“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated,” Confucius.

“Simple is not easy,” Dan Heath.

Yesterday’s post on the four types social media strategy sparked a great Facebook debate about what is strategy. Some said social media is not a strategy, it’s a tactic, and others (like me) disagreed. In reality, it’s none of the above. You can have strategy with social media, with integrated communications, or with just traditional communications.

The definition of strategy remains simple. Citing the Oxford Dictionary, “A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.” We as communicators overcomplicate the conversation about plans to get from A to B with discussions about tactics.

It’s no coincidence that many communications strategies — with or without social media — are often really justifications for existence or just tactics in disguise. Other plans have an overabundance of tactics in them so organizations can play with the latest shiny object. These “strategies” forsake their purpose, a plan to achieve an objective.

The simpler a plan is the more elegant it becomes in my eye. The best strategies are the ones that clearly win with the least amount of resource expenditure.

Consider the name of social media darling Charity: Water. Need not say more.

Successful simplicity requires a deft hand. It is the mark of the truly experienced craftsman. People should be proud to be simple.

The above is draft material for my next book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate (the follow up to Now Is Gone, which is almost out of print). Comments may be used in the final edition. You can download the first drafted chapter of the new edition — Welcome to the Fifth Estate — for free.

It’s late in another summer, and another thought “leader” has said that the blame for the lack of female speakers (or success) should be laid squarely on the shoulders of women. While there have been several great direct responses to this latest link frenzy, I felt that instead of participating directly (like I did last summer), the best commentary I could make is to outline how as a conference organizer I successfully garnered approximately 50% female speaker rates for all three BlogPotomacs.

First, I co-organized the first BlogPotomac with Debbie Weil, and together we set the precedence for the event series. We mindfully decided that at least three of the seven speakers will be women. This seemed like the right thing to do, especially considering that there are more women in communications than men. We wanted to represent our stakeholders with a group of speakers that at least came close to matching our audience.

Each of the three BlogPotomacs had predetermined topic areas, and speakers were matched to the topics. In almost every instance there were natural choices that made sense. A couple of times the would-be speaker was not available. So we found someone else! In one case, I held the spot for two months until my networking yielded the speaker.

But I didn’t give up. And when men asked for speaking spots (women rarely solicited a speaking spot, in fact I cannot remember one), I said no. I did not want the loudest chest beater. I wanted quality lady speakers, was committed to achieving that result, and would not be distracted.

We had some fantastic lady speakers including KD Paine, Maggie Fox, Kami Huyse, Shireen Mitchell, Liz Strauss, Amber Naslund, Jen McClure (emcee), Beth Kanter, Natalia Luckyanova, Jane Quigley, and Shonali Burke (emcee). Two of them are so great, they are now my business partners.

So, the morale of this story is as a conference organizer, it’s a conscious decision to either have women or not. As I told my friend Allyson Kapin, “If you spend time in a homogeneous social network like Silicon Valley’s VC community, then you will only get white, male venture backed candidates. It’s your job to go beyond the comfort zone. Victimization may be an easy out, but it won’t stop the criticism of your inability to break out of limited social circles.”

BTW, if you would like to hear some outstanding lady speakers sign up for some of the WomenWhoTech Telesummit on September 15. I’ll happen to be one of the few men participating, a refreshing change.

The following is draft material for my next book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate (the follow up to Now Is Gone, which is almost out of print). Comments may be used in the final edition. You can download the first drafted chapter of the new edition — Welcome to the Fifth Estate — for free.

If strategy can be defined as the terms and conditions of how to engage with the Fifth Estate (or whether to engage at all) then there are many different and unique ways to do just that. Individual voices, teams, mainstream social networks, applications, pages, groups, documents, wikis, your blog, their blogs, the list goes on on ad infinitum.

Choosing the tactics is a fantastic part of the effort, but in reality the tactics are not the strategy. It’s so easy to get caught in shiny object syndrome when you consider this world full of bells and whistles. Yet, it’s important to focus on the actual strategy, the approach towards.

