We have been working on a couple of interesting start-up ideas at Urbane Media that have mushroomed into companies. The idea stage is much safer, in that we can vacillate for hours on end about this and that. It makes us feel good. It is exciting to talk about our ideas. Actually launching your idea is a bit scarier because the stakes are higher. It is no longer just verbal masturbation, you have likely plunked down some dough to get started, either yours or someone else’s.

Must Do

One of our Must Do Exercises with our companies that we own and operate is to create a new value curve. We spend a lot of time on the following four questions:

A New Value Curve

1. Reduce - Which factors should be reduced well below the industry standard
2. Create - Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered
3. Raise - Which factors should be raised well above the industry standard
4. Eliminate - Which of the factors that the industry take for granted should be eliminated

Create Your Niche

Question mark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Getting really clear with the above four questions has helped us carve out niche businesses. Many times the things that separate one company or business from another are not large single items, but a series of small, but radically different, things. A great place to start is your policy and procedure manual. It is likely slam full of stuff that no longer applies or never worked well from the get-go.

Have You Answered Why?

This is a tricky one, we tend to race to What we do. That is much easier to identify. We gravitate to How we do it. The question of Why we do it only gets answered by the remarkable brands. If we reverse the order, and start with why we are doing this and keep that at the core center of our culture, we are heads above the rest.

Why People Buy

People buy from companies because of why they do, not what they do. That is one of the explanations as to why great brands exponentially lead the pack. Many times their competitors actually have a better product. Many times the competition is better capitalized. Yet the company who best identifies what motivates them, and why they are doing what they are doing run circles around the pack.

We suggest that you take some time to identify the Why, way before you get to the What and the How. Your result will be diametrically different.

For more inspiration on the same topic, check out Simon Sinek’s awesome TED Talk:

Brands shifting all or most of their digital marketing and social media marketing efforts to Facebook are going to lose and perhaps big. Yes, there are 900 million users there. Yes, the IPO is coming and an influx of cash and becoming a publicly traded company will bring with it many benefits that will strengthen what Facebook is. Yes, Facebook will continue to be an ever-present social utility for years to come.

But there are more concerns than cocktail parties on the horizon for the behemoth, I’m afraid. And those concerns directly effect brands investing their time, attention and dollars in Facebook. The problem is now that Facebook must make money to sustain its investor’s satisfaction, it must rely on its only scalable and reliable business model: That of a media property where brands want to advertise.

Image via CrunchBase

Rebecca Greenfield’s piece for The Atlantic spells it out pretty nicely. She writes that there are two kinds of Facebook advertisers: the ones that want metrics and the ones that want attention. The problem for both is that Facebook’s Zuckerberg-inspired ethos doesn’t care if either gets what they want.

Facebook has built a 900-million person gorilla, so they know advertisers will flock to them. Marketers always want a piece of the action when eyeballs are involved. But Zuckerberg’s philosophy is that advertising should be more organic, relevant and unobtrusive. Their new advertising options herd marketers to buy sponsored stories and softer appeal opportunities. While one could argue this might be a better way to get in front of people’s attention, it’s also less definitive on value.

Facebook wants advertisers to share good content, not good deals and discounts. Advertisers are generally very bad at content and just want to plaster coupons all over the network. Even if advertisers were good at content, the audience-centric nature of good content means there are fewer calls-to-action, fewer direct benefits to the company and, thus, metrics that leave a lot to be desired compared to what companies have seen in other mediums in the past.

The other type of advertiser Greenfield outlines — the one that wants attention — is just S.O.L. Facebook is so big and funded and ready to cash in on the next week’s big IPO, they don’t care to answer the phone. If you’re not already in touch with an ad rep there, good luck finding one. They don’t need you right now.

But that attitude is going to befell them soon.

With organic content not delivering the metrics brands want, the ones that are paying now will stop. With Facebook acting as if they don’t need to be responsive to those calling wanting to place media buys, the ones not advertising now won’t likely want to much longer. Sure, 900 million people can’t be wrong and someone will throw their money at Facebook once given the opportunity, but it’s not a long-term, sustainable way of doing business.

