How to use social media to search for your tribe

I’ve recently took on an engagement to be the founding editor of a monthly technology supplement for the Sunday Times of Malta, the leading newspaper in my country.  The first edition of Technology Sunday is out tomorrow.  I’m passionate about content and all things digital and the Times is a good brand to be associated with.

My immediate challenge was to quickly find people who could a) write well  b) quickly c) with authority d) with insider local knowledge on e) a range of issues – from telecoms to gadgets to social media to the intersection of life and anything deemed digital and f) for no money!

I decided to rely exclusively on social media to search for like-minded people.  I also wanted to find people who were not professional media journalists.  Unconsciously, I was starting to look for members of a new tribe, who wanted to engage and collaborate on a project on the basis of trust and a common objective.

These are some observations I made as I assembled my writing team:

1. Start with Facebook.  If like me you do not have thousands of ‘friends’, it is fairly easy to filter down on the handful of potential writers.  Look at the way they engage online.  It’s fairly easy to sort out who can write and who can’t.
2. Continue with LinkedIn.  You can now home in on specific skills sets.  Look at how active people are in groups; see if they answer questions and help others.  LinkedIn is adding plenty of new features and groups are really getting a lot of traction.
3. Use Twitter’s own advanced features.  This post is very useful if you want a web-based application.  In my case, I used TweetDeck to monitor who was active in my space, and spent some time looking at blogs.  I also tweeted a question, asking if people were interested in joining the quest.  I started to get followers.
4. You could also use some customised applications.  This tool, called the UGC finder, for instance, is targeted at journalists.
5. I leave the obvious till last – use Google.  I guess the fact that this is last is indicative of how search is becoming more specialised, perhaps more human – where word of mouth is as important as an algorithm.   Or a reflection of how we are constantly looking for short-cuts in our time-poor lives.

I met people in my office or in cafe’s,  and held many an online conversation with writers I had never heard of.   I guess the acid test is tomorrow.  But the process has already paid off, as far as I’m concerned.  I have met some great people, learned how to generate specialist content quickly and cost-effectively and applied social media tools for a specific task.

And perhaps that is where the lesson lies – that if you are very focused on your objectives before you start to apply social media, you can get relatively quick results.  Like most things in life, it helps having a clear strategy before you dive into trying to get something done.  And that applies as much to a business, as to a 24-page technology supplement.

Everybody’s fumbling with Social Media

I’m finalising my slides for a presentation on social media for SMEs next Friday.  As I try and wade through the ’social media’ column on my TweetDeck to pick up the latest conversations on the subject, there seems to be a number of common threads:

1.  Early adopters of social media tools are up in arms on new entrants claiming to be ’social media marketers.’  The consensus seems to be that unless you update a blog regularly (for yourself and others), manage a Facebook group, and twitter regularly (for yourself and others) and (here’s the US hook) have advised some Fortune 100 company on social media marketing, you’re not really cut to be a social media marketer.  (I find this particularly amusing, as I believe social media is essential for SMEs to reach way beyond their physical and economic budgeting / marketing / logistical restrictions to connect with entirely new customer segments).

2.  Then again, large companies also apparently get it wrong.  Watch this.

3.  Evan Williams has waded in on mainstream US TV to explain how Twitter works, and why they did not take Facebook’s money.

4.  There is clearly a sense of comedy in the confusion of what Twitter is all about, seeing it defies the basic business tenet of ROI.  Jon Stewart saw a great opportunity to explain.

5.  In the meantime, more sign of the times:  some hope social media will get them a job.  Others are still in Obama mode and are focusing on how social media can create change.

My advice?

Ignore all advice.  Or take the most simple:  

1. Listen.

2. Set up.

3. Participate.

4. Engage.  

5. Network.  

6. Build Something together.

7. Repeat.

And the sting in the tail?  It’s not totally free, it’s not instant karma and yes.. you may need some help.  Business Week still nailed it.

