A while back I wrote an article about the fortress-like tendencies of the A-List bloggers and the sycophants who follow them. I compared it to an exclusive country club.

But as I’ve reached a wider audience and gained more experience on the social web, I’m learning that some of the online behaviors deserve even less credit than that.   A couple of anecdotes:

• Last month I met with a high-profile blogger/speaker who said he had been “black-balled” by those following Chris Brogan (not Chris himself) because of disagreements he lodged with the uber-blogger.
• Another top blogger told me conference speaking invitations had dried up since he criticized fellow A-list bloggers
• I recently politely disagreed with a number of high-profile folks … who promptly “unfollowed” me on Twitter
• One follower implied I was chauvinistic because I had more men than women on one Follow Friday tweet
• A nasty and unprofessional online fight recently erupted between East Coast and West Coast factions over the issue of social media credentialing.
• Recently, a well-known social media pundit named me as one their favorite bloggers.  One of my followers said she now had a “moral dilemma” of whether to follow me or not because she did not like the other blogger. 

Pardon me folks, but doesn’t this sound a lot like high school?  Or worse.

The petty politics of every day relationships are exacerbated on the social web because we are making very limited assessments of people based on their written words. People seem quicker to judge, and harsher in their reactions without thinking about the real live human beings behind those little icons.  I’ve been guilty too.

In the end, I can only be accountable for myself.  The social web mantra of  “authenticity” and “transparency” is a load of crap.  Nobody is truly authentic. Nobody is truly transparent.  Nor should you be!  However, there is an urgent need for civility, tolerance and honesty in this space.  I’ll try my best to walk the talk in those areas and if this makes any sense to you, maybe we can support each other and make the change together. 

Thanks for hanging in there through the rant.  You may now return to your social media high school home room, wherever that may be.  : )

Community alert: Sean Williams, a regular contributor to {grow}, pointed out this timely WSJ op-ed piece  on the subject of social web civility. Which was a civil thing to do.

One thing about blogging –  Headlines matter!  And this is what I’ve learned from standing at the grocery checkout line:  Nobody does headlines better than Cosmopolitan magazine.

So I’ve decided to tear a page from the Cosmo playbook and make my blog fresher and sexier.  Here are the upcoming {grow} posts you can look forward to in 2010:

• RSS — Really Sensational Sex!
• Five steps to a curvy new blog
• Pete Cashmore: Our sexy uber nerd!
• 10 ways to tone your butt while text messaging
• Your best sex ever!  They don’t call it the mashup for nothing
• The Amanda Chapel Diet – Swearing your way to a sexy new you
• America’s hottest tweetup cities!
• From You Tubby to YouTube — Techniques to make you look 10 pounds thinner!
• Facebook break-ups!  Your most outrageous stories!
• Google: The REAL “G Spot!”
• Ten make-up tips for looking good even in those stupid little Twitter pictures
• Chris Brogan’s total makeover

So what do you think?  Am I on to something here?  Have I become too sexy for my blog?

Disclosure: For those of you who may be new to this blog, this is an attempt to be amusing.   I do it now and then to spice things up a bit around here. 

I don’t look back too often but I thought this would be a good time to reflect on a few 2009{grow} posts that seemed to make a difference.

1)   The Social Media Country Club

Esteemed blogger Danny Brown called this article “The best blog post of the year.  Period.”   This post touched on a taboo subject of the closed society of A-List bloggers and the “economy of favors” that gets in the way of dissension and innovation.  The comment section is well … “lively!”   I think this post made a difference because it started a conversation that has continued long after this post first appeared in August, 2009.

2)   Can you out-source authenticity?

This post was a breakthrough in some ways. I think this was kind of a watershed in the community’s evolution. We had grown from being a blog to a group of friends creating some powerful content together.  This article inspired related posts by Jason Falls, Danny Brown and Bill Sledzik. The work of the community in this post set the framework for an article on best practices for ghost-blogging.

3)   Five social media myths that MUST STOP NOW!

“Myths” was my most tweeted and talked-about blog post of the year.   Calling out the sacred cows hit a nerve.

4)   Social Media Measurement: It’s like being a Great Bartender

In 2009 I wrote extensively about social media and measurement but this guest post from Jamie Lee Wallace summed it up so beautifully and capped an ambitious series.  She described the process like bartending — yes, you have to measure how the job rings the cash register, but there are a lot of intangibles, too.  A blogger or two have made careers writing about ROI, but this post, and the companion piece, Your Social Media ROI Shock Treatment, are really all you need to know on the subject. It’s not rocket science.

