*Note: This is a cross-posting of a post I wrote for AdFarm. Check it out here.

For some companies, social networks are kind of like monsters under the bed. Instead of thinking about the great upsides, these folks worry about over-sharing by employees, losing control over intellectual property, damaging their brands, losing productivity, fielding sensitive questions, unleashing embarrassing secrets and all manner of other bumps in the night.

But when you think about it, none of these things are any more of a threat because of social media. They stem from deeper business problems. And deeper business problems make prime fodder for snarky conversations on social networks.

So, while I believe it’s a great idea for every company to have a social media policy and a functioning understanding of the various channels, there are sometimes more pressing matters than choosing the right Twitter handle.

If any of the following apply to you, it might be time to work on something other than your Facebook Fan Page.

1. You’re leaky

If your company holds onto private information as well as a sieve holds onto water, the problem might be your employee training or internal security practices.

Journalists will tell you most of the whistleblowers and leaks they talk to are people who feel they’ve been silenced or punished for disagreeing with something they find objectionable. Fixing the problem might be as simple as training employees and managers on how to better voice and field complaints. It might also mean fixing what I call confidentially overload – or overusing confidentiality and secrecy to the point where they lose their seriousness. Product development memos are confidential. Birthday party memos probably don’t need to be.

2. You create customer service horror stories

If you’re a regular feature on The Consumerist, social media shouldn’t be your top priority. You may want to review your procedures before you start fielding complaints on the public stage. It’s a proving ground everyone can see, so if you say you provide great service, it needs to be a promise you can keep.

Handling customer issues can make or break your brand. And if you do a bad job, you’re undermining all your other efforts. That’s just as true online.

3. You ignore and/or take legal measures against your critics

If this applies to you, you’ll find your entry into social media a bumpy ride. Odds are there’s a flotilla of critics just waiting to take shots at you. And while I think you should absolutely face your critics wherever they may be, you need to figure out how you’re going to do it first.

Letting your lawyers do your dirty work only gives your critics an incredibly effective us vs them story to tell. Half-hearted apologies feel just as fake to those who receive them as to those who give them. Fighting emotion with pure fact works against everything we know about the human brain.

Honest dealings are the second most valuable currency online. The most valuable is reputation, and you’re not going to make a very good one if you can’t deal with disagreements.

Anything else?

Sometimes we all miss the forest for the trees. Take a step back and see if you can think of some other fundamental business problems that prevent companies from finding success in social media. I came up with three. Let’s see how many you can come up with in the comments.

Jacob can do horrible, unspeakable things with words. But he’s chosen to use his powers for good, not evil. Follow him @jacobedenfield or contact him directly at Jacob.Edenfield@adfarmonline.com.

Photo courtesy of http://jesshillis.com

If you don’t live under a rock, you’ve likely heard of or visited Mashable. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no better news bureau for the happenings in the social media realm. Mashable articles rack up scads of retweets and Diggs on a regular basis, and the site’s founder, Pete Cashmore, is a regular contributor to CNN Tech. You should definitely check out his most recent article on 2010′s hottest web trends.

Mashable is currently running its third annual Open Web Awards, honoring the best of the social web. And one nominee is giving the agricultural community – and the larger web community – reason to stand up and take notice. Michele Payn-Knoper (@mpaynknoper), agricultural speaker and founder of #AgChat, is one of the final five nominees for Twitter User of the Year.

It’s a nomination well-earned, and as a frequent voter for her, I’ll be thrilled if Michele wins. Her service within the world of agriculture and her role in better connecting producers with consumers make her a worthy recipient. The weekly streaming Twitter chat, #AgChat (Tuesdays 8-10 p.m. Eastern) and its monthly sibling, #FoodChat (Every second Tuesday, same time) are shining examples of one person’s bright idea enriching the lives of many others. Her Gate to Plate blog is also a great read.

Now, in addition to the chance to honor a deserving member of the ag community, there are a few other things we should all take away from this experience:

1. If you still labor under the misapprehension that farmers, ranchers, et al. don’t care about the online world, you’re dead f*cking wrong.

2. If you’re still doubting the value of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook for personal and professional use, it’s time to take another look.