In my experience, the following four categories are the primary types of social media strategy that organizations use online:

1) Participation: This may be an individual (often called a social media or community manager) or in more sophisticated organizations, a team of people that are basically out ad about on the interwebs, having conversations with their communities of interest. The primary purpose of their activity is interactions, building trust and developing relationships. Most customer service accounts on Twitter could be classified in this strategy taxonomy.

While a stand-alone strategy, participation is also a precursor for success in the other three primary areas of social media strategy. In many ways it’s a two step, basic, functional and necessary for any kind of dance, and something utilitarian enough that you can get away with it for one night. In addition, participation is a maintenance strategy between large initiatives.

One of the best examples of an organization that fosters participation is the nonprofit Social Media Club. It’s no coincidence that co-founder Chris Heuer is the original proponent of participation is marketing on the social web. Social Media Club began in 2006 when the first chapter began meeting in San Francisco to discuss social media. Now more than 200 chapters exist around the globe to host conversations on and offline that explore key issues facing our society caused by transformative social technologies.

2) Service: Want to make friends with the Fifth Estate? Serve it with great data, content and applications. This seems pretty easy, but there’s a fine line between serving and spamming, which most inexperienced marketers cannot delineate. In fact, many organizations begin their social media experiences by publishing content without any community to listen or consumer their offering (participation). Further, this information is often delivered via a message format rather than in a conversational tone.

If you consider the necessary precursor of listening as a step prior to social media engagement, success becomes much likelier. Add in participation and network building prior to serving the community with content and success ratios increase even further. Said application, wiki, or content will be much more likely to resonate with the community, in part because your organization will be better informed to serve.

A great example of content server is Rubbermaid, and its Adventures in Organization blog. In some examples products are featured, but in all cases the blog talks about how to organize your house, other places or outings. Adventures in Organization offers a great utilitarian approach to content delivery, providing potential stakeholders with real practical information that matters in their day to day life.

Image: #gapmagic by GoonSquadSarah

3) Top Down: Many organizations assume they will not be able to invest the time in the grassroots effort necessary for full community participation, nor do they want to commit to a long-term content offering. Instead , they opt to build relationships with influencers using a top down approach. With a relevant offering for the influencer, they seek blog coverage or social network profile endorsements. By building relationships with critical influencers, they hope the communities following these leading voices will follow suit.

A great example of an outstanding influencer approach is one my friend Susan Getgood told me about. The Gap engaged in an outreach program prior to the 2010 BlogHer conference, offering 100 influential female bloggers a $400 shopping allowance, and a styling appointment at a local Gap. These women were described as influencers and speakers at a conference where Gap clothes would be seen by hundreds of other women. Many speakers tweeted using a #gapmagic hashtag and blogged about their experience, and most wore their new Gap clothes during the conference. “Smart marketing all around,” said Susan.

4) Empowerment: The hardest of all forms of social media strategy, empowerment assumes that the organization will commit to building a far flung community. In essence, the empowered Fifth Estate members create conversations and ideas that are so extensive they exist well beyond the organization’s reach. Instead, the company or nonprofit becomes much more of a host and facilitator, available when called upon. The organization then creates initiatives and helps to sustain the effort over the long term. Crowdsourcing, large scale events, cause-based initiatives, and loyal customer communities are examples of the empowerment strategy.

Consider 350′s efforts with this type of strategy. The nonprofit organizes an annual global day of environmental action to reduce CO2 omissions. 350 uses social tools to empower local organizers to develop their own events, promote the events, and to keep their stakeholders informed. In 2010, 350 is organizing its 10/10/10 Work Parties, to get people focused on actions. They have already signed up more than 1000 event organizers in 108 countries.

Just about any individual strategy can fall under one of these four classifications or this taxonomy. More than one strategy type can be in play at once, obviously, depending on an organization’s capacity and initiative. What are your thoughts?

Episode 41 started off quivering about the Pet Shop Boys, theater and the Expendables.

