That’s how Clay Shirky describes media in the 21st century in this fascinating TED talk titled, How Social Media Can Make History:

Side note: If you’re in PR and you’re still trying to find a magic bullet that lets you avoid talking to people on an individual basis – even if they don’t quite qualify as “influencers”, this talk should make you think again. Everyone matters in this new paradigm.

These tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring –  it isn’t when the shining new tools show up that their uses start permeating society, it’s when everyody is able to take them for granted. -  Clay Shirky

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for things to get interesting. Enough with the shiny object syndrome. Let’s talk.

Copyright Dan Jordan

Yes, comment marketing is a real thing. If you’ve started listening to all the discussion in social networks and on blogs about your company and/or industry and you’re wondering what to do with all this new-found intelligence, comment marketing is a great place to start.

Now, let me preface this by saying that most of what passes for comment marketing inside the majority of marketing departments and agencies absolutely sucks. There have been numerous times when I’ve been on the receiving end of horrible attempts at comment marketing — this one of the primary reasons I finally decided to write this post.

Also worth noting: if you work in a particular industry and you leave your marketer hat off when commenting on relevant blog posts with insight and candor, this post is not necessarily for you. Rather, this is a guideline for marketers and PR pros looking to represent their official company position in blogs, forums and social networks while on the clock.

I understand nobody is perfect, but if you tread carefully and respectfully, it’s possible to not only avoid pissing people off, but hopefully you’ll be able to form some really great relationships on behalf of your company or client.

For my purposes, I’ve developed a red light, green light, yellow light approach.

Red Light means STOP!
Green Light means comment, but always comment with care.
Yellow Light means email (or some other means of offline communication) ONLY.

Your company is mentioned in product comparison between Company A and Company B: Green Light

If the blogger is asking for feedback between Company A and Company B and you work for either, feel free to respond, but don’t give the hard sell — be human. Let the blogger know you appreciate their consideration, acknowledge that you can’t speak to the features of the competition, but let them know you would be happy to arrange a special demo/promotion or simply make yourself available by providing your email address or direct phone number. Then, walk away.

Your company is left out of the comparison between Company A and Company B: Yellow Light*

If I’m asking about for feedback about Competitor A vs. Competitor B and you work for Competitor C, stay away from the comments section altogether

Nothing makes your company look worse than an appeal to “take a look at what we have to offer instead of the other two you mention…” It seems desperate. In this case, it’s also likely that the blogger already ruled your company out and is seeking feedback directly related to the two companies mentioned.

If you really feel compelled to reach out, do so via email. Most blogs have a means of contacting the author (my email address is visible in the sidebar of my blog). Reach out on a back channel asking whether the person had considered your company — DON’T try to leave an advertisement in the comments section.

However, do keep listening. The dialogue around the pros/cons of your competition should be at least somewhat enlightening.

*Note: The third party issue is an extremely yellow light – the only thing that keeps it from being red is the fact that sometimes email is okay.

No direct mention, only a general reference of industry or market segment: Red Light

If your industry or market segment is mentioned in broad terms, monitor, listen and feel free to weigh-in from your personal or professional experience, but take off your marketing hat.

Even if your marketing pitch seems relevant — try to put yourself in the shoes of those on the receiving end.

As a litmus test, maybe try a little visualization: Imagine you are shopping at the mall (not working or at a networking event). Then, picture a group of strangers standing around having a conversation that reads exactly like what’s on the blog post and ask yourself whether you would feel comfortable interrupting the people chatting away at the mall to deliver your marketing pitch. It not, don’t do it on the blog.

Reader asks about your company in the comments: Yellow Light or Green Light

If someone asks the blogger or other readers of the blog for feedback about your company, email is my first preference. Let the person know you saw his/her comment on XYZ blog, provide your contact information and make yourself available as a resource.