Our new year mashup

I’m never quite sure what to make of year end resolutions – I keep making mine shorter. But like Godin, I think there is no such time as NOW to “use cheap media, available attention and great talent to make something that matters”.  Everyone I know is cost cutting, firing, waiting for some positive sign from somewhere to take them out of credit crunch paralysis and fear.  We believe there are opportunities waiting to be exploited while your competitors stop and lick their wounds.

This is the approach we are taking with our new project:

1. Focus on an area where you have a natural strength – where you can use your unique combination of talents, skills and knowledge to create some meaningful positive change for others.  Specifically, look for an area where you can ‘commoditise’ what you know.
2. Identify a tribe that you can lead.  Click here for a tribe you may belong to without knowing.
3. Use a decent blogging platform like WordPress to get a  mashup blog cum website started.  Start developing your content.
4. Use Ning or Elgg to bolt on a community element and invite members of your tribe.  You know where the first members may be.  Go fishing.
5. Use Facebook  as a powerful inbound link and to reach out to members of your tribe
6. Use Twitter as a short hand blog.
7. Use Squidoo to develop a lens or two as your project starts to take shape
8. Use Slideshare to develop an elevator pitch of your new project.
9. Get your LinkedIn profile updated to reflect the above
10. Go

Serious skills part 2

Ann E W Stone says that she once read a book that changed the course of her career, and her life.   She learnt that people make snap decisions on others based on ’signals; and that it was within one’s power to manage those signals.  The first part of her transformation was to understand the operating style she had; the second was to get some fundamentals right before she could achieve her career goals.

Her ‘25 skills that signal that you are to be taken seriously‘ have been modelled on what she has learnt on her way to fame and fortune and an appearance on the Larry King show.

1. How you walk into a room

Walk it like you own it.  Head up, confident.

2.  Your handshake

Put your hand out at a 45 degree angle and make it firm, not harsh.

3.  How you are dressed

Ms Stone recommends that you dress for the position you aspire to.  Dark colours and jackets imply power (green is a non-starter for a suit.  Yellow, red and purple if you’re female.  No open-toed shoes or coloured stockings).

4. What you read and talk about.

You need to demonstrate that you read the papers and have an opinion on ‘word events’.  You have to assume that most people are not interested in your family affairs.

(I found this particularly difficult to embrace.  Sarah Palin is more interesting as an ice-breaker than some family anecdote?)

5.  Self-confidence and optimism

‘If you want ot get ahead in business, you have to be an optimistic person’, says Ms Stone.  ‘People want positive leaders.  People do not follow pessimists.’

6.  What you put in writing

Ms Stone says you have to think before you write.

7.   How you present new ideas

You need to lay claim to some ‘new ideas’. 

(Right).

8. Organisation skills

Ms Stone says she will always hire women re-entering the workforce after having raised young children, because their multi-tasking skills are so developed by this stage.

(This makes perfect sense).

9.  Learning and motivation outside your job space

You need to demonstrate a yearning for knowledge.  Get books, go to seminars, join a trade association.

10.  How you handle yourself in the office

No crying, giggling.  Learn from your mistakes but don’t take them personally.  Don’t talk back to the coach.

(By this time, I was thinking of my rather stubborn, curious-about-the-world six year-old.  And started giggling myself).

11. Verbal skills

You need to be able to speak in public or to groups.

(Another one for the blogging and Dale Carnegie fraternity).

12.  Vocabulary

13.  Spelling

Always use a spell-checker before you communincate in writing.  ‘Spelling tells people how intelligent you are.’

14.  Be courteous

Show good breeding.

(I thought of Trump and Alan Sugar for starters).

15.  Business cards

You need to hae one, even if you don’t have a job.

16.  Ability to delegate

Men are apparently much better at doing this than women.

17.  Computer & Technical Skills

18.  A support system both inside and outside the office

Don’t make enemies.  Keep your own counsel.  Unload only with your family

19.  Be on time

This is a signal of respect.

