Along side Meg Knodl of Hennepin County Library Systems at last Friday’s Social Media Breakfast-MSP, I shared some of my experiences as a community and digital brand manager. For those asking what the hell community management is, this is how I define it:

A business function that endeavors to foster connections with a group of people around a shared interest or topic, and the development and execution of strategy around listening and engagement with members of that community. This function typically refers to online communities (social networks, forums, blogs and other digital media), but should complement other management functions established by an organization’s business objectives .

It was a colorful conversation (more to come about my “quit your job” comment) full of great tidbits of information about this emerging discipline. Pre-event, Meg and I bounced some questions around and of course I wrote out all of my answers like a school girl, so thought I’d share them here. For some solid soundbites from the conversation, visit #SMBMSP on Twitter search.

How do you find people who are talking about Mall of America (insert your brand or business here) online? Are they an easy group to engage?
We use a few different tools for listening and engagement. We use TweetDeck, which is a free desktop application for managing multiple Twitter accounts and other social networks. This tool offers the ability to enter search queries and pull any mentions into a column so we’re able to see opportunities to engage with folks who mention our brand, but aren’t necessarily following or using our Twitter handle.

You’ll see @ mentions, “Mall of America” and “MOA” search. Having a dashboard with notifications by the minute makes it very easy to stay up on what’s going on. In this case, you’ll notice the first comment in the second column is someone counting down to an upcoming visit. She clearly doesn’t know we have a Twitter, so we can reach out and say, “We look forward to having you for a visit, Taryn!” in order to show her we’re on Twitter and convert a follower.

Actively listening online has the potential to teach a brand so much about how people relate to their surroundings and what’s important to them (gee, imagine that) − and information is everywhere and mostly public! Whether a blog post, Yelp/Trip Advisor review, Facebook post or a Tweet – it is silly to not be peeking in on what’s being said about your business. There is endless opportunity here.

When on the go (mobile), we use Boxcar for iPhone which allows for the same exact notifications so we can listen, and engage where necessary, but just pops up as a notification. We use this in tandem with the Twitter app. Facebook for iPhone allows us to manage Mall of America fan pages mobilly (comment, delete spam, etc.). We use the same tools for iPad.

I’m fortunate to work for a brand that people mention often, and that it’s typically relevant for us to reach out and acknowledge a comment, share in guest excitement, solve a guest service concern, and a multitude of other engagement points.

In addition to these tools, we use a Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) called JitterJam. This alerts us of brand mentions across social media and traditional media. Note: We use our SCRM tool to send content to Facebook and Twitter so that we can measure its performance among our community. The problem with SCRM tools is that they’re building products based on other products, like Facebook, whose interfaces iterate regularly, so I caution you to make sure that whatever third party you use, vet it substantially. Make sure your content is showing up and not being penalized by Edgerank (Facebook’s algorithm for how things show up in a news feed).

How do you separate your personal and professional identities (or do you)? 
I don’t believe in this. Just like I don’t really believe in “these opinions are mine and not those of my employer.” I do strongly believe in wherever you go there you are. While I may wear different hats in life, I like consistency and find that who I am is represented in my respective roles (wife, friend, daughter, worker, dog mom and so on). I believe this question asks bigger questions:

Why are so many people so concerned about ‘doing it right?’

What has happened to humanity that we question how to have conversations and connect with other humans; as people and as businesses?

At another recent event, I was baffled by how many people went up to a microphone and asked this very question. I understand social technologies are new, but the fundamental mechanism of it, the conversation, is not. There are a few things at work here.

 We have lost the art of conversation, partly as the result of innovation in technology and mass media. Essentially, people have become accustomed to making a message for a large audience that they never hear back from.

 We, as a people, have been trained to do things a certain way and are so concerned about not doing them right that we don’t move forward and tackle scary things.

May sound like and extreme assessment, but that’s okay with me. I just believe that we are who we are and we bring that everywhere. There’s professionalism and there’s your personality. There shouldn’t be a disparity if you’re in this business.

