But there’s a giant upside, probably accounting for all those folks taking that 25^th hour to learn more and do more to market online. All of that sweat equity can deliver sharper focus and more success.

Take social media marketing.

There’s a learning curve when you begin blogging, Facebooking, Twittering, etc., and it takes time to get started. But these venues are designed for the average time-challenged human being. They’re forgiving, a necessity for busy entrepreneurs, right? You can dip a toe into social media marketing any time, day or night, and then build on it at a pace you can handle.

Who has time to Facebook? Why Twitter? The answer to these questions may be a few other questions: Who are my customers? What are my customers looking for? What are my peers in my industry thinking about and what are they saying?

So maybe you can’t afford a PR firm to answer these questions for you, but you sure can Tweet, Facebook, blog and, generally, jump in on the conversation. You can get some answers.

There are guides to social media marketing out there for sure, written by enthusiasts eager to share their struggles and successes. Consider us one of them, because we are sold on the marketing power of social media. Here’s a white paper to help you get started on getting social: “Using Social Media Marketing to Drive Traffic to Your Website” (more)

Follow-up reading: Wondering how social media marketing helps with SEO? Steve Fisher addresses the effect social media is having on search engine listings.

Trend #1 – Advertising is shifting from Contextual Relevance to Temporal Relevance

I recently was chatting with a friend of mine who works with a large social networking company about online advertising and how we are going through a shift. For as long as web advertising has been around it has been about contextual relevance. What is written on the page drives the ad copy to increase the click through potential. This is how Google Adwords works and almost every web advertising system out there.

What is emerging is what he calls “temporal relevance” which is driven by advertising in a time sensitive manner. While this could be a spammers delight (see hashtag spamming on Twitter) it could be great to increase click throughs when the maximum amount of people are looking for something in a particular topic.

Trend #2: Google Wave is the New Era of Real Time Collaboration

I have been using Google Wave and the amazing real time collaboration available with this platform blows my mind. The potential for this tool is staggering. I always explain Google Wave is like Twitter, IM and email had a baby. Mashable talks about this topic as well:

“Real-time will play a major role in the future of online collaboration. We’ve seen all the hype around the new Google Wave platform, as well as the growth of Twitter and Twitter-like communications (such as Facebook status). On the business side, SAP’s Gravity, a prototype of real-time collaborative business process modeling within Google Wave, is a good example. But I see this as the tip of the iceberg.”

Trend #3: E-Commerce will transform to a shared and social experience

Similar to the trend of social commerce, imaging a shared shopping experience but take it a step further. What if you have prices change in real-time based on demand. This has been happening for years to a certain degree with the travel industry and its revenue management systems. But still, that was based on historical data and human modification of current trends. It is not truly real time. With real time data and real time e-commerce, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving in the United States where everyone shops for Christmas) would never look the same. What about products that rely on a certain freshness or “cinderella packaging”. Mashable talk about it with this great example:

“For consumer facing applications, real-time pricing can be a competitive advantage for perishable goods. For example, the grocer with fresher fruit can theoretically charge or sell more by providing real-time freshness data. With the growth of smart energy grids, real-time pricing of solar energy and electric power provides tremendous cost-savings for consumers. Generally within e-commerce, real-time inventory information that is accessible through the web is valuable for both the consumer and company. What are the other areas of high impact? Travel? Off-season luxury goods? Event tickets? Let us know in the comments below.”

What else? Analytics? Job Contracting?

What else do you think will be impacted by this shift to the real time web? Leave us a comment and tell us your thoughts.

Find out answers to all of the above and more at the Social Media Workshop sponsored by Network Solutions in Richmond, VA. Key learning points from this half-day FREE workshop include:

• Advantages of social media marketing over traditional tactics
• How to start blogging with WordPress?
• How to turn Twitter into a customer service tool?
• How to increase your Google ranking with Search Engine Optimization tricks?