• Richard Laermer hung out with the Pet Shop Boys, and they like Eminem.
• Richard discussed the theater, then Geoff joined the conversation with an epic rant about Washington theater.
• We discussed Richard Wagner, and Nazis playing frisbee. It’s so wrong!
• When people ask us to do things for free, the recession is really bad. Things are bad right now, says Richard.
• Philadelphia charges bloggers $300 to exist in the city.
• The Emmys happened and Breaking Bad won, but Conan O’Brien didn’t.
• The Tea Party is funded by the richest people in the right
• The New York newspaper game, from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Post.

Download or listen to the El Show Episode 41 today! Also available on iTunes!

Per last week’s post, the CitizenGulf Day of Action some good numbers and created a mindful way for people to take action in the face of the oil spill. As the entire process was largely open sourced, I’d like to share my analysis of the marketing experience, too. It is my hope that by sharing this information, other individuals and non-profits that are considering developing events can garner best practices for their own efforts.

The value of participating as a volunteer in #CitizenGulf was threefold:

1) Provide a mindful way for people to respond to BP and the Obama Administration’s collective mishandling of the situation
2) Help fishing families get on their feet and perhaps find a new future via education
3) The experience garnered running a series of concurrent national meet-ups

We met the first two objectives fairly well. By my estimate, we got at least 1000 people to take actions online or in person, and helped at least eight kids get into the After School Assembly program with $10,000 in funds raised (final tallies from Citizen Effect pending).

There are a couple of general themes that are important to note. Initially, we had larger fundraising expectations, but several challenges arose — namely BP’s role in and responsibility for the disaster, and timing — that made it clear this wasn’t going to happen as early as August 4th.

The Issue: As angry as people were, the oil spill was an issue they felt BP should handle, and if not, then the Obama Administration. It was very hard getting people to act and support this issue, especially with the dying media attention, and BP claims that the oil was gone.

Others felt the fishermen didn’t deserve a break. In the Gulf, one event organizer was encouraged not to have an event because it would hurt local tourism business. Add in the horrible disaster that occurred in Pakistan, and this effort became a very tough sell. This effort moved to become much more of an education initiative for the public.

Timing: We put the events together, from beginning to end in five weeks and two days. The actual events opened on August 1, with a 24 day ramp. This shows tremendous activism can occur using social tools in a quick timeline, if need warrants.

In this case with the oil spill rapidly leaving the national media and the minds of U.S. citizens and with the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 28th, we felt that the window of action was a limited one.

Timing also worked against us. August is a slow month, and organizers only had weeks to get the word out. I am sure we lost some cities because of this. It also put enormous strain on the national effort. Mistakes happened as a result. I believe in the cause enough to do this and have no regrets, but I will think three times before doing a series of meet-ups with so little time. Six months would be ideal.

Overall It Was a Success

Twitter Activity the Week of CitizenGulf Events

In my mind, the effort was a success, primarily because enough local leaders really ran with this, and so many people took action. The effort succeeded because most of us involved in organizing events kept going no matter what. People showed their true characters, and the success of CitizenGulf was a collective win as a result. To honor those who worked hard, and made a big difference with little steps, I’d like to offer the positives before the challenges.

Positive Lessons

Citizen Philanthropy: This effort was an initiative based in empowering citizens to act, and they did. Given the nature of the oil spill, providing mindful action for concerned citizens was a challenge, and one we felt compelled to offer after our fact finding mission. Clearly, as tough as an issue as it was, others felt the same. The 1000 plus people who took action, and 400 plus who donated are the big winners.

Social Media Works: We had no budget, and no paid staff other than the time that Citizen Effect dedicated to the effort. Everyone else volunteered, and all the tools and design were provided for free. The whole effort was done on a shoe string, and was possible because free social tools empower activism.

Crowdsourcing on a National Level: We took a hands-off approach to local events encouraging people to become creative and make the events their own. The Tar Ball took off in Houston and DC had a date auction. In North Carolina, Rob Blackwell created a song! DC’s Jess3 contributed an EventBrite landing page. Chicago and LA had concerts, and New York featured a movie. It was awesome to see the creativity!

