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.