7 Key Rules of Social Optimisation

These "rules of engagement" apply to Social Optimisation both online and off. Maximise your impact while minimising effort through following them.

1. BE AUTHENTIC: You can only be what or who you are. This is dynamic and changing as well as multidimensional. Represent that clearly and with both pride in success and humility in failures. It is much easier and will be respected. Deception will only come back to bite you.
   
   
2. DEFINE GOALS: Understanding what you hope to gain from a relationship minimises time spent on relationships with no gain, and often drain. Have a strategy and understand both what you have to offer as well as what you need. Unhealthy relationships as well as those connections that just create added noise without relevance most likely should be removed to make room for accomplishing goals.
   
   
3. LISTEN: There is much to be learned by listening, we gain insight into others, their needs, their feedback, the knowledge and their experience. Understand who they are and learn their story, this creates depth in relationships.
   
   
4. SHARE: Knowledge is a wonderful thing, but without sharing it is worthless. Share what you know with others and build. Connect peers that have mutual needs or potential synergies.
   
   
5. BE PRESENT: Isolation is not social. Learn where your peers, or audience are and participate in the conversation.
   
   
6. BE POSITIVE: Solutions never come from whining or shooting the messenger. If you see opportunity for improvement suggest it. When you come across something you like, provide praise.
   
   
7. BE CURRENT: Update your peers on your status, on things that are relevant and keep current with the tools which will always be evolving.

These are the foundation steps. They are meant to be generalised to accomodate both online and offline as well as individual and organisation scenarios. I welcome your thoughts on these "rules of engagement".

Summer is Social

In the effort to maximise my social impact and effectiveness, I will be focusing on my off-line social networks and developing curriculum during the Summer. I will be interviewing a lot of interesting people on the impact of social media and social networks and their lives and their businesses/work. I hope to compile a few highlights for a weekly blog entry and will return to more frequent entries at the end of August. So please check back and read through previous entries for morsels of social optimisation for impact.

Storytelling for Impact and Resonance

We are writing our own stories everyday, whether we take pen to paper, fingers to keyboard or tell it to a friend/ colleague. These are the stories that are woven into those of others. From individual letters to condensed newsletters, we evolved to the email and online newsletters. Creating websites and blogs and connecting through online communities spreads our stories to further corners of the globe. But, have the stories gotten lost? Do we remember to share how they impact our lives or others, rather than just the latest sales pitch or annual reports, what we ate for breakfast or what we are reading.

In pulling together the cases for my book, I am more determined than ever to tell the story from the impact perspective. How does social media effect our lives and our businesses. I am one individual with many roles which affect how I am impacted by any story. I, the shareholder, the executive, the speaker, the teacher, the developer, the social entrepreneur, the writer, the mother, the wife, the sister want to write a book that I would enjoy reading, that will resonate. I interview the people behind the case studies and hear the experiences and misadventures with social media and social networks. These speak to me with far greater resonance than the case studies. After all, "social" is about people. So, I am changing my strategy in collecting content. I will interview and collect stories of impact. These stories need to be shared. They are real. They impact our lives, our communities, our businesses and our futures.

Has social media or your involvement in social networking had an impact on you, your business and/or your community. Please tell me your story. Let me interview you to share it with others.

Social Media Not Just Marketing & Socializing

Finding the holy grail of engagement in social media, we have to be ready to take it on whole heartedly. This means not just throwing a web page or fan page up or even creating a social platform for participants. It means interacting and "engaging" for the maximum effect. Think in terms of stakeholders/people/social. It means listening and speaking.

Why do we participate in LinkedIn and keep our profiles fresh? To represent ourselves accurately in the case of a referral or a request. Why do we participate in a group? Because it is of interest and stimulating. Otherwise we become "lurkers" in our interactions online. We log many hours but never leave a trace, besides a number in the Analytics (which might just as well register the time while I leave my computer on a webpage while I go to lunch).

