Photo courtesy of Chrysaora

Social media can help bring people together and drive social activism. And more importantly, it can help level the playing field when corporate carpetbaggers knock on people’s doors.

Not unlike the California Gold Rush of 1849, oil and gas companies are moving to rural areas across the country to access the precious natural gas that lies beneath the ground — and in people’s backyards.

Last week, I had an opportunity to meet with Chris Csikszentmihályi, director of the Center for Future Civic Media, to hear how the Center is bringing people together through something called “civic media” and “click-through activism.” The idea is that communities can use social media to support grassroots efforts, and in this case, help people defend themselves from opportunists who are using their money and political clout to their advantage.

The Center, which is on the forefront of social media activism, is a joint effort between the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and is funded through a four-year grant from the Knight Foundation.

I was struck by the work the Center is doing with the ExtrACT project, which uses Web-based and mobile tools to help level the playing field when representatives from oil and gas companies, called “landmen,” knock on people’s doors to negotiate gas leases. Many landowners are caught unaware and don’t realize they have negotiating options – or that these companies often use toxic chemicals during the exploration and drilling process, which can seep into the ground water and pollute the environment.

To empower these people, the Center has developed the Landman Report Card (LRC), which provides resources for landowners in Colorado and Ohio, and eventually New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, states that are experiencing booms in natural gas exploration. The Report Card serves as a resource where people can find information, learn about the options they have and share their experiences with landmen.

We’ve seen social media activism gaining in popularity, with everything from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign to videos posted on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter that showed the death of 26-year-old Neda Soltan, who was hailed as a martyr and became the face of the Iranian protests. Even The Washington Post wrote about this growing trend earlier this year.

According to a 2009 report from the Pew Research Center, 37 percent of Americans 18 to 29 use blogs or social networking sites for political or civic involvement, compared to 17 percent of online users 30-49. By the same token, the report states that people who use social media for civic engagement are more active participants in traditional political and nonpolitical engagements.

Knowledge is power, and by working together, people can make a difference.

Real life relationships are complex enough, add the digital medium with a sprinkle of ego and the relationship points become more complicated. In a social network defining relationships beyond friendship is a tough problem to solve.

In the story “Are You My Mother?” by P. D. Eastman, the baby bird explores the world looking to find his mother, confused he asks if each character in the story is his mother. In the end a digger ends up dropping him back home to his real mother. Just like this, it seems every social network touts the idea of being a friend, but none offer ways to satisfactorily address the complexity of the relationship.

The issue of the complexity of digital relationships started with linking to other websites. Defining the link relationship has been an issue since the early days of the Internet, thus the creation of NoFollow and the XHTML Friends Network (XFN). These tools were developed to define in the code what human relationships exist between the two websites. According to Wikipedia, the “nofollow” HTML attribute was originally designed to stop comment spam on blogs. Stemming from this concept the XFN specification outlines the relationships between individuals by defining a small set of values that describe personal relationships. Thus, using XFN, machines that parse your web pages, as well as other humans, can see how you are related to the pages you link to.

But it doesn’t stop with links, relationships involve the action (or lack of action) taken between users on a given social network. It can be like high school all over again.

Of all the large digital networks, Facebook has the greatest to gain by improving relationship classifications and tools to manage the dynamics of human relationships. For example in the event of a relationship fallout – the possibility to loose digital property such as tagged images when the relationship status changes is a real problem. But taking an aggressive approach to the relationship such as disliking a friend or their action could add balance to the existing reconnect strategy.

The advent of life streaming added more dynamics to relationship algorithm with more immediate conversation tools and ways to define and track a relationship by time. Sites like LinkedIn have an advantage of defining the relationship based on a time and professional association. Yet, still fall short when truly giving information into how connected you really are with someone because you’re afraid of fallout from six degrees of separation. Below is an example of my Facebook network and how interconnected the relationships are with each other.

In the early days of Twitter it was etiquette to just friend back anyone who followed you. Now, unless the user is of interest it is fine to not reciprocate the follow; however, with the addition of the list feature being exclusionary in nature misunderstandings in the network relationships have begun.