How do you tell the difficult stories? Store closings, accidents, etc?
This largely depends on the story. Mall of America sees an average of 100,000 people a day, so there is so much to share, positive and sometimes negative. Our number one priority is guest safety and guest experience, so we communicate about on-site issues with mainstream media and via Facebook and Twitter when appropriate. As far as social media is concerned, we usually participate in the conversation if it’s started, but don’t necessarily start it on our own. We let our community dictate that and are happy to give factual information and direct people to the best source to answer questions people may have.  Something important to remember is that we’re the house to 520+ tenants, so sometimes communication comes directly from them. Crisis situations are more difficult due to their unpredictable nature, so those are handled on a case-by-case basis. It is important to note that we have a protocol for digital crisis communication that lays over our traditional crisis communication plan.

For a little more in depth, read “How Community Management Spawned a Social Business Strategy at Mall of America.” What do you peeps have to add?

“We need to be passionate about innovation and the desire to be better than we were yesterday,” said Avinash Kaushik, Google’s digital marketing evangelist, as he kicked off the 10^th Annual MIMA Summit in Minneapolis yesterday.  That he is, as proved in his keynote where he shared a plethora of digital marketing and interactive practice successes and failures, all examples being Minnesota brands such as Target, Best Buy, Star Tribune, General Mills (Betty Crocker and Wheat Thins), U of M, and 3M. The fact that he did so much research and pruning of our market’s digital assets for his presentation was a beautiful illustration of user-centrism, the central theme of his talk. In addition to this fabulousness, he shed light on metrics we can evaluate in order to scale and create a better [digital] experience for our respective audiences. Most of the sites and brands featured, with the exception of  University of Minnesota (website), Wheat Thins (Twitter) and Red Bull (Twitter), were scrutinized for lack of thought about the end-user in design and content on the web (UX and information architecture), mobile (optimization, mobile enabled websites, use of QR and barcodes, etc.) and social (using as a push, rather than a conversational medium) – so basically everywhere:-). So, how do we even begin to move in the right direction since none of us have a perfect digital strategy? He offered three different  anecdotes.

Accountability
He went after the impression metric right away and classified it as HITS (how idiots track success). “Pure unadulterated crap!” he exclaimed when referring to the person who says, “We’ve touched 500,000 customers this year.” It’s important to actually measure. The bounce rate is the best accountability metric… It means, “I came, I puked, I left.” To drive this one home he called out the Star Tribune, who has 407 links on their home page, to which he said, “Here you go, here’s all this info. Go find everything for yourself.” U of  M, on the other hand, focuses on the person, not page views. A little visit to University of Minnesota‘s website is an experience geared toward the user and focuses on assisting them through its vast house of content available. Definitely worth checking out and taking some notes from. So, we were left with…

Extract insights from everything you do! Deliver delight across digital activities. Be authentic! Don’t guess.

Visitor Loyalty
He used this opportunity to talk about brand destruction. He challenged agencies (and even inferred a bit of doom) to asses data on the micro and macro level, which means helping them to innovate and leave certain metrics (that don’t really tell a story) behind. Give clients data they actually need and can use; that helps dictate new direction or revisit one that’s worked previous. Help clients to see where their audience is and what they need and want.

Influence People in the world
Simple. We’re losing our ability to control the conversation. We are in a human and conversational economy. If you do not understand this, you’re going to have some serious problmes moving forward in digital – and probably life.

FANTASTIC one-liners that sum it all up!

• Don’t pimp yourself! Give your customer what they want.
• If you don’t think about multiplicity in everything you do, than you won’t do great things.
• Think differently and increase innovation in your company.

Four Different Ways You Should Be Measuring
Avinash closed his presentation by sharing four different ways to measure the performance of our digital content in order to truly understand our audience(s), and with that knowledge (hopefully), create a better experience for them through content and conversations.

• Conversation Rate – Number of audience comments or replies per post
• Amplification Rate – Facebook/G+ = # of shares per post | Twitter = # of retweets per tweet | Blog/YouTube = shares per post  and clicks per post
• Applause Rate – Facebook/G+ = # of likes per post, +1 | Twitter = # of favorite clicks per post | Blog = # of +1 and likes per post, video, etc.
• Economic Value – Sum of short and long term revenue and cost savings (per visit goal value). This is a custom metric that needs to be assigned. Much like how we give value (as PR people) to impressions. You set this up in Google Analytics.

In addition to being one of Google’s masters of awesome, Avinash blogs about analytics and digital marketing at Occam’s Razor. Visit Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value for his kick ass blog post that lends far greater detail and explanation of these four metrics.