Facebook’s users, meanwhile, are generally averse to advertising, like they are everywhere else. Facebook ad click through averages are half of typical online advertising and less than 25% of what most SEO experts would recommend as a target for Pay-Per-Click advertising on search engines. The sponsored stories aren’t going to change that much. Zuckerberg will have created a fantastic social network and utility that everyone wants to use, but one that can’t sustain advertising revenue.

The do-advertising-our-way effort won’t work if Facebook cannot either A) Help advertisers see positive metrics and returns on their advertising investment or B) Suck up to anyone willing to spend money with them.

But then there’s the simple fact that people on Facebook are not interested in your ads. They’re not going to be interested in your sponsored stories, either. People don’t go to Facebook to engage with your brand. They go to Facebook to see pictures of their grandchildren, stalk their exes and play Farmville. A select few seek out a higher purpose and participate in groups, have conversations and the like, but advertising is noise among the signal. And Zuckerberg’s ethos won’t change that.

Facebook is a great place for a brand to facilitate customer service, engage customers or prospects in research and development-type conversations and perhaps even share some coupons or discounts from time-to-time. It can be a place where positive, measurable outcomes occur. But that is going to be a challenge for any brand simply because people don’t want to engage with companies, logos or buildings. They want to engage with people.

There are far too many companies putting all their eggs in Zuckerberg’s basket right now. From advertising to building brand pages and running promos, everyone wants a piece of that 900-million-person pie. Never mind that email marketing produces over $40 per dollar spent return on investment. Never mind that a strong corporate blog with keyword-rich posts helps you drive organic search results that send 8-12 times as much traffic as pay-per-click ads. Never mind that mediums like radio and television still produce higher sales and awareness results in shorter times than social media can even hope for.

Marketers are helping Facebook build a modern day Tower of Babel, hoping to touch the face of the revenue gods. And soon, the revenue gods will become angry and everyone, including Facebook, will suffer.

Don’t put all your eggs in that basket.

Related post: SEO Implications of Reduced Corporate Blogging – by Scott Clark, BuzzMaven.com

John Jantsch is flat brilliant. This time, he’s developed a webinar series that solves a major problem we all have with learning new ideas in the marketing world. He’s developed a webinar series that forces you to commit to act on what you’ve learned. It’s even called Commit2Act.

I’m speaking in the webinar series (so it’s virtual) along with Ann Handley, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki, Amy Porterfield, Lee Odden and Jeff Walker. We’re charged with giving you five actionable ideas each month that you then commit to trying, testing and reporting back on.

The series would be free, but John wants to make sure you’re committed to do it, so it’s going to cost you $5 to join. Five whole dollars! But that holds you accountable for showing up and doing the work, right? It commits you. Told you John was brilliant.

You can still join, though the first two webinars are completed. Don’t fret! There are recordings.

You’re going to get great ideas that you can implement in your marketing almost right away. Then you try them and report back. Rest assured, you’re going to walk away having done something to improve your marketing.

My talk is Tuesday (again, it’ll be archived) and I’m sharing five things you can do to get more out of your social media marketing. They’re not meant to be deep changes or ideas, but little things that can make you more productive and profitable. It’ll be a lot of fun talking shop with John. You should certainly join us!

Go ahead. Make the Commitment! Commit2Act.

Note: Links are of the affiliate kind.

Social networking and the marketing and technology world’s response to it is quite amusing. To network socially is to connect with people of like mind and interest to have a group of individuals you can relate to when you choose. It’s about having a group of buds to watch the game with or girlfriends to meet for lunch … in a manner of speaking.

While Internet-based social networks are built for scale, people are not. Dunbar’s number says we can’t maintain more than 150 stable relationships at once. Hence the appeal of applications like Path — I don’t want to friend everybody. I want to “friend” the people that are my friends. Sure, many of us can stretch that 150 to a few more, but let’s be realistic. If you’ve got 500 people in your friends circle on a given social network, you aren’t really maintaining a relationship with them. You’re just catching a random update from time to time. That’s far from personal. It’s also far from social.

But because marketers, technologists and gamers were at the helm of many social networks, it became a game: How many friends can I get? Every social network I’ve ever joined as immediately told me I needed to add friends and then slapped a big badge on my profile telling me, and sometimes the world, how many people like me enough. This gamification trigger made people want to add more friends.