Usually, a commenter will have his/her URL embedded in their name above their comment. If you poke around on their blog/website, there is probably a means of contacting them directly. If not, then choose whether to leave a comment in response to theirs on the blog, but always be respectful of the blogger in this regard — it’s their house.

One size fits some

It’s never my intention to state that there is only one way to do things — I’m not trying to set the rules, I’m only trying to share what works for me and help others in my industry avoid some of the common pitfalls I see so many make.

Different companies, different brands, different industries will always require slightly different approaches, but know there are plenty of sure-fire ways to piss people off with bad comment marketing.

If you were looking for something a little different, Mack Collier has a post about how to write GREAT blog comments, and Sarah Lewis has some great advice about how leaving blog comments can boost your blog traffic.

I hope you find this as a useful starting point to developing your own comment marketing system. If I’m way off base, let me know in the comments.

This is by no means a complete guide, but a starting point… Will you help me finish by adding your voice to the comments?

Photo by your_wht_knight

Social media engagement doesn’t always have to be fun, but it should be customer-centric. Rather than trying to be the life of every party on every social network, simply think about what customers and community stake-holders want from you and over deliver.

Boring but Important

1. Make sure your website is easy to navigate in a variety of browsers including different types of mobile browsers.
2. Build a mobile application that makes transactions easier. Mobile apps improve the speed with which people can access your site and his/her account or profile information since it lives on the phone — no more waiting for mobile browsers to load pages.
3. Make contact information readily accessible on your website without having to search and click on too many links. Include email addresses and direct phone numbers. Walled gardens and information silos are so last century.
4. Add a resources page to your website with shareable and embeddable (not just downloadable) company logos for journalists and bloggers to use in their stories about you.
5. Track the most popular search terms and places on your site and make those elements more prominent. Give the people what they want.
6. Visit the real world once in awhile. For example, if you make toilet paper, don’t appoint someone to talk to me about toilet paper on Twitter (please don’t do this!). Instead, maybe become an official sponsor at an entertainment venue — make your product available to use and appoint on-site staff to ensure that it never runs out.
7. Make it as easy to opt-out as it is to opt-in. Show a little confidence — besides, you’ll get better metrics.
8. Stop pitching media about you, You, YOU all the time. Monitor your feedback for interesting stories and pitch THEM to the media. Be willing to be an auxiliary component of the story and turn the spotlight on your most passionate customers.
9. Don’t ignore search. Learn how to properly tag your content so it can easily found by people already in pursuit of what you have to offer.
10. Make your site more accessible to special populations. Check out Glenda Watson Hyatt’s presentation on making your blog more accessible. There’s nothing boring about this presentation, but it may be the most important thing I’ve seen all year.  P.S. It turns out good SEO also improves accessibility for special populations online. Bonus!
11. Get rid of voicemail. Sounds radical, eh? Central Bank, headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky has a company-wide ban on the use of voicemail. This ensures that somebody is always available to answer the phone.
12. Add a social media newsroom or interactive press room (what you call it is your business) to your website. Optimize your press releases for search and add multimedia elements that can be shared and embedded (not just downloaded). Make sure the items can be found as part of an overall press release as well as a la carte. DO NOT just list a bunch of links to old releases — or even worse, PDFs of old releases.
13. Create an internal newsletter that shares external news with the people inside your organization. So often, the people working for a company are last to hear news about their company. Whether the coverage is positive or negative, there are several benefits of having a well-informed workforce.
14. Bring down your firewall. Studies actually indicate that employees who communicate on social networks are more productive than those who don’t. More than just goofing off, social networks offer employees a shortcut to communication with important contacts.
15. Bring down the silos. The social media ethos is all about giving everyone a voice. Rigid power structures that distance those on the front lines from those at the top of the organization create bottle necks of productivity and ensure inefficiency.
16. Be nice: Clean up your messes, apologize when you’re wrong and listen to feedback even when it hurts.

What else?

Am I missing anything? What other boring but important things can you add to this list to help businesses be more social?