Now with geo-location tools like FourSquare – I believe some connections shouldn’t know every move you make. I understand the benefits of advertising your location – such as getting friends together for karaoke; however, I really don’t care if you’ve been to Starbucks 15 times this week. Or more dramatic, announcing your attendance to a Democratic convention with Republican parents who follow your stream can lead to icy conversations around the dinner table. Having location data is great for location aware networks and the ability to offer additional features, yet the ability to merge privacy with relationship classification will be a big advance in social networks.

When it comes down to it, being a big deal is not as big as you think, but I think there needs to be continued thought given to online relationship classifications. The next big thing in relationship dynamics online will be the ability to go beyond just measuring compatibility between individuals to being able to craft (control) your life message based on the individual audience. The concept of a digital “friend” will morph into the classification structures like we have in real life. Be honest, do you really want to be “friends” with a brand? What ways do you think relationship dynamics will change on the Internet in the next 3 months to 5 years?

 Wind Power. Renewable Energy. Green Economy. There is an awesome amount of momentum in the America right now around all of these topics. We’re on the cusp of real change in how we create the gobs of energy we increasingly consume in a manner that is kinder and gentler to Mother Earth.

One problem – we have a power grid infrastructure (i.e., those big transmission lines that cut across the landscape), once the best in the world, that has gone neglected for many years. The current system was built for few big energy on-ramps (like coal-fired power plants and nukes) not a lot of small, variable energy outputs like the on ramps needed for renewable energy sources like wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass. Expanding and updating the transmission system is perhaps the most contentious project you could ever undertake. They are often ensnarled in protests and lawsuits so it takes decades to build even small additions to the grid. And the current transmission grid is far from smart right now.

We’re making progress. Last week President Obama cut loose $3.4 billion dollars worth of stimulus money to roll out the American smart grid. Realistically, $3.4 billion is just a drop in the bucket, but it’s a move in the right direction.

According to ABB, one of the major players in the power transmission game, North America is “not close” to developing a true smart grid. ABB CEO Enrique Santacan, cut a YouTube video where he says:

• The process of developing and implementing the smart grid is just starting in North America.
•  Lots of old equipment will have to be replaced.
•  And, many new automation technologies will have to be deployed in order to get there.

According to Dean Anderson’s blog  the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory defines a smart grid as having the following characteristics:

• Self-healing from power disturbance events
• Enabling active participation by consumers in demand response • Operating resiliently against physical and cyber-attack
• Providing power quality for 21st century needs
•  Accommodating all generation and storage options
• Enabling new products, services, and markets 
• Optimizing assets and operating efficiently

If you saw this weekend’s 60 Minutes broadcast. we should all be greatly concerned about creating a smart grid that is resilient to cyber-attack. In typical 60 Minutes style, our electrical grid was “exposed” as a prime target for cyber terrorism potentially dropping our nation into darkness and confusion. More alarming was the interview that pointed out that some of the components damaged in a cyber or physical attack could take four months to replace. (I once spent 11 days without power due to an ice storm. I can’t imagine what four months would be like!) Remember that in 2003, a simple tree limb on a power line in Ohio resulted in a power failure that in mere seconds enveloped the Midwest to Broadway in darkness.

It will take time to develop a smart grid system designed to be more like your office and home wireless LAN but less susceptible to hacking.

Patrick Mazza’s blog on Grist from more than 27 months ago  pointed out that “It’s time to bring the grid into the foreground because it positions at the exact center of the world’s most crucial issue, global climate change.”

Two years later, we’re enthralled with harnessing wind and solar, but all that excitement won’t get us far if we don’t address the much more mundane but essential infrastructure needed to turn all that excitement into real progress.

by Geoff Livingston

It doesn’t matter what the property is (image by junkerjane). From Twitter and email to document and blog post titles, your ability to write great headlines (or 140 character writing) matters more than ever. Great headlines drive traffic and interest.

Attention spans have shrunk, and if you can’t interest someone right off the bat with a great, witty headline then you’re out. Done, finished, out! That’s why Peter Shankman rightly values writing skills above all else.