A social network diagram (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Suddenly, it was a race to 10,000 on Twitter, then 25,000 and so-on. LinkedIn developed the LION designation for people who had lots of connections and were open to connecting with anyone, even those they don’t know. From a marketing, gaming or ego perspective, it made sense: Whoever has the most friends wins.

But from a human social capacity perspective, it’s just plain dumb.

I have 50,000+ followers on Twitter. I probably average around 175 public “@” replies on a slow weekday. Mind you, I don’t sit on Twitter all day. If I have time to look, I look. If I’m busy, I’m busy. Yet, I’ve been accosted by people THAT I KNOW for not responding to a public tweet — One that I didn’t even see. (I know, first world problem. But it’s easier to reply to every message when you have significantly less of them. And keep in mind, that’s Twitter … not primary communications like emails, phone calls, meetings, etc.)

Yet, we still think more is better. We have to have more Twitter followers, more Facebook fans, more LinkedIn connections, more people have to circle us on Google+ … the list goes on.

Complicating matters is the emerging world of online influence measurement. Klout, Kred and the like are starting to have serious implications for mainstream consumers. Even if it is just perks and coupons, when the Sunday ad-clipping nutters figure out they can game Twitter to get followers which then gives them free stuff from Klout … watch out!

Whether you’re building online influence as an individual or as a business, there are way too many reasons to aim for more, rather than less, followers. But what we marketers need to consider as we try to communicate our messages to all the other users on social networks is that they just might not be like us. They may not want 3 bazillion followers. They may just want to chat with their friends, stalk their ex or see pictures of their family from time-to-time.

You may not be able to market to those people here. And by those people, I mean most people.

Have You Registered For Explore Minneapolis?

Don’t miss two days of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. Join SME’s Jason Falls and Nichole Kelly, The Now Revolution co-author Jay Baer, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman, Neil Patel of Kissmetrics and more at one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, August 16-17 in Minneapolis, Minn. DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

Last week, the state of Alabama recognized the one-year mark of one of the most brutal and deadly tornado outbreaks in anyone’s memory. It was not a celebration, nor an anniversary. It was a stark reminder of just how much nature cares about our First World Problems. Even with the latest and greatest in warnings and technology, more than 250 Alabamians lost their lives on April 27, 2011. That element of the devastation should always come first in any discussion.

With that firmly on the record, there are some interesting things we can learn about how technology has changed us. I want to talk for a moment about my friends Pete and Sherri Blank.

When “being pinned” is not good

They were at home with their two children when the second wave of storms came through Clay, to the northeast of Birmingham. They got the tornado warning in time to flee to the “man cave” in the basement — and were fortunate to be in the half of the basement that didn’t collapse. However, they were trapped under two-and-a-half stories of home. And by trapped, we mean they really didn’t have free range of movement at all.

Madison, their daughter, had her smartphone, and was immediately able to post a Facebook update that indicated they were alive. What is even more telling is that within three hours, nearly every material need for the Blank family was filled by family and friends. Yes, there is insurance, and FEMA, and the Red Cross, and churches, and a whole host of resources there to help. But assistance doesn’t have to flow from the top-down in as bureaucratic a fashion as we’ve become accustomed.

Observation: In disasters, people will use their own technology and personal networks to share information and marshal resources. In the past, emergency responders would have pleaded with the public to “stay connected” with portable radios and D-batteries. Everyone would have been plugged into a general broadcast platform, which can only herd people through the largest one-size-fits-all conduits. However, more of us aren’t getting our news that way anymore. We get teases and links through our social networks, and click through to read more if so inclined. Why would you invest hours listening to The Generic when you’ve already cultivated a feed of people who are specifically relevant to you?

Takeaway: As a business or brand, you have to recognize that in these instances people will gravitate to their networks even more. I am not inviting you to figure out how to spam through their friends — but I am suggesting that you be highly strategic in what you communicate and how. Knowing what people are really sharing is more than half the battle, and the great thing is you can use your own personal network as a listening post. (and knowing when to not say anything at all is the most important skill of all.)

Bottoms-Up

James Spann at ALSOCME (Photo credit: ALsocme)

James Spann is the chief meteorologist for the ABC affiliate in Birmingham. I worked with him for several years. He was an early adopter of social media. (He’s currently approaching 100,000 Likes and 60,000 Followers, which is phenomenal for a local weatherman in the 40th-largest TV market, with just 740,000 households.) And he manages his accounts himself. (Do check out his talk with the Alabama Social Media Association – it’s first-rate.)