Citizen Journalism: The citizen journalism last June was an incredible success, driving incredible awareness about the plight of the fishing families, prompting people to ask us what was next, and if they could get involved. I wouldn’t hesitate to do this again as a means of open research, sharing knowledge and driving interest.

New Relationships: Whenever you do something like that involves mass action and face-to-face interaction, you create all sorts of new relationships for others as well as yourself. I think anyone who invested serious time in CitizenGulf is already seeing the intangible benefits this week in their online networks.

Believing: Sometimes when something as bad as the oil spill occurs, the lying, the malfeasance, and the inept governance that oversaw the effort, people stop believing. Ironically, Obama’s campaign promise of, “Yes, We Can,” while it may not hold true for his administration, did come true for CitizenGulf. I think most people believe that even with a simple registration or even a tweet they made a difference. And for eight kids they did. It’s important that people see this and know it, because believing your actions matter is the antithesis of the growing lack of empathy we are seeing in society today.

Challenges

Twitter Activity the Week Prior to CitizenGulf Events

Some of the challenges were external and beyond our control, and some were internal and provide an opportunity for learning. As one of the public leadership points of contact for CitizenGulf, and arguably the most visible, I want to state now that these are my opinions, and also from my standpoint, the internal challenges are my responsibility. I share these simply to offer lessons learned for staging events of this magnitude.

Crowdsourcing on the Executive Level: We put together a dream team of volunteers to lead the effort on the fly. Yet, at times this was hard for all parties.

Because the effort was discussed orally, and expectations were not put in writing so everyone understood their roles, we had some branding and promotion issues that made CitizenGulf less visible than it could have been. Also, this lack of clarity caused our effort to become more complicated than necessary, and I received feedback from local organizers that they did not understand calls-to-action, etc. Again, I see these errors as my fault, and I apologize for any problems this caused.

With a group managed movement like this, Memorandums of Understanding should be deployed so that everything is in writing and roles clearly defined. It also may be worthwhile to have a smaller team, with clearer executive roles.

The Local Cause: Because we picked a charity that only worked within eight parishes of Louisiana and because it was religious, we had some more explaining to do. Our fact finding mission showed that Catholic Charities of New Orleans was doing the most work with fishermen, but I think it was a stretch for some people, and it could have been better explained.

Pepsi Refresh: As part of putting together the dream team, we added a Pepsi Refresh contest to the calls-to-action. But the contest entry did not read like a CitizenGulf effort, and didn’t integrate well. Plus an ensuing controversy the week the contest opened about Pepsi Refresh’s Gulf initiative pretty much submarined this call to action right out of the gates.

Posterous: Posterous was generally a good blogging platform, but had significant DNS attacks the week of the event launch which stymied momentum. Posterous does not currently let you use its code on your own server. If we had made the decision to use WordPress on our own server, we would not have had such an issue. We had 18 business days to market the event and lost roughly two to Posterous issues. As you can see, relying on a platform outside of your control can have its downside.

Conclusion

As you can see there were more positives than negatives, and because of the outstanding way some local leaders took on the crowdsourcing challenge, a successful movement was built in a short period of time. Most importantly, people were provided with and took up mindful actions to build a positive result in the wake of BP and the Obama Administration’s combined mismanagement of the oil spill disaster.

As a whole, I see fundraising via social media as a secondary result, not a primary goal (See May interview where I stated this). For the amount of time spent, there are better primary ways to raise money. Movements like this are better for education, and to empower citizen philanthropists to act. That being said, we still helped out eight to ten children this year, and that’s a very powerful statement.

Personally, I feel like I could easily replicate and improve the citizengulf movement building process. If I had a budget and more lead time, the results would be extremely potent in comparison. The #citizengulf experience was invaluable in that sense.

Finally, I have so much more respect for Amanda Rose and the incredible job she did with Twestival. To do this three times with the level of success she has had is simply astounding.

Thank you to everyone who participated. I think we made the interwebs a better place this Summer with the CitizenGulf initiative and we made a real difference for children who were impacted by this disaster.

