We’re calling that rule Step Zero.

Step Zero: If businesses become operative within social media without regard to their community, they become irresponsible and oppressive.

"Laptop Megaphone" by jj_pappas423 on Flickr

We’re aware of these boundaries in the real world: an overzealous sales associate who stalks each new customer with nonstop pleas for service:  “May I help you?” “Would you like to try that on?” “What are you looking for today?” A customer is likely to walk out of the store every time. But in terms of the web, it takes a different form: countless fan page requests, despite denial time and time again.  And then there’s the megaphone effect, when businesses use social profiles as a megaphone to broadcast their message, without actually participating in the community.

All other subsequent “laws” hinge upon this idea. We often forget that real world rules and courtesies apply within the web. Bombarding social profiles with requests and suggestions is no way to earn business. Once this intangible, invisible line is crossed, marketing efforts become oppressive.

People are generous to extend some level of accepting interruptions. By connecting with businesses online, customers are granting permission for marketing purposes, but don’t take advantage of this generosity. If business exceeds this level, the community will regard it as being socially irresponsible and insulting.

If you’re like many tweeters, it’s the latter. The trending topic that started back in January of last year with a single tweet by @Micah has grown into a well-known weekly tradition since its inception. But has it run its course? While the original idea seemed to be to mention or promote a specific tweeter based on quality content or common interest, now many of the tweets resemble endless strings of @ signs and Twitter handles with no information or discernible reason for following any of them.

It’s become something that you do because, well, it’s Friday and that’s what you’re supposed to do. Right? We sent out a quick poll to some tweeters last Friday to find out what they thought about the whole affair.

Of the 17 respondents we had, the vote was fairly equally split between those who follow the suggestions with some scrutiny and those who are tired of the trend or ignore the tweets altogether. Not surprisingly, no one said that they follow the suggestions blindly.

As early as a few months in to the trend, bloggers were already questioning its relevance, and some have suggested other ways to go about promoting quality content on Twitter.

We’re wondering if the value of the idea hasn’t been lost in the strings of Twitter handles with no explanation of who the person is or what type of content they typically bring to the stream. #FollowFriday is losing its steam and its relevance. What do you think?

And sure, there are plenty of benefits to real-time search. It’s got lots of sparkle and shine to it – the idea that you can search literally everything that’s being said about a given topic on the web right at this instant. It’s a fascinating innovation, but it comes with huge risk factors.

"Annoying Noises Prohibitted (sic)" by BarelyFitz on Flickr

As businesses become aware that their Facebook page – which may only have a hundred or so fans – is being indexed by Google, the temptation will be great to deck out updates with SEO-friendly terms and inundate the stream to grab that coveted top spot in the search. With search results automatically updating in real time, one post a day isn’t going to cut it. If you update about tomato soup in the morning and someone searches for tomato soup in the afternoon, your update likely won’t appear – it will have been pushed down by all the other people who’ve raved about tomato soup since 9 a.m.

Ultimately, while businesses can benefit greatly from being involved in social media, these platforms were not created for businesses. They were created for individual users. Still, very often a business’s presence on Facebook is a good thing for those individual users – as fans, they get benefits like exclusive deals and discounts and they can keep up with events at their favorite local venues. But Google is dangling a pretty tasty looking carrot in front of businesses with real-time search; if they bite, the utilities of social sites for individuals may soon be overshadowed by superfluous, constant updates that are a huge turn-off for most every user.

It’s certainly not surprising that a business would go to great lengths to nab the No. 1 spot in a Google search. Before now, that might have involved expensive SEO consulting and tedious copy writing to try to get in good with the algorithm. Real-time search is like a secret passageway, letting them bypass the algorithm entirely simply by having a social media presence.

But for those of us hanging out on Facebook, and not on the Google results page? As the Grinch himself once said, all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise! We’re going to see much more of it on Facebook and Twitter. We may soon find businesses posting anything and everything to up their search rankings. But is that ranking more important than genuine fans or followers who are interested in your message or your product/service? If it’s the Google ranking, eventually those fans may go by the wayside, either by removing your page entirely or hiding your updates from their feeds.

There’s a fine line to walk. It would be foolish to ignore the possibilities of real-time search. You shouldn’t completely throw SEO principles out the window. But this does inject one more artificial aspect into the conversation that may push people away if not handled correctly. If it weren’t for the people using these networks, they wouldn’t have any value. If businesses turn up the noise too much those users are going to retreat. The back channel will have truly gone mainstream, and the value for the individual will wane quickly.

As for Google’s motives with this, we can’t help but feel like we’ve run into another snake-oil salesman. Hey, Facebook and Twitter and MySpace! We’ll give your sites lots of search love by listing real-time web updates in our search results. Sound good?