After the storms passed, James found himself in a peculiar role: connector. Hundreds of his followers who knew of desperate needs tweeted him with requests, and asked for retweets. Thousands of people who wanted to help pinged back, wanting @Spann to relay what they had to offer to the greater community. James was stuck at the nexus of this incredible engine of spontaneous good, and was afraid of the consequences of stopping. He may have been close to developing “ReTweet Blister.”

Observation: Spann didn’t ask to become a valuable post-storm resource, but he found himself with that opportunity.

Takeaway: There is incredible power and value as a connector. “Content” has resurfaced as the buzzword of the day, with Content Marketing and Content Strategies and Content Generation propping up a lot of consultants’ time and billables. But you can’t deny the advantage that comes when one is known simply as an engine for connection. But don’t wait until destiny taps you on the behind and gives you the chance to step up — start cultivating a rich and diverse network of people who don’t yet know that they will need each other. This is very different than Community Management, where it is assumed that the community already has commonalities and can approach each other.

Emergent Order

During the first 48 hours, it became ridiculously difficult to keep up with @Spann’s twitchy retweet finger. A lot of really good information and heartfelt offers were sliding off the page as new offers and cries for help piled on top. What was needed was some degree of curation — but nobody had the time to do it.

Enter my colleague, Jamie Sandford.

Jamie pitched an idea to Spann that would turn the tide. Instead of just blindly retweeting the messages through the same conduit, they pitched a pair of complementary hashtags: #ALHaves and #ALNeeds.

Two chainsaws and a pickup truck with a front winch. #ALHaves

Need help pulling three trees off my mother’s house in Argo. #ALNeeds.

Shelter in Ashland about to run out of bottled water. #ALNeeds.

You get the idea.

Now, instead of locking into @Spann’s total feed of everything (including, gasp, actual weather forecast information,) those who needed water could enter a Twitter search for #ALHaves+water.

Observation: Within a few hours, the hashtags caught on — even with people who had no idea what a hashtag was. And with the distributed nature of that informal information network, we will never conclusively know how many Solutions met Problems last April and May.

Takeaway #1: Listen. Someone might have an idea that can make your task a lot easier.

Takeaway #2: Let the technology do the work for you. Where possible, let social tools do what social tools do well — and look for ways to allow sharing to be as frictionless as possible (while still getting the job done.)

Now, your turn.

What takeaways did I miss?

(Special thanks to Jason Falls and Explore Nashville, for its contribution to the Red Cross in the state of Alabama.)

Have You Registered For Explore Minneapolis?

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Leave it to one of the web’s mainstays to truly being to solve the digital marketing dashboard problem! Yahoo! (of all companies) unveiled a sweet small business dashboard product today. It’s Yahoo! Small Business Marketing Dashboard pulls together web analytics, Pay-Per-Click and other paid search advertising, e-commerce, social media monitoring, directory listings and more into a single reporting home.

Long the lament of the online digital marketer and lip-service goal of every social media monitoring and management solution out there, the unified dashboard has been a pipe dream for many a digital marketer for years. Some platforms offer a glimpse at what one could be. Few have pulled one together that is definitively good. Yahoo! has made a better-than-most effort here.

Yes, it’s geared toward small businesses. But this platform is powerful enough and built do pull disparate sets of data together into one place. Certainly, if you’re a Yahoo! Small Business customer, you’re going to love it. But even if you’re not, you may want to check this platform out. Don’t fall out of your chair on this one, either: The core product is free.

Not that it doesn’t have its limitations. The social media monitoring component (which they call reputation management) is very light and only offers you views of the last two mentions without upgrading to a paid version of the solution. I worry about it’s integrity in terms of providing you with enough and accurate data … it’s too simple in its set up to indicate that it’s good enough compared to many social media monitoring solutions. Still, with the upgrade (which starts at $9.99 per month), you can get access to similar data for competitors, too.

Even with the free version, you get access to directory listings and monitoring, email and SEO campaign monitoring, and all in an interface and tool designed for the business owner, not the marketing or tech geek.

