Social Media Time Management

What’s that sucking sound? It’s the sands of time, the ticking clock and and my unfinished to-do list — all being eaten whole by Facebook, Twitter and my blog. I have succumbed to the time-sink of social media, and I’m all too keenly aware of my addiction. How do people draw the line between true engagement and online time-wasting?

It’s a difficult habit to kick when it partially drives the economic engine of my professional livelihood. Working in public relations, I feed the beasts of my own personal social media presence as well as my agency’s and certain clients.

I was recently asked a question about this on a panel. The question was: How do you find the time to “do” social media for yourself and clients? Doesn’t it take up all of your time?

The answer? It can if you let it. The best way to carve out the time is to set limits on how much time to devote to each social media footprint. The worst thing for me is to leave my time wide open. When I do that, I get caught up in “the zone,” or my “flow” space, where I lose all track of time. This is fairly self-indulgent for me—although it feels good in the moment, I can’t usually afford to let my time evaporate. I’ve got a family to get home to, client deadlines to meet and other normal life to-dos.

I try to spend 30 minutes on each Twitter account per day, 15 each in the morning and the afternoon or evening. With the blog, it’s a couple of hours a week. Just one post a week, usually. And then I’m reading others’ blogs through my reader, usually an hour a day.

Then there’s Facebook. How much sharing is enough, really? I try to limit myself to sharing just a few items per day of others’ content, with a couple of status updates and/or content of my own. This one is my real weakness, because I pore through information obsessively and tend to think that everyone should also ready the cool stuff I’ve come upon. This is where I have to reign myself in and exercise some judgment about not oversharing.

There are people I’ve friended that I filter out of my feed because they are constantly putting up stuff from third-party sources. To me, that’s as bad as someone telling me the minute details of their life second by second. Get original. Have your own thoughts and insights.

It does add up, all told. At least 10 hours a week for myself, probably another 15 or so for work-related items. When examined like this, the opportunity cost of social media becomes more stark. What real-life experiences am I missing due to social media interactions? How much outside time am I sacrificing?

What are others’ experiences? Amber Naslund, Director of Community at Radian6,  just put up a good post about time management in the midst of social media. Bottom line, it’s about knowing one’s goals and setting priorities aligned with them. She shares helpful information to guide social media priorities.

For me, it’s all about the balance. Easy to write about, not easy to strike!

Filed under: social media , blogging, human interaction, PR, social media etiquette, technology, time

Corporate Twitterer: Mascot, Spokesperson, Teacher

For several months now, I have been the woman behind the curtain of my company’s Twitter presence. Every day, I put up several tweets, and since we began tweeting we’ve organically built a base of 1,000 followers. That’s several million less than Ashton Kutcher, for the record. But our enterprise is more about quality than quantity, so we’re in no hurry to get there.

Being the designated twitterer has been illuminating. There are several keys:

• Tweets demonstrate the company’s values and culture, adding content of value to the conversation.
• Retweets are within industry and share helpful information to broaden the minds of our followers.
• Mentions call out other respected thought leaders within the industry.

In short, serving this role has me behaving somewhat like a combination of mascot, company spokesperson and teacher. Mascot, because I am “in costume,” behind the walls of Twitter, not posting my own individual thoughts but engaging as the Twitteresque embodiment of our company’s unique combination of offerings. Spokesperson, because I am serving up the company’s thoughts and opinion. And teacher, because I am providing a curriculum of sorts for our followers, through which they engage back with the company to provide shared content.

We’ve stayed away from prescheduled, automated tweeting, believing instead in the power of real-time, I’m really here interaction. Our belief is that our authenticity and credibility are built on our actual presence in the space, to build our reputation and engage with our customers.

Next time you visit your favorite brand on Twitter, say hello to the Twitterer behind the curtain. You might be surprised by the conversation.

Filed under: social media , social media, social media etiquette

Obama’s Peace….Both Sides Now?

I’ve been curiously listening, watching and reading news coverage and general opinion about Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. Put me in the “conflicted” camp about whether or not he deserves it—at this point in time. For those who know me, this will be no surprise. I am a ferocious moderate, mainly because I always want to have clear proof before I’m won over to either side. This is an interesting case study for proof, or lack thereof.

On one hand, I admire Obama’s perspective of hope, international cooperation and thoughtful decision-making on tough topics. I don’t agree with those who claim his only skill is oration. I do believe that we deserve a president who is intellectual AND action-oriented. We can both be inspired AND see the fruits of our efforts. I see both qualities in his approach, and I’m willing to give him the time to prove his mettle. When it comes to fixing national problems, instant gratification is not possible. Sorry, far right.