On the surface, it does. But if this results in increased noise, it may eventually be a detriment to these social sites. The habits of traditional marketing are hard to kick, and it won’t take long before businesses start picking up their megaphones. Our word to businesses? Be careful. Be smart and be savvy — you don’t want to get left in the dust — but be careful.

As of Sept. 24, iPhone users can access comprehensive calendars to find arts events in the city, Google Map the destination, get tickets and post a review of the event all with the newly launched ArtsMemphis app. And if you can’t get out to see the real thing, you can watch ArtsMemphis TV for a helping of local culture from pretty much anywhere.

Lucky for us (and hopefully you), Lindsey Coates, ArtsMemphis manager of marketing and communications, will be the featured speaker at our upcoming breakfast. She’ll be able to fill us in on the development process for the app — on which ArtsMemphis worked with local developers ResoluteGames — and also how ArtsMemphis is using its new iPhone connections plus Twitter and other web 2.0 functions to reach arts lovers in and outside of Memphis in a totally new way. Plus, as a non-profit, ArtsMemphis faces its own unique challenges when it comes to web marketing and social media. Coates will address those challenges and how they’ve been working through them during ArtsMemphis’ 18-month process of establishing a social media presence.

As usual, we’ll be at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, with breakfast and casual conversation before the presentation and core conversations afterward. Please RSVP at the Social Media Expedition Meetup page, and do so quickly; we do have a limited number of seats available.

Earlier this week, several administrative accounts at Twitter were hacked, revealing several internal documents along with revealing a good deal about Twitter’s corporate culture – things like which programs they use for creating work documents, plans for a reality show, and the fact that they use weak passwords – one of which was the word “password.”

While you can be sure that the social network’s popularity makes it a target for hackers who know how to execute sophisticated attacks, it seems that Twitter’s biggest vulnerability was a lax attitude towards their own security.

It should be noted that, as far as anyone knows, this doesn’t open any security vulnerabilities to the end user.

We all need to take this as a reminder that we should periodically change our own passwords, especially those for online banking accounts and for anything containing information we really care about – our Facebook accounts, for example, contain much information that helps define our identities to the outside world.

Our online passwords are frequently our best – and sometimes our only – defense against identity theft. It is crucially important that these passwords are secure. (Yes, that means using a password other than “password.”

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered did an interesting story in May called “The Search for the Perfect Password.” It contains a lot of useful advice for creating good passwords and some amusing anecdotes about bad passwords.

Some things to avoid when creating new passwords:

• Simple dictionary words, spelled as such
• Family information (birthdays, anniversaries, children’s names)
• Using the same password across services
• Using only letters or only numbers
• Leaving the password written on a Post-It note on the desk next to the computer.

Now, we understand that keeping track of a lot of passwords, especially when you’re throwing new ones into the mix all the time, can be daunting – especially if you’re avoiding the Post-It note method, but there are several useful tools to track your passwords. Firefox has a built-in password manager, while there is a piece of software for Mac computers called 1Password that does the same thing. The NPR story above earlier contains many helpful links to solutions such as those.

"Stormy Weather: Lightning" by Sabrina Campagna on Flickr."

EDIT: A direct message from MLGW on Twitter requested that we change the headline to reflect that they weren’t aiming for attention, but rather that they were just trying to help. That’s the main point of this story, so we’re happy to comply. (Once again, thanks for the good work, MLGW!)

Severe weather tore through Memphis Friday, June 12.  The weather knocked out the transmitter for the local public radio station, and the digital television switch ensured that anyone left without a converter box couldn’t rely on local television for breaking weather news (and several thousand Memphians were left without power anyway). So where did people turn for the news?

They turned to cell phone-friendly microblogging service Twitter.

When the storms hit, even local news turned to Twitter for information about how people were faring. The Commercial Appeal was the only news source actively tweeting during the event, though its news was scant at first  (it’s hard to tweet from a cell phone in a basement with neither WiFi nor cell service), but once they got out of the basement, the main source that the CA was using was the suddenly very active Twitter stream of Memphis Light, Gas, and Water.

MLGW, over the course of about 72 hours from early Friday evening to mid-morning Monday, sent out over 880 tweets, mostly either @replies or information directly relating to the outages. Only the people at MLGW know how many direct messages they sent, but judging from how many times they told people to check their DMs, it’s up there around that 880 mark.

And though their followers have drastically increased (1,265, up from around 400 early Friday evening), what really sets their tweeting apart is that they haven’t changed their tactic: responding to every customer question possible.

For any business to pull this off in a time of emergency is remarkable – and admirable. With Memphis’ summer heat kicking in, a lack of power for fans and air conditioning really is an emergency situation, and MLGW’s willingness to connect with customers through social media (especially via a service that can function as SMS text messages) has truly shown their respect for their community, and their eagerness to help that community get back to normal as quickly as possible.