Voting for the Open Web awards is open until December 13th, and you can cast a vote each and every day until then. With that said, I’d ask you to go ahead and put that Facebook or Twitter login info to good use. Click here and cast your vote for @mpaynknoper for Twitter User of the Year. If you want to see why other folks think Michele is a worthy recipient, check out the links at the end of the post.

This is a genuine chance to do something great in service of the business of growing things – and an opportunity to help a deserving recipient beat out the celebs. Don’t forget to take the time to vote every day between now and December 13th.

Cheers,

jae

Nate J. Taylor – The embodiment of service

Ray Prock – Honoring those that motivate us

Jeff Fowle – Why I support Michele Payn-Knoper for Twitter User of the Year

Janice Person – Twitter User of the Year Nominees Includes #AgChat Founder

Eliz Greene – More Than A Speaker! Why You Should Vote Michele Payn-Knoper Mashable’s Twitter User of the Year

Michele Payn-Knoper – Gate to Plate Blog

I’ll admit it. I’ve anthropomorphized a time or two. In any creative profession, it’s an easy fix to ascribe a like mind to an object or creature. It helps make old stories new again or create a more compelling interpersonal narrative where one doesn’t naturally exist (see: Cars, WALL-E, Toy Story, the entire Looney Toons catalogue, the Disney empire, Babe, Charlotte’s Web, California Cheese marketing, Chick-fil-a’s long-running gag and the Honda Fit commercials).

You can see from the list, anthropomorphizing can be helpful. It can be fun. It can be useful.

Most of the things on that list I like, remember and enjoy, save the Disney catalogue. With a younger sister, I watched a crooning Caribbean crab serenade two young lovers one too many times.

But there are a few places where anthropomorphizing shouldn’t be taken lightly. Like the animal welfare debate. For every happy cow, there’s a very unhappy cow nipping at your heels in the Google results.

You see, people are very clever, but our brains are even more clever.

I once took a seminar on Philosophy of the Mind, and we spend a good chunk of time discussing Theory of Mind. Basically, it’s our ability to, by attributing our own self-understanding to another, figure out what he or she may be thinking, what he or she intends to do or what underlying motives the subject may possess. It’s the mechanism that helps you anticipate and respond to questions in a meeting before they’re even asked. It’s what helps us offer helpful advice to a fellow sojourner. It’s the reason you talk to your dog like a baby. It’s the mechanism that allows us to function as a society without coming across as total dullards or feeling as if we have to constantly explain ourselves.

Theory of Mind makes the world work. It’s also what makes it so easy for groups like HSUS to solicit enormous amounts of money with heartstring-tugging ads and so difficult to sell a story of animal care based on sound science. Being a science buff myself, I kinda hate those odds.

By the way, if you’re interested in reading it, you can download the CAST paper from that last link for free. It’s a good read if you’re the type of person who gives a damn about the conclusions of logical, critical minds who study these issues day in and day out.

So maybe it’s a good thing we have a heifer from Wagner farm in North Dakota tweeting her story, following in the footsteps of the first four-legged Twitter star, Sockington.

After all, it should be a hell of a lot easier for good-hearted producers and veterinarians, who spend time around them every day, to write a better story about our anthropomorphized animals than the people with all the bucks but none of the science or experience on their side.

So here’s a call to arms. For all the folks out there with the ability to do so, give a tweet on behalf of your favorite sow, hen, heifer or steer. People want to know what they’re eating, but you have to reach them in a way they’re compelled to pay attention to. All the science in the world doesn’t go half as far as a great narrative that exploits the built-in mechanisms of the brain.

Cheers,

jae

That’s an analogy, for my my fellow word nerds. My folks made me do those before I was allowed to play outside as a child. Hated it then. Glad for it now.

Anyway, The idea is, your brand can (and should) be different things to different people. The trick is making that quantum state look like the only one there is to the people observing.

Informative lay science tangent:
Schrodinger’s Cat refers to a quantum paradox of one thing being able to inhabit two different states at once. In Schrodinger’s example, a cat in a box with a flask of poison can be to be both alive and dead at the same time based on a prior random event, but, when observed, be found to be either alive or dead. (wiki your brain)

The root of the problem came in the realization that in experiments on the wave/particle nature of photons (bits of light), these photons could behave as both a wave and a particle, but when observed, chose to behave as one or another. (wiki your brain)
End science tangent

You too can be both a wave and a particle. Inevitably, you’re trying to reach out to an audience that’s anything but monolithic. If you’re smart, you can be Schrodinger’s cat and be one thing to one observer and quite another thing to another observer. It’s a tall order, but if a cat can do it, you have cause for serious concern if you can’t manage.

