Sure the social web is filled with rants and quacks, but I’ve also been thinking about how the science and technology of this channel lifts people up, and perhaps even makes us better in a deeper, spiritual way.  Here are a couple of personal observations. I would love to hear what you think!

Spiritual touchpoints

I was feeling kind of bitchy this week and wrote a bitchy blog post to go right along with my mood.  It was supposed to run today.  Then I read Danny Brown’s post on leadership which reminded me that sometimes we need to think bigger about ourselves and the world.  I decided the universe didn’t need another bitchy blog post and that I could do better.  So I trashed it.

I experience these tiny tugs of hope, optimism and encouragement every day.  Little social strings between me and others, pushing, pulling, inspiring me to do better, to think bigger about my social media community and the world.  I am evolving in positive ways because of it.

Have you surrounded yourself with these spiritual touchpoints too?

The communion of community

Recently a woman in my city lost her 18-year-old son in a tragic and violent drug-related death.   Her pain was exacerbated by questions about how police handled the case, which played out in a public forum.

I really don’t know this woman, but I have children too and the agony that came out on her blog posts touched me and probably thousands of others like me. We were a community of strangers united in grief.  We connected through Twitter, through comments, through prayer for her family.

I’ve seen this same kind of communion of strangers after the Haiti earthquake and the Nashville flood.  People used technology for a higher purpose, to commune with the needy, displaced and heart-broken.  This gives me so much hope.

Igniting Passion

I’ve just read the “Brains on Fire” book (recommended – no affiliation other than profound admiration!).

The agency by the same name preaches that the social web is an opportunity to create not just “conversation,” but movements. Watch this short video they created for Love 146. I dare you not be outraged, shocked and moved.

Love 146 works toward the abolition of child sex trafficking and exploitation.  Brains on Fire created a movement by igniting passion through stories, images, even music and art.  This is work that is measurably changing the lives of forgotten children.  This is the social web — and the human spirit — at its best.

Love one another

There are people I have met on the social web who love and care about me.

That is probably the sappiest thing I have ever written but it is undeniable and true so why not say it?  The Internet now allows you to find your folks wherever they may be, to establish your personal movement.

Does this sound weird to you?  I think it can happen for anybody if you give it a chance.  The social web is spreading love from country to country and server to server, to laptops, smart phones, iPads and people. It’s amazing to think about.  More love in more places around the world gotta be a good thing,  right?

A global heartbeat

I am in daily contact with people who inspire me from Sweden, Malaysia, Jordan, France, Australia, Russia and many other nations.  Perhaps you are too.

Pause for a moment and realize that you and I are experiencing a milestone in human history.  A profound and spiritual milestone, I think. For the first time we have access to free, real-time, global communications.   The ability to make these connections were not available to us just a few years ago.

And this is just the beginning. Sure, Facebook is the home to Farmville and about every other inane concept known to man. But don’t dwell there.  This platform alone is providing an opportunity to unite hundreds of millions of people.  Hundreds … of millions … of people. Doesn’t that take your breath away?

Twitter enabled a revolutionary movement in Iran. It failed … this time.  The power of technology to connect, nurture, and teach will eventually out-run the technology that is trying to control and contain it.  We WILL be connected and then there will be one global heartbeat pulsing through the social web.

Look through the silliness, cut through the drivel, ignore the hate.  There is a core light of hope streaming above it all with the potential to unite us, heal us, and inspire us no matter who or where we are.

Unless you’ve been in a cave this week, it would have been hard to avoid the splendid, amazing and entertaining Old Spice media blitz, which includes brilliant ads and one of the best social media campaigns in the young history of the channel.

“Hello Ladies,” says the oh-so-manly Old Spice guy. “Does your man look like me?  No.  Can he smell like me? Yes.”

While the hilarious Old Spice ads have been an Internet hit on their own for months (5.5 million views), everything changed this week.