Photo by Scott Ableman

Mark Story tagged me in his #blogmonday post along with Jackie Peters and Jonathan Trenn in an effort to force us to dole out some link love to some “hidden gems” in the blogosphere.

So, here are some gems you might not know about:

Natasha Wescoat
Natasha is an artist who does a great job of leveraging social media to make a living as an artist. She’s also a bit of a nomad and her blog is a fun way to keep track of her whereabouts. She’s also an incredibly sweet person online and offline.

Ken Burbary
Ken is super smart. He writes mostly about social media and other web-based stuff, but it’s never the me-too sort of stuff so many are putting out. In fact, I wish he would write more often. ;-)

Dirk Singer
Dirk is the principal voice of News from the Herd, the blog for London/Cape Town-based agency, Cow Digital. Dirk touches on everything from digital PR and mobile technology to advertising and social media. He’s not afraid to be critical of bad strategy and practices, but he doesn’t resort to some of the usual foolishness. He’s a class act and he has a firm grasp on the pulse of the industry.

Stuart Foster
Stuart writes about PR, marketing and social media. He has a very down-to-earth approach to all of this stuff, yet manages to entertain and make me rethink some of the things I thought I had all figured out.

Culture of None
Adam Paul (yes, my husband) writes about and posts rare and obscure music for download. His posts range from Eminem’s teenage basement recordings to late 80s hardcore. Plus there’s plenty of how-to stuff as well.

I know there are so many people doing really interesting things out there. Please, feel free to add to this list. Who would you add to #blogmonday?

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. ~Anais Nin

What if resistance to change was really resistance to life?

By seeking to preserve a single state –  a successful state — whether we’re talking about our lives as individuals or whether we’re talking about the life cycle of a business, we’re really seeking a kind of death.

Life is about motion, action, expansion, contraction. Life is risky. Death is a sure thing.

The way we communicate on the web requires us to live more every day as a means of getting things done; we engage, listen, adapt, restate, amend, send, receive, grow, change.

The old way – the way of lists and mechanized, repeatable distribution processes with text that spoke to no one was a lot like death.

Yet, rather than embracing the new life within new methods of communication, so many simply seek new ways to die.

They seek new formulas, proclaim new dogmas, force new processes and measurements that miss the point. They count their number of followers on Twitter and manipulate the definition of PR “hits” so they can keep counting those, too.

Why do we not feel liberated? Why do we resist the inherent life in our work?

I saw Brian Clark’s super smart presentation at SOBCon earlier this month and he told everyone there that being successful at this stuff isn’t about what’s right or wrong, but about what works.

The best thing he can do is to share what works for him.

The best thing we can do is listen — not so we can all go out and repeat the exact same steps — but so we can extract and integrate the stuff that will work for us and ultimately let it go when it doesn’t anymore.

Photo by law_keven

What our fear of the stock market can teach us about resistance to social media integration

Sounds crazy, I know. But, many of the same things that prevent businesses from getting social are the same things that prevent people from investing in the stock market.

Maybe I’m oversimplifying things a bit, but I think if those of us who are so smitten with social media can begin to understand our own hangups then maybe we can better empathize with the businesses we’re ultimately trying to help.

For most of us, the idea of investing in the stock market seems very abstract and completely removed from our day-to-day activities even though the economy impacts almost every aspect of our lives. The same can be said of businesses and social media.

The last statistic I heard was roughly 100 million Americans have never owned a single share of stock. 100 million Americans equals about one third of the entire U.S. population or the number of viewers who visit YouTube each month.

Why is everyone so nervous?

1. Lack of a B.S. Meter

When it comes to the stock market and social media, I feel comfortable saying there’s definitely a lot of bullshit out there.

Too many of us in social media rely on buzz words that ultimately mean nothing or do little to truly communicate. Detecting B.S. of any kind really comes down to one’s ability to trust his/her own judgment.