Speakers to include:

• Doug Meacham Managing Consultant – Retail Delivery at IBM
• Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Strategist, Network Solutions
• Randall Windsor, Web Marketing Manager, Network Solutions
• Priya Ramesh, Director, Social Media Strategy, CRT-tanaka

Event Details:

• DATE: Friday, Nov 20th, 2009.
• VENUE: CRT-tanaka, 101 W Commerce Rd, Richmond, VA 23224
• TIME: 8:30AM – 12PM

Agenda:

• 8:30AM – 9:30AM: Light breakfast and Networking
• 9:30AM – 10:00AM: Intro to Social Media Best Practices (Doug Meacham)
• 10:00AM – 11:00AM: Maximize Customer Satisfaction Via Blogs and Twitter
• 11:00AM – 11:30AM: Importance of Search Engine Optimization
• 11:30AM – 12:00PM: Q&A

Sign up today! Limited seating available. Don’t forget to bring you laptops to take your first steps in blogging. Attendees will learn how to use the Network Solutions WordPress Hosting package for free!

This, by itself, is only slightly interesting; as with any technology — dishwashers, automobiles, air conditioning, telephones, TV, cell phones — there are always folks who’ll find reasons not to use it, for reasons ranging from the pragmatic, to the quixotic, to the perverse. And inevitably, those refusers will diminish as the technology evolves from novelty to utility to necessity.

(Also, I note that some of the Facebook refusers profiled were merely lazy, since instead of taking a principled stance and quarantining themselves from the people and information transmitted via online social networks, they simply relied on their non-boycotting friends to relay the information for them.)

To me, the interesting bit is the idea that people who aren’t on Facebook exist in a kind of un-person / non-entity state of being, and how that represents a radical change in attitude from the pre-computer era — a paradigm shift, sea change, or gamechanger (depending on which era’s jargon you prefer), brought about by the dominance of digital media and interconnected networks in general, and the ubiquitious convenience of online search in particular.

My thinking goes a little something like this:

Previously, if something didn’t have a physical presence, it didn’t really exist. Now, if something doesn’t have an online presence, it doesn’t really exist.

Consider: In pre-Internet days, the only presence was physical, so we only really thought we knew someone or something if we could see, talk to, and touch it directly. Anything outside that model — early virtual relationships  like BBS, amateur radio, telephone party line, or pen pals — wasn’t quite “real.”

Nowadays, knowing something really means the ability to find, store, and send it online.

Looking at the example of the Facebook refusers, we see people who don’t participate don’t have presence, even in those platforms where the online interactions are strongest when reinforcing offline relationships. (I’ve mentioned a related theme before, “When you don’t post, you don’t exist.”)

More importantly, it holds true for goods and knowledge that exist as physical items in the real world — say, old books that haven’t been scanned in yet; a property record that isn’t in an accessible database; or an antique that hasn’t been documented online: Because they’re not findable via Web search or interlinked database, because they don’t have presence online, we can’t know then or even know about them unless we venture offline, so they don’t really exist.

Now, sure, there have are plenty of things that didn’t and don’t really “exist” — economies, trust, reputations, patriotism, love, etc. — but have always been convenient for us to act like they do. But here I’m talking about things that actually do exist as physical items in the real world, but because we’re cut off from them in our daily, digital, online lives, they’re out of the loop.

This is, of course, not due to any changes in intrinsic value (to the extent that such a beast exists), but represents a shift in attitude — it boils down to what we consider “visible” and “knowable.”

Anyway, just a thought. Please leave a real comment below.

This isn’t in an existential, “Can one ever truly know someone?” kind of way — I’m literally thinking, “Who the heck are you and I how do I know you?”

Oftentimes, it’s because I only know them by a nickname or online handle, whereas the network uses their real name (as in the case of Facebook). Or they’ve changed a name along the way. Or it’s simply an old connection that I’ve just drifted away from.

Most of the time, though, it’s because a person’s presence in my social network simply reflects a momentary connection — say, an introduction at an event or party — but they’re lumped in (probably alphabetically) and given the same weight as people with whom I have much stronger, even lifelong, connections. Unless I was diligent and added tags, notes, or categorized them in the proper group — anything to put them in an identifiable context — it’s up to me to remember the distinctions.

Of course, this isn’t a new phenomena — we ran into the same problem flipping through paper address books,  Christmas card lists, Rolodexes, or Filofaxes. Online, it’s simply more accessible, both to ourselves and to others.

The 7-Year Friend Itch

This past summer, an academic paper came out and quantified this occurrence, saying that our friend networks (that’s in the broader, traditional sense, not just online) turn over every 7 years.

At least, that how it was popularly reported. I don’t know that anyone has actually read the paper, since the full text doesn’t appear to be online. Also, the 7-year figure just reflects the fact that the study period ran from 2000-2007, which also means that we don’t really know the full scope of how social networking tools affects that behavior, especially if those online interactions are an integral part of the network from the get-go.