That respect extends all the way up MLGW’s totem pole, too. Jerry Collins, president of MLGW, took a few minutes to answer customer questions, in what amounts to a grassroots press conference.

It wasn’t just homes without power, either. Many local businesses (ourselves included) were affected by the outages as well. Our own Dave Barger, who had been following MLGW for the better part of a year, noticed on Friday how their updates begin showing up more and more.

It started with some updates about the service status, letting their customers know how many people were without power and how long it would be out. Then they posted some phone numbers, both for emergencies and simple outage reporting. Barger immediately took advantage of the phone numbers.

“I called the number,” he said. “I don’t think the automatic system gave me an option for business, so then I tweeted my report. I got a pretty quick response. They were very responsive.”

Susan Mealer, of Answering Advantage, found a similar situation. Because she is not the building manager at her office, she wasn’t sure if she had the appropriate information for reporting an outage over the phone. So she tweeted it. She too, got a very quick response. Though MLGW said they passed the information on, Mealer said that she was pleased just “knowing that [report] was heard.”

Having that online communication with her local power company was convenient for Mealer, too – she was on vacation at Disneyland when the storms hit. When she found out about the storms, she was naturally concerned about her employees and customers. She said it was comforting to know that MLGW was there and taking care of the electricity situation.

Which is exactly what MLGW wanted. Richard Thompson, who runs the MLGW Twitter account, says that the real focus this weekend has been “getting people information about what’s going on and when power can be restored. That’s what’s most important to us right now.”

For Thompson, the decision to tweet MLGW updates was merely a practical one. “Hopefully we’ll continue to integrate Twitter into our communications, but we’re not there yet.”

Mealer had kind words for MLGW’s use of Twitter during the outages. “The buzzword here is ‘transparency,’” she said. “We can all see how they respond to everyone. It really allowed them to shine. It really showed that they heard their customers and that they were responding.”

Barger had high compliments for the sense of community that MLGW’s transparency instilled in him. “You definitely feel part of a community which is going through the same sort of problems. There’s this camaraderie sort of thing that kicks in. You know that the guy across the street has limbs down, that his power’s out.”

For the record, chances are quickly diminishing that you or the guy across the street have their power out. MLGW is working around the clock to get power restored, and as of 4 p.m. Monday, only 32,285 customers are still affected by outages. This is down from a peak of over 130,000 Friday evening.

As a result, we’ve been thinking a lot about the recent explosion in popularity of Twitter.

There used to be a standard progression for people making their way through social media.

The online presence of the first digital natives seemed to evolve from writing online journals read by only four or five people to maintaining MySpace and Facebook profiles with a few dozen friends on to full-fledged blogs and Twitter accounts accessible by the general public.

“Digital Natives at Work” by Gerard Bierens on Flickr.

Though other sites and services empowered them to take those steps, Twitter seems to have been the triggering mechanism for making social media into a more truly mainstream phenomenon.

Twitter’s simplicity took the focus off of the means of communication and put it right onto the communication itself.

It may have been that simplicity, along with the suddenness of communication via Twitter, that led mainstream media to embrace it as a way to get information to consumers as quickly as possible. National Public Radio and the New York Times, for example, have been using Twitter since the network was still in relative infancy.

Even celebrities of all kinds have embraced Twitter, from TV Host and comedienne Ellen Degeneres to basketball player Shaquille O’Neal to songwriter Colin Meloy.

Twitter has officially broken down the barriers between the common person and celebrity. We here at LunaWeb have to wonder if this is why people who haven’t really dipped their toes in the waters of social media are now doing cannonballs into the deep end of Twitter.

If so, this marks not so much a gradual evolution in people’s progression through social media as a sudden mutation.

Whereas the digital natives eased themselves in, this new flock of Twitter users seems to be jumping right into using publicly accessible forums.

It’s exciting to watch. Especially considering that many of these new users aren’t digital natives at all. They’re immigrants to the internet world. By jumping in like they have, they’re expressing a newly empowered willingness to learn a new – online – dialect.

Once these new digital immigrants are acclimated and fluent, however, and they decide they need something other than what Twitter has to offer, where do they go?

Will they behave like a flock of migratory birds, moving almost as a single organism, or will they simply quietly disperse, as though the party has ended?

One (completely unresearched) impulse, based on Facebook’s near-simultaneous bump in membership, is to say that this new social wave is like a flock of birds. It’s not exactly predictable, but it undulates gracefully, pulsing with each new possible direction.

"Flock of Birds" by Picture Perfect Rose on Flickr.

Here at LunaWeb, we’ve been giving a lot of beginning social media lessons to our clients. We’re thinking about opening these up to the public. If you’re part of this new wave of users, please sound off in the comments. Let us know what you’d like us to cover.

blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The workshop, held at Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis focused on the ways non-profit organizations can use social media to promote their message and attract supporters. We had representatives from over 50 local non-profits show up.