This keynote did indeed delight this digital gal, and gave me inspiration to continue on my little path of seeking business success by way of building an experience (holistically) for people instead of thoughtless and ridiculous things that people will never care about. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I hope to share a few more MIMA Summit session highlights in the coming days. God, it feels good to write. I don’t do it enough. Hoping someone enjoys it. Also – a HUGE THANK YOU to the organizers and volunteers of MIMA Summit. Talk about a professional organization who’s crushing it. Way to be an example of the awesome.

Happy Thursday:-)

I had the opportunity to guest post over on Spin Sucks recently (big thanks to Gini Dietrich). My post, Curiosity: An Essential in Every PR Pros Tool Kit, focused on seeking your passion by fiercely pursuing the answers to all of our questions so that you can arm yourself with the information and experience to get to where you want to go. If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that we are very much drivers of our own destinies. While a lot of work is required, if there’s something you want it is likely you will attain it or something like it if you set your mind to it. While something that has been true for me, I’m beginning to think this way of thinking is more rare than I had originally suspected.

I’ve just wrapped hiring a social media intern. This experience has made clear a few things: 1) People are aimlessly applying for any internship these days, and 2) There is little research, care and preparation put into the process (Note: Not all candidates, but about 95%, which is a lot). Needless to say, I’ve been supremely disappointed by a consistent lack of applicants’ desire/ability to research and/or ask questions pertaining to what they’re applying for. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations. I’ve just never applied for a job before looking at the company website, understanding what they do, seeing if they were social – and even going as far as to ask my PR contacts what they know of the prospect – to establish if I was interested in and well-suited for the opportunity.

In a time when the PR landscape is changing considerably, there are fewer stellar opportunities for the up-and-coming young pro in a highly competitive market. I realize that this fact alone accounts for a surge of applications when an internship or job is posted, but please guys and gals – don’t let some of these challenges prevent you from doing the basics before applying and interviewing for prospective opportunities and staying true to yourselves in the process, okay?

Here are a few of my condensed (because this could be a REALLY long post) thoughts on how you can effectively apply and prepare for your interviews.

Know Yourself
This post is really about knowing yourself, not about writing a good resume. While that is important (see below), it is by knowing what turns you on, why it turns you on and what you want to do with what turns you on (professionally, of course*smile*) that will propel you in this life. When you have this stuff figured out, presenting yourself everywhere (resume, interviews, in your relationships, etc.) becomes much simpler because you are operating with confidence – gained only when you’re sure of what you’re doing.

The pursuit of knowing yourself can be accomplished many ways. Perhpas we can go down that road some other time. In the meantime, start by seeking answers to the questions you have about everything in life (for more on this, see Curiosity: An Essential in Every PR Pros Tool Kit) . The common denominator in ‘knowing yourself’ is work. If you have done the work to figure these things out in tandem with some education (either self or academic), good things are likely to happen because you’re operating within parameters that make sense to your spirit. Doing stuff because we have to or should is fine to a point – and we need to put time in, etc. – but if it’s not enjoyable or teaching you something – or you just have no desire for it, then move on. Life is too short. Hoping this all made some sense. It is the only conclusion I’m left with after what I’ve witnessed.

Take Five
It takes five minutes to uncover a lot of information that will 1) Validate your interest in an internship/job, and B) Arm you with all the information to walk in during an interview and knock your interviewers socks off. And really, I mean this – because few are actually doing it.

Do you care?
Ask yourself, do I actually want this job, or am I applying it because I have to? There is a big difference between wanting a job and needing a job, and your HR/prospective employment person knows the difference.

The Basics (Yes, I know this seems obvious, but it’s not – I promise)

• Read the job description.
• Look at the company website (Google is your friend).
• Get a feel for what prospective company does and who they are.
• See if they’re social and understand how they position their brand online.
• Ask any PR contacts  (professors, mentors, PRSA people) what they know of the prospect.
• Establish if you’re really interested in and well-suited for the opportunity.
• Tailor your resume (which should be no more than one page) to the job.
• Have an awesome objective that articulates your value add to the company and shows personality.
• Write a simple cover letter that illustrates who you are and what value you’ll provide based on experience you have.