5)   The Monetization of Chris Brogan

This post was significant for a couple of reasons.  First, it used uber-bloggerBrogan as an example growing pains in the social media field.  But it also demonstrated that the Country Club was still alive and well. The comment section got a bit out of control.  Here’s a best practice folks: Read posts before commenting on them. : )  This is another post that spurred conversation far beyond the boundaries of {grow).

6)   Social media expert: Women need not apply?

There are just some weird things going on between the social web and gender. I still don’t quite understand it, but the community dove into a touchy subject bravely, as always.  This subject was continued on the post, Is blogging a man’s job?  … and unfortunately will probably be debated for the foreseeable future.

7)   Twitter for Business: Four break-through insights

This post kicked-off {grow}’s very productive relationship with Dr. Ben Hanna.  The VP of Business.com and his research has been featured in seven different articles this year and I’m grateful he has been so generous with the community.

8)   Managing Generation Zombie

Not a very popular post but I think one of the most important ones.  It addresses one of the most over-looked aspects of the inexorable connection between technology and people.  The impact of the social web and the workforce of the future is vitally important.  The thinking behind this post led to This is the future of social media, one of the most popular posts of 2009 and was cited in many end-of the-year round-ups.

9)   A Formula for Social Media Success

This set out to codify some observations about what it takes to really create business benefits on the social web. It seemed to resonate with people and had an illustration I thought was quite funny! 

10)   The REAL math behind your followers Mr Twitter Bigshot!

I tried to bring a little humor on to the scene now and then, even when making a serious point.  This was also a hugely popular post.  It was also a lot of work!

It was difficult picking a “top 10″ but there you go!   Thanks so much for being part of this great community. It was such a fun year and I’m looking forward to great things from the {grow} community in 2010.

At this time of year I’m not thinking too much about marketing and business so I just thought I would tell you a Christmas Story.

This is the tale of the only Christmas present that ever made me cry.  

When I was a little boy, all I ever wanted for Christmas was a Lite Brite set.  Lite Brite was the Photo Shop of the 1960s.  You could create beautiful picture light shows by manipulating tiny colored pegs on a black paper screen.   This was right up there with 8-track tapes and Seas Monkeys as the technology marvel of my generation.   

But I was the eldest of six kids and we didn’t have a lot of extra money for Christmas presents.  Actually asking for something as glorious and exotic as a Lite Brite seemed impossibly greedy.  So I kept my little secret between me and Santa Claus.  Every Christmas morning I would open my presents and find socks and shirts and maybe a baseball, but no Lite Brite.  Yuletide after Yuletide passed, never brightened by the phantasmagoria of Lite Brite masterpieces that lived so vividly in my mind.

Eventually I grew out of my Lite Brite phase but never really stopped wondering what it would be like to feel that little peg break through the crisp black paper to unleash its beauty.

Fast forward 30 years.  I received a mysterious Federal Express package.  No return address and it said “Don’t open until Christmas!”  Being just a little spooked in an era of terrorist bombings and anthrax letters, I opened it right away.  It was a Lite Brite set with this enclosed message: 

Dear Mark,

You will never guess what happened. I was cleaning out my sleigh and found this Lite Brite set for you!  It must have dropped from my sack many years ago.  You were a good little boy and deserved this present.  Sorry I goofed.  Have fun!  

 Love,  Santa

A grown man had tears in his eyes as he finally opened up his Lite Brite set, a gift from a sister who had paid attention, kept a secret, and had a loving heart.

May your Christmas, and every day, be filled with the joy and wonder of a child painting with little colored pegs!  — Mark

I’m writing this blog as a way of accepting a challenge from my friend Venessa Miemis.  Always glad to be pushed in new ways!

I’ve been a devoted Twitter-er for nearly a year.  In that period I’ve moved from reluctant skeptic to poster-child advocate.  Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned.

