Most of the feedback was positive and in agreement with my argument that twitter can become something that overloads you with a lot of noise. Some folks disagreed with my argument too…and I’m OK with disagreement.  I welcome it…as long as there’s a reasoned argument behind the disagreement.

I wanted to take a second to revisit my argument for those that disagree with my approach.

First…its the way I use twitter…and it works for me.

Second…if your argument contains the words “absurd”, “stupid”, “dumb” or “you’re doing it wrong”…you need to learn to argue better.  Have a valid, reasonable reason for your argument.

Lastly..there are those that argue that if my twitter stream is too ‘noisy’, then I shouldn’t follow so many people.   That’s a valid argument..but one that isn’t necessarily reasonable.

Why?  Because I have a lot of interests and there are a lot of people out there with those same interests.

For example:

I’m interested in Technology, IT Leadership, Project Management, Knowledge Management, Investing/Trading, WordPress Development, Distance Education, Photography….and much much more.

Now…imagine you follow 25 people in each of these interests you’d be following 200 people.   Once you do any type of interaction with any of those people, you will probably find another 10 to 20 people that are worth following…within a short amount of time you are up to following 500 people.

So…its not quite as easy to ‘only follow a few people’ like those that argued against me following a large number of people.  One of those folks that argued against following a large # of people had 3000 followers and followed only 100 people.  Good for them for figuring out the 100 people that they want to follow…they’ve found a way to keep their stream less noisy.

Me?  I’ve found that lists work best for me.  I can have many interests and follow a lot of really interesting folks but these lists allow me to focus on just a few topics/lists at one time.

That make sense?

Makes sense to me and it works for me.

Oh…and I’m not doing it wrong. I’m doing it my way

But….there’s just as many (or more) not-so-great folks out there too.  You know the kind…they add tons of noise to your twitter stream.   They add tons of noise to your life.

I’ve noticed that the noise is getting worse.  Twitter has turned into not only a spamming engine but it also seems to be used much more as a non-private messaging system between folks. Don’t get me wrong…I love things like #blogchat and other stream chats on twitter but I’ve gotten real tired of the folks out there that are using twitter as a replacement to email…or…GASP…a phone call.

The signal to noise ratio (SNR) on my twitter stream is approaching zero these days.  I’m getting very little signal and a ton of noise.

In the early days of my twitter use I had an SNR close to 1…but these days the noise is overwhelming the signal.

How can I (or you) improve the signal to noise ratio?

I’ve started using hootsuite to help cut down on noise.  I’ve closed my main twitter stream and now only watch my mention stream (containing my @’s) and my created lists.

If you don’t use twitter lists today…do it now. Twitter struck gold with lists…they are the perfect way to get your SNR closer to 1.  How?

Simple…find those people that you really want to interact with, learn from and follow and add them to a list.  Then in your twitter client open up the list as on of your main streams and … voila … your SNR for twitter has begun to move closer to 1.

My SNR isn’t quite 1 yet but its getting closer. I’ve stopped reading all the inane tweets from spammers,  social media ‘gurus’ (except for those that I want to read via my lists), nimrods and idgits out there.  No longer am I reading something from kxe35TX (a name I just made up BTW) about how their dog just jumped off the couch.  Now…I’m actually able to see the great stuff from the likes of Wally Bock, Elliot Ross, Scott Brinker, Sam Palani and others.

Let me reiterate…I love twitter. I love what it is and I love the fact every person can use twitter how they want to use it.

But…I want to use twitter my way. I want my signal to noise to be as close to 1 as possible so I can see the good stuff that matters to me.  My lists are working perfectly for that…but it does mean I may miss out on some really good, quality conversations and opportunities…but right now…I’m ok with that. I’m plenty busy as it is

change By busy.pochi on flickr

This was originally posted on InfoBoom.  Reposting here for my regular readers.

I recently wrote a post titled Social – A Culture, not a tool that describes a “light bulb moment” that a friend of mine had when thinking about Social media’s use in marketing and PR.

In that post, I outline how a friend of mine came to the conclusion that social media is much more than just a tool to use to blast a message out to customers.

There’s a message in that story for everyone in business…but even more so for IT.

The message is this:

Social media is changing organizations. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sometime in the future, organizations are going to have to be much more open to the outside world.

Is this a good thing? Maybe…maybe not. But I think its coming (if its not already here).

What do these changes mean for IT?

It means more governance to manage data that shouldn’t be open to the public. It means more processes in place to ensure proper people have the proper access to the proper data. It also means a ton of headaches for IT security personnel.

Lots of headaches in social media, right?

Perhaps you can look at it that way…or…you can take a different tack and look at social media as the future of IT.

Social is driven by technology…why not be the driver of social within your organization? The Marketing organization is driving social. The PR team is driving social. Why not put the full force of the IT group and help drive social adotpion throughout your enterprise?