(Totally, totally agree with this.  Sadly, this is not a trait which works in Southern Europe.  In fact, being late is often used as a show of ‘power’)

20.  Market yourself and celebrate your sucesses

Ms Stone believes in self-promotion and advises that we should not ‘bury our accomplishments’.

(There was much nodding from the audience.  And the blogging community, I suspect).

21.  Show you love the competition

This was an interesting one.  Ms Stone believes that many people shine on the adrenalin of beating the competition.

22. Make money one of your measures of success

Ms Stone had started her talk by saying that she managed to increase her salary five-fold in 11 months once she started applying her signalling skills in earnest.

It sounded particularly hollow as the markets went into freefall. I just know so many people who love what they do without thinking of how much money they are making from ’selling their life’.

23.  Think like management

I come from the other side of the equation.  Management has to think like the factory floor to get things done.  Or the people on the help desk, the front of house, the doers and the cleaners.  Period.

24.  Have clear goals

It helps knowing what you want in life.  And work.

It’s aligning them to your company’s value system which is the key issue, I think.

25.  Show you are a team player

Make the boss look good.

This is tougher than it seems.  Especially if you are practicing 20 above.

As I left the hall, I couldn’t help feeling that Ms Stone does not spend much time advising start-ups or geeks.  Perhaps it was her disapproval of open-toed sandals.  Or making money one of the measure of success.  Or maybe it was just a transatlantic approach which does not translate in its entirey across the pond.   There was a seeming lack of awareness that there are ‘cultural differences’ that cannot be ignored when you are doing business in different parts of the world.

All I know is that not all of the above would work in the cauldrons of an office in Milan.. where ‘bella figura’ has its own code of behaviour.. or the earthier variations further south.

Still, in an age and medium obsessed with lists, there is some common-sense to be gleaned from Ms Stone’s thinking.

It would just be a much nicer world if we didn’t have to worry about ‘being taken seriously’ and just had the internal confidence that we are in the right place, at the right time, doing the job we are meant to be doing, to the best of our abilities.  And having some fun in the process.

You still need a web strategy and you still need to work at it!

Seth Godin’s post earlier today about the dangers behind aspirations to  ‘overnight success’ on the web really struck a chord.  In the bad old days, it used to be about going to a VC, asking for a pile of money and promising to make everyone rich in under 12 months.  Now it seems to be about people saying ‘get me on the first page of a Google search, tell me how much money I need to invest in a pay per click campaign and I will take care of things from then on.’

Seth says: ‘The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly.  You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.  But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics’.

1. You always need a plan.  It doesn’t need to be expensive, ornate or devised by exernals.  You can even find a free template online and get started with that.  But you do need to focus on how your web project is going to a) increase your sales b) reduce your costs or c) make your current or new customers happy.  Preferably all of those.

2.  It’s about real-life business models, not the web! In all cases, that means delivering meaningful value to your visitors, customers, users.  If ‘web strategy’ sounds ‘esoteric’ – think differentiation, ROI, cashflow, competitor analysis, survival – dealing with plain old-fashioned business concerns.  Guess what?  They never go away, even after you’ve become a hit on Facebook.

3.  If you’re doing web, you cannot ignore content.  Content is expensive to produce, and requires discipline, creativity and energy.  If you cannot produce content yourself, you need to be hiring or outsourcing it to someone who understands your business model enough to do that for you.

4.  You just cannot get into anything new and expect it to work in the short term.  Most people who want a sustainable businesses know that it is unlikely to make a profit before year 4.

5.  Strategy is not something that you do once, at the start of a new project or business.  Or every three years, when someone remembers to dust off the strategic plan.  You are going to have to be making small changes all along the way.  In The 8th Habit, Stephen R. Covey talks about the ‘trim-tab’ approach.  The trim-tab is the small rudder that turns the big rudder that turns the entire ship.  Good business leaders know that you are constantly having to make small changes to navigate your business to better waters.  You always need to know where you want to go.  But you need to be aware that you are going to be in a constant phase of deconstruction and reconstruction.