Citizen Effect will continue the CitizenGulf Project. You can create your own initiative to benefit Gulf kids, or you can still give if you’d like. Here’s the donation page.

The following is draft material for my next book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate (the follow up to Now Is Gone, which is almost out of print). Comments may be used in the final edition. You can download the first drafted chapter of the new edition — Welcome to the Fifth Estate — for free.

The organizational social media policy becomes a critical document for employees. It defines what is safe to do, what the organization frowns upon, and how employees can navigate their day-to-day responsibilities while maintaining a social presence.

A social media policy is a living document reflecting management’s ethos about how much latitude the organization encourages with online public conversations. As an organization becomes comfortable with social media and its interactions with the Fifth Estate over time, the policy will likely encourage more transparency and authenticity. It will also reflect lessons learned, some of them painful, but necessary experiences on the path towards more extended networked communications.

There are several best practices documents that have already been created on what should be included in such a document. Consider Cision’s and Society of New Communications Research (SNCR)‘s best practice recommendations.

These are good starting points, but also keep in mind that your culture is unique. That means you may have special qualities that you want to show, or regulations that prevent you from talking openly (SEC, HIPPA, government clearance, client/case confidentiality, etc.). Or your organization may be conservative with its social media out of the gate, and that’s OK, too.

The Social Media Governance site published a list of open social media policies representing almost every type of organization imaginable, from Cisco to the New Zealand State Services Commission. Your organization may want to review them to see which ones work for you and your type of business or nonprofit. In fact, you may find that several parts of the different policies may work, and you will decide to take pieces of them. Simply provide attribution, like the American Red Cross did with it’s social media policy for personal communications.

Just remember that almost all of your employees are members of the Fifth Estate themselves. To not enable access in any form only encourages anonymous postings and veiled remarks. After all, to truly become visible in social media you must at least to some extent participate with the Fifth Estate as a community member.

The following is draft material for my next book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate (the follow up to Now Is Gone, which is almost out of print). Comments may be used in the final edition. You can download the first drafted chapter of the new edition — Welcome to the Fifth Estate — for free.

Who in their right mind would predict the death of Facebook given its ever increasing dominance? But this is a question everyone asks, “What’s next?”

One thing long term Internet citizens have seen over the past 25 years, communities and social networks get huge, even as dominant as Facebook is currently, and then they fade. Some continue to stay relevant as the leader in their niche — YouTube, for example — and others completely fade away into a second tier or worse — a la Friendster and AOL.

In my opinion, one of the secrets to Facebook’s longevity is its replication of McDonalds’ business model. That’s right, McDonalds.

A good part of McDonalds relevancy lies in its ability to offer a cheap menu of foods and beverages that are popular in contemporary society. You want a latte? Go to McDonalds. Ice cream? We got soft serve! Salad? No problem! And, oh yes, we still have your favorite Big Mac, just in case you want a burger.

Facebook does the same with its social network functionality. It literally watches competitors create new features, and then incorporates that functionality into its network, competing head to head with the leading social network in that functional space. Facebook relies on its incredibly large user base to accept and use the new features.

Most recently, we saw this with Facebook Places and the competition it offers Foursquare. Other examples:

• Pictures and Flickr
• Video and YouTube (this one does as well as a McRib sandwich on market share)
• Chat and AIM
• Questions and LinkedIn

Get to the Funeral, Will You?

This strength is also Facebook’s weakness. As we have seen over time, Facebook constantly updates its interface to incorporate these changes. This is relatively easy because of its text-based, three column layout.

Frankly, while text allows Facebook to offer all of these features, the user interface has become cumbersome. In essence, being the McDonalds of social networks, the user interface or menu has so much junk on it, the social network has been forced into an over-reliance on text.

Enter a new interface, the almost completely visual tactile (touch) input to a social application. A couple new apps on iPad have shown a new way to interact. Early signs show these applications are becoming immensely popular.

Flipboard allows users to create their own magazine based on preferences and socially recommended content. And ABC’s iPad app (300,000 downloads) features a visual globe of news stories. Both application interfaces rely heavily on pictures with very few words, and why shouldn’t they given that a picture is worth a thousand words?

