9 years since my 1st article about blogging on Aug. 22, 2001: To Blog or Not to Blog http://bit.ly/cgL88M Yr thots on what has changed – ?

Weil was prescient . . . → Read More: Looking back and looking ahead at executive blogging: the missing link is leadership]]> Debbie Weil, corporate social media consultant and author of the recently updated The Corporate Blogging Book (now on my Kindle), tweeted this on Monday:

9 years since my 1st article about blogging on Aug. 22, 2001: To Blog or Not to Blog http://bit.ly/cgL88M Yr thots on what has changed – ?

Weil was prescient with her 2001 ClickZ article To Blog or Not to Blog… That’s a Good Question. She not only saw blogs as potent corporate marketing tools but saw the possibility of them being used by executives:

So how does this translate to your email marketing program? If your objective is customer retention and you are sending an e-newsletter to your house list, you could easily include a link to your CEO’s blog — or a blog by another executive in your company who has a keen wit, writes with style, and has something to say.

In 2006, Weil wrote in her book:

Ideally, the blog attaches a voice to the company through the words and style of the executive writing it. A legitimate question to ask, however, is this: Is a CEO blog "the" voice of the company? What about employee blogs? Perhaps it’s better to say that a CEO blog can help tell the story of the company. The story you want customers and the media to listen to. It’s a subtle difference, but it touches on one of the most oft touted reasons for a large corporation to blog–giving the company a human voice.

Yesterday, Jennifer Van Grove, Associate Editor at Mashable, published an article titled How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the Future.

Van Grove quotes from last May’s Mashable interview with Forrester CEO George Colony titled Should CEOs Be Fluent in Social Media? about how few top executives use social media, noting that "social media abstinence even appears to extend to CEOs of tech companies."

She brings in the age and attitude factor (which Colony raised as well):

When it comes to CEOs, there’s a vast disparity between the young ones heading up startups and the more seasoned CEOs running the world’s most powerful companies. That disparity is social media — the young are more versed than the old. The difference between the two groups can be attributed to different generations and different attitudes around content and information meant for the public and private domains.

But she fails to mention that in that interview, as well as on Colony’s blog here, that he also notes that the CEO’s of social media companies are less than avid social media users:

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is active on his platform but doesn’t blog and infrequently visits Twitter. Evan Williams of Twitter Tweets several times per day and blogs, but hasn’t posted in 2010. Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn uses Twitter several times per week and posts to the LinkedIn corporate blog. Mike Jones, co-CEO of MySpace is on Twitter several times per week and has a blog (though no posts this year).

I don’t know the ages of Weiner and Jones but Williams is 30-something and Zuckerberg is 20-something. These guys are not only extremely versed in social media but Williams (Blogger and Twitter) and Zuckerberg (Facebook) were among the creators of it.

So it doesn’t seem, as Van Grove asserts, that lack of executive blogging/social media use is solely because of "different generations and different attitudes around content and information."

I’d argue that it’s because executives of all generations have not considered how these technologies can be used as leadership tools. They only see them as marketing/public relations tools and once a company gets to a certain size, few CEO’s engage directly in PR on a daily basis.

Van Grove lauds the tweeting of Livestrong CEO Doug Ulman but he doesn’t appear to blog and I seriously doubt that he spends much time reading or personally responding to the tweets of his 38,000+ followers. As I blogged last month, the social networking part of social media is a problem for most executives.

Van Grove asks Edelman Digital’s Senior VP Steve Rubel what he thinks the use of social media will be by executives in the future:

While bullish on CEOs making organizational changes to better incorporate social media, Rubel does not see reason to predict a huge uptick in social media broadcasting from the CEOs themselves. “I see CEOs more laying the groundwork in vision and process than necessarily participating actively themselves,” asserts Rubel.

That’s because Rubel sees the world of social media through the lens of public relations. Others, like that geezer CEO Paul Levy, see it through the lens of leadership.

Debbie Weil saw that a blog could give an organization a human voice.  We now need executives to see that a blog can help them lead an organization with human voice.

Today, I tweeted five of their recent posts, ones that I think are instructive for those who are interested in the art of leadership blogging.

