rethink the way we talk about what we do. Two of my three most recent titles didn’t exist five years ago.

The big question, of course, is will this provide clarity and value to clients, or will it confuse people? Regardless, it’s a bold step and one that seems to me to involve more than just semantics.

What do you think of those titles? And do you think we need new ones, or should we let the old ones evolve?

image by suchitra

There’s an article in The New York Times (via TechCrunch) about the demise of Color, the something something photo sharing something location-or-other app that got a lot of attention months ago for raising $41 million and was therefore, far more annoyingly, responsible for another rash of “bubble” rumblings.

The TechCrunch article says Color “was supposed to be the app that changed proximity-based sharing.” The Times describes it as a “photo-sharing cellphone application.” Color’s website says:

Simultaneously use multiple iPhones and Androids to capture photos, videos, and conversations into a group album. There’s no attaching, uploading, or friending to do.

I downloaded Color to my iPhone when it launched, played with it for about two minutes and gave up on it. When you open the app, what passes for instructions is a drawing of a bunch of people apparently taking pictures either of nothing or of one another with their smart phones. The legend says, “Take photos together.”

Why? Of what?

Now I’m not just being curmudgeonly. I use a lot of apps, social media and otherwise, that many people would consider pointless. Plus, I wanted to like Color; I like taking photos and I like social networking. But, in the time I was willing to spend, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do with Color or why it would be fun and interesting. I can almost get it, but not quite.

I’m not necessarily an early adopter and over the last few years I’ve been concentrating on enterprise social media, so most of the questions I’ve fielded and explored have been about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and blogs. They all have their skeptics, but it’s not that hard to explain the value of each to someone willing to keep an open mind.

To people not on Facebook who ask me why they should care, I tell them that Facebook is creating, essentially, a “shadow Internet” that makes it easier to share news, messages, photos, videos and other information with people you choose to connect with. Most people, unless they’re just being bloody minded, can see the value in that. (To the people who ask, “Why should I care what my friends are doing?”, I have no answer nor do I wish to help you work that one out. Maybe you need more interesting friends.)

When people ask me about Twitter, I tell them it’s a messaging service that allows you to get short news updates on a variety of topics from people and organizations you find interesting and valuable. I show them how I get the majority of my news, both about my profession and the world in general, from Twitter. Again, even the skeptics who conclude it’s not for them can see that it’s not just a waste of time.

I tried to understand Color and couldn’t, and still don’t. Hence my suggested rule for investing, as described in the title. Can you explain the value of the social network you want to invest in (or build) in 50 words or less in a way that your parents will understand? Without a digression? Without PowerPoint?

(Of course, I’m old and so are my parents, so you might want to substitute “grandparents.”)

I’m not worried about a bubble fueled by social media because I’m convinced that a great deal of what is being created is worthwhile and valuable. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of hype and money going in the wrong directions.

If the elevator pitch only makes sense to other folks inside the social media fishbowl, maybe that should tell you something.

I spent the last two days at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston. As always, it was an excellent event filled with great information and smart people willing to share their experience and expertise. In addition to leading a workshop and participating in the final wrap-up panel, I volunteered to do some “one-on-one therapy” sessions with conference attendees on the topic of enterprise social media structure, policies and integration (you know, the stuff we write about in The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy).

I spoke with half a dozen folks and was happily surprised at how far along they were. A year ago, many of the conversations around enterprise social media were pretty basic: Who should “own” it? Do we need to be on Facebook? But these folks came to me with very specific questions about staffing, generating and sharing content, tracking results and other nuts-and-bolts stuff. It was great fun.

I also spoke with several very smart folks who I really couldn’t help very much. Everything I suggested, they’d tried. They were intelligent and adventurous and read the right blogs and the right books and went to the right conferences. We struggled to come up with ideas to address their particular problems. In the end it came down, essentially, to “I work for a company (or a boss) that just doesn’t care or get it no matter how much I show them what our competitors are doing, or what the industry best practices are, or the conversations about our brand we’re ignoring.”

What do you do with that?

I know a lot of people in the enterprise social media world who have pushed similar boulders up similar hills and had great successes. They are people whose names you may know, and a lot are mentioned in our book, like Zena Weist and Bert DuMars and Nichole Kelly and Chris Moody and Lee Aase. (And some of them have changed jobs since the book was published.)

If you’re the person inside your company who has been pushing the social media boulder up the hill, I want you to know three things:

1. There aren’t many people like you.
2. Eventually the people standing in your way will know you’re right.
3. You are more valuable now than you’ve ever been.

It’s up to you, obviously, to decide how much boulder-pushing you want to do. Maybe you like your boulder. Maybe you like your hill. Maybe I’ve taken this analogy too far.

But if you’re beating your head against a wall and feeling like you’re failing, I’ll bet you’re not. You may think you’re doing it wrong, and I promise you, you’re not. If you’re thinking you could finally break through if you just worked harder or smarter or longer, that’s probably not it, either.

Maybe it’s just time to look for a new job.

image by Krikit

By now you’ve probably heard the story of the woman in the Netherlands who got a tattoo on her arm showing the faces of all her Facebook friends. And by now you’ve probably also heard that it’s a hoax. Many of the more than two million people who viewed the video on YouTube commented to express their views on getting a permanent reminder of a passing fad.

Let’s try a little exercise. Read the following sentence:

“A woman in the Netherlands got a tattoo of all her Facebook friends on her arm and it became an international news story.”

Now read this one:

“A woman in the Netherlands got a tattoo of all her friends on her arm and it became an international news story.”

I don’t think so.

I live in a town where I see odder tattoos nearly every day. I remember seeing a guy years ago who had tattoos all over both legs, including a crossed knife and fork, and a cow hiding behind a giant piece of broccoli. When I tended bar in London last century, I saw a young punk on the King’s Road with “GLASGOW” tattooed across his forehead. (“So where are you from? Oh, never mind.”)

In the annals of tattooing, getting your friends’ faces on your arm could actually be considered charming and sweet. But add the word “Facebook” and it’s a scandal and an outrage.

I’m immersed in this every day so I get tired of the hype machine that tacks “social media” or “Facebook” onto what are essentially phenomena that have always existed. Houses got robbed, people got stalked, photos got misused and people got fired for saying stupid things long before social media came along. Unfortunately, it’s the hype machine that plants the idea in people’s minds (including executives of enterprise companies who should be getting value out of social media) that social media is evil and dangerous.

Social media is just another way of communicating. It’s a set of tools and, to a certain extent, a philosophy of sharing and openness. But it’s not a religion. It’s not a political movement. One day the novelty will have worn off, the fears will have subsided and social media tools will be just a normal part of our lives, like the telephone and the Internet.

(But then what will we blog about?)