The bottom line is that Yahoo! has tapped into a market need here. Yes, it’s focused on the small businesses, but even the large, enterprise companies I’ve spoken to recently are still frustrated with having to pull disparate reports together manually. No one seems to be solving this problem for much of anyone. And then Yahoo! comes along and does it.

Who’d a thunk it. Good on ya, Yahoo!

When Twitter first baked the new retweet style into their web platform there was no way for HootSuite users to see who retweeted them. Subsequently, HootSuite introduced the “My Tweets, Retweeted” stream to address this. However, this function still doesn’t allow for an easy way to see and respond to the actual person who retweets your content.

One hack to find the source of a web RT on Twitter involves clicking the date stamp of a message in HootSuite:

This redirects you to the individual tweet on Twitter.com where you can see which users retweeted your content:

The problem with this solution is that it doesn’t present an easy way to respond to the RT. You have to root around Twitter to find the post – as a user that monitors and manages a number of active streams I find this to be seriously unproductive.

An Easier Way

While experimenting with the “My Tweets, Retweeted” stream I discovered a workaround that lets you see and respond to native Twitter web RT without having to leave the HootSuite dashboard. I hope you find it helpful.

Step 1: Add the “My Tweets, Retweeted” stream to HootSuite.

Step 2: Click your icon image.

Step 3: Click the “Mentions” tab within the profile pop up screen.

Step 4: Identify missing retweets.

Step 5: Reply to RT (if applicable).

If you are using HootSuite, this is one method of monitoring that will help mitigate the chances of missing native Twitter retweets.

Another best practice to consider is using multiple tools for monitoring, including TweetDeck, which offers the ability to track native Twitter retweets. If you have any other suggestion on how to work around this functionality gap in Hootsuite please let me know. The comments are yours.

Update: There is another (easier) solution that presented itself during the comment discussion that evolved around this issue. To see all your retweets simply set up a search stream in HootSuite using your Twitter username (“@username”) as the search term. Also, for more information about why you can’t see Twitter web retweets in your HootSuite mention stream check out this post: http://help.hootsuite.com/entries/434415-why-can-t-i-see-twitter-web-retweets-in-my-mentions-stream

Have You Registered For Explore Minneapolis?

Don’t miss two days of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. Join SME’s Jason Falls and Nichole Kelly, The Now Revolution co-author Jay Baer, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman, Neil Patel of Kissmetrics and more at one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, August 16-17 in Minneapolis, Minn. DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

Social media has been around long enough to start evaluating how effective your strategy is at delivering on the goal. This is important. But the big question is do you have the right players on the field? Have you established the right frame work for success? Or does your social media strategy resemble a 5-year-old’s soccer game?

Soccer seems to be that entry-level sport for many kids. Both of my boys played soccer when they were five and I remember watching the games while hysterically laughing on the sidelines. The kids are running around the field, unsure of why they are there and so easily distracted. One of my sons was the kid who scored every time he got the ball, but in between he would sit down and play with the grass. My other son was a force to be reckoned with, even that young. He had focus and determination on getting the ball to the goal. But he would also survey the field and pass to his team mates when they were open. As I started thinking about where we are in the social media adoption scale, it seemed that a 5-year-old’s soccer game would be a good analogy that we can have a little fun with. So here it goes.

To get started think about the players you have on your social media team. Are any of these kids your social media strategist?

The kid who eats the grass

This is the kid that is sitting at the end of the field, clueless to all that is happening around him. He’s eating the grass, filling his hand full of dirt, and watching the game on the next field. His parents are yelling at him to pay attention, but he’s focused on anything but the game. One of my sons was this way. He was only interested in the game if he had the ball, if not, he was perfectly happy to sit and play in the grass until it was “his turn” again.

In social media, this is the strategist who doesn’t understand anything about business, but understands social media channels. It may be your Twitter expert who can rock out an awesome tweet and sit and talk with your followers all day, but the minute you start to talk about being strategic her eyes gloss over. It’s probably someone that was selected because she had an enthusiasm for social media that helped you get the job done faster. She feels like a leader because she helped create the presence you have, but as your social media presence grows you are realizing that she isn’t the right person to drive the strategy.