Thoughts? What would you add?

I’m hanging at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. I have an event review on the way, but thought I’d share an interview I was able to capture an hour ago with Gary Vaynerchuk and Brian Solis about Gary’s new book, ‘The Thank You Economy,’ which explores humanizing business and the revolution taking place (in the Samsung Blogger Lounge – arguably one of the best things about SxSWi).

I was able to meet Gary at MIMA Summit in Minneapolis in 2010 and have chatted with him since about various endeavors, which he surprisingly referenced in this interview to make a point about the way connections, and more importantly how we connect, is changing everything. I just got a copy of Gary’s new book and the first few pages are fantastic. He’s good people; based on his passion, determination and the action he takes alone. I suspect his book will not disappoint.

How the heck are you humanizing your business?

Well known blogger, human business advocate and all around cool dude, Chris Brogan, shares with his community each year his three words for the upcoming year. They’re not resolutions or goals, but what he calls a lighthouse for his actions and efforts. You can read more about it from him here.

I dig the concept, as I’m not a huge resolution person, but rather someone who makes a few short and long term goals for myself. The lighthouse or road map concept works really well for me because as life happens it’s so easy to get way off track. Distractions, procrastination (in my case), and other factors tend to get in the way of desired plans I might have. Simplicity always reigns in my world, so having these three words to come back to as my intended direction and purpose is extremely helpful. The words don’t symbolize an unrealistic expectation I have for myself, or a big goal I’ve written that is obtainable but still overwhelming to think about. They’re just three small words that can put me back on the right track to achieving what it is that I’ve deemed important in order to grow (integrity, service and growth are my eternal words for living).

I did some significant reflection yesterday, which was really nice. I feel really good about what I accomplished in 2010, but also found that I rarely slow down long enough to truly enjoy it, or seek understanding in the process as it’s happening. The holiday provided me a bit of balance in that area. While I plan to dig a bit deeper, I thought a lot about what I’ve done well, but more about what I haven’t done well or would like to do better. More importantly, what is getting in the way of me accomplishing certain things that I really want to conquer. Out of this inventory came my three guide words, which will help shape my personal and professional goals in 2011.

Courageous: The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery. I find that fear has the ability to hold me back from what it is I want to accomplish. More writing, public speaking, being more accountable to managing finances so that we can travel and so on. While logically I know how silly and unproductive fear is, it continues to hold me back from the things I would love to do because of the power I give it in my head. Identifying my fears and understanding why I’m allowing them to hold me back is something I need to dedicate more time to in 2011.

Thorough: Carried through to completion; executed without negligence or omissions. I have so many great thoughts, ideas and topics I’d like to explore across the ‘roles’ I fulfill in life. However, due to my tendency to procrastinate (due to fear, hence the courage), many of these things are never actualized, or I churn out average (or below) work. Organization of my thoughts in order to produce better work, writing, speaking and self in my relationships is paramount this year. I’m getting sick enough of myself in this area to make a commitment to change the behavior:-).

Act: A state of real existence rather than possibility; the doing of a thing. Yes, you see the theme in these words? I do:-). The preceding words are great, but not complete without this one. Act. It’s easy for me to make decisions or say I will do something, and then in the blink of an eye not do it because of the sloth factor, fear factor or the other ‘justifiable’ excuses I may drum up. 2011 is the year of sticking to my guns and really ‘acting’ on what I say in the areas that matter most.

So there you have it. My guide words for the new year. Nice to write them down publicly, as it holds me more accountable. Did you pick some? What are yours?

I’ve just returned from Blogworld Expo. It was my second time attending this content rich conference, complete with amazing connections with folks I’ve known online for years and random encounters with like minds — all conversations that get your mind jogging in a multitude of ways, both  personally and professionally.

There are many highlights from the conference that I hope to cover in posts to come, but more than anything, attending the conference really allowed me to put some things into perspective. Like, what happened to my desire and commitment to blogging?

Thursday’s afternoon keynote Mark Burnett, executive producer for shows Survivor and The Apprentice (to name a few), nailed a thread that runs through everything in life when he said,

“The need to be certain causes paralysis.”