Below find five basic tips on writing headlines:

1) Active versus passive: Man, it drives me crazy when I see one of my post titles using a passive verb. People want exciting, fun titles. Active headlines inspire emotive responses, while passive ones invite the reader to visit someone else’s feed! Passive headline writing means I’m sloppy and didn’t care enough to review my work thoroughly.

2) Get sassy with it! Yeah, I said sassy. Seriously, throw some edge into it. You can call it tabloid, I call it interesting. Who wants to read business writing anymore? How exciting are all of these press releases? Oh boy! No thanks!

That doesn’t mean write sexual entendres into every communication. You may not like what you get back! Plus, great writers infuse edginess and excitement into their writing without resorting to juvenile tactics (at least most of the time). This is a great segway for…

3) Genuine headlines: Your headline serves as a preview. It should be genuine in describing the actual content, as opposed to teasing readers into a false experience. Consider this: You want them to come back, right? So write authentic headlines that do relate to your copy. Further, back the headline up right away in the first paragraph with a great thesis statement.

4) Less words: My dad used to be managing editor of the Philadelphia Daily News. Growing up with him editing my documents was a Dantean experience at times. His mantra: Cut the fat! What can you cut? How can you say a six word headline in four? What words can you replace with a new singular word. Take the time time to relentlessly review, and cut the fat.

5) Intentionally incomplete: Sometimes I’ll just drop a phrase or even one word as the headline. It accurately depicts a part of the story, but the open-ended nature teases readers. The post or document must be well described by such a phrase so the headline’s abstract depiction still resonates.

What would you add to these five headline tips?

“Press” releases have been declared dead on other occasions. Mary Schmidt did so in September in Lipsticking. Shel Holtz weighed in 3+ years ago with a reasonable call for evolution (…is Dead. Long Live the …). “Press releases generally don’t create either relevance or trust. In the Darwinism of this crowded new media environment, they don’t survive,” declared Josh in Span Society during the post-election crisis in Iran.  Mark Naples of iMedia Connection posted recently on “6 Facts Every Marketer Must Know,” in which he heaps another shovel of dirt on the release based on polls of people who cover marketing for large media outlets. 

For a guy who started out his PR career trying to convince clients that an objective of “getting out 100 press releases this year” wasn’t a good objective, I should be heartened. But I’m not. I am hopeful that while the form has used up most of its nine lives, there are many more miles in this cat. And, I am challenged because of what all this talk about the news release says about our culture.

There are three reasons for my faith that the news release has a few more lives.

First, our writing for the ear and for the eye has been expanded in unprecedented ways in recent years with the advent of text messaging, mini-blogs, online video and the like. But, we haven’t given up on the written word. The value of a news release may come in the complete telling of the story from the client’s perspective all in one place. The fact that it has evolved from being written purely for the eye and now includes video or audio that covers other senses is allowing readers/viewers to experience the subject more fully. The better targeted the communication, the more likely it is to be a part of a story, column, post or on-air piece, for sure, but well-timed and well-executed releases still have value.

Gladwell (Social Media: not changing world)

That said, there is a tipping point coming, even if, as reported by rocker/chairman  Khan Manka, Jr. ,  “Malcolm Gladwell (The New Yorker) basically (has said we are) all full of ourselves if we think for one minute that we’re changing the world in any way.” (Khan wrote of the Strauss Zelnick’s Rooftop Salon recently).

Third, the “market” for these communiques is separating the good from the bad. There are literally hundreds of bloggers and journalists who are now able to push a button and purge all messages from a lousy PR person. There are whole blogs and columns written about what not to do. Beth Kanter delivered a great one recently that contained an admonition agaist “cravat” pitches (her husband’s neckwear at their wedding was described in Esquire – with elegant language – as “last seen around the neck of the Undertaker before his match at Wrestlemania XXV. Unless you can deliver tombstone piledrivers to anyone who scoffs at you, opt for a bow tie.”).  She also noted,  ”My husband didn’t ask me to marry him on our first date.”

And what does all of this say about our culture?