6.  The temptation to give up is always there.  Seth’s little nugget The Dip is an uncomfortable reminder, on my book shelf, of what it takes to make a business sustainable.  Especially online.  There are always brick walls to be faced.  Your web strategy has to be good enough to make you see round the walls.

7.  If you hire externals to devise your web strategy, see if they are prepared to wade in with you and get things to happen.  Ask about the timeframe they envisage for the return on your investment.  Your investment in their fees, and the new web solutions being contemplated. The best external strategists I know do not stop with the plan, or the launch of the web solution.  They will roll up their sleeves and work alongside you and your people until there is enough momentum built within the organisation.  And until you are making the small, corrective changes intuitively, for your long term success.

Smart City Video

Smart City was officially announced

 I drove round Ricasoli last week. You can sense change is in the air. This video gives you a flavour of what’s round the corner. 

Why Smart City will work

A post on the BBC’s website yesterday was aptly titled ‘Malta woos technology wanderers’. 

I was once told by a consultant to the mobile industry that what Malta needs for the 21st century is the Princess Grace factor.  Someone who understands the potential of the island, brings some glamour, invests some money and puts it on the world map.

TECOM Investments may not be Princess Grace.  But a US$ 330m investment in Smart City in Malta is as close as it gets.   Smarty city is the first European outpost for Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City, and is positioned to become a Strategic Regional Centre of Excellence of ICT for Southern Europe & North Africa.  With its focus on ICT & Media clusters, SmartCity@Malta is projected to be the country’s largest ever ICT private sector project and foreign direct investment as well as the largest ever new source of knowledge-based jobs to be secured by Malta.  The project will also be accompanied by new state-of-the-art use of the environment of the site with the development of a hotel and other activities to help attract knowledge-based operations to the site.

For the time being, Smart City is just a collection of architects’ drawings and the target for new specialist ventures, including Muovo.  There are many who, like me, believe that this project will have a significant impact for generations to come in Malta:
•

1. •Smart City levers on Malta’s unique blend of critical success factors:  technology; human capital; fiscal and regulatory incentives; English-speaking; European; safe; quality of life.
2. It puts Malta on the map, for reasons other than sun, sea, diving, cultural heritage or MTV festivals.
3. Ricasoli, an area long abandoned as an artefact of Malta’s manufacturing past, will be regenerated.  There is some poignancy in replacing experiments of the past that have long failed because of globalisation, with new ones levering on what Malta can now deliver, thanks to investments in technology.
4. Malta will attract an influx of professionals in technology and knowledge management sectors.  Many of these will come from Europe and Asia.  There is a great need for this island to look outwards again, to go multi-cultural.
5. It creates 5,600 new jobs in Smart City alone – the multiplier effect in several unrelated employment sectors will be much higher. 
6. It clearly separates the responsibilities of Government from those of the private sector investment.  There appear to be the right checks and balances to make sure that TECOM honour their responsibilities in terms of mix of industry and creation of employment. 
7. Government is committed to cutting through the red tape to facilitate movement of capital and labour.  There is cross-party support for the project.
8. Smart City is part of an overall national strategy focusing on specific ICT niches where Malta can make a significant impact.  Being small, we can focus on what we can do best.  A small slice of a big cake can make a major impact to the economy. 
9. It provides Malta with a chance to again become a strategic location.  This time, instead of being strategic for military purposes, it puts Malta on the technology global map.  We’re one hour away from Rome, three from London, 45 minutes from North Africa. 

We are again connected.

The Cringe Factor

Things are a bit chaotic.  I have gone from managing a team to managing myself and there has not been much time for the transition.  Muovo, the new startup, is at drawing board stage (more on that some other time).  Whatever it is.. it’s that time of the year, when things change overnight (in Malta,  we literally go from winter to summer seemingly overnight).  Or maybe I am still in a state of shock to find that one of my heroes, Hugh MacLeod, is working for (gulp) Microsoft.   

But no sooner was I into my five minutes of Jungian self-analysis that my perspective of the world – of the map of who’s who - the heroes, the good guys, bad guys.. and the guys who just don’t get it – was mercifully reaffirmed courtsey of the Ernst & Young video.