While he used this in the context of how new media is changing the television broadcast landscape in terms of how he, and inevitably the rest of the world, tells stories to a global audience, this concept touches about everything. From our personal lives and growth as humans to how effectively we communicate or attempt the move the digital needle in our respective agencies, organizations and the like… and the list goes on. Uncertainty, or the inability to know the outcome of the actions we take (or would like to take), single-handedly can kill or disallow birth of really cool stuff.

Lesson in Progress

I started this blog in late November of last year with the intent to blog on a weekly basis. I’ve blogged 11 times in the past year and while math is not a strong suit of mine, 11 times in a year is far less than once a week.

But… I had good intentions.

• Blog focus that I felt qualified to speak to based on my experience and knowledge base, passion and pace at which I am constantly learning.
• Saw a need in my community to talk about things that I was experiencing as a young digital communicator.
• Share in hopes of being a catalyst for conversations to take shape that would help me and others learn and grow.
• Become a better writer through blogging
  

So… what happened?

• I was worried that it wouldn’t be perfect.  –Never is. Not possible. Practice makes us better, but we’ll never achieve perfection. If we did, what kind of fun would that be?
• I worried that what I had to say didn’t matter in the context of the greater conversations and amazing publishers of the blogosphere. –Well, if that’s the case, I’m sure a number of people will tell me, so no need to take it upon only myself to judge.
• I was worried that you weren’t going to like me. –Some do, some won’t and that’s just how the cookie crumbles. Gotta love pride and ego.
  

In essence, I. WAS. SCARED. And because I was uncertain of how my blog would be received by the world, I slowly progressed into a place where creating content based on my original intent became an afterthought and often an excuse-filled discussion with those who cared enough to ask me why I wasn’t writing.

Fear is a marvelous thing. It is innate in humans. If it were not a part of us, “we would run out in the middle of the road and get hit by a car,” as a friend of mind says. This is the good kind of fear.

Then there is the other kind. The kind that manifests itself and can often dictate our course if we’re not equipped, willing to or ready to walk courageously through it, which requires a lot of honesty and quite a bit of faith. It affects or, if you prefer, infects us on various levels depending upon our ability to regularly address what we’re fearful of and take the action necessary to get through it. In my experience, the more you walk through it, faith strengthens and the ability to take on, tackle and address things without ‘knowing the outcome’ becomes a far easier errand. While something I seek on a personal level regularly, my ability to apply this professionally is a bit trickier for me.

So what?

Well, sometimes we need a refresher on life’s little lessons and various people are placed somewhere at the time we are particularly receptive to hear what it is we need to hear. Hopefully, we’re ready to take action as well. While what Burnett said is not earth shattering or new, it’s one of those concepts that as humans (or certainly, this human) struggle with regularly because we all want to do great work, make cool stuff, be liked, never screw up and once more, the list goes on.

It was just the thing I needed to hear in order to post something and reassess my commitment to sharing the work that I do and my take on communications from where I sit.

Don’t let your uncertainties paralyze you from doing everything you want to do, whatever that means. I’m serious *smile*.

Human business advocate and one of social media’s finest, Chris Brogan, rolled through Minneapolis last week to keynote the LaBreche and Minnesota Business Reputations Event at Best Buy Headquarters. Some other folks have recapped the event and shared about the panel discussion, so if you’re interested in other perspectives just Google or Twitter search #BroganMpls and you should have access to some good posts and tweets from the event. Additionally, I captured a few afterthoughts from Jason Douglas, Keith Privette, Christian Betancourt (fodder for another conversation) and a clip from the Q & A with Chris.

A few things…

I dig Chris and this is why: Chris is just a guy who knows how to talk to people (the human-to-human way), and as the result of being an excellent relationship cultivator, he’s managed to build something profoundly great and share it with a lot of people.  If I can look back and say that I built something similar with those around me and gave it away, I’ll be one heck of a happy gal.

My regard for Chris goes a bit beyond his keynotes and his public social media persona. I’ve had a few opportunities to get to know Chris outside of his keynotes, both at Blogworld in 2009 and over dinner when he passed through town last week, and it’s nice to be able to say that his insides match his outsides, as in he’s not full of shit IMHO (in my humble opinion).