1. We are “uprofessionalizing” news at a rate that amazes me. Whole media outlets are falling by the wayside. Whole TV shows are now being done in Tweet form (TMZ). Journalism is trending toward Drudge’s world view in a Liberty Roundtable quote from 1998  – a nation of 300 million reporters.
2. Rumor, gossip or opinion is taking on the same relevance as news. But, in this stream, journalists from traditional media are finding some good-sized fish, too.
3. Bloggers, for the most part, aren’t coming up with a sustainable business model, so when the economy improves how many of us will find other jobs? In the meantime, traditional media are handing over the keys to covering the news.
4. Developing a new relationship between public relations professionals and new media is presenting a tough value proposition. Some want the relationship building to move beyond appropriate first date behavior quickly so we can get to the good stuff. Fortunately, most humans aren’t that easy. Building relationships takes time and resources well beyond what was required in the old press release culture, and many still remember that old culture too fondly. (How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to actually change the bulb while the other two talk about how great the old bulb was.)
5. Engagement is difficult in the form of comments, tweets and limited face-to-face. The old model of engagement was a cab ride uptown to do a personal deskside briefing. Technology has brought us closer in many ways, but it’s more ambient closeness and quasi-relationship in some ways. I’m encouraged by how there are places to meet up, but they also are proliferating and straining the resources traditionally dedicated to communications activities in the old one-big-trade-show; four-big-magazines era.

Many of us continue to move at light speed in sorting this out, and the tilting against traditional windmills work is exhausting. So, I still cling just a little to the evolved news release while doing all these other things. Does that make me a bad person?

Photo courtesy of San Jose Library

I’m not proud to say that I have a double standard when it comes to social media and my kids. But I have to admit, I’m a “Do as I say, not as I do” kind of mom.

I have a Twitter account, Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile and spend a lot of my time on the Internet for work. But when my daughter established a Gmail account and her new cell phone had Twitter, MySpace and Facebook apps, I realized I couldn’t take a lassez-faire approach to social media – we had to have one of those awkward, parental discussions.

Not that these are something new. Now that my daughter has entered middle school, we’ve had lots of these discussions, with topics ranging from why she doesn’t want to be a “friend with benefits,” why she can’t send text messages after 10 p.m., why “sexting” is wrong, and the basics of social media safety.

CNN touched upon the topic of young teens engaging in social media in its article “Social Networks and Kids: How Young is Too Young?” The article points to Pew Internet Research report that says 61 percent of teens age 12 to 17 use social networking sites to send messages to friends and that 38 percent of teens 12 to 14 have an online profile of some sort.

By the same token, a U.S. News and World Report article reported that teens and tweens are more active online than most parents realize. According to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that tracks children’s use of media, 51 percent of teenagers check into social networking sites more than once a day. And while only 2 percent of parents believe their child has posted naked or near-naked photos or videos of themselves or others, 13 percent of teens admitted they’ve done that.

No matter how much parents want to protect their kids, they’re already on the Internet and it’s not long before they setup a Facebook page (if they haven’t already done so). But do these kids realize that once something is posted on the Internet, it never really goes away – and you have no way of knowing who’s going to see it?

You read stories about college students who post images on their Facebook pages of themselves drinking and in various states of dress, only to have them re-emerge during their job search. Or how cyberbullying is not just something you might see on an After School Special – it’s a regular occurrence at some schools.

Both my kids are using social media and I do my best to keep track of what they’re viewing. My 9-year-old goes to the WebKinz and Littlest Pet Shop Web sites to play with her virtual pets and my 11-year-old uses YouTube to watch music videos, now that you can’t watch them on MTV anymore. And when camera crews showed up at my daughter’s elementary school, she called me and said, “Hey Mom, check out Twitter and find out what’s going on.”

My agency talks to companies all the time about the importance of setting up social media policies to educate their employees about how to use social media. By the same token, parents need to share the same information with their kids – and tell them that you want to know if someone posts inappropriate photos of classmates on the Internet or sends them via cell phone. Now, more than ever, parents need to talk to their kids and find out who they’re talking to online.