To me, it’s only a question of time — maybe even within the next two years — before an almost completely visual social network launches. Processing time, software development and bandwidth will inevitably increase to enable it. How will Facebook possibly upgrade its interface to compete with this kind of competitor?

It would take an almost complete gutting of its social networking code. Frankly, this system has become so clunky that Facebook CEO Marc Zuckerberg can’t make changes that he wants to in order to open it (Plus Facebook’s original feature of private, closed social networking was its big differentiator. The privacy tension caused by the movement towards openness continues to haunt Facebook).

No, such a network upgrade would likely force Facebook to abandon users that are still text based. It would be very hard for McDonalds to keep serving Big Macs while offering a tastier Filet Mignon sandwich that holds market share (Angus Wraps aside).

Think it won’t be a tactile input-based network? Bandwidth and technology permitting, how about Third Life, a better would-be virtual avatar based world where interaction occurred in a computer generated 3-D world? Or a video-based network like but more nimble than the original Seesmic?

Isn’t it just a question of time before Facebook meets a competitor with a better, next generation interface that it can’t match? To me, given the context of Internet history and technology development, it’s not an if, but a when. The Fifth Estate moves with what’s hot, and without thinking about

As communicators and strategists, we cannot afford to become too entrenched on a mega social network like Facebook (or Twitter). If we cannot move with our community because of an over investment in one network, we lose our opportunity to serve our stakeholders effectively.

What do you think?

Yesterday’s national day of CitizenGulf events ranged from the first Social Media Club event in Fredericksburg, VA to a big get together in Honolulu, Hawaii. With tickets starting at $10 a pop, it looks like 400 people came together and raised roughly $10,000 (preliminary estimate) benefiting at least eight children of fishing families in the Catholic Charities of New Orleans After School Program.

Considering that this whole effort is volunteer based on literally no budget and named after a hashtag, I am just stunned. Two months ago, four of us were heading down to the Gulf on a fact finding mission with no idea about what we would find. And two months later we had this incredible day of action, thanks to you.

Next week I’ll provide a post mortem analysis of what did and did not work about the campaign from my perspective. Today and this weekend are all about cherishing the action so many of us have taken towards a positive, mindful result after the oil spill. With BP and Obama responsible for and promising everything, and often falling short, this is not the easiest cause to take on, but a very important one. Taking mindful steps — instead of staying angry and letting the Gulf suffer — are acts of compassion.

There are so many of us who participated, from the more than 750 people who tweeted to the more than 400 people who attended our 20 events. Jeff Dolan even made a tribute music video! I know of at least 60 blog posts written about the Day of Action. It’s impossible to thank everyone, so please forgive me if I’ve forgotten you.

First, let me thank Dan Morrison and May Yu of Citizen Effect, and Jill Foster of LiveYourTalk. It’s amazing how far this crazy little trip went. And Dan, did you think the fajitas at Lauriol Plaza would turn into this?

Eric Johnson at El Studio deserves a huge thanks for designing our Posterous blog, and for his work migrating the site. Thank you to my long term cohort on cause based action Andy Sternberg for his hard work and running the LA event.

Thank you to Sloane Berrent and Taylor Davidson for letting us co-promote with Gulf Coast Benefits. I can’t wait to see what you do next. And a huge thanks to Social Media Club co-founders Kristie Wells and Chris Heuer for believing in CitizenGulf and making it an official Club event.

Thank you to David Bazea and Citrix Online for donating your organizing software and phone services. Michael Ivey, thank you for donating RT2Give set-up. And thanks to iShake for donating proceeds from iPhone application sales.