These weren’t retweets of their blog headlines. I tried to cram in . . . → Read More: Tweeting some posts of leaders who blog: learning by example]]> I’m subscribed to the blogs of 18+ leaders (and adding more as I discover them).

Today, I tweeted five of their recent posts, ones that I think are instructive for those who are interested in the art of leadership blogging.

These weren’t retweets of their blog headlines. I tried to cram in a hint about why I judged each post to be instructive.

I’m experimenting with how to best format these tweets.  By the time I did the 4th one, it occurred to me to include:

• The #Leadership hashtag at the beginning with the phrase ‘blog post’
• Their name/Twitter username and their title/position/organization
• The topic
• My take on why it’s a good example of leadership blogging
• A short URL that links to the blog post

Here are my tweets of today’s five leadership blog posts worth noting:

• #Leadership blog post-CEO Richard Edelman: Story of his mtg w Elie Wiesel – value of making a difference http://bit.ly/clgqGx
• #Leadership blog post-Ventura City Mgr Rick Cole: Reframes adversarial extremes to face econ realities http://bit.ly/aPAbNQ
• Leadership blog post – Hospital CEO @Paulflevy Talking to people w cancer; 2 stories of listening http://bit.ly/aWFv0V
• Leadership blog post – @tom_peters: A story excerpt from a novel that illustrates reframing, recognition, emotional EQ http://bit.ly/cXzZf3
• Leadership blog post – Eden Prairie City Mgr Scott Neal on the death of an employee: Goodbye Dona http://bit.ly/aIHRcj

I’m not sure yet how often I’ll A) do this kind of tweeting; B) continue to blog the tweets.

Suggestions/feedback appreciated.

If I’m reading him right, I think this is a mistake. If . . . → Read More: Social media in the executive suite: For influence, yes. For networking? Not so much]]> In his recent series of blog posts on The Social CEO (Pt 1, Pt 2, Pt 3, Pt 4, Q&A), Forrester CEO George Colony seems to assume that social media technologies can only be used as tools for social networking. 

If I’m reading him right, I think this is a mistake. If these technologies were seen more as tools for leveraging one’s influence, then many more leaders would like be willing to deploy them. 

In Part 2 of his series, Colony writes:

With the exception of a small minority of brilliant thinkers, smart social networkers, and publishing-oriented personalities, the social heavy model is a recipe for blowhardism. Think about it — how many people do you know with the erudition to make 30 worthwhile short statements per week, and one valuable long statement per week?

What Colony appears to miss is that a blog in the hands of a leader can be used for (among many purposes) strategic, near real-time, short storytelling. And Twitter can simply be used to help the individual blog posts ‘travel’ around to the leader’s intended audience. (Yes, I’m deliberately using the term ‘audience’ instead of the term ‘network.’ More on that below.)

Here’s a recent example by Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, in a post to his Running A Hospital blog titled Brava, Maureen!

I was out of town when President Obama made his recess appointment of Don Berwick to head CMS, and when the Institute for Healthcare Improvement announced that Maureen Bisognano would take over as CEO… Regular readers have often seen Maureen’s name on this blog. Her suggestions, for example, have made a huge difference in the way we have made our ICUs more patient- and family-centered.

Levy’s using his blog post (tweeted here) to provide recognition, telling a short and simple story about someone whose efforts or actions embody his values and furthers his strategy and goals as a leader. 

Another Levy example: a blog post about a single employee whose actions reflect one of the hospital’s strategic initiatives.

In the networked world we live in, this is a significant way to affirm someone. In the How to blog effectively section of my 2005 Leadership Blogging Guide (currently under revision as a White Paper), I write:

One of the most effective ways to acknowledge someone informally is to tell someone else a story about them. Why? Because it has a better chance to spread around.

A positive remark directly to the person being acknowledged generally goes no further because to most people it would feel like bragging to tell someone else. But if the positive remark is made to someone else, then the recipient is very likely to repeat the story to others.

A blog post recognizing an employee, a colleague, an organization or business in the community is an effective way to accomplish the informal form of recognition with the impact of the formal.