The Keynote: My Thoughts

Instead of the obligatory hello, Chris began his talk by addressing the audience with the Zulu greeting Sayubono, which translates into “I see you.” Chris explained that “I see you” is at the heart of this whole social media thing.  If you take whatever hat you wear off for a second (public relations, marketer, CEO, student of life, etc.) and look at the logic behind this, it should make sense. Being impersonal and going through the motions in life is boring, not particularly enticing and usually has little action associated with it. It’s lazy. If I get something in the mail (or via another medium) that is irrelevant to me and poorly executed, someone obviously didn’t really take the time to understand why they needed to chat with me. They didn’t SEE ME. And by the way, I’m not just talking about this in terms of how marketing communication people address their audiences’ needs. I’m talking about with your check out gal at Target, with your friends and family. I’m talking about everything you do. What’s the point of any of it if we don’t SEE one another? Seeing is the beginning of it all, and most importantly something we have complete control over.

Listen. Connect. Publish. The keynote was framed by these three verbs, and upon them a discussion was built. Here are some raw notes:

Look for the relationship. SEE YOUR PEOPLE .By listening to your publics it should be pretty simple to determine what it is they need you to say to them. How do you build content around the people you equip? Peeps will reveal what they need. You can’t assume they want to talk to you there (various mediums). When you find where they are you need to participate where they are, you’re there to be a participant – not there to manage the brand. Equip them! It’s amazing what happens when you give people collaboration tools. Help people belong. Build the relationship, a relationship that yields and benefits. Listen and BE HELPFUL. The important thing is DO NOT USE the tools if you’re not willing to listen, if you’re not willing to build relationships.

Sentiment. Many post-event discussions with peers reeked of disappointment with the event overall. The social media literate tended to find the event repetitive in nature or took issue with having the same discussion, or as Andrew Eklund stated in a Minnesota Business recap (nice thoughts over there btw), “Social Media is having a hard time growing up.” Here’s what I say to that: The social media literate were not the intended audience for this event. Beth LaBreche said it herself during the panel discussion. While she appreciated the turn out, she was hoping for clients and prospects less versed in the social media discipline to show up and get some wicked education. Problem is, you stick the Brogan in as headliner and you draw his fan base and those who may want to be his fans because they’ve heard about him from his fan base.

To the literate: While hearing about listening and creating the appropriate content based on the information we’ve uncovered by monitoring, listening or whatever, the reality is that so many people still need to hear the YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO BE HUMAN message, which is really at the core of the whole listen, connect and publish thing (and Brogan happens to carry that message well). The underpinnings of social media are the humanity piece. My strong belief as someone who has participated here for a while is that teaching people about the human part, about what that really means is most of the battle. At the end of the day a lot of people don’t know how to just have a conversation with people, let alone figure out how to go talk to a bunch of people they don’t know strategically. Add the “we should market to people using social media” piece without a foundational knowledge of this and you’re in a world of trouble.

Those of us that want to (and some are) get into the sophisticated realm of growing social communication channels, developing new measurement infrastructure, social products and services for consumption, etc., keep doing it. DO IT! Then when you’ve done it, you can get on stage and TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE DONE.

Until then, I think we should expect to remain on the 101 information highway for a while because that’s where the majority of folks are. Those of us who have been playing on the playground for a while need to keep doing what we’re doing, help others, keep ourselves right sized in the whole scheme of learning curves, give back what we’ve been given and create results using our preferred communication medium.

What do you think?

For those of you that don’t know who Chris Brogan is, I recommend you Google him  (you’ll find that he blogs regularly over at www.chrisbrogan.com about community and social media, he’s co-author of New York Times Bestseller, Trust Agents, is president of New Marketing Labs and participates in a number of other endeavors). You’ll either be into his voice or you won’t. I’m acutely aware that not everyone is a fan.

In addition to my great social media friends and colleagues, I have a lot of wonderful friends and connections that do not hang in the social media sphere per se. These are folks that may use Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace (yes I just said MySpace) for personal use, people that are just getting on various social networks to make professional connections or reunite with people from high school or college. Their intentions do not exceed this purpose, however, the desire to do more as the result of mass growth in social media use for business, etc. is sparking curiosity. I get messages from many of them saying things like, “Half the time, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” It’s not that they’re disinterested (well, some are and give me a hard time); it’s that many of my status updates aren’t really relevant to them. I forget most of the time that terms like augmented reality and mentions of various mediums like Twitter, Foursquare and Plancast etc. are not really that commonplace. With that being said, it’s time to talk to those that don’t really talk about and/or do this stuff ALL THE TIME.