Generally speaking, though, the 7-year figure feels right. In your youth, your social network centers around school, which has some built-in stopping points, forcing turnover. Once you get out of school, most of your friend network probably revolves around your workplace, and as we get older, in addition to personalities, tastes, and interests changing, there’s a fairly fixed set of life-altering milestones that directly affect our friend networks: people move, switch jobs, date, break up, get married, have kids, get divorced, and die.

In the online context, we can also have to add in the behavior of people flocking to, and then abandoning particular social networking platforms. Even with robust import / export tools, switching networks is an opportunity, to lose or explicitly dump connections.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how online engagements affect overall friend turnover. Which will be the more powerful affect: The constant influx of new people (if it occurs at all — for example, my Facebook friend growth has slowed to a trickle at this point) displacing old people, or the online components reminding us of and reinforcing existing connections.

To the extent that they don’t already exist, maybe social networks should add in tools that shows us the people we haven’t touched online in a while, maybe moving them to an “inactive” category, either to act as a prompt to get back in touch, or to clear them out so we can focus our attention on the friends du jour.

How does the 7-year friend turnover number work for you? Do you think online connections will increase or decrease that figure? Leave a comment (especially if you haven’t touched me online in a while).

Since I couldn’t monitor the entire event live, I won’t do an event recap (which would be superfluous, given all the writeups, reviews, and Twitter posts from the event) other than to say that Senator Mark Warner is a great speaker, but I thought his remarks were a little… stump-y; Ramon Ray is very animated; and that while I’ve heard Steve Fisher present his tips on business cards before, his delivery just gets better and better, as you can see for yourself.

A Tale of Two Social Media Policies?

Now that we’re in October (though the thermometer is currently reflecting December, brrr), I thought I’d just dip into my slushpile of socially-linkshared links and clear out some lingering subjects from September that I didn’t get to do full entries about:

Milbloggers and social media watchers of all types are waiting with bated breath to see the Department of Defense’s recommendations on social media policy for the armed forces. Each of the armed services has crafted its own guidelines in herky-jerky fashion, often taking a few steps forward, then soon after taking them back. So it’ll be good to see some guidance from the top, especially when folks at the top and bottom of the chain of command see the value of servicemembers engaging on social media platforms.

According to reports, the draft memo looks like it’s embracing social media communication usage by troops and their families, which is good news. Of course, the problem is in implementation — I suspect the barriers lie largely in middle management, as is the case with many large institutions. Time will tell.

On the other hand, the Washington Post also just announced its social media policy (internally, but of course it got out), which is being criticized for being overly restrictive, in that it basically bans reporters from having any opinions that could give people a peek behind the newsroom curtain, or be considered partisan, reflective of bias, or otherwise interesting.

Additionally, the Post’s policy addresses some issues of digital bread crumbs and friend/follower relationships — I mentioned the MIT study that could “out” people by analyzing their Facebook networks, and the Post policy warns against friending people or joining groups that could indicate a particular bias, as well as using tools (like search engines) where one could infer bias by watching the trail of queries, publicly viewable or not.

I’ll let the journalism navel-gazers debate the merits of trying to maintain a sterile field when it comes to opinions, versus accepting that people have viewpoints and being transparent about them (to say nothing of going to a more British tabloid-model of aligning with a particular viewpoint, much as Fox and MSNBC have done).

This also ties into a story by Mark Bowden in the Atlantic, “The Story Behind the Story,” on how motivated ideologues are driving the news cycle, with the goal of winning points instead of seeking truth, though I need to think about this some more.

There’s a lot more stuff in my slushpile that you can check out, though for now, I’m going to resume looking forward, so I can begin to fall behind for October now.

Got a comment on the Grow Smart Biz conference, fellow stream watchers, or on any of the other points I allegedly made here? Share it below.

Coincidentally, I’ve been getting more active trying out Foursquare, a location-based mobile social network — you go to a bar, restaurant or other attraction, tell the service your location via phone or mobile device, it broadcasts your location (mine is set to also post to Twitter, and since my Twitter goes to my Facebook status, updates that, too), and it notifies you if friends are also there.

(It also has a points/competition aspect, which doesn’t win you anything except bragging rights, but also serves to activate the gaming, gambling, and rewards parts of your brain.)