Others see the post and mention it to the affirmed person; some pass around its URL/PermaLink via email to others; others blog it and retweet it, thereby widening its impact; and the search engines store the content of it indefinitely, thereby providing opportunities for serendipitous acknowledgement far into the future.

I can imagine in the days and weeks subsequent to Levy’s blog post about Bisognano, she got a fair number of people saying to her "Hey, Maureen, I saw your photo in Paul Levy’s blog…"

While erudition might be important for anyone aspiring to be a columnist (which is how I’d describe Colony’s "one valuable long statement per week"), it’s not necessary to be an effective leadership blogger.  (Providing recognition is only one of the ways leaders can use a blog to leverage their influence. I’ve identified about a dozen.)

Colony rightfully challenges the notion that executives need to be heavily interactive with their use of social media technologies. In Pt 4, he writes about his ‘social light’ strategy:

Now admittedly, this is a far cry from the "Get into the conversation" conventional wisdom of the social heavies. And it contradicts the "Post incessantly to build followers" high-school behavior of many social players. But let’s face facts — most CEO don’t have the time or the capacity to play those games. They’ve got companies to run.

Which is why I think it’s often more helpful to emphasize the term ‘audience’ instead of the term ‘network’ if you’re a leader considering how you can personally deploy these social media technologies. (Some of the lack of adoption of these technologies by those in leadership positions is likely due to the nomenclature of social media. ‘Blogging,’ ‘tweeting,’ and ‘social networking’ can be off-putting terms to the uninitiated executive.) 

For the ‘audience’ vs. ‘networking’ approach, look no further than Seth Godin who has a huge following among the social media-oriented communcations/public relations/marketing crowd (and a favorite author of mine as well.)

• Godin does not allow comments on his blog. Readers can only like/recommend a post and/or retweet it. (He does allow pingbacks/trackbacks but in the age of Twitter, it gets little use.)
• Godin only uses his public Twitter account and his Facebook page as a tools for automatically publishing the content of his blog posts. (His Facebook page followers engage with one another on his Wall, but he doesn’t participate.)

In other words, Godin’s using social networking technologies very effectively to reach his audience without any of the ‘social’ or the ‘networking.’ (He does publish his email address and is reputed to be very responsive.) Rather, Godin is big on using these tools to leverage his influence.

 
Not enough has changed since 2006 when Randall Stross published a column in the New York Times titled All the Internet’s a Stage. Why Don’t C.E.O.’s Use It? 

It need not be the case.

A month ago, I’d purchased the Kindle version of Brian’s new book Engage: The Complete . . . → Read More: Social media guru Brian Solis: Engagement, influence, leverage, and a question of the packaged self]]>  
I attended An Evening with Brian Solis in Minneapolis last Tuesday. It was a full house (250?) at Solera‘s A/C-challenged, 3rd floor conference room. Kudos to Jennifer Kane and Kary Delaria of Kane Consulting for a well-run event.

A month ago, I’d purchased the Kindle version of Brian’s new book Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web (Google book here; Scribd here) and found it not only informative but intellectually challenging. Brian’s as much a sociologist as he is a marketing and communications guy.

I’m mainly interested in how people in leadership positions can use social media themselves to be more effective, whereas most of Solis’ presentation and his book are about how organizations (primarily businesses, though much of it could apply to non-profits and even governments) can use social media to be more effective.

So his presentation was inspirational and informative to me because I’m gearing up to take my own business, Wigley and Associates, to a different level and need to apply his principles just like any other business.  But I found two elements of his speech were especially relevant to leaders who use social media themselves

Influence

I like it that Solis defined influence as "the ability to inspire desirable and measurable outcomes" and that those involved in using social media for their organizations must not lose sight of this (to wit, the funny but ineffective Old Spice guy campaign and the inane Fast Company Influence Project).

I’ve long preached influence vs. numbers to leaders who check the traffic stats on their blogs too often, and I now tell it to those who pay too much attention to their number of Twitter followers and Facebook friends/fans/likers.

Yes, you need an audience. There’s not much point to giving a sermon with no one in the pews.

But numbers don’t give you the kind of feedback you need on whether your social media efforts are having the kind of influence you want on the people who matter to you. (Informal feedback that let’s you know people are paying attention is good. Measurable outcomes, of course, are best.)