As TNW reports, the Old Spice social media team had secretly been collecting people’s – and especially celebrity – questions and responses across Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo Answers, and were preparing for this week’s all-day-video-shoot where Shirtless Old Spice Guy (Isaiah Mustafa) would provide video responses. This included providing a proxy wedding proposal (that was accepted!).

Literally, an over-night marketing legend was created (here’s a link to some of the stats).

I don’t need to re-hash the details of the campaign.  Instead I’d like to point out that this is an extremely rare example of a brand attempting to entirely re-invent itself.  To accomplish that, you need it all — vision, guts, brilliance, execution, and a lot of advertising money.

There have been plenty of others who have tried to go down this perilous path and failed (remember “it’s not your father’s Oldsmobile?”).  This drive to resuscitate Old Spice may go down as one of the most ballsy moves in marketing history.

Despite numerous attempts at an updated image, OldSpice was still languishing behind edgier brands like Axe. Wouldn’t you have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the ad agency (Wieden+Kennedy) made this pitch: “While the  historical Old Spice customer is an ulta-conservative white male in his mid-50s, we would like our new spokesperson to be a half-naked black man flaunting his manliness to women under 40.”  Sure, the social media is genius. But what I admire most is that they may have finally taken a quantum-leap toward achieving this:
Old Spice … the pungent, stinging stuff my DAD used to splash on his face each morning, is now a trending topic on Twitter, not to mention riding the top of Digg, Reddit and a ton of mainstream news stories. The story is all the more remarkable because of how awful Old Spice ads have been in recent years. Remember the “centaur” ad during the Super Bowl?

Another break-through aspect of this campaign is how a blue-chip brand truly integrated a multi-million-dollar mainstream advertising campaign with the social web.  Even recent successes like the wildly-successful Nike World Cup mini-movie seemed to occupy a special niche as a pure social media play.  Can you think of another high-profile example where the TV spokesperson is really interacting and responding to people on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube? This may be the start of real integration.

This social media campaign has built tremendous momentum in just a few days. Will this actually sell body wash?  What will happen to the brand’s core demographic?  Will we witness a true marketing miracle? Will the Old Spice Guy suffer from (ahem) over-exposure?

And now it appears that the social media onslaught has just as quickly some to an end. Today, the “Guy,” chainsaw in hand, says in a final tweet and video “like all great things this too must end.”  And then he catches a giant fish that falls from nowhere.

So what will happen next in this campaign? Some guesses:

• Customer contributions to their own home-made shower commercials
• Shirtless guy cameo appearances in real TV shows
• Humorous , longer YouTube productions with how-to tips on how to be manly

What do you think?  I hope you’ll join me in appreciating this really special marketing campaign and tell me what you think about it in the comment section.

By the way, this blog post is dedicated to Arminda Lindsay (@AllArminda). Why?  Because she asked me to. You should know by now that I am basically the {grow} community’s personal blogger … kind of your word valet.   And Arminda wanted me to write about a half-naked black man.  So I did.

I’d like to start with an excerpt from a a recent Gregg Morris post. This is an email from one of his associates, expressing frustration at an inability to convince small businesses to engage in social media marketing:

Social networking is making zero inroads into any of the businesses (SMBs) we have visited and interest in “mining” those networks is similarly zero.  It’s not that they are rejected as future possibilities, but rather that SMBs haven’t time for it, since they sense the costs far exceed the benefits … The facts are the facts – SMBs are still the same as they always were: overworked, scratching for dollars, but now fighting even harder for market share. They are competing not just with local competition but also with online, distant suppliers and, of course, big box retailers.

To the point: Joe average – architect, restaurant owner, retail store – are not stupid, nor are they unaware of the need to handle their customers better. All I see … is the same, stupid Social CRM Expert-type of messaging. A bunch of esoteric bullshit skimming the surface of the problem, with no real solution offered. Everywhere I look, they all say the same thing: “You have to communicate with your customer…”, “you need to serve your customer…”, “you need to do this, that or the other…”. Lots of “you needs”, but few “here’s exactly how”

This little rant hit a chord for me because I teach a social media marketing class for small businesses and I constantly hear these same concerns.