On the other hand, I do think it’s fair to question whether or not mere potential qualifies someone for the award. Just as it’s unrealistic, naive and obviously partisan to criticize President Obama for not getting us out of Iran, Guantanamo Bay, the recession and staggering national debt, it is premature to award him a prize for results not yet achieved. Have we truly moved the needle in terms of the world’s opinion of the U.S.? Too soon to tell. Sorry, far left.

Some have vehemently reacted to the announcement, both ways. The right is vilifying Obama as if he awarded himself the Nobel Peace Prize. I suspect that he was as surprised as everyone else was about the news. The left is responding to neo-con pundits with incredulity, insisting that the right-wing spin-meisters are not paying attention. The left-wing contingency would do well to wipe the stars from their eyes and keep Obama focused on outcomes.

Instead of criticizing Obama for not having done enough, speak up about what he should do. Get off your high-horse and point the way forward. Rather than being blinded by the light, the far left should keep clear outcomes in mind, and hold Obama to meeting them. To the extremes on both sides, who’ve come out in full force to dominate the news coverage on this topic, there’s still much to be learned. Don’t look back to decisions made under previous administrations, Republican or Democrat, and either blame or credit Obama for the problems or the accomplishments. Again, look forward, with solutions in mind, before judging or believing before it’s time.

I don’t believe that true change will happen right away, and I haven’t seen any evidence to prove otherwise. Frankly, it took us eight years to bring down our international reputation. Cowboy politics don’t play well in the global sphere, and we are now paying the price of rebuilding our country’s reputation. Both Republicans and Democrats in D.C. have roles to play for the sake of change. Don’t dig in your heels and prevent it—and don’t just assume that saying it will happen is sure to make it so.

Filed under: leadership , change, difficult people, leadership

Social Media Policies: Guidelines or Rules?

Here’s an increasingly common question from clients:

I want to implement social media, but I’m afraid that my staff will take advantage of the freedom. What social media policies can we institute to shape use by our employees?

It’s a good question. Businesses are catching on to the practical necessity of social media for customer interaction and reputation-building. But it’s unwise to jump into the fray before preparing in advance.

Having a clear communications plan in place is the first step. Warning: If your plan involves only social media, do NOT activate. Social media is only one channel for communication. Comparisons with walkie talkies and telephones are apt. Just knowing how to use a walkie talkie or telephone doesn’t mean that you know how to WISELY communicate with it. It all depends on what you say, not whether you know how to pick it up and talk through it. Take Gap’s new Born to Fit campaign. They are leveraging social media—heavily—but only as one among many tactics within the media mix, that includes billboards and other examples of “old-school” ads. No television, though. Interesting.

Now back to the policies. The situation reminds me of a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Elizabeth Swann is trying to outsmart the Captain, and he reminds her of the flexibility around the pirate’s code:

Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann pretending to be Elizabeth Turner):		… wait, you have to take me to shore, according to the code of the Order of the Brethren …
Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa):		… first, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement, so it must do nothing, and secondly you must be a pirate for the Pirate’s Code to apply and you’re not, and thirdly the code is more of what you call guidelines than actual rules, welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner …

The same will be true of social media policies. The landscape is so dynamic that you cannot account for everything that could possibly happen. And not everyone will follow them, but without them you are rudderless.

Now back to the policies. Here are some common themes drawn from various social media guidelines:

1. Use good judgment. Don’t write anything that you wouldn’t say in person.
2. Be yourself. Never be anonymous.
3. Preserve confidentiality and intellectual property. Don’t disclose client or proprietary information.
4. Own your own content. Take responsibility for what you post.
5. Disclose your blogging to your supervisor. And put a disclaimer on your blog clarifying where you work and that the opinions and views you express are not necessarily those of your employer.
6. Link back to your corporate culture guidelines. These should shape your social media practices.
7. Use social media at work, because the process of communicating through social media is so often now a part of our work. But don’t let social media use keep you from getting other parts of your job done. Stay productive.
8. Follow the ethics code of your given profession. Respect copyright and fair use. Do not risk defamation.
9. Be a courteous social media community member. Pay heed to mutuality, authenticity and timeliness. These concepts have special meaning in the social mediasphere.
10. Clarify the place of social media within your overall business goals and communication plan. It should not stand alone.

Now go forth and post!