Leverage (AKA social media sharing)

I don’t remember if Solis used the term ‘leverage’ but it came through loud and clear when he asked the audience how many were tweeting about his presentation as he was speaking. A third or more of those present raised their hands.

His memorable phrase: "With social media, you are marketing to an audience with an audience." 

Most leaders don’t get this.

I remember the first time the ‘power of the permalink’ got through my thick skull. It was late 2003 or early 2004. My client, Eden Prairie City Manager Scott Neal, told me that one of the people following his blog was a reporter from the local newspaper. Scott was amazed when excerpts from his blog posts began showing up in newspaper articles without the reporter ever phoning or emailing him. And he was more amazed when others started emailing/linking to those articles and in turn, mentioning to Scott informally that they read/heard what he said.

Likewise, Scott was surprised when, after posting to his blog at 7:30 am, he’d walk down the hall and have employees mention that they’d just read his post. And then later in the day he’d hear employees tell him that someone had emailed them a link to a recent blog post.

That was happening seven years ago.  The state of social media now is such that nearly everyone has an audience and a leader’s ability to effectively reach the audiences of their audience is unparalleled. From Brian’s book, page 4:

Social media has created and magnified a new layer of influencers across all industries. It is the understanding of the role people play in the process of not only reading and disseminating information, but also how they share and create content in which others can participate. This, and only this, allows us to truly grasp the future of communications, which is already unfolding today.

A confusing quotation

Solis ended his presentation with a George Bernard Shaw quote: "Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself".

I’ve always like the quote because of its optimistic, you-can-be-or-do-anything message.

But without some elaboration, it’s puzzling to me why Solis would use it in a presentation that emphasized the importance of authenticity which, on the face of it, does not seem to go hand-in-hand with ‘creating yourself.’ 

Social media tempts us all with its ability to make it easier to package ourselves. Today’s NY Times ‘The Way We Live Now’ piece by Peggy Orenstein, I Tweet, Therefore I Am, focuses on this (though she seems to miss the distinction between lifecasting and mindcasting):

The fun of Twitter and, I suspect, its draw for millions of people, is its infinite potential for connection, as well as its opportunity for self-expression. I enjoy those things myself. But when every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight? When we reflexively post each feeling, what becomes of reflection? When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy?

The risk of the performance culture, of the packaged self, is that it erodes the very relationships it purports to create, and alienates us from our own humanity.

It seems to me that Solis might elaborate a bit on what the Shaw quote means to him in the context of Engage and his writings about the egosystem. Or maybe find a different quotation that epitomizes it. Maybe one of these authenticity quotes? (And while he’s at it, he might want to offer his services to the company with that 1999-style website!)

I’ve been waiting for some substantive blog posts to be published about An Evening with Brian Solis but thus far, haven’t seen any referred to in the Twitter real-time results for the #solisMSP hashtag.  Lots of tweets have captured some of his quotes, though, for example:

Every company is a media company, EC=MC

Upload your excellent written content to Scribd.com and Docstoc.com to get found by a wider audience

Youtube is the #2 search engine after Google. Want to build your brand? Get on Youtube with high-quality, SEO’d video

People is now the 5th P in marketing (with product, price, place, promotion)

Engage people where they congregate online

If your dentist isn’t on Twitter, get another dentist. Same goes for your wife.

70% of all social web users are just spectators

RRS = Relevance, Resonance & Significance

One room at a time makes a difference for engaging people. I want to engage you so that you will engage others

You’re only as good as you were yesterday

Twitter apps like tweetdeck and Seesmic are slot machines of attention

Empathy is the toll booth in the last mile of engagement in social media

Influencers don’t magically find information

UnSummit is an alternative, "unconference," not unlike a BarCamp. That means full participation, full dissemination and free admission — all the things that traditional conferences are not.

The unstated theme was social media/PR oriented, . . . → Read More: Photos from unSummit #4 at Lowertown’s CoCo]]>   
I attended UnSummit 4 yesterday at CoCo, the coworking and collaborative space in downtown St. Paul’s Lowertown:

UnSummit is an alternative, "unconference," not unlike a BarCamp. That means full participation, full dissemination and free admission — all the things that traditional conferences are not.