By all accounts, everyone was grateful and eager to learn why and how Facebook, Twitter, and blogging can all be great tools to spread your organization’s message.

But one busy week can lead to another, and another after that.

April 16, for example, marks the second time we’ll be holding TwilightCamp, the evening time equivalent to our Social Media Expedition Breakfasts. It’s the same idea, plenty of time to learn and network with fellow Memphians, and with those core conversations to tap your new friends’ minds for answers to your social media questions.

Twilight Camp will take place from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. We’re still not sure on the location- we want to be sure we can fit everybody, so please RSVP immediately.

And then, on April 23, Launch Memphis, along with Southern Growth Studio, is hosting Tech Fuel, a combination private workshop and open panel discussion. This time around, the theme is “Mastering the New Modes: Insights and Innovations from the Blending Worlds of Technology, Marketing, and Culture.”

The speakers for this event are Adrian Ho of Zeus Jones and C.C. Chapman of The Advance Guard. These two are leaders in innovation at the blurring intersection of marketing, interactivity, and user experience.

You’ll need to reserve your seat for the private workshop in advance. You can do that through the Launch Memphis website.

blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Dr. Markman’s presentation focused on how society functions with technology. Her central assertion is that social technologies are nothing new. Though they use new tools to cover greater distances faster, it all essentially sums up to basic communication – Facebook, even as it nears ubiquity, is just a fancy version of cave painting communication.

Humans, she continued, simply need other humans for survival.

So we communicate as we always have, and we find brand new ways to communicate. One pattern Dr. Markman has noticed is that society is beginning to stratify naturally among those who can more readily adapt to new modes of communication.

Markman cites Pew Internet and American Life numbers that show that Americans, along with being divided along lines of behavior, can also be divided among the age groups and economic traits that allow them this behavior – but that doesn’t necessarily fall along the same lines as would be expected.

For example, podcasting is more common among the Generation X set, even though they aren’t as into things like Facebook or Massively Multiplayer Games.

Essentially, what Markman seems to be saying is that what makes online communications so interesting is that it’s so difficult to pin down the demographics of it in a general sense, because the information skews from example to example.

After the presentation, as always, we broke into smaller group discussions, including topics such as blogging, Facebook for business, Twitter, and social bookmarking. There was even some demand for information about Yahoo! Pipes – if you’ve got an interest in or knowledge of Yahoo! Pipes, (or Twitter, Facebook, or any other tools) please, by all means, join us for the next Social Media Expedition Breakfast, the first Wednesday of May.

blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

One bright spot in the midst of this gathering, was the serendipitous and spontaneous creation of several unconference-like core conversations.  Dave was lucky enough to be a part of one of these conversation, when several SXSW attendees converged on a session that had reached max capacity.  These 50+ rejects went on to form there own conversation group, “The Rejected Connected”.

[clearspring_widget title="Animoto.com" wid="4805fc0db4a3562c" pid="49c3c7747e145866" width="432" height="240" domain="widgets.clearspring.com"]
TweetHall – Rejected Connected from LunaWeb on Vimeo.

The discussion became a valuable mindshare of best practices for Twitter.  The group ranged from people brand new to Twitter, to Twitter application developers.  Everyone was able to contribute, and everyone walked away with a headful of new ideas to ponder.  The key takeaways for the session from Dave’s blog were:

- Using a good photo of only your face.
- Share your twitter handle everywhere.
- Don’t use the profile URL to merely link back to your twitter page.
- Multiple users of one org’s twitter account can end tweets in “/fl” that being /(first initial)(last initial) or state the person tweeting in the profile description.
- Be genuine and don’t be uptight about tweeting, just get out there.
- Don’t protect your tweets and still try and seek out people to follow (the analogy of “going to a cocktail party and locking yourself in the bathroom” was shared).

There was great discussion on the best way to manage a corporate identity on Twitter. Deceptively tricky questions like, “How much of myself do I put into my corporate Twitter account?” and “If I choose to have multiple Twitter accounts, what’s the best way to keep up with them?” were debated at length.

Tiffany Winman, one of the attendees, did a great job of nailing down the rationale behind marketers using Twitter. “Awareness/traffic; viral buzz; lead generation; increased customer satisfaction and loyalty via increased community networking, identifying and fostering relationships among employees and customers; generally decreases in costs and resources from traditional marketing methods; research on brand image, public sentiment, hot topics to improve messaging and product/service development.”

Otis Maxwell also had some valuable insight into how a previous session at SXSW provided further illumination on the spontaneous hallway discussion.

If you’d like to see the twitter conversation that resulted from this ad hoc gathering, search for #tweethall on twitter.

blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.