Filed under: leadership, reputation, social media , human interaction, leadership, reputation, social media

More on Manners: SMetiquette

Judging from the traffic to this little blog, people like to read about manners. And they like to read about social media. This post is dedicated to a topic that I will call “SMetiquette,” or etiquette for social media.

Whether you’re just starting to use social media or have been out there as an “expert,” everyone can use a little reflection on proper adult ways to interact through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.

Here are some thoughts, based on what I’ve seen on the business and life sides, for what works and what doesn’t:

1. DO share. Giving of your true self—including your thoughts, opinions, contributed content of all sorts—supports the social media ethics of authenticity and mutuality. Holding back, by only showing your business perspective and approaching social media simply as a way to make money, will not get you anywhere.
2. DO be there. Now. But not 24 hours a day. If you are out there on Twitter all the time, then I’m going to think that you are lurking, at best, and stalking, at worst. That’s just weird. A few times a day is fine, but realize that your posts should be reflecting what you are learning about living life—which is not the same thing as being online all the time. Go out there and be offline to enrich your life, PLEASE! But when you are online, by responding to my posts and being fully engaged, I count you as a valuable contributor in the conversation. This is why I’m not a fan of automated posting through the variety of tools that are out there to support the omnipresent ideal. If it’s not really YOU out there putting up the post, it looks to me like you are not committed to genuine interaction.
3. DO know when it’s time to DM or chat, or just plain talk in person. Everybody doesn’t need to see all of the back and forth—or inside jokes—that you think are hilarious. Use some judgment and take the conversation away from Everybody mode when it gets to a certain point.
4. DON’T auto-DM or self-promote. If you do this when I follow you, I’m apt to promptly unfollow you. If you are just looking to drive traffic to your blog or Web site, I will care about you much less than I used to. It’s just rude and is the social media equivalent of jumping up and down or doing the “ooh-ooh” pick me thing that Arnold Horshack did on Welcome Back, Kotter. Looks and is desperate for attention.

This is by no means a comprehensive listing, but it should get you well on your way to being an appreciated contributor and practitioner of good SMetiquette.

Filed under: social media , business ethics, human interaction, social media, social media etiquette

The Power of Place

Spatial memory is a powerful thing. It brings hummingbirds back to Ohio every year from the Caribbean, and it evokes emotional memories for us humans.

What is it that makes places so deeply etched in our minds and hearts? My thought is that it’s because of the sensory experience. Unlike an object, which could be remembered for its static qualities, a place is full of three-dimensional and dynamic sights, sounds, smells, textures and tastes.

This is why we return home and feel comfort at the end of a long day. Memory evokes the senses that yearn for the smell of the fireplace in the living room, the velvet upholstery of the favorite armchair, dinner cooking in the kitchen and clean sheets on the bed at night. Places like home, a friend’s house or a spiritual setting like a church, mosque or synagogue elicit emotions that feel good and keep us coming back.

Why do so many visit New York City every year, for the first time?  The reason is place anticipation—spatial memory in reverse. The many attributes of “The City” are known far and wide: opinionated and metropolitan people, high-end boutiques, the best plays and live music, museums, Central Park, street vendors, five-star restaurants. These are the many facets of New York City’s place brand, and everyone knows them. Reading about them or seeing them on television is not enough. The value is in BEING there, experiencing the brand of New York City—close up and in person.

Place branding fuses economic development practice with the strategies and tactics of branding. The goal is to create anticipation for locations that are less well-known—or places that are perceived inaccurately. More cities, states and nations are investing in a place-branding strategy to incentivize capital investment and expansion in their locale. Dubai, Wales and Queensland are prime examples—even my own Ohio. The key in place branding is to focus on the overall economic development strategy and leverage marketing and communications to deliver on their promise.

I am particularly interested in the experiential aspects communicated virtually through place branding. It’s tough to get at all of the senses when separated by distance. Words and pictures can help to tell the story, but two-dimensional impact is not as powerful as being there in person. This interview conducted by CEO Ed Burghard of the Burghard Group with Robert Govers—an expert in place branding, image and tourism—explores the possibilities. In particular, question and answer number 5 address the concept that place branding’s product development is all about managing the experience, in person and online.

As we become more of a global economy and can leverage technology to activate our senses in anticipating place, I wonder how our impressions of places will change as we are exposed to more information about places we thought we knew. Will the so-called “hot-spots” for young talent, families and couples change—both in terms of vacation sites and places to call home? I’m guessing that there are places still off the map in the minds of developers and travelers alike—not because they’re uncharted but because they’ve been overlooked or under-appreciated.