Somewhere, I keep thinking that this might have been an April Fool’s joke.  Or that some bright guy in a suit thought that it was wonderfuly viral and get people to talk about E&Y (yes, they are!)

But like many others.. I just cringed.  It would be really hilarious.. if it weren’t so sad.

And yes.. I admit, I used to be an accountant, once.  I was just never that happy about it.

Reinventing yourself

Isn’t it strange? Sometimes you are thinking of something, then your eye drifts over the NetVibes feeds and a post leaps up to reinforce what was on your mind just before your eyes landed on the text.   Or else you purposely visit one of your regular sources, and find that Hugh MacLeod has again posted something inspirational.

I am part of a generation of restless 40-somethings.  The first to be constantly reinvent itself.  To have had multiple careers, lived in different countries, and moved seamlessly from fixed term jobs to entrepeneurship and back to short term assignments.  We consciously, regularly, push the ship of our lives into different directions.  Looking to spread ourselves over many things.  After the best part of a year working on a large project, I again feel the need to diversify.  Tomorrow I will kickstart a telecoms research project.  I’m quietly exploring a start-up with two partner companies.  And I’m toying with the idea of further study.  A perennial item, which surfaces every time I raise my head above the barricade of whatever I’m doing. I want to explore all of these things, right now. Some will work, some will remain on the drawing board. The important thing is to channel my restless energy positively. Creatively. Restlessness works.

About five weeks ago, I connected a friend of mine in Rio, a former Andersen Consultant, with a former partner, the CEO of a well-funded technology start-up with offices in London and Malta. Three conference calls later, both parties took a big leap of faith, and she has just moved from Rio to London to work on Entropay’s new marketing programs. She’s 45. She believes most times we make our own luck, but there is always a time when you can move things quickly, and other times when you need to wait for the right time. She believes that no experience is wasted.

Another close friend Joe, an ISO process specialist, is battling with a life-threatening disease in hospital. When we meet, in his ward at St Luke’s, we now talk about the really important stuff. Two months ago, I told him his business model needed to be readdressed. We were exploring creating a new vehicle together when his illness struck. I know we still will.  But this temporary hiccup, in his life, is forcing us both again to take stock.  Of what is important.  Of how to put our time to better use.  And how to do something meaningful.

That’s all that matters, right now.

Letting go

Every external change agent knows the time has to come when you have to let go. Over the past weeks, it became clear that I was reaching the end of the road with a project I have been running for a client company for the best part of 17 months.

Several things have been unusual about this one. For a start, I was involved in managing and driving four very different areas: ICT infrastructure; software development of an inhouse business support system; e-business (from SEO all the way to design and build of web solutions used in the sales channel); and knowledge management. And then there was the intensity of the programmes – many things had to be built from the base up – and the longevity of the project. A lot happens in 17 months. Bonds are made. You become part of the furniture.

Change Agents can can only be effective if their passion for change is matched by the appetite of whoever championed it. Still, the writing is always on the wall when it is time to move on.

Symptoms a Change Agent needs to look out for in determing an exit:

• Those who initially denied there was a need for any change (and put spokes in your wheels) start telling you things you told them months ago
• The team you set up to implement change needs little direction to get on with the day-to-day
• People start lifting parts of your presentations
• The CEO starts behaving as if you are a subordinate /direct report
• Targets have been surpassed
• What used to be change is now process
• You start getting restless

Sometimes I think there is something seriously dysfunctional in the work change agents do. We identify problems, devise solutions, roll our sleeves, get on with it, win some friends, make some enemies, build a legacy, and then.. just as things start to purr… we move on. We devise the exit strategy, agree handover timeframes and prepare to go back on the outside.

At times like this, I always delve into Patrick Dixon’s excellent Building a Better Business. Open any page. If you see something that resonates, in the change you have been driving, you will know that you have done a good job. And that it is time to get on with something else in your life.