There is a business cultural gap that is keeping many SMB’s from working this channel: Typical SMB ”advertising” is a hand-off. All the work is done by an ad agency and/or the advertising sales people.  There is little personal time expenditure and the cost/benefit is usually easily measurable. Not so with social media marketing.  There is more hands-on doing and the results may not be immediate.

When I consult with small businesses, I recognize that for many, the time commitments and demands of maintaining a consistent, effective presence seems overwhelming so I help them cut through the hype and FOCUS.  I encourage them to consider five very practical questions:

1) Do I know enough about social media marketing to make the right decision for my business?  Not knowing the possibilities would be the same disadvantage as operating a business without knowing such a thing as television advertising existed.

2) What is mybusiness strategy and how could a social toolkit align with my key initiatives?

3) Are my customers using the social web?

4) Are my competitors using this channel, and what are the competitive implications if I decide to participate or not?  Could I create advantage by being an early adopter?

5) Do I have the resources, or can I acquire the resources, to conduct limited, focused experiments to see if working through the social web can provide a cost-benefit exceeding traditional advertising?

After my students walk through these questions, they usually conclude a) yes, this is something with a lot of potential and b) there are practical and manageable methods to approach this if I stay committed and focused.

Does this make sense to you?  What is your experience with SMB’s and the social web right now?

{grow} community alert: Pete Mosely, a frequent contributor to {grow} has a new eBook out on promotion fundamentals which is a nice companion piece to this blog article.

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 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.

One of the questions I hear frequently is, “Should I have one or two social media accounts for family and business?”

My strong recommendation is that you keep family and business separate.  The information needs of your family are going to be much different that those of your clients, right?  Why clutter customer feed streams with news of family dinners and disclosures about your husband’s snoring?  On the flip side, why bore grandma with re-tweets from the Wall Street Journal?

The argument I’ve heard against this is that you should simply be authentic and talk about whatever is going on in your life.  I’m hoping most social media participants are growing beyond this naieve  and simplistic view of the channel.  Nobody in business really wants you to be “authentic” if that means disclosing every little fact of your life.  I think a more accurate and practical goal is to remain “open and honest” in your communications.

Another argument against the complexity of two ( more) accounts is the risk of confusing accounts and disclosing something personal on a business account when you thought it was a family account.

Still, I’ve found the best strategy is to keep it clean.  Respect business accounts by minimizing the family details. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be personable and refer to family details on a business account, and by all means establish multiple accounts (if you have the time!) and enjoy all that the social web has to offer.

Thinking I’ll have a few arguments about this one?

Illustration: Christy Tanner

I’ve been thinking about lists on Twitter and how they might be used to assess someone’s influence.  I’m about to let you in on my thought process.   Please keep all  hands and feet in the car until it comes to a complete stop. We are entering murky and dangerous waters …

My assumption is that if somebody puts you on a list, they really want to pay attention to you.  They are giving you a vote of confidence. 

By dividing the number of lists a person is on by their total number of followers, I believe this might serve as a quick and dirty rating of relative influence. To me, this is one simple method to answer the question — you have a lot of followers, but how many REALLY listen to you? 

Certainly this is more straight-forward than the mysterious algorithms of Twitter grading apps. Both number of followers and number of lists are public, easily-accessible data points.   Another advantage is that “list” is a relatively new Twitter function.  People have not had time to figure out how to “game” it yet.  If this formula would catch on, people will probably figure out a way to boost their numbers, but in this moment in time, it’s still “pure.”

For your edification and discussion, I came up with a representative list of top social media bloggers (those with more than 10,000 followers) and ran the list formula (# of lists / # of followers = influence rating).   Try it on your own favorite marketing personalities.   Any surprises?

P.S. My own ranking came up as 4.5.  Eat your heart out Brogan.  ;  )

Belem Tower, Portugal

Miss me?  You DID?  Awwww … I missed you too.