We teach kids how to drive and the importance of safe sex. Now, we need to teach them how to safely engage in social media.

The fact that twitter users take their personal brand so seriously was exemplified when Chris Brogan mentioned the backlash by excluding individuals from his lists, thus labeling lists “exclusionary by nature“. So besides a thick skin do his users need to grow up? I think this harks back to the follow me – I’ll follow you back mindset on twitter etiquette.

Does the fact that inclusion on a list will add anything to a user as meta-data or perceived relationship by classification? And by taking the control out of the hands of the user on the list does it make this classification more human/real?

What if you feel the classification is wrong or derogatory? I dare refer to those who Chris may have offended by excluding would be happy to not be included on @cspenn’s lists.

So it seems to get on or off lists you have to connect with the creator (which is kind of the point) but what about the ability to collaborate or moderate a list. For example, it seems in my city almost every Twitter user has their own list of local users. The issue being that there is no one with a complete list and this leaves the classification structure fractured.

For me the benefit of being able to list users without following them helps simplify the amount of users in my main feed. I now wonder how this will impact the follow ratio for most accounts – especially business or corporate types. So it might make sense to forget the main feed all together, turn lists private and then build an app that will display only the lists I follow. Thus building a simple taxonomy used to categorize a user based on what I expect them to tweet.

To finish off, lists are a good start at classifying users and simplifying the feed structure but need a lot more work to take a simple classification structure and make it more usable to the whole community. Please share what your recommendations for the obvious next steps for Twitter lists!

Photo: voxefx

 I have lived in several places throughout the east and Midwest, but I spent my formative years (8 to 18) in the garden spot of the Garden State and I have now lived in Richmond, Va., for the past 19 years (my longest stint so far in one city/location). So I have a special interest in the odd fact that New Jersey and Virginia have the only two gubernatorial races in the country this year.

And they are pretty telling races. Historically Democratic “blue” New Jersey has incumbent Jon Corzine running neck-to-neck with Republican Chris Christie, a former U.S. Attorney (who apparently has little respect for copyright law).  The polling difference between the two candidates falls within the statistical margin of error making it’s anyone’s race.

In Virginia, which as a one-term limit state never has an incumbent candidate for governor, Attorney General Bob McDonnell has a commanding double digit lead in the polls over Democrat Creigh Deeds, a long time state politician. A Republican win would end two back-to-back Democratic administrations in a traditionally Republican state.

What national implications should we read into these two races? Has Obama lost sway and, in turn, Democratic candidates? Well, according to the SmartPolitics blog, there’s a far less knee jerk story to all this. To quote the blog “A Smart Politics analysis of historical election returns in the Garden and Old Dominion States finds that the two states have voted in tandem during the last five gubernatorial elections dating back to 1989 - and always electing the party which is not in control of the White House. (If it’s not too late, find a bookie and put all your money on Christie in Jersey!)

From a social media standpoint it is interesting that in Virginia McDonnell has outspent the Democrat Deeds 5-to-1 in social media (a number which far exceeds the Republican spending advantage in traditional media.) As blog site bluevirginia  reports, ”That’s inexcusable…that the McDonnell campaign has blown Creigh’s campaign away in new media.”

But perhaps the most telling statement here is the naïve assumption that social media is the domain of the Democrats. The success of the Obama campaign taught both parties a lesson. If the Democrats want to learn something valuable this November for the 2010 midterm national elections (especially for U.S. House seats), it’s that social media, like liberty, is accessible to all.

by Geoff Livingston

Facebook fan pages have become immensely popular for companies and organizations. They love using pages to communicate with their stakeholders.  The following eight suggestions will optimize your fan page to create the most vibrant community possible (for more tips also be sure to check out Facebook’s best practices page, too):

1) I differ with Facebook right away on function. Don’t split the conversation stream between the organization and “just fans.” You want fans to see each other communicating online.  It’s about fostering a community. To split your updates from fans signals that:

• You are controlling the message,
• Organizational message delivery is the primary reason for the page; and
• The organization doesn’t value fan content or participation as highly as its own

2)  Compelling conversations matter!  That means doing more than just dropping a post, a link or a picture periodically on the page. Comment on fan posts, add value to those posts with additional information, and encourage more.  Make sure people know that humans update the page, and not corporate stiffs.