She is a great community manager, but will never understand that social media isn’t only about tweeting on the fly. If this person is your “social media strategist,” you will find yourself battling about whether her efforts are delivering any return to the business over … and over … and over. She can’t develop strategies that will deliver a return because she doesn’t understand business. She understands Twitter. Remember, just because someone developed a successful personal blog, or has a lot of followers on Twitter, or fans on Facebook won’t mean they understand how to apply their success to business.

The kid who chases the pretty girl in short shorts

My kids played on co-ed teams and there was one kid who was fascinated by the girls. He was also oblivious to the game; his only focus was that pretty girl at the other end of the field. At one point this girl had the ball and was going down the field for an awesome score. At this age anything that looks coordinated is a success! As she reached the goal and wound her foot back to get the game winning score, BAM, he tackled her.  He stood up laughing because he was just playing a game. But the girl was crying. For her, they weren’t playing chase and she didn’t sign up for football for a reason.

In social media, this is the strategist who gets distracted by shiny things. They are the true early adopters who have tried every social media platform, they have the latest technology, and they have a need, a true need to fit your company into every social media network that exists … because it’s cool. They stand in line for the new iPad, even though they have the two versions before it. This is an important person to have in your arsenal because they are going to find the next Twitter or Facebook long before anyone else does. However, you will have to balance their need to discover with your need to focus on the channels that have potential today. If this person is developing your social media strategy, you probably don’t have a social media strategy. Rather, you keep hearing that social media is moving too quickly to develop a strategy. It’s true, it is tough to develop a strategy if you are busy trying to keep up with 12 social networks. Unfortunately, only 2 of them may have relevance to your business, right now.

The kid who is focused on the goal and scores every time

This kid is probably your star player. His skills are far more advanced than his other team mates. He gets the ball and he takes it down field and scores … every time. The parents are thrilled because this kid literally wins every game for them. But eventually, they start to get angry because he never passes the ball. He only knows how to do one thing: score.

In social media, this is the strategist who looks at social media in the context of social media. They are great at developing a strategy for Twitter to grow followers or to grow fans on Facebook; however they are disconnected from the rest of the organization and other departmental goals. They tend to develop strategies that other teams can’t get behind because they were never involved. Their strategies are singular in focus and many times the focus is misaligned with what the business is trying to achieve. Growing fans and followers can be useless if your company’s goal was to generate more leads and the strategist hasn’t provided a way for them to convert from the social channel.

This can be the phase when social media is seen as being only a marketing channel, rather than having the ability to change the way business is done throughout the organization. It’s the difference between someone who can develop a singular social media strategy and those who can affect change to transform the organization into a social business. Sometimes this is more about the organization than the strategist. However, many strategists have a difficult time envisioning where social fits into the entire organization.

The kid who understands the field, where his team mates are, when to go for the goal and when to pass

You know this kid. She’s the one that the parents are in awe of. She is only five but she is an orchestrator on the field. She understands the game. She scans the field as she’s bringing the ball down. She tells other kids where to be and when. She sets your kid up to score, and he does. When the other team is all over her, she somehow manages to keep the ball and take it down for the tough score the other kids couldn’t get. All of the parents talk about how she is probably going to be a pro player when she grows up, because she just gets it.

In social media, this is the strategist who has a view of the entire organization and understands where social media fits. She understands where it can be the most successful today and where she is growing it to be successful tomorrow. She has the entire executive team on board because she can clearly demonstrate where the return on her strategy is and has even been able to grow the budget to levels you thought were impossible. Her strategies are completely integrated with other departments’ goals and supporting marketing channels. She views social media as a tool that can be used to accomplish what the business has always tried to accomplish. It’s a tool in her tool belt and she knows how to use it. She is transforming your organization into a social business one initiative at a time.

So back to the question, does your social media strategist play like a 5-year-old soccer player?

Would she be able to recognize it if she did play like a 5-year-old? Probably not, unfortunately this is something that every single person will say: She will be the last to “get” it. But as a business owner or business executive you have to be able to look at your team and know whether or not you have the right players. This doesn’t mean you fire your social media managers or strategists if they are one the first four types of players. Those profiles are important to have represented on your team. But it may mean you need to take a look at who is driving the ship, because that’s the most important position.

What do you think? Does your team have the right players on the team? Are the players aligned with the right positions? Let us know about your team and what you think of our analogies in the comments.