1) Respect the person behind the icon.  Early on I “blocked” a young lady because her icon was a little provocative. My assumption was that she was spamming me or worse.  Later that day she wrote a comment on my blog – she was a student trying to learn from me and she was disappointed that I turned out to be a smug elitist. Wow, talk about being humbled. I apologized profusely and now we’re friends.  This was a great lesson and I’m glad it happened early in my Twitter career. Think about the real people behind the icon.  You should be honored they are interested in you. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

2) This is best kind of networking.  About a year ago I was attending a live, weekly meeting with a networking group that had the initials “TNT.”  Every time an attendee reported something positive, everybody would suddenly yell “BOOM!”   TNT … get it?  Scared the crap out of me every time. The long meetings, the referrals, the score-keeping and gimmicks – not for me, especially after I discovered the power of Twitter.  Nearly every customer, partner and supplier I currently work with came through Twitter. This is the NEW networking. No limits. No scary noises.

3) It’s not for kids. This is a business tool.  Get in the game.

4) It’s not for everyone.  I have not quite placed my finger on it, but there is a certain subset of the human race who will not, can not tweet.  I think it has something to do with being an engineer, but I need more data on this. : )  Accept them. Love them. Move on.

5) Go to the party.  One of the most over-used descriptions of how to succeed on Twitter is adopting the “cocktail party” persona:  Be nice, entertain, be helpful, don’t sell.  It might be trite, but it’s also about the best advice you can give anybody.  It’s a metaphor that’s easy to understand and it’s accurate. If people will pay attention to you at a party, they’ll pay attention to you on Twitter.

6) Adapt and adopt.   If you spend too much time trying to “find your audience,” you will completely miss the amazing audience who has found YOU.

7) Twitter is an appetizer. But to get to the main course, you need to write your new friends, call them and, if possible, meet them.  That’s when the real magic happens!

8) Don’t tweet drunk.  ‘Nuff said.

Please tell me the lessons you’ve learned from Twitter.

Illustration: This visualization came from a place calledMentionMap. I have no idea what it means but it looks very high-tech and cool, don’t you think?  I have always wanted to be a node. 

The social web may be the most revolutionary marketing tool since the advent of radio.  I don’t have to tell you why at this point.  But for all the opportunities, there can also be danger, if the technology is mis-applied or misunderstood. Here are some ways social media can destroy customer relationships:

1)      Hit and run communication.  Many people, especially under-20s who have been conditioned to handle conflict over text messages, mis-use the technology. If 80 percent of communication is non-verbal, how much is lost when customers provide customer service issues over a tweet?  We are more likely to be unprofessional, harsh and inappropriate in writing than in a live conversation and unfortunately, more and more important customer interactions are taking place over short-form messages.

2)      False sense of expectations.  I’ve observed that some companies are urgently getting into the social media scene and then being unprepared for the response.  It’s so easy to connect with customers today, but you better be prepared to connect with them in a meaningful and appropriate way or you will disappoint them and then lose them.

3)      Over-dependence on social media. Pick up a phone. Make a personal visit. Write a thank-you note. Don’t get too hooked on communicating through only social media, especially if it’s not your customer’s preferred way to communicate.   Going old school can actually help you stand out.

4)      Wrong person in charge.  Some companies pick a person to run their social media efforts just because they have a nice Facebook page. Wrong.  Like your website or your sales and customer service efforts, this is your front line of defense. I would much rather have an experienced customer service person learn social media than a social media person learn customer service.

5)      Customers are learning to game us.  I had a company president tell me that he no longer responds to customer complaints over Twitter. Customers caught on that complaints meant free merchandise and the company became overwhelmed. So they just stopped until they can figure out a solution.  Now even people with real complaints are being ignored because it is too difficult to separate the real problems from the gamers.

So, there are a few dangers withn the opportunities. What do you think?  What customer-related dangers could be prompted by using social media in your business?

I’m Merry. I’m Jolly.  I’m in the Holiday Spirit. But this is just dumb.

Illustration: http://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/unconventional-warmers

I recently moved into an older home that needs a lot of repair work.  As luck would have it, I had a new Twitter follower this week, @knoxhandyman. Sounded like just the trick.  Called him up.  Met him. Hired him.

And he did a great job so I thought I would provide this interview with this hard-working social media entrepreneur:

Mark: How long have you been a repairman, Lance?

Lance:  Well I’m 49 and I’ve been doing this about all my life, so let’s just say a long time.

Mark:  And how long have you been on Twitter?

Lance:  About 5-6 months.

Mark:  How much time do you spend on Twitter?