Filed under: brand, reputation , branding, human interaction

Blame it on the Puppy

Yes, I got a new puppy over the weekend, which distracted me from the Harvard Business Review subscription drawing.

I am now pleased to inform all of my loyal readers that we have a winner! It’s Mark Henson of Sparkspace, who is entitled to a free year’s subscription to HBR, thanks to MagsDirect, http://www.magsdirect.com/harvardbusinessreview.html

For those of you who didn’t win, you can still subscribe to this stellar pub through MagsDirect. I encourage you to get in on well-written business articles that will keep you one step ahead of the competition.

Filed under: Uncategorized

The Company of Canines

I never knew how much I enjoyed the company of dogs until I didn’t have a dog. Over the past month, I’ve said goodbye to two canine companions—one expected passing due to old age and another unanticipated loss initiated by behavioral issues. Neither was easy, and both were quite different grievings.

Hera was a dog we adopted from the Humane Society as a puppy, back in 1993. My husband and I had been married for just three years when we brought her home with us. We were young and so was she. Her passing is a milestone in our relationship that bookends her adoption. We took her on vacation, worried over her every need and trained her to be a civilized beast. She was the smartest dog I’ve known. Despite being smaller than most of the dogs we had as buddies for her, she out-maneuvered every other dog. She was the canine equivalent of a chess champion. If she wanted a toy, she pretended that she was in love with another fetch-worthy item until the dog who had the toy she wanted couldn’t help but drop it with unwitting greed. Hera thought well into the future, a quality that most dogs lack.

Her face was unique. She had a black mask like a raccoon’s, and it grayed with age so that by the time she died it was 100 percent silver and quite striking. The last few years of her life, we had to call her name loudly even when standing next to her, and cataracts made her eyes mood-ring cloudy and she was apt to run into things. When she stopped being able to get up reliably on her own—at all—and seemed to be just biding her time, we made an appointment. She really, REALLY hated being carried around and resented us terribly for it. Her time had come. The vet came to the house, and the family gathered around Hera in the back yard on a beautiful day. It was a very peaceful passing, and she is forever resident underneath the big pine tree at the back of the yard.

Mobley was a big black hundred-pound mess of supposed Black Lab and Newfoundland melange. Since he didn’t like water and couldn’t retrieve to save his life, I am not entirely sure about his rumored lineage. His head was disturbingly large—providing ample breathing room for a sadly undersized brain. No dog welcomed the world of the backyard in quite the same way as Mobley. Every morning, he could not wait to get outside. The phrase, “He could not contain his excitement,” does not begin to describe Mobley’s insane exuberance. I was routinely knocked over by him either in his goings or comings. I still have bruises and scratches to prove it.

Mobley was only six when we had to make the decision. A heart-wrenching decision. We had invited very good friends to come to the house to say their goodbyes to Hera. They brought their dog with them, and I should have told them not to. As he got older, Mobley became more and more aggressive towards other dogs similar in size to him. Instead of telling our friends to take their dog home, I locked Mobley in the house behind two closed doors while we visited with Hera, our friends and their son and dog in the backyard.

Everything was fine until circumstances went awry. Children came in and out of the house. Doors were opened inadvertently, and Mobley got into the backyard. As he burst out the back door, I knew it was going to be bad. And it was. Mobley viciously attacked my friends’ dog and grabbed its throat in his jaws. He would not let go. We did many things over the course of 10 very long minutes to get the dogs apart. My girlfriend was smart enough to think of turning the hose on the dogs, so that finally we were able to separate them.

My friends’ dog was terribly injured. Both my friends and I had been bitten. That night, my friends spent all night in the ER after taking their dog to MedVet. I went to the urgent care. We all got tetanus shots. As for Mobley, he  knew something bad had happened. He just didn’t know that he caused the problem.We were grateful that we had the presence of mind to send the kids all into the front yard while the dog fight was in process.

I rewound and replayed the entire series of events over and over in my mind all week long. I should have told my friends not to bring their dog. I should have locked Mobley in an upstairs room. We should have worked harder to socialize him. Why were we such miserable dog-owners? My failure to control my dog surely made me unpardonable, I told myself.