Have You Registered For Explore Minneapolis?

Don’t miss two days of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. Join SME’s Jason Falls and Nichole Kelly, The Now Revolution co-author Jay Baer, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman, Neil Patel of Kissmetrics and more at one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, August 16-17 in Minneapolis, Minn. DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

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Jeremiah Owyang offered an insightful piece on how social profiling will work in the real world last week. We’re all aware that influence tools like Klout are being used to reward people with deals, perks and discounts based on their measure of online influence. Owyang rightfully predicts that what we’re seeing now is the tip of the iceberg, like it or not.

But for all its potential, social profiling scares me. It harkens back a day when people were treated differently because of their race or gender. The various Civil Rights Acts in the United States were essentially an effort to force people to not consider how someone looks when deciding whether or not they could be treated like everyone else. Yet with the social profiling future Owyang portrays — facial recognition on iPhones allowing us to see someone’s Klout score just by aiming our phone at them — I think we’re in for a universe of hurt.

Image via CrunchBase

There are several reasons I worry about social profiling. The tale of Sam Fiorella being overlooked for a job because of a perceived low Klout score which appeared in Wired last week (and is also an early case study in Mark Schaefer’s book Return on Influence) is just one example. Sam Fiorella is brilliant, experienced and few people in the digital space can hold a candle to his qualifications to help brands kick ass. Yet some bozo somewhere eliminated him from contention for a digital strategist position because of his Klout score?

Whomever that person or agency is, be glad Sam is a professional and wouldn’t think of disclosing who you are. You might be laughed out of the industry for that one.

My problems with their improper use of Klout?

• Klout is just one way of looking at the data of influence
• Klout is limited to reach and resonance on social networks online, and further limited to only a handful of them.
• Klout doesn’t measure offline influence, email influence, word-of-mouth influence, publishing influence (blogs, news sites, newspapers, magazines, broadcasting), job titles, name recognition, whether you’re connected to the mafia and so on.
• Klout, to date, is very, very, very, very, very, very (is that enough veries?) immature. It doesn’t link what a person does offline or away from social profiles to their impact. For example, as of April 29, Walt Mossberg, arguably one of the most influential people in tech, has a Klout score of 68. Mine is 69. That’s bullshit. Better example: P.J. O’Rourke, perhaps one of the most influential political commentators of our day? Klout score of zero. But there’s an “I want to be P.J. O’Rourke” account on Twitter. It has a Klout score of 20.
• Then there’s my argument that not everyone is online with the intent and purpose of growing fans/friends/followers. Most people are online to stalk their ex’s and see pictures of their grandkids. Klout doesn’t mean anything to them and never will. I content that is true of most (greater than 75 percent) all all people online anywhere. Some research points in that direction, but no one has really asked those direct questions yet.

So the future Owyang tells of is one based on metrics that are incomplete and, on the whole, less than compelling.

Regardless of the accuracy and significance of the data used to measure influence, the whole notion of profiling is morally reprehensible to me. Perhaps idyllic and utopian in my opinion, and certainly based on the fact I grew up in a struggling, middle class family in a small town where what clothes you wore and where you lived was more important than whether or not you could speak coherently, I believe human beings to all be of equal value to the world. Ashton Kutcher doesn’t deserve to be treated better at a restaurant than Ashton Johnson, a resident director at Lyon College in Jonesboro, Arkansas. (Whom I picked randomly from a search of people named Ashton on LinkedIn.)

Yes, the reality of our world is that the restaurant in question thinks that treating Ashton Kutcher well might mean he’ll recommend them to millions of people on Twitter or that he’ll let them take his picture to hang on their wall of fame. Yes, marketers are going to do the same with online influencers because they’re dying to find some measurable outcome from social media. Maybe that 25,000-followers Twitter guy will drop a “loved shopping there” Tweet that will mean a few more “Likes” on Facebook!

But this doesn’t make it right. And one day, we may find, it won’t make it Constitutional.

What social profiling does is allows us to play favorites. Every time that’s been done in this country it has created one, or both, of two things:

• Animosity between groups of people, typically the haves and the have-nots
• Laws to abridge a person or organization’s ability to do so

Yes, there’s a difference between racism, sexism, religious prejudice and letting someone with more Twitter followers get First Class seat upgrades before everyone else. Or is there? We have loyalty clubs and rewards programs. They play favorites. But those programs are opt-in and fueled by purchase. I can buy enough airline tickets or miles to jump in front of you in line and have access to the private club.