We feel vulnerable when we don’t have a clear idea of who we should trust to guide us into unknown territory. For most people, the stock market and social media both still qualify as relatively unknown territory.

2. The Rules Change

There is no clear-cut, step-by-step formula for turning a profit in either the stock market or with social media. A lack of understanding makes the stock market and social media investment seem like gambling.

The patterns are there, but it takes some dedicated observation and hands-on effort to see them emerge in a meaningful way for any particular circumstance.

3. Long-term Commitments are Best

Although a lot of people seem to benefit from risky short-term endeavors, real gains in the stock market, just like social media, are made in the long term.

Add to this factor the above statements and realize how unsure it feels to make a long-term commitment without an adequate B.S. meter in an environment where the rules seem to change.

Empathy Helps

The problem with evangelism and enthusiasm is that they often burn too hot to coexist with the soothing presence of the other e-word: empathy.

I’m only a few weeks into my new position working with PEAK6 Online, but I’ve been learning a lot about attitudes people have toward investing in the stock market through one of our websites, WeSeed, and applying that to what I do professionally with social media. (This is my disclosure — yes, I work for WeSeed).

WeSeed is an interactive site that lets people learn about the stock market by investing in virtual stock portfolios with fake money. It even lets members browse for stocks based on things they’re already passionate about, like sports, fashion or technology.

The mission of the site is to help people get over their fears of the stock market. This really resonates with me since most of what I do here is to try to help professional communicators and other business types get over their fear of social media.

Just like those of us who readily engage in different types of social networks, savvy investors often feel enthusiastic about sharing their market knowledge with others. Think about the last time you ran into one of those people the next time you get frustrated with a business’ lack of excitement over the idea of social media integration.

If it’s our job to help others wade their way into social media communication with confidence, isn’t it also our job to empathize first and frame these foreign concepts in ways that make them seem more familiar and relevant before we climb up on our soap box?

When was the last time you felt afraid?

Note: Since I totally ripped off David Griner’s title for one of his presentations, inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s brilliant work of Gonzo Journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, please check out David’s slide deck on SlideShare. Also, follow David on Twitter – @griner. I wish I could do more for HST, but if you can just pause for a moment of silence the next time you drink Wild Turkey, that will probably suffice.

Photo by Paul Watson

Having access to social networks at work makes me more productive, not less. Even though it might seem like I’m only chatting with people online and watching silly videos I’m maintaining a network that helps me rock out when it matters most. Here’s how:

1. I don’t try to reinvent the wheel
Forgive the cliche, but so many people think they have to take every problem that comes their way head on. They return to their desk, make mind maps and start from scratch.

Twitter helped me realize there are no new problems and there is great value in the ability to reach out to a lot of people quickly.

Google is still great when it comes to searching for answers, but the solutions people serve up on Twitter are pre-vetted.

Sure, the answers are not all amazing, but if my employer were to cut off access to my network, I would spend a lot more time researching solutions and less time putting them into action.

I have people.

2. I don’t need “contacts” to make contact
If someone is following me, I can send them a direct message aka a private message that doesn’t post publicly.

I’ve made appointments this way, gathered support for promoting something I needed help promoting, straightened out misunderstandings, passed along and received valuable information, put out requests for a proposal, received requests for a proposal all on Twitter’s back channel without having to track down a single email address or phone number.

Oh, and it didn’t matter whether I did this on my phone or at my computer.

3. I benefit from information asymmetry
Awhile ago Chris Penn wrote a great post about how understanding World of Warcraft can make you a better marketer.

Sure, you can play World of Warcraft like most people, but downloading add-on software gives players an advantage through what Chris describes as information asymmetry. In other words, the software gives him access to more information that he uses to play the game better.

Participating in social networks like Twitter is like having add-on software for professional life.