Lance:  None. My wife handles all that.  She asks me what I’m doing and where I’m going and what customers are saying and then she puts it out there.  I don’t have time for it.  I’m out here working.

Mark:  And do you use anything else beside Twitter?

Lance: Yeah, I get a tremendous amount of work from Craig’s List and she also puts it on Facebook.

Mark: So is Twitter working for you?

Lance: Seems to be. I’ve had a whole let better success there than newspaper advertising, I know that much. Took out a couple of newspaper ads. Zip.

Mark:  And how much of your business is coming from the social media channels?

Lance: I don’t really know.  I don’t keep track of it very well, which drives my wife crazy.  To me, it’s all pretty much word of mouth. It’s a call to my cell phone, that’s all that matters! 

And so I let Lance get back to re-wiring my new outdoor lights, another successful Twitter job completed!

I wanted to share this with you because it represents the REAL world of social media and working people. It’s not necessarily about the corporate world of “Trust Agents” or community managers or sponsored posts.  It’s about hard-working families and small businesses trying to figure out how to make a buck.  Go Lance.

I was engaging in an interesting intellectual discussion on this question with my friend Jeremy Victor and he kindly offered to lend his expert perspective to a guest post.  Take it away, Jeremy:

As the founder of an online publishing company, you might expect my answer to this question to be a resounding and emphatic, “YES!”  … but it isn’t.  But as much as I’m a technologist and marketer, I’m also a realist.

We are at a pivotal time in history — not just the convergence of print, digital, and social media, but also the transition of how media is created, packaged, and consumed. And that’s the challenge facing trade publications. So rather than speak to the demise of the “dead man walking,” I’ll offer a prescription to inject some vitality back into the industry. How’s that for helping the competition?

The key to the demise

By far, the biggest factor impacting the trade publication industry is a lack of innovation. High profit margins of the past have lulled the industry to sleep. When the Internet arrived, publishers initially ignored this “fad.”  On top of that, the mid-2000s brought rising paper costs and increasing postal rates. Pile the 2008 Recession on top and the industry has no room for innovation.  It’s focused on survival.

Backed into a corner, publishers started doing things like selling covers. For example, this week’s Advertising Age cover belongs to the Jackson’s new reality show.  What does that say about the state of the industry? Now the talk has turned to pay for premium content models. Innovative? Not so much. That is reactionary, not the Apple-like , market-changing innovation that’s necessary to cure what’s ailing the industry.

 Ideas for re-invention

When was the last time you received your mail actually hoping the trade magazine you subscribe to was there? With online content available anytime, anywhere, on a growing number of devices, trade publishers need to put the focus on creating remarkable content that will make it exciting to actually receive a magazine again.

A few ideas to spark innovation in the trade publication industry:

• Develop an iPhone application tightly integrated with both the editorial and advertising.
• For ads, include something like a bar code that can be scanned with the iPhone, providing  access to discounts or special promotions only available in the print publication. Membership has its privileges, right?
• Integrate the LinkedIn API or Facebook Connect to enable readers to easily submit their contact information to the advertisers as a lead request.
• Create videos or podcasts that accompany the articles that can only be accessed by using a code from within the magazine.
• Gaming – Trade magazines don’t have to be dry, bland technical journals, do they? Sure case studies and featured articles are necessary, but what’s saying you can’t surround that with some social games? Try connecting the subscriber base through Facebook or LinkedIn – or a newly created publisher branded community. 
• Marry the content and the distribution devices.  Intertwine paper and online content.  

 That’s my prescription. Or have the trade publications already heard those fateful words from the doctor, “We’re sorry, there’s just nothing more that we can do?”

Jeremy Victor is the founder of Make Good Media and publisher of BtoBbloggers.com.  He can also be found on Twitter at @JeremyVictor.

I read a blog post yesterday that staggered me. It was about a woman who could only find success as a blogger and freelance writer after she posed as a man (under the name of James Chartrand).

The gist of the tale was that she was a talented, hard-working individual who could not make enough to feed her family until she lied about her gender. Once she became “James,” her life changed. She’s been living a double life for years and has attracted a loyal audience to her photo-free, phone-free persona. It made me sad and angry … and it stirred a lot of other people too.  It was tweeted more than 2,000 times and received more than 400 comments.