Time to get back to work after a spectacular two-week vacation in Europe.  But for fun, I thought I would give you a little insight into my holiday.  Here is my trip by the numbers:

1, 707 — Number of emails in my inbox when I got home.

691 – Number of photos I took on the trip.

75 percent – Drop in readership of my blog when I recycled my “greatest hits” for my vacation.  There’s a lesson there.  Maybe it’s you can’t take a vacation from blogging  : )

45 – Cost (dollars) of a five minute cab ride from hotel to airport in Seville. No kidding.  There’s corruption there somewhere.  By comparison, the cost of a 25-minute cab ride in Lisbon was about $8.

38 – Total number of countries I have visited now that I’ve added Portugal and Morocco to the list.

29 — Number of blog posts Chris Brogan wrote in the 14 days I was away. Dude, that is just ridiculous.

Five – Number of MEANINGFUL emails in my inbox when I got home.

10 — Minutes of rain encountered over 14 days.

1.51 – Five-year record exchange rate that was hit while I was on vacation.  These days, you don’t go to Europe for the bargains.

One – Number of times I got really, really lost on the local roads. This was remarkable because my brand new Garmin GPS system did not work worth a damn.  It kept saying I was driving through a forest.

Zero.  Number of free, public Wi-Fi spots I encountered the entire trip. Perhaps this is a factor in Europe’s relatively slow adoption of social media?

Any way, I’m glad to be home and in dialogue with you again.   One of the things I’ve realized is that the evolution of social media is measured in dog years.  I was only gone two weeks but it seems like 14.  What did I miss?

I’m taking some time off and I’m not one of those super hero types who blog when they are on vacation. I am spending time with my family, not the computer.

However, I’ve set-up some of my favorite blog posts from the past for you to view while I’m gone. If you’re new to {grow} I think you’ll enjoy them and if you’re familiar with the blog, well … you’ll probably be bored quite frankly, but I’m doing my best : )  See ya soon!

One of the points that differentiates me from other bloggers:  I’m old enough to remember when Microsoft was cool. They were the college drop-out geeks who conquered the world.  Then David turned into Goliath. And nobody likes Goliath.

But I just get this sense that Microsoft is recaputuring its mojo. Let’s see if you agree.

1) Those ads.  As a marketer, I loved the ninja move they put on Apple.  Apple’s ad campaign famously defined their competitor as a pasty-faced, clunky slug.  Instead of fighting this deeply embedded image, Microsoft incorporated it into its own ads and flipped the “Apple cart” by highlighting the breadth and depth of the Microsoft user base.  This was simply inspired marketing.

2)  Real service.  The last time I went to an Apple Store with a technical problem, they said “no.”  I never encountered that as a service option before or since.  They would not fix my product and would not even recommend somebody who could.  The only option was “you’ll have to buy a new one.”

I have had enough hair-pulling customer service disasters from both companies to make me repulsed by the thought of a service call. But my last experience with Microsoft was very different.  I got a live person on the first ring, which left me momentarily paralyzed.  The India-based technical leader took control of my computer and solved a debilitating problem in 10 minutes.  But when he sent me back to customer service for a refund on a purchase, I hit a stone wall. The technical leader, who had not abandoned the call, jumped in and asked if I could be put on hold while he addressed the problem. Thirty seconds later he came back on and explained that my money had been refunded.  I was impressed that the technician took accountability for the entire customer service experience and had enough authority to do the right thing on the spot. Well done.

3) The Bing Thing.  The best companies constantly re-invent themselves with Madonna-like regularlity.  But Bing out-Googled Google by upping the ante on search performance features. Consumers rewarded Microsoft’s  innovation by moving to Bing in droves. It’s no easy feat to grab share from a famous and entrenched market leader. Google will respond. Microsoft’s aggressive and innovative market entry will speed the evolution of the platform and benefit us all.

In a few days, Microsoft will release their latest operating system evolution.  Here’s hoping the Big Guy stays on a roll.  We need that.