By paying attention to this constant stream of information, I can play the professional game better. Yes, I still actively seek out plenty of information, but there’s so much I would miss if I wasn’t tapped into Twitter while simultaneously carrying out other tasks.

I’m not alone
Don’t just take my word for it – a recent scientific study from the University of Melbourne in Australia shows that workers are actually more productive when given access to social networks, not less.

For those about to rock…
I’m always looking for new ways to explain how these things benefit me so others can benefit in the same way.

How do you use Twitter, or other social networks, to rock out?

How does working for a company that blocks access hinder your ability to get the job done?

Photo by Devo(lutio)n

To me, humanizing a business symbolizes aligning what it means to be a good human with what it means to be a good business, not just putting a face on an organization or dusting off the creative elements of an old brand, but emphasizing the importance of humanity within the institution.

However, do any of us really know what it means to be a good human? Is there value in being a good human, if so, how does this translate to good business?

Think deep, not wide
Relationships are always fun when they’re new. Most humans can tell you that maintaining relationships starts to feel like work over the long haul. This is true for businesses, too. Long-term social media engagement requires businesses to get real and go deep.

Starting a company blog and building a presence on Twitter is a great way to raise visibility and introduce a new facet of your organization to the masses, but to have any sizable impact, the real work needs to take place inside the organization.

To foster long-term relationships that go beyond skin-deep, channels within the organization must be established to handle unforeseen inquiry and feedback from external platforms — what I’ve heard Amber Naslund refer to as bridge-building. This is where the bulk of the work in social media integration occurs in any business (no, we don’t just get paid to tweet).

Can our business keep up our end of the dialogue?

Listening and establishing a presence on the social web are great first steps… now what?

A little less conversation a little more action
As much as I love to encourage companies to engage in dialogue with the public, sooner or later people will expect you to put your money where your mouth is.

Acknowledging public sentiment and providing a personal point of contact on social networks to address grievances will help curb most negative sentiment, but if the communication stops at the front lines, your love affair with the public will be nothing more than a meaningless fling or worse — a messy, public divorce filled with mutual scorn and regret.

Is our business worthy of public trust?

We make good content, we engage in conversation, we’re establishing trust… but, can we maintain it?

Scale isn’t the only issue
Human relationships are built on our ability to share not only our strengths, but our vulnerabilities. Even if we can scale an organization’s ability to connect across several communication platforms with innumerable consumers/users/fans; most human relationships are fragile — volatile, or at least somewhat transient.

Can a brand forgive, evolve, love, connect? I’m not trying to be difficult or confrontational when it comes to the humanizing issue, I just wonder which human attributes we would like businesses to adopt.

Is our business built to attract new business and nourish old relationships in equal measure?

What does it mean to be human, let alone humanize a business?

An imperfect future?
Looking down the road ahead, I can’t help but think that elevating the human aspects of business will mean more than just a lot of talk.

I’ve raised a number of questions and I’m hoping you will help me begin to formulate some answers.

When all of this social media stuff becomes commonplace, how will business be different? How will we be different as a result?

Photo by ♥ Cishore ♪♫

Two speaking gigs in two days might be a regular sort of week for some people, but for me it’s kind of a big deal.

Thursday night I gave a full hour presentation on this subject for the Ann Arbor Ad Club and right now I’m ramping up to deliver a brief version of of the same presentation to a group at the Module Midwest Digital Conference.

Other speakers here today at Module include:

Chris Brogan – @chrisbrogan
Amber Naslund – @ambercadabra
Scott Monty – @scottmonty
Marcel Lebrun – @lebrun
Ken Burbary – @kenburbary
Adrian Pittman – @adrianpittman
Jeremy Tanner – @penguin
Oz Sultan – @ozsultan
Damian Rintelmann – @drintelmann
and Terry Bean – @terrybean (graciously agreed to moderate the presentation despite it also being Opening Day for the Detroit Tigers)

Also, thanks to Tracy Lindsay (@tracylindsay) and Annie Wolock (@A2Annie) for inviting and arranging everything for the Ann Arbor Ad Club.