One of those commenters was Jenn Whinnem, who suggested that I blog about the underlying issues.  I thought it would be a richer experience if I could capture a woman’s perspective too, so I embarked on an experiment – a virtual chat that became today’s blog post on gender inequality on the social web …

Mark: My initial reaction was “stunned” that this kind of blatant inequality still exists, especially on the social web, which is supposed to be so democratic. I guess that myth has been exploded.

Jenn: I was saddened, but not surprised.  Since establishing a professional presence on the social web, I haven’t experienced discrimination (to my knowledge).  I have, of course, experienced sexism in the workplace – everywhere really – so I see no reason why it would be any different on the Internet. I realize James Chartrand was pushed into outing herself, but I’m really grateful for the attention her decision has brought to this topic.  When I’ve been offered a salary, I’ve had no idea if a man would have been offered more.  But “James” knows, and she shared it with us.

Mark: You said you didn’t know if you had experienced discrimination on the web and this made me think about my own behaviors. I looked at who I work with, who I am connecting with on the web, who has been guest-blogging … just any data points I could find. I guess I’m trying to judge my behavior by the numbers. Does that seem silly?

Jenn: I don’t think it’s silly at all.  Reviewing one’s own behavior is necessary for change. As for examining the ‘numbers’ aspect of it — well, that’s a pretty hot topic in social media – proving that the time spent using social media leads to dollars for your business.  I know it’s something you’ve written about, Mark.  It’s important to know which numbers you’re paying attention to and knowing what they mean.  You can look at the number of men vs. women you’re following on Twitter, but what is that going to tell you?

Mark: At the end of the day, equality has to come through self-awareness. I can try to look at numbers and still fool myself about how I treat people. I had one boss who treated women terribly … to the point that I was compelled to address it. He said, “Look at all the women who report to me. How can you say I have a problem with women?” In his case, the numbers supported “equal treatment” but his actions were incongruent. So Jenn, what do you do to see yourself more accurately?  To make sure you’re congruent?

Jenn: That anecdote is a perfect example of how someone can fool themselves into thinking they’re ‘okay’ and why there’s a real need to keep fighting for equality. For me, that fight begins with my own behavior.  I’m the first to admit that I’m often guilty of ‘incongruent’ behavior, and like you, Mark, I find that awareness is the first step in correcting that.  I also had an excellent boss (hi Alice!) early in my career who lived the mantra “nurture other women, don’t compete with them.”  And, when I think about it, this complements nicely the social media mantra “promote others, not yourself.”

Mark: Do you think that is a social media mantra or a feminine mantra?  I ask this because the comment section in my previous blog post on this topic contained speculation that some inequality stems from the fact that men are perceived to be better self-promoters than women. I think the male social media mantra might be “help others, promote yourself.”

Jenn: I’ve read the “promote others” mantra in several blog posts, but didn’t notice if the authors were men or women.  But I don’t know that this is a feminine mantra. My experience has been, at least in the work place, that women are more likely to tear each other down to eliminate the competition, rather than help each other out.  This is why Alice’s advice was so powerful to me.

I find the conversation about men or women being better at self-promotion more difficult.  If we look at gender roles in this culture broadly, I would say that self-promotion goes against socially desirable behavior for women.

Mark: That’s an interesting observation. Perhaps this cultural expectation for socially-desirable “female” behavior is just exacerbated on the narcissistic social web. Instead of being the great equalizer everybody hopes for, it could actually highlight and reinforce aspects of our culture that keep gender inequality in place?

Jenn: If I can back up a minute, where did the idea of social media as an equalizer come from?  We encourage the idea of “being human” on the social web … and any space where people are invited to be human means they’re going to do just that.  On the positive side, I think this kind of highlighting is a good thing.  When attention is drawn to inequalities, it starts to change.  Something of a theme in our conversation.

Mark: I say “equalizer” because presumably having access to free, global, immediate communication should provide genders, races, religions, rich and poor with precisely the same opportunity to communicate and connect. But I guess you’re right. If underlying inequalities persist, it’s wrong to think that will change by simply having a new way to broadcast it. It drives home for me again how silly it is when people say the social web “changes everything.” Obviously it doesn’t.

Jenn, our dialogue has brought up some vital discussion points. Let’s turn it over to the {grow} community to add to the discussion …

Jenn Whinnem is a Communication Specialist focusing on developing social media strategy for Golden Compass. You can connect with her via @JennWhinnem on Twitter.