The unstated theme was social media/PR oriented, though not exclusively. It was an amazingly well-done conference for being volunteer-run and 100% free (no conference fee; free coffee, donuts, pizza, beer, wine, etc.) due to the generous support of its sponsors.

My favorite session: "Feeding the Blog Beast" by Arik Hanson (center photo above).

Then Steve Clift @democracy retweeted this from @72prufrocks today, a report titled Listen, Participate, Transform: A social media framework for local government . . . → Read More: Budget cuts: an opportunity for local government to deliver services WITH citizens. Social media can help.]]> @Ross Currier, my Locally Grown co-host, tweeted on Monday, “As citizens increasingly challenge politics as usual, is it no longer left vs. right, nor faith vs. reason, but individual vs. institution?”

Then Steve Clift @democracy retweeted this from @72prufrocks today, a report titled Listen, Participate, Transform: A social media framework for local government from the UK-based Young Foundation. It’s part of their Local 2.0 project (see the Local 2.0 Blog here), funded by the Department of Communities and Local Government. 

The report’s emphasis on the importance of public officials building relationships with citizens, using social media in part, is encouraging and is the best writing I’ve seen thus far on the topic.

In my hometown of Northfield, this is more than a little timely because:

1. Significant budget cuts have to be made soon and the process is receiving some criticism
2. Citizens are being asked to support a referendum for new police and fire facilities
3. The Northfield City Council has a goal of improving communication with staff, citizen advisory groups and community

From the report’s introduction:

Impending budget cuts mean that local government will need to change the way it works, largely moving away from a model of delivering services to and for people, to a model of delivering services with people. Public servants will be required to build new relationships with citizens, relationships to help support civil society in responding to inevitable challenges.

As a consequence, local and central government needs to find better ways to forge new partnerships, involving citizens and the state working together to generate new ideas, tap into latent community capacity and make better use of local assets.

These challenges come at a time when social media has become part of everyday life for millions of people. For those in central and local government, social media will undoubtedly become part of everyday business, a channel for improved dialogue, wider networks and a new kind of mutualism that will be central to delivering effective public services. However, at this point social media is largely uncharted territory for many councils and public agencies.

…

1. Listen to social media users and conversations about local issues
2. Participate in conversations, building dialogue with citizens through social media, but also by energizing them around local issues, providing spaces for residents to support each other, and ultimately empowering them through decision making. The impact of participation should also be measured.
3. Transform service redesign, replacing or complimenting existing ways of working and adopting new models of working

This reinforces the Citizens League’s finding on the importance of the quality of the dialogue between pubic officials and citizens that I blogged about last August:

One hypothesis about citizen involvement processes is that citizens view processes as “authentic” if the processes results in policies that citizens favor. This turned out not to be true. The most critical element citizens used to evaluate the authenticity of their involvement in MAP 150 projects was the quality of the dialogue with public officials. The quality of the dialogue was more important than the eventual result.

The disincentives for public officials to meaningfully engage with citizens are strong (see related blog posts here, here, and here) but the financial pain that everyone is about to experience as pubic services are cut back just may be enough to overcome them.

For those who want to go deeper, I recommend two other recent Young Foundation papers:

L: Public services and civil society working together 

R: The birth of the relational state

I’m mainly interested to see how detailed she gets on the actual use of social media tools by individual leaders vs. the overall use of social media by an organization.

The title of . . . → Read More: Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, by Charlene Li]]> I’ve started reading the book Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, by Charlene Li.

I’m mainly interested to see how detailed she gets on the actual use of social media tools by individual leaders vs. the overall use of social media by an organization.

The title of the book seems to infer the former but I’m guessing that most of the content will focus on the latter. I’m following her on Twitter and keeping track of her blog.

I was pleased to see that one of the first leaders she discusses (p. 26 of the print edition) is Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. I blogged about Levy a year ago, as he maintains a leadership blog called Running a hospital where he regularly shares “thoughts about hospitals, medicine, and health care issues.” I follow Levy on Twitter.