Here are the slides I used to give both presentations:

We all know there are a lot of obstacles to integrating social media, but I think it helps to understand why. I think it’s all about culture… what do YOU think?

There have been a lot of exciting things going on for me behind the scenes, but I’m glad to say I can finally share what’s been going on for me with you.

This week I started a new job as a Social Media Specialist for PEAK6 Online. For those of you who don’t know, PEAK6 is headquartered in Chicago’s financial district directly inside the Chicago Board of Trade building.

This is exciting for two reasons:

1. The building itself oozes with historical significance from the action on the trading room floor to the beautiful art deco architecture.

2. Batman was here… Seriously. Many scenes from The Dark Knight were shot directly outside the window from the PEAK6 offices. How cool is that?

In my new role, I’ll be helping with social media strategy for each of the PEAK6 Online business units including WeSeed, www.ONN.tv and OptionsHouse.

Social media engagement poses brand-new challenges for businesses in the financial industry and I’m excited to learn how to navigate the space and share what I learn along the way.

Here’s a little bit of background information for each of the above mentioned PEAK6 business units:

WeSeed – WeSeed is an online community that lets people learn about the stock market in a risk-free environment by building virtual stock portfolios of pretend stocks called WeShares. WeSeed members select their WeShares based on things they’re already passionate about, like technology, fashion or food. Follow WeSeed on Twitter: @WeSeed

www.ONN.tv – www.ONN.tv, aka the Options News Network, is an online video channel that provides daily options news and entertainment, options education, options trading ideas, and expert commentary on the options market. There are even videos that help explain the basics of options trading on the site. Follow ONN.tv on Twitter: @OptionsNews FYI, you can also follow ONN.tv host Jud Pyle on his newly-launched Twitter profile: @judpyle

OptionsHouse** – OptionsHouse is a retail online brokerage firm that lets investors make options and stock trades on a custom trading platform. The site also provides data feeds, execution capability and trading tools. Options House also offers seminars and webinars designed to help people better understand options investing. Follow OptionsHouse on Twitter: @OptionsHouse

Here are some fun pictures of me in and around PEAK6 in Chicago:

Everyone who works for a securities company gets fingerprinted I swear!

I'm Batman ;)

The view from our offices at the Chicago Board of Trade building. Batman was here!

mmmmm candy!

Sorry, Chicago, I won’t live here permanently. However, I’ll be doing a lot of traveling back and forth from Detroit for awhile until new PEAK6 Online offices are ready to open in Seattle.

Yes, Seattle
A new PEAK6 Online office will soon be open in Seattle and I’ll be working out there with a great new team to help expand the company’s online presence. I’ll know more soon enough.

P.S. Here are some more of the fun people who work for the PEAK6 family of businesses you can follow on Twitter:

@crosberg
@brandonzeman
@cfritchle
@lucyglib
@chicagomac
@bradgold
@behindthehills
@armchairdj
@cheapsuits (especially him)

FYI, since I mentioned options trading in the summary of the activities at OptionsHouse, in good faith I need to include the following:

Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. In addition, electronic trading poses unique risk to investors. System response and access times may vary due to market conditions, system performance and other factors. OptionsHouse provides neither investment nor tax advice. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options<http://www.optionsclearing.com/publications/risks/riskchap1.jsp> | Risk Statements and Disclosures<http://optionshouse.com/risk/> | Privacy Policy<http://optionshouse.com/risk/privacy/>, copies of which can also be obtained by contacting OptionsHouse’s Customer Service Department at customerservice@optionshouse.com<mailto:customerservice@optionshouse.com>.

Please forgive the delay in posting the details of my new position. The first week on the job was action-packed and I’m glad to say I’ve already hit the ground running.

Wish me luck?

A big thank you to Caitlin Rosberg (@crosberg) for her great work on the photos.