I want to take this opportunity to directly and more thoroughly approach a series of related questions that one of my IRL (in real life) and Facebook friends asked me after my last blog post. (I’d be so grateful if experienced readers take this opportunity to share your thoughts and help others that know far less than you do). I’ve inserted her Facebook message below. NOTE: To capture this image and make quick and easy edits I used a program called Skitch. Skitch is a great tool to pull images off the Web, edit them and convert for easy insertion into documents and blog posts.

I’d like to start by thanking Jane (fictitious name) for asking me her questions, allowing me to use her private question to me as subject matter to post. To keep the identity of her business and name private, I’ve blacked out references to each.

Jane is in a position, like many I know, where she serves as content curator for her workplace(s), spokesperson and brand evangelist for what she represents. While she is all of these things, she’s not familiar with how social media can help her spread the word about her awesome company, its product benefits and brand promise. The boss has assigned her the task. As the result, she’s asking:

What to update? How to get loads of followers? How to make people see our updates?

These are great questions and I’m so glad she asked (me – and I’m hoping you too). The questions are tricky to answer directly because there are quite a few steps in between these questions. Some conversation starters are below (I replied to her privately as well). My goal here is for as many peeps as possible to come in and share links (perhaps to a related post you’ve written) to helpful resources for beginners and drop a useful tip that address her questions. I’ll cover a few, as we’d be here quite a while if I tried to cover it all.

Because I believe that newer communication tools are about creating a two-way dialogue (instead of one-way message distribution model), here are a few suggestions for learning about existing communities and how you may create your own.

Primary and Secondary RESEARCH. My number one approach to just about anything is RESEARCH. I like a blended approach of secondary research (research that others have done and documented) and primary research (gathering my own conclusions and data as the result of first hand experience).

Some helpful secondary resources I use are Google, Twitter Search, Technorati or BlogPulse (blog search tools). You’d be surprised what you’ll dig up as you move through the resources that come up. One thing leads to another. There are many blogs that cover social media and creating online communities out there (they touch the technology piece all the way down to strategy and supporting subjects). Your blog searches will help you hone in on these. Some of my favorites are: Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Social Media Examiner and Mashable. Others I enjoy can be found in my ‘Stuff I Read’ section.

In regards to primary research, hop on and establish yourself in the mediums you plan to participate in. Practice makes perfect, right? So, if you’re comfortable enough after you know what Twitter is, open an account. WATCH and LISTEN to people. Using Twitter Search (search.twitter.com) seek out keywords that are relevant to you using quotes. (Example “public relations” or “social media.”) By searching for specific terms, you will be able to find exactly who is talking about the subject matter you are interested in. This will help you determine if you want to follow this person/people and if the conversation is a place you want to engage. If you have a prospect list or are curious if specific people are utilizing Twitter (or another medium), go to Google and type in “Jane Doe on Twitter” and anyone by that name will pop up. This is very useful, as you can get granular very easily to determine where you should be spending your time.

Analyze your research. Upon gathering information, sift through it and make some decisions about what you’ve found. Does the data found fit within the overall PR, marketing and business strategy of your company, or will it help you develop a stronger mar-comm strategy? Perhaps you will determine that you need to set up some Google Alerts and use Twitter Search everyday for a week or month and log the results to get a better idea of what’s being said and how you may create community for your people. Does your company culture suit having open conversations with its publics (hopefully it does), or does it just want to blast out one-way messages in hopes of making a sale? If that be the case, you may want to just advertise to save your brand’s reputation.

Closing thought.This may be shocking, but if you know how to talk with another human being, and I’m talking like human-to-human, none of these things will be a problem for you. Yep, I said that. Think about it. These mediums are tools that allow communicators the ability to do what they’ve been doing all along: CONNECT with (audiences) people by realizing common interests (which suggests that you’re a good listener), SHARE and GIVE of yourself genuinely. In essence, create a community or be a good community member. Just may have to do a little extra work to figure out the technology:-)

This is a small piece of the puzzle here and it’s intentional, as I’d love for the awesome community who live this stuff to share the rest in comments.