Mistakes were made, but there’s no rewind in real life. Decisions were imminent. We had to really be grown-ups about this. Because after things happened, we realized that we could not in good conscience adopt Mobley out to another family knowing that this could happen again. We knew we couldn’t keep him safe from other dogs. He could vault the fence and was strong enough to pull us over when leashed. We’d had dogs that we were able to find homes for in the past, either dogs we’d owned ourselves or fostered. And we knew that we had worked hard to train him. There was just something weirdly off with him, something that affected him early in life when his social skills were developing, so that once we adopted him at 2-3 years of age there wasn’t much that could be done. Perhaps he had been trained as a fighting dog. Who knew? He had been rescued after living with numerous owners before us. His behavior was getting more erratic. During a walk during his last week of life, he snapped at a person who wanted to pet him. He was not a bad dog, he was just a dog who would never really change. Although incredibly loyal and devoted to humans, he was a loaded gun with other large dogs.

We talked with our friends whose dog got hurt more than once a day for the week afterwards. And we talked with the family that owned Mobley before us. We told them what we were thinking. That despite the fact that Mobley was true and good in most ways, we felt that as his owners the only responsible choice we could make was to put him to sleep. Sadly, everyone agreed. The affirmation was both validating and painful to hear.

Mobley was a dead dog walking. Because there were bites to humans during the dog fight, we had to quarantine him for 10 days in the event of rabies. And so we bided our time. In some ways it would have been easier to put him down right away, saying our goodbyes and taking swift action. Our house was already quieter for having had to say goodbye to Hera that same week. But we knew that our decision to say goodbye to Mobley was the right one. His former owners came over for a visit. We took him for his last few walks. And we loved him for who he was, nothing more and nothing less.

The passing of Mobley was like his life: tumultuous. We took him into the vet. Because of his size, and because he got nervous around shots, we wanted to be able to help things go smoothly. Well, they didn’t. The vet had to give him two doses of a sedative to get him calm enough for the shot of sodium pentathol. He had to be double-muzzled to keep from biting the vet. And then the anesthesia had to be administered three times because he was so full of life. I am sorry to say that he just would not go quietly. The entire event took about an hour from start to finish. We were physically spent from helping to keep him still, and emotionally worn out from the trauma of making the decision and then seeing it through.

The kids were with a neighbor during all of this. On the way home, I talked with the mother and apologized that we were so late, explaining why. She said, “Well, God didn’t mean death to happen that way.” She didn’t mean to be harsh, and I wholeheartedly agreed with her sentiment. And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, dog-owner or dog.

It’s been about a month now since everything happened. I hesitated about posting this. Judgment from people about situations like this can be quite cutting. Fair warning: If anyone comments about the decision, giving advice about why we should have chosen differently, I won’t publish the comment and probably won’t read all of it. I just can’t second-guess the choice we made. Making the decision was difficult enough.

I believe that as animal “owners” we become the stewards of our animals. They are like family members. If you’d asked me a year ago whether I would ever consider having to take this course of action, I would have said no. And I would expect most people to not really understand getting to the point of having to make this kind of decision for an animal in their care. It is truly the worst possible decision to make.

We have been healing, but we’re missing our dogs. Hera and Mobley were incredible companions. We know that their souls have moved to the great beyond. With some trepidation, we are taking steps to get a puppy that we can train from the ground up. We’ll see where this goes, but if I had to guess I’d say that we will soon again be in the company of canines.

Filed under: family, nature , dogs, family, friends, life, nature

Harvard Business Review Contest Ends SOON!

Dear 25 Readers,

Please remember that the HBR contest ends this coming Saturday, 8/29. Don’t forget to send me your leadership stories so that you can be entered for a chance to win a FREE year’s subscription to Harvard Business Review.

Good luck!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Social Media Musings

This summer has been an interesting set of firsts for me in social media:

• I got my first “commercial” offer on the blog–an incentive to run a contest. Gratifying to get asked to help promote a publication as lofty as Harvard Business Review.
• Just a few weeks ago, I friended my mom on Facebook. It’s been interesting. She will not let me help her to post a picture of herself, but she was very interested in joining the fan page for Elvis and her church. She’s a bit lonely out there right now. I don’t think that there are many septuagenarians on Facebook. But my mom is not afraid to try new things, and I am quite proud of her.
• I made the decision to “defriend” some people on Facebook who don’t interact with me anyway, in person or online. I am all about having quality interaction with the people that share back with me—not those who share nothing or just include me in push messaging that I’m not interested in. Life is too short to waste time. This defriending lightened my load in terms of friends but gives me more time to read and enjoy content from people where the friending is reciprocated. In case I accidentally deleted someone who really does matter to me, I made sure to let folks know that they should give me a shout to refriend–just as a safety net.

Nothing revolutionary here. Just some social media musings.

Filed under: social media , business ethics, difficult people, family, friends, human interaction, social media, social media etiquette