by Heidi Sullivan Stage actors have an old, if somewhat crude, joke. When they read a script it looks something like this: “BS BS BS BS … I enter … BS BS … My line … BS BS BS … Another line … BS BS … My last line … annnnnnnnnnnnd exit.” Image purchased from iStockPhoto As Geoff discussed here three weeks ago, whatever your influencer engagement strategy may be – Direct Community Interaction with Stakeholders, Top Down Influence, Flanking, or Creating a Groundswell – you need to first “read the tea leaves” to be successful. He rightly spoke of the importance of listening prior to engagement in social media. But, listening is just not enough; it’s too passive. And …

A written narrative of my #NextLevel Hawaii Keynote… There’s nothing worse than performing before an empty venue. Yet isn’t that what most nonprofits and companies do on the social web? The rush to play with new tools in this scary Brave New World has been the focus. We’ve seen the many, many successes, and yet organizations find they rarely succeed. Then they blame the media forms. You can hear them now, “FourSquare, Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla, YouTube or blogs [take your pick] don’t work! And don’t even start with the Augmented Reality conversation! This isn’t what was promised in the New York Times. We were told this was where people met!” The truth of the matter is simple: Companies and nonprofits …