Social is driving change within organizations…IT can help driver that change and ensure social technologies are implemented correctly and proper governance and security are in place.

Or…you can sit back and do nothing and wait for the inevitable question of “what is the value of our IT group?”.

Adapt and drive change today. Or be forced to change tomorrow. It’s your call.

Sheeple By rhiannonstone on flickr

Social Media has brought a real danger to the forefront of society.

It’s not the security risks that might be inherent in social media, although there are many of these types of risks.

It’s not the many inherent dangers that might be found in social media, although they are valid dangers.

It’s not the very real and very serious issues parents and children must be aware of when dealing with social media.

What is the real danger found in social media today?

Its the same danger found in all aspects of life but social media seems to exacerbate it.

What is it?

Blindly following others and allowing them to form your opinion for you.

Of course, that’s always been a danger for anyone at anytime in history.  But…the adoption and widespread use of social media is leading to more and more ‘sheeple‘ in existence today.

In the past, these sheeple could always find someone’s opinion or idea to blindly follow but social media has given rise to a much more dangerous world for these folks.

Its quite easy today to find someone on Facebook or Twitter to follow.  Someone who seems to know what they are talking about. Someone famous perhaps…or someone who labels themselves an expert.

Sheeple base their opinions on the opinions of those they follow. In most instances they blindly accept as truth/fact/gospel whatever comes across their twitter stream (or email or web brower) without taking one nanosecond to think about whether that ‘fact’ is true.

Sheeple are nothing new…but social media has opened up a growth industry for the this non-thinking class to thrive.

Think for yourself.  Analyze for yourself.  Be yourself.  Heck…disagree with the people you follow (but disagree cordially of course).  You might find that you’ve learned more from non-agreement than you ever learned from simply nodding your head and moving on.

Don’t be a sheeple…plenty exist already.

Stop being lead by the sheeple shepherds and start thinking for yourself.

I had a conversation two weeks ago with a colleague who was taking over the social media, marketing and PR responsibilities for a small but growing organization in the consumer products industry.

In this new role, my friend will be moving into a role of responsibility of all social media and engagement aspects for the business.  While he’s excellent at marketing and pretty darn good at PR, he’s not had much experience in the social media space.  Sure…he has a Facebook and LinkedIn account but hasn’t really made much use of them for much more than just keeping in touch with old friends, family and colleagues.

He called me last week to catch up and fill me in on the new role.  After congratulating him (three or four times actually), I asked a question that I always ask in these situations…..what’s your goals for the new role?  Sure…it may be too early to really have a set of goals formed for the new role, but he had time to come up with basic thoughts as should anyone in that same position.  No need set formal goals before understanding the real issues at hand, but its definitely worth having some high level goals in mind, right?

As I knew he would, he told me of some of his plans.  While most were good, a few jumped out at me as being more tactical than strategic, which surprised me a bit…in times like this, its better to think a bit more strategic until you fully understand the new role, people and responsibilities.

What was interesting to me was this: the areas that were more tactically focused where the social media areas of his new role.  On the marketing and PR side, his thoughts were very high level and spot on…on the social side, his thoughts were more focused on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’ or ‘what’ of social.

I brought this to his attention.

He took a few seconds to think about my comments and then responded with something that floored me….he said something along the lines of this:

Social Media is just a bunch of tools to get my message in front of my customers…..there’s nothing strategic about it.

I’ll let you ruminate on that one for a bit.

Really?

That was my response to his comment too….perhaps it was more like “REALLY????”…but you get the idea.

Social is more than a tool

Thankfully, I know this person quite well and can speak bluntly with/to him.

I told him he was an idiot (I used that word too).

Social is not just another channel to shout your message to the masses. Social is much more than that.

I told him that social is more than just some tools like twitter and Facebook…social is a cultural mind-shift.  Social is something that requires three-way communication between you and your customer (and vice versa) as well as communication between your customers.

Find any case study of a company successfully using social media and you find a social culture. You find people engaged in talking to, listening to and learning from their customers.

I told him to spend a few hours reading Danny Brown, Jason Falls, Brian Solis, Mitch Joel and Valeria Maltoni. I told him to go pick up some of the great social books like Six Pixels of Separation (amazon affiliate link) by Mitch Joel, Trust Agents (amazon affiliate link) by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, The New Rules of Marketing and PR (amazon affiliate link) by David Meerman Scott.

I found myself talking for a few more minutes about social not being a tool and realized I hadn’t really given him a chance to respond. His repsonse was a good one….he wanted to take some time to think about the topic and read a few of the above blogs, etc.

I received a call from him yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to hear him say:

You were right…I’ve got a lot to learn about social media.  I realized social is a culture, not a tool.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Ever found yourself  ’afflicted’ with cognitive dissonance?  Sure you have.