Anyway, as the night progressed and we were moving from place to place, I was dutifully updating my location. At some point, one of my friends, who was also a Facebook friend (and a hardcore user, too — she was checking status updates on her smartphone), saw one of my updates and said: hey, what gives — why are you posting that you’re in DC?

Apparently, Foursquare has a known problem distinguishing between multiple locations that share the same name. Because the place I was at was part of a chain, it picked the DC location, which was about 20 miles east of where I actually was. (They’re working on the problem, and there are workarounds involving unique location names. Plus it may not be as much of a problem if you have your phone’s GPS location transmitter turned on. I don’t.)

Not that this was anything important (this time), but the fact that I was inadvertently transmitting misinformation was a little irritating.

In the Location Game, Wrong Information Is Worse Than No Information

So what’s the point of this anecdote? When it comes to location-based services, accuracy matters. In many things online, good enough is usually good enough, but not when it comes to near-realtime physical location. Close may count in horseshoes and hand grenades, but not for location-based services, or at least ones that promise the kind of granularity that you can use for ad hoc meetups on-the-fly — rather than the more appointment-like services with messages like “I’m in Denver for the weekend, anyone around?” (which is how some of these services started out.)

Location is also complicated by the additional consideration of time — if you’re posting perfectly accurate location updates that are offset temporally by a few minutes, it’s not a current location, it’s a historical record.

In Rumsfeldian-terms, knowing that you don’t know someone else’s location is a “known unknown” (you know that you don’t know where your friends are, and in fact, may not even think about it). Whereas thinking you know something that’s actually incorrect (by dint of time or space) is an “unknown unknown” (you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know), which can be a whole lot worse.

Have your own run-in with location-based services? Leave a comment below.

[Incidentally, there’s a local DC band called the Known Unknowns. I don’t know if they’re still active and I’ve never seen them live, but I’ve heard a few tracks — they’re pretty good.)

Two recent cases in point:

* Project ‘Gaydar’: This Boston Globe article looks at some MIT researchers who analyzed Facebook friending patterns and figured out that they could pretty accurately predict which men were gay, even if they didn’t list it in their profile. They did this by looking at the subjects’ Facebook friends; apparently, gay men have more gay male friends than straight men, so by looking at someone’s followers and plugging them into a computer model, they could infer who was gay. (It didn’t work as well with bisexuals and lesbians.)

The reason it works is that people with similar interests tend to cluster. Call it birds of a feather flocking together, or guilt by association. Either way, it shows another way that indirect information — in this case, the company you keep — can be used to reveal more information about you than you might have intended, especially when that information is accessible online.

(A further example comes from another researcher cited in the article who used predictive models, combined with follower information, to predict political affiliation based on music preference. Again, while it may be an old stereotype to associate, say, the Grateful Dead with progressives, and while you might miss a few outliers — like noted Republicans who are Deadheads — the ability to cross-check against the stated preferences of your online friends, over whom you have little control — is a new thing to worry about.)

Although I’m sure many audience research, political polling, and marketing types are salivating at the possibilities, any privacy-valuing individual should take pause. Though the logical answer — don’t post information under your own name, which basically means don’t post anything — seems pretty draconian. [link via Slashdot]

* Online Compliments Can Haunt You, Too: From the Wall Street Journal, a lawyer who represents corporations in employment cases recommends they tell employees not to post recommendations for laid-off co-workers on job networking sites (like LinkedIn), on the theory that if someone is let go for cause, but gets good online recommendations from co-workers, it might be used as legal fodder.

You know the mom-ish advice — if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all. I guess we can amend that to simply say, “Don’t say anything at all.”

Online job recommendations are strange beasts — as Jeremiah Owyang notes, their value is already dubious, since people are only likely to ask for a recommendation when they think they’ll get a good one, but this is a new twist. Most of us are hesitant to give a less-than-shining recommendation if the other person can see it; take away the ability to give a good recommendation, and all that’s left is the mushiest of litigation-proof recommendation letters, or simply a very corporate verification of employment dates.

It’s easy to say, “Just stop posting stuff online,” though in practice, it’s getting to be like saying “so just don’t drive” or “just don’t talk on the phone” — you can do it, but the cost is increasing.

Got a comment (that’ll add to your online body of work, possibly lending more insight into your personality and purchasing habits)? Leave a comment.

I have worked with many companies to build out online communities and people always seem to ask me what makes a great community and how do you build one?