I want to give a special thanks to a few city captains who just took CitizenGulf on and made it theirs. Gloria Bell (Philly), Kami Huyse and Grace Rodriguez (Houston), Richard Laermer (who helped me co-organize NYC), Heidi Massey (Chicago), and last, but not least Andi Narvaez (DC, our top fundraiser). Each of these cities raised $1000 or more! Also, I owe a personal thank you to Kelly Mitchell (Honolulu), Todd Van Hoosear (Boston), Alex de Carvalho (Miami), Heather Coleman (Fredericksburg), and “Calamity Jen,” Jennifer Navarete, and Colleen Pence (San Antonio) for organizing their cities! Thank you to all of our other city organizers for going the distance.

And finally, as co-organizer of the New York City event, I’d like to thank my committee of outreach kings and queens. Thank you to Damien Basile, Anna Curran, Erica Grigg (Carbon Outreach), Nicole D’Alonzo, Howard Greenstein, and our special guest Eric Proulx! CitizenGulf would not have been the same with New York!

Again, if I missed you, please forgive me. Thanks so much!

Citizen Effect will continue the CitizenGulf Project. You can create your own initiative to benefit Gulf kids, or you can still give if you’d like. Here’s the donation page.

It’s been about two years since I published a book review about online or social media marketing. Generally, while many friends have had their turn at the plate and I know their books have great helpful ideas and content, there tenants have had an element of redundancy, and I could not finish them (and I only review if I’ve read half of the book).

Greg Verdino‘s microMARKETING offers a different experience with new, refreshing looks at online communications. In my mind, while it offers many of the tenants his contemporaries espouse, the book has new, exciting approaches and tenants. I actually found the book’s style and approaches (do many small things well and Greg’s view of earned media) inspiring, and caused me to rethink a couple of my own projects.

Case in point, the 7th Son case study in Chapter Eight was just fantastic. As someone who has published business book with a second in the works, but also has two novels almost contracted with publishers I could not help but absorb every detail. The case study made me resolve to re-edit one of the novels, and publish it independently (gasp) using social tools to promote.

This book is full of case studies like that, from Laura Luke and Sephora to the Dancing Man, as well as a few social media mainstays that you’ll be familiar with. In addition, the book offers seven principles of microMARKETING that are well explained and a series of questions in the final chapter to turn the quick read into a learning lesson for your organization.

I tend to lock onto great sound bites, and this one resonated so well with me, you can expect to see it in Welcome to the Fifth Estate (location 1172 on Kindle):

“All this creates a new marketing imperative and demands a new media model. When a company attempts to interrupt the stream, the stream is bound to shift course, or simply flow around the interruption. But if a brand can actually become part of the stream, it will be carried along in the flow itself.”

Thank you for a very compelling read, Greg. I highly recommend microMARKETING not just for those looking to begin their journey, but for those of us who have seen a few rodeos in their time. I’m looking forward to the launch party tomorrow night.

Lots of basic stats about Twitter – 35 million U.S. users in June, 93 million worldwide. 5% are female and 69% are caucasian. Far higher use by African American and Hispanic use. The site grew by 109 percent year over year from June 2009-2010.

Ted says the trick is to find, be found by, and interact with key audiences. Strong Twitter users are influential in the field. And search results matter. So for example, the #ztrain hashtag will make this event more searchable in Google.

Great advice: Don’t worry about appealing to everyone. Instead focus on the issues that matter to you. Share a common interest and dialogue as it will likely put you together with more influentials. Influentials, care more, write more and tweet more. Bloggers, writes and journalists are included in this group. Ted says following people back critical for growth, and to thank people for the follow (but don’t auto message them).

Search is an underpinning of following, retweeting, replies. Searches help you do the things that matter on important topics. An end result of Twitter online is search in other places. Oneforty.com is a great place to find Twitter tools and applications to help with search.

Retweeting on Twitter is important, but many people prefer to use applications like HootSuite for more functionality. Write to be retweeted. 120 characters gets it done. Remember tweets are meant for someone. Speak t people, reply, use DMs, have conversations.

Adding connectivity via Twitter profiles to your site is critical for connections. You can customize your twitter profile to show staff on your profile page. TweetyGotBack is a tool for creating Twitter backgrounds.

Integrating it to Facebook is doable. Some feel it’s not advisable. Many screen the types of Tweets that go through. It’s really a hard place to do fundraising.