The trick is to figure out where your audiences are. Different observers have different vantage points. Thus, by exploiting the spaces where they don’t overlap, you can be two things at once.

Of course, in an interconnected world, everyone is going to figure out that you’re two things at once. Funny thing is, observation makes the heart grow fonder.

Your old college friends may love you for the occasional drink-fueled reunion exploits that remind them of earlier days. Your co-workers may love you for your diligence, punctuality and reliable sobriety. One could argue you’re still the drunken debaucher at the same time you’re the reliable co-worker, but you choose to be one or the other based on who’s observing and a previous random event (in my case, usually that first drink). To point, neither group is going to think any less fondly of you as long as the behavior they observe outweighs the behavior they just hear about.

Be the wave-particle duality. Be two things to two different observers. It’s easier than you think, and a whole hell of a lot more effective than treating every audience as if they’re the same.

Cheers,

jae

Part 2 – Paying to be ignored OR how I learned to stop worrying and love the angry letters:

People who write angry letters (or E-mails or tweets or posts) are an interesting breed. I’ve met a few, and I don’t think there’s any unifying personality type there. I think, generally, they’re just people who’ve taken enough interest in a given topic to complain but not enough to propose a workable solution. Actually, I don’t have a single angry letter (or E-mail or tweet or post) in my files where someone genuinely expected a response to their concern from someone who could address it.

I suppose I should take a moment to say that I’m talking about people who write angry letters to companies with which they have an issue. Not to the Consumerists or to legal counsel. Those people are out for blood.

Anyway, one thing I can say about angry letter writers is, “To whom it may concern. Thank you for your interest. You make my job worth doing.”

The thing is, when you reach out to people for a living, there’s a real emptiness that sets in when you don’t solicit any response whatsoever. At the very least, when I do something on behalf of a client, I hope they receive an angry letter or two. After all, the law of averages in a world with a population of over six billion makes it a given that you can’t please all the people all the time. And if you’ve displeased a few, you’ve at least made a few happy.

If you’ve ever communicated in such a vapid, innocuous way that no one was even remotely impassioned by what you had to say, that’s a real problem. You’ve just wasted time or money or both. Simply, you’ve made a conscious decision to be ignored.

So, if you’re not tracking the effectiveness of your communications in any more formal fashion, at least be glad for those angry letters. It means you said or did something in a way that was worth the effort.

Cheers,

jae

Like anything new, when I bring up Twitter to my clients, I get a lot of sideways glances. Maybe it’s because I look like Hobo Jesus and think operating based on “institutional wisdom” is a contradiction in terms. Or maybe it’s just a healthy skepticism for something that is, for most, largely unproven.

Luckily, I have a few new arrows in my quiver. #IranElection, for instance. In particular, this was the Damascus Road moment for yours truly. Last Friday, sitting in front of my laptop, mesmerized by the wealth of first-hand accounts, photos and video coming my way from Tehran, I realized I was witnessing the world’s newest news bureau. Now couple that with the very public #CNNfail shaming at the same time.

Along with very productive tweetchats like #agchat and a very cohesive community of plugged-in ag professionals crystallizing and growing every day, this is a party that’s not to be missed. It’s a chance for genuine connection and a chance to add and share value. That’s something you can’t achieve with a print ad, a corporate Web site or a shiny TV spot. All those tactics still have an important place in a marketing mix, and they’re great for raising the profile of a product or issue, but when it comes to mobilizing people, engaging people and having a connection to your stakeholders, it’s time to jump into Twitter with both feet.

If you don’t think your audience members are there yet, I have news for you – many are. At the very least, they’re waiting for an invitation. Encourage that direct dialogue, and you’re providing a service to your organization and the people you hope to reach.

For now, Hobo Jesus is going to keep pushing the issue. Because I won’t be happy with my job performance until I start seeing follow notices from some familiar names.

Cheers,

jae