What Makes a Great Community? That one is easy – the people engaging with it and the people who support it.

How Do You Build a Stellar Online Community? Well, that one deserves a bit more detail.

So I started going back to my ready resources and articles and thought that I would compile a list of best practices across a bunch of blog posts and forums that I will list below. This list is compiled and my view of what it takes to build a stellar online community. I include the referenced links so you can review and make your own list. Let’s get started:

1. Create compelling content on a recurring basis. Brands sometimes create videos, podcasts, or stories on a daily or weekly basis that encourages members to come back. – From Jeremiah Owyang
2. Integrate with your website –and other customer touchpoints. Remember, corporate sites of the future are aggregations of community discussion, be sure to integrate community in your corporate site.  Make sure your call center, email marketing, and external newsletters all integrate community.  (don’t forget even the email signatures) - From Jeremiah Owyang
3. Invite community influencers and advocates to the community first –giving them first right of testing the system and then inviting others.- From Jeremiah Owyang
4. Encourage interaction through conversations. Ask questions, talk about controversial topics, or host a contest that encourages participation.- From Jeremiah Owyang
5. Reward top contributors: Those that participate the most, or perhaps, are the most helpful should be recognized on a leader board, and thanked in public.  Unexpectedly, send them something nice as a thank you, or reward them with premium services –never money.- From Jeremiah Owyang
6. Reward users who fill out their profile. Folks like to see other friendly faces, so giving them access to premium features or recognition of those who have the most complete profiles should recognized.- From Jeremiah Owyang
7. Centralize your community around your real world events.  People want to find each other before events, talk about the event during the duration, and then afterwards are key.  Use the community in your physical events. - From Jeremiah Owyang
8. Virtual Events integrate community:  Don’t just use on your real world events, but integrated with your virtual ones, I‘ve written at length about that here. - From Jeremiah Owyang
9. Empower your power users – give them a private area in the forum & let them brainstorm. You’ll be amazed at what a group will come up with! Encourage them to keep it simple so no one gets worn out. Have them help moderate. - From Connie Bensen
10. Encourage employees to get active.  A party isn’t much fun if there’s no one there, so encourage the hosts (often employees) to kickstart discussions by talking, debating, and arguing about the news, updates, or even relevant YouTube videos will trigger discussion.  Of course, you have a community manager on staff, right? - From Jeremiah Owyang
11. Encourage people to come out of lurking – run games or contests to see who is frequenting your forum. You may be surprised! (where to get the prizes? If you don’t have resources, partner with related products & ask them to donate. You’ll be surprised at how many will join your venture.) - From Connie Bensen
12. Encourage members to put info in their signature (for ex: a photography site – they could include their camera, lens info & software (It will encourage conversations amongst members) - From Connie Bensen
13. Listen to your customers. Ask them what they’d like to see in the forums. Post a poll of interest to your community. Ask them to provide feedback on your product/resources - From Connie Bensen
14. Ask yourself what makes your site unique? or how would you like it to be unique? How are you providing the user with value. - From Connie Bensen
15. Be present – as a site owner it’s important that you’re there & active. Get to know your people & they will notice & respond. Make your customers feel special. - From Connie Bensen
16. Be flexible…. and realize that sometimes you’ll have a great idea & oopsie, things don’t go as planned. But try try again. - From Connie Bensen
17. Be creative… watch what others are doing & gather ideas. I’m a people watcher, can you tell? And I love trying to figure out why things are successful. Plan ahead – this will guarantee success – and make you happier when you’re more relaxed in the execution of your plans. - From Connie Bensen
18. Be transparent – say what you mean & mean what you say. You’ll gain far more respect with all those you work with. And this is obvious, but good business practices are absolutely necessary. Remedy customer service issues quickly & follow up. Even the most negative curmudgeons will post their appreciation which adds value to your forums because it shows that your company is listening to their customers & most importantly *cares*. - From Connie Bensen

Great Resources Mentioned Above a Few Extra Golden Nuggets:

How to Kick Start a Community – Jeremiah Owyang

How to Kick Start a Community – Connie Bensen

Facebook Community Manager Group

Friendfeed Community Management Room

Twitter Pack of Social Media and Community Management People

Launch Your Community Site with a Bang – ShoutEm

10 Ways to Kick Start a User Community – Keen View

Leave a comment below: Whew, I’ve rattled off my best, now over to you.  Leave a comment with your tip.  How do you kick start a community?