3) Intelligently integrate other web properties and Facebook applications (including your own Facebook app).  The tabs on top of the page should be intelligently selected with one goal in mind: Enabling your fans to do more and spread the word.  No matter how much the organization thinks it’s own pushing will drive “the message,” in reality, fans need to carry the baton.

Make badges on the columns and tabs that are obvious, make sense and inviting. Ensure these tabs connect easily to applications and to your blog, twitter, MySpace and other accounts and sites. Make sure you don’t over-clutter with every app on earth. Be selective. See Mashable’s top five features of Facebook fan page for more.

4) Pay attention to the statistics: Insights allows you to understand which posts are truly motivating your fans to interact. If they are like Ning users, they love photos and videos! Whatever is working, give them what they want! And while you’re at it cater to your demographics, too.

5) Make your fans feel special.  Reward fans for participating, let them know you are watching and foster further engagement. Make a fan of the week, allow fans to badge their page and site with something that clearly marks them as an extended member of the brand family.  Do things that are unique to your Facebook fan page only, and make sure the fans now that such contests, brick and mortar events, etc. are specially designed for them.

6) Use outside properties to promote the page: So many times people build it and wonder why they don’t come. Use all of your communications properties to build up the Facebook application page, and use the Facebook application page to promote the other properties (as well as opportunities to donate and/or buy product), but be smart. If you place promo in front of conversation on the Facebook fan page, expect a dormant community.

7) Don’t assume your Twitter audience is your Facebook group, too. It’s not. Yes, you’ll have a healthy minority who are on twitter, but the community that participates on Facebook tends to be different than the voiceiferous on twitter.

8) Did I mention that Ning users love photos and videos? So do Facebook users!  Tagging your fans from event photos and videos is just a simple, obvious way to make them feel like they are part of the community. In fact, you should be encouraging them to upload their own photos and videos.

What tips would you add?

Customer service according to The Office (click to play)

Anyway, long story short, his subject complains about a never opened T-Mobile account for which she is being charged.

Segal gets in touch with T-Mobile on her behalf, and the PR team at the phone company “sprang into action.” Segal wonders in the piece why (presumably all) ”companies seem to rouse themselves only after they get a tap on the shoulder from someone in the news media.”  He does a bit of a tap himself around the facts: The customer complained. The company asked for some information. She didn’t provide the information, and the collection firm pushed on.

I have often pushed back on bloggers, Tweeters and Facebook status updaters who perform elaborate public whines or rants over customer service issues that they should have solved themselves. Caveat emptor has never been more appropriate than in the brave new world of the internet, yet many seem to think that it’s possible to fly through life unscathed by the unscrupulous or even dented a little by a bad customer experience.

I am impressed with consumer companies that are facilitating good customer experiences by using social media. Dell was featured in a guest post on Mary Ellen Slayter’s Smart Blog on Social Media recently. Matt Jurmann from Chromatics lists a number of good ones, also, in the form of case studies. Maybe Price and Jaffe have it right in The Best Customer Service is No Service.

Maintaining customer satisfaction has never been more important, as Alison says in her Better Business Bureau video/blog post. As our client notes, “you can’t make all customers satisfied all the time.”  The crying of “wolf” over things that can be resolved with a little conversation, though, is troubling. Social networks have the potential to facilitate the resolution of issues; not just amplifying the whining or the shouting.

A more recent look at the multiplier effect of “badvocates” is Laurie Burkitt’s post on Forbes just this week. She repeats a Weber Shandwick stat, saying that power writers like @dmscott represent 20% of the world’s adult population online and each one reaches an estimated 14 people with his or her critiques. Powerful, most often principled, these critics, though, may be encouraging less sophisticated copycats

What do you think? Are we too quick to resort to the online rant or a call to Mother NYT? Is the age of social media encouraging whining? What is the appropriate role of customer service in the era of such transparency when the first complaint can carry such weight?