Let's look at several different forms and impact of engagement. First, PLAN!
What is the purpose? Is it engaging my consumers? Communicating with my shareholders? Selling something? Recruiting? Connecting remote teams? Define resources/time I have/wish to commit to it. In this case, let's say, I create a blog and start by talking about my work and things that impact my business and what I think is interesting about it. Hmm, the analytics show low traffic. Promote it with tags relating to the posts on other related social media sites. Ok, good start, still not much though. Remember that someone needs to be interested. So write to your audience. Your strategy includes understanding who you are communicating with. Context delivers quality and increases interest.

The beauty of social media is that it is based on "user generated content" (UGC), that means there is a person behind it. Speak to the person and show that you are one too, in other words, respond. What you are building is TRUST and RELATIONSHIPS. This is not limited to the world of marketing, but to the sphere of people. People are your peers, shareholders, employees, clients, customers, members, designers and developers, testers, and more. They will be talking regardless. Become part of the conversation.

Entrepreneurs on twitter

This is a response to a tweet from Furqan Nazeeri (@altgate) listing 67 entrepreneurs on twitter. I am afraid I am not very good at limiting myself in 140 characters, so I decided to write him an email and share it with my readers. I responded to his post as there were no women on his list. Naturally he responded asking for suggestions. In an effort to respond, I realised, yet again, that their presence is greatly lacking. I referred @ariannahuff, @maggiefox, @charleneli, @adrianne and @connectedwomen based on their quality of interactions.

Two things stood out to me. I am curious if others have seen these trends as well. Note: these are observations, not judgements, and very generalised. The first is that women entrepreneurs often focus on coaching and soft skills, leading to small businesses that don't dare to think big. If they are on twitter they use it as a social update tool only or references to their own services only (which doesn't encourage others to follow them). If this is the type of interaction, I can see why they might consider it a time drain without much ROI. I guess there is a lot of work to be done.

The other trend I observe here is that twitter is still perceived very much an American toy to the rest of the world. I looked through my list of who I follow (keep in mind I only follow based on context of social media optimisation and social entrepreneurship) and the vast majority were US west coast based. Some of the women entrepreneurs that I thought would be an obvious hit in terms of twitter, didn't have a presence at all (ie. Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital and Stina Honkamaa of Google Sweden, link in Swedish) or they only had a social one.

Entrepreneurs need to capture, listen and interact with their audience. If done effectively, participating on twitter with a strategy as part of overall strategy, will have a positive ROI. Twitter etiquette by Julie Niesen is a good place to start. The playing field is level, let's keep it that way. Thanks Furqan for sparking the question. I will continue my quest to support and share the stories of those who are succeeding as well as to encourage best practice for those who've just begun. Please feel free to send me ideas.

Jason Goldberg on R&D and Social Media

This is a powerful example of how we should be developing our strategies to incorporate social media in all stages in the future. Social media is not just for marketing and brand building.

Social Optimisation

People are what make things social. Our interactions with people are online, off-line, in the office, board room, and classroom, with our clients, shareholders, customers, friends and family. So, let us not mix up the terms "social media optimisation" and "social optimisation." Social media optimisation is about maximising the positive impact while minimising the effort when using social media channels for communications with people on-line. Social optimising includes the off-line relationships that are often (but not always) the foundation of these relationships and gaining the maximum mutual benefit from them. Where we are present for face to face interactions, or who we have shared history with can determine a great deal. The end result when we optimise is quality, improvement through learning and dialog, depth in mutual understanding and creation of sustainable relationships. The additional benefit is the we create more time to enjoy our successful relationships and ourselves: balance. Time is the ultimate return on investment (ROI) of social optimisation. Time is money, don't waste it, enjoy it.

Whether you apply these terms to a corporate strategy or to your individual approach, the end results are the same. Optimising requires understanding what you want to achieve, your strategy, applying the best tools to communicate with your people (where are they already), creating a dialog, listening to the response, and maintaining your relationships. Social optimisation requires application of the three basic rules (REAL, RELATIVE and RESPECT) to create sustainable quality relationships that will benefit you whether you are social for recruiting, branding, R&D, team building, selling or just keeping in touch with friends. In the end the "social" comes down to the person at the other end.