Do you speed during your commute to work?  Intellecutally, you know its wrong but you do it any way.

Do you smoke?  Again…intellectually you know its bad for your health but you continue to smoke.

What about your use of social media?  Sure you understand (and believe) that social media is a place to build relationships with your clients / customers, yet you still approach social outlets with your old ‘pitch and blast’ methods of talking at your clients instead of talking with them.

Cognitive Dissonance results when an individual (or organization) has to choose between attitudes and behaviors that are contradictory.

This occurs daily in the world of IT doesn’t it?

Think about it…your Marketing and Communications team need to live in the social media space these days yet many IT teams have disabled access to all social networks because of ‘productivity’ issues.  This approach creates cognitive dissonance in a big way…it forces the marketing team to have to choose between following IT standards or breaking those standards and using these platforms.

Another example – The IT group forces users to use the IT helpdesk for any service requests.  Except for when its ‘really’ important or if the requester is someone ‘important’.  So….what do people do?  Do they call the helpdesk and wait for 2 days to get their minor computer issue working or do they make the issue more important than it is?  Or do they escalate to their boss (who escaltes to her boss, etc) and get IT to fix the issue now?  This happens every day in every organization and it happens because its allowed to.  It happens because the IT group has allowed the ‘important’ people to have their issues addressed differently than the ‘regular’ folks.

This mentality creates dissonance…everyone knows they should follow the procedure but they also know it will take too long so they call their buddy to get the problem solved.  I’ve done it. You’ve done it..everyone does it.

What can IT do?  Remove the contradictions. Remove the exceptions.  Everyone goes through the same process.

Removing Cognitive Dissonance

To get rid of Cognitive Dissonance, you’ve got to make sure you aren’t confusing your customers with options that are contradictory.

You’ve got to remove contradiction from your processes to make them mirror the reality of business today. That’s a tall order for most organizations…but its a necessary one.

Make it easy for yourself and the organization to make decisions…take the contradictions away as soon as you can.

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My review in two words: Excellent book!

Whether you are an expert in the Enterprise 2.0 world or just a beginner, this book has something for you. Whether you believe in Enterprise 2.0 or not, this book has some excellent concepts that can be used to help bring social tools into the enterprise.

The book is split into two parts with the Part 1 covering the tools of Enterprise 2.0 and Part 2 discussing how to successfully utilize social tools within the enterprise.

Part 1 provides a very good overview of the tools and techniques of Enterprise 2.0 as well as some real-world case studies of companies that have implemented Web 2.0 platforms.  These companies are extremely diverse running the gamut from government agencies to start-ups and the information provided by McAfee shows real-world usage of Web 2.0 within enterprises.

Part 2 is where the really good stuff happens.  This is where McAfee shines.  This is the stuff that every CEO, COO, CIO and CMO should read and digest.   This is the place where you get to see some strategies for using social tools within the enterprise.    When you read this book make, sure you pay attention to the Six Organizational Strategies starting on page 179.  Good stuff.

Will this book give you the recipe for successful use of Enterprise 2.0?  No.  Will this book make your Enterprise 2.0 project(s) successful?  Maybe. Maybe not. What this book will do is give you some ideas on how to introduce Enterprise 2.0 into your organization and give you some tips on make it successful.

So…let’s take a step away from the book for a minute and look at the topic itself.  Enterprise 2.0.  Great name but one that has been much maligned.  The topic has caused a lot of debate since being introduced.  For some examples, go read Dennis Howlett‘s article titled “Enterprise 2.0 – the non-debate” and then read Mark Fidelman’s response on CloudAve titled “Enterprise 2.0 Caffeine: Let’s debunk the non-debate” to get some flavor of the various debate’s happening out there on the topic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 in the comments.

With all of this debate, or non-debates as some would say,  let’s look at McAfee’s definition of Enterprise 2.0:

Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals.

McAfee continues with his definition when he writes:

Enterprise 2.0, then, is about how organizations use the newly available ESSP’s [emergent social software platforms] to do their work better

With those definitions in mind, let’s revisit one of the main arguments against Enterprise 2.0 –> The value of Social Media / Enterprise 2.0 cannot be determined.  In fact, there are many (Howlett included) that say social media tools are worthless to the organization.

My response to this argument is a simple one:

How valuable is the knowledge of an employee?  How valuable is the knowledge of 10, 100 or 1000 employees? Can you place value on that knowledge?  Maybe.  Maybe not. That doesn’t mean that trying to harness that knowledge is worthless.  So why would using tools to harness that knowledge be worthless?

I can understand some of the arguments of folks out there against Enterprise 2.0.  There are a lot of buzzwords floating about and a lot of hype around the subject, but if you take the lessons from this book to heart, you’ll do more than buy into the hype…you’ll give your organization an opportunity to succeed by really harnessing the expertise, experiences and value of your organizational knowledge.

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