Everyone else can’t buy online influence. It’s not a true opt-in, opt-out system. It’s prejudiced against people who don’t want or need to be well endowed, virtually. It is not a level playing field and can’t be leveled by money or time, necessarily.

What social profiling does is creates a system of being able to judge a person by their looks, even if those looks are augmented by technology, and say, “You’re not worthy.” I see nothing good coming from that.

Sadly, it’s going to take an Act of Congress — literally — to stop it from happening.

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Leadership. We all want it. Need it. Strive to have it. Leadership in ourselves. In the people around us. Leadership isn’t limited to a human quality, it is also represented in the companies and brands we follow.

Many people talk and tweet about leadership. When the COO of Facebook and the CEO of American Express talk about leadership, it is important to pay attention.

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and AMEX’s Ken Chenault sat down to discuss the topic of leadership earlier this year during the #fMC in New York City. The Facebook Marketing Conference was a day-long event designed to announce the latest products and features driving business growth through the use of social technology. During #fMC, Sandberg and Chenault warmed the hearts of marketers and sparked the corporate creative spirit as the audience watched the two successful C-level executives discuss leadership during a fireside chat.

Sandberg and Chenault chat about leadership at #fMC

Indeed, these two juxtaposed juggernauts have earned the title of leadership. One, a newcomer tech giant trailblazing towards Wall Street. The other, a financial institution, steady and consistent as powerful as the bell towers of Notre Dame. As we seek solutions to lead in today’s digital divide, tips from the tech to traditional can help.

Facebook: A fresh and forward-moving example

Last year Facebook boasted of 680 million active monthly users. According to an amendment filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week, the tech giant’s value has skyrocketed. Their continued growth includes a recent acquisition of Instagram and now claims 901 million active monthly users, with 488 million mobile users a month. Responsible for new friendships, influential online communities and razor sharp advertising targeting capabilities, this social technology game changer has proven leadership capabilities that business leaders must respect.

AMEX leadership: Old as gold

This shiny gold card carrying financial institute was founded 162 years ago. Like a fine wine, this traditional establishment has only matured and grown its wealth of wisdom as it evolves, keeping a smooth pace in today’s marketplace. Once catering to the business traveler, AMEX has shifted their market focus to the small business owner. With partnerships and alliances with social tools like Facebook and Foursquare, this traditional institution has earned the social creds to not only be included as a cutting-edge market leader, but also to be reverend and respected as one of the leaders in social marketplace.

One common theme Facebook and AMEX exude? Leadership.

Personal, Professional Leadership

These two chief executives have earned the right to speak on the topic of leadership. On a personal level, the stories they could share of their own career climb could teach us a thing or two as individuals. Both leaders represent diversity. As a female executive of a tech company and an African-American executive at a financial institute, there is no doubt their positions were earned by tried and true leadership qualities.

From a business perspective in today’s marketplace however, there are key points to understand as professionals seek to lead their businesses upward and onward, beyond the digital divide. As Sandberg led this fireside chat discussion, here are the leadership secrets Chenault shared on how AMEX has approached today’s tech-driven marketplace and maintained a position of leadership:

LINK

Link with people at a personal level. Inspire hope in others that leads to innovation. Don’t be consumed with competition that you lose sight of who you are. Own your identity and brand, never allow others to define you.

CONNECT

Connect and build trust through consistent thoughts and actions. Without trust, progress and innovation is stalled. Content should never be an accessory, but part of the relationship. Provide relevant content through engaging socially.

DRIVE

Drive change. Reinvent yourself as needed to reach your optimal purpose. Listen to where the needs are and what the market is wanting. Drive is not coasting or riding shot-gun in today’s digital era.

Chenault’s LCD approach can be scaled to today’s challenges we face where leadership is needed. This fireside chat represents proven leadership we can all apply. Throughout the discussion, Chenault shared the importance of trust as a foundation to leadership.

Would you agree that the LCD leadership principles built on trust is a solid approach to today’s digital divide? The comments are yours.