How To Get Into Google+: Share Everything

The best way to get into Google+ is to get into the habit of sharing everything.

For a long time I have advised clients and friends to spend more time listening online and worry less about what to share. By listening we can find conversations to start or jump into and truly enjoy social interactions.

So my advice to become a sharing fiend to really get into Google+ may sound contradictory but I think it is the best way to let yourself get sucked in and appreciate what this powerful network has to offer.

Share Because You Can

Whenever we come across something we like online we don't react to it by sharing all of it because we know (or should know) that we'll drive our friends and followers crazy if we do. Most social networks are giant soapboxes through which everyone we're connected to can see everything we share. Sure, Facebook offers other sharing options but they are not intuitive and rarely used.

With Google+ nothing gets shared at all without first selecting one or more circles to share them with. If you want to share something with everyone, it's as simple as selecting the Public circle and sharing.

But here's the difference: when I snap a photo of my kids doing something cute my thought doesn't jump to sharing it because I consider that to be private and personal. Unless there was a way to just share it with my immediate family or close friends, which there is with Google+.

So now, for me, I just share everything and select the right groups to share each thing with. Google+ makes it easy to make that choice and when I use the smartphone app it uploads everything I create automatically so I just need to select who to share it with and I'm done.

Sharing Leads To Engagement

While over sharing leads to disengagement on most networks, on Google+ it leads to more engagement because not everyone is going to see everything you share. You may still only share the same number of things with everyone that you do on Facebook, but you may share so much more with your hiking circle, your curling team circle, your jogging buddies, your family, or whatever other circles you've created. And if you are thoughtful with how you curate your circles they will rarely overlap.

The result is that you'll have content that others will see, comment on, share and +1 that will pull you into the network naturally, just like on Facebook and Twitter.

So have fun sharing. It's what the network was built for and once you get into it you'll find it more natural than you expected. Maybe in time you will back off a bit, but to really get into it, let yourself loose with sharing for a while and get in the habit of choosing which content is right for each circle of relationships. For me, it has resulted in Google+ becoming my favourite online social channel. I don't even email my wife any more when I find something interesting, I just hit the +1 button, and enter her name.

If you're staying away from Google+ because "no one is there", be one of the first ones who is. What else is keeping you from jumping in?

Feature Update | Removing a Barrier to Learning: Sociallogical Learn Gets Single Sign-On

 

We all know that small things can make big differences and signing in to an online service can be a big pain for a lot of people. So, to make things easy for our learners, we have installed a single sign-on (SSO) service so people can sign on to our courses using their Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn accounts instead of needing to remember yet another password.

This is the first in a list of feature and usability improvements we are rolling out this month all to serve one purpose: to make Sociallogical Learn the ideal environment for business people to learn social business and to mentor each other through the big changes of the coming decade.

Setting Up Single Sign-On

If it's your first time using Learn, just click one of the social icons to the right to get started with SSO. Once you select a service, you're walked through the rest of the process and a Learn account will automatically be created for you.

Already using Learn? You can still make use of this convenience.

1. Sign in to your account if you haven't already,
2. open the User Menu on the right hand side of the Learn bar and
3. hit My Account.
4. Click Social Accounts, followed by
5. Add Linked Account and then follow the onscreen process.

When you're done, you can forget about your Learn password and just use SSO to sign on in the future!

How it Works

It's quite simple really - we are simply linking your social accounts to your Learn account. These relationships are then automatically saved and remembered for future use.

We know that passwords are a pain for most people - they are often a pain for us. So we hope this simple improvement makes life a little bit easier for our learners by making it easier to visit us more often and find out what's new in social business.

Why Your Location Matters in Your Online Profiles

You are not from "everywhere", "the world", "the globe", or "the web". You are a human with your feet planted somewhere on the earth that influences your view of the world, your business, and your society. So tell us where it is so we can get to know you better.

Whenever someone new connects with me on a social network I check out their profile to find out if they are a real person, and a few other characteristics I have mentioned in earlier posts. And one of those key characteristics is a person's location. More than almost any other profile element, location gives me context for that person. And when a new connection doesn't tell me where they are or where they've been it significantly lowers the likelihood that I will add them to my list of people I want to listen to.

We All Care About Place

Where we live and where we have lived in the past influences how we see the world as much, in my opinion, as our education and work history. I know that every city I have lived in has had a significant influence on me, both while I was living there and after I left (that's one of the reasons why I love the "places I have lived" section of the Google+ profile). Think about the top 5 questions you ask someone new that you meet at a trade show, webinar or when you're away on vacation. I'm willing to bet that "where are you from?" is on that list.

So it's best not to be coy or cute about where you live and just tell us. It doesn't have to be a street address or your detailed latitude and longitude coordinates (The long code after "UT" that very precise people use). Just your neighbourhood, city, state, or region. Something that gives the people you want to connect with you a sense of where you are in the world so we know a little more of who you are so we can get to know you better.

How do you feel about sharing your location? Is there a reason why you are ambiguous that overrides a potential friend's need to get to know you a bit better?

Startups, Oatcakes, and Building Community Through Sales

There’s a new way to strategically connect with customers that gives certainty to sellers, reduced prices to consumers, and turns the process of social promotions into an addictive game that Groupon fell short on and fizzled.

Spinzo is a brilliant new startup that is now working with merchants in a way that actually helps them grow their business instead of gouging them. Started by our friend Emmanuel Elmajian, this new startup has launched with their bright new idea and a long list of features to come that will turn merchants into happy partners - quite the opposite experience many have had with Groupon and the like.

Case Study: The Cape Breton Oatcake Society

In the highlands of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia is a rich Scottish heritage complete with its own Gaelic College, Scotch Distillery (sorry, single malt whiskey), and countless kilt-wearing performers. And from this magical little piece of the world comes our friend, Greg Pringle, and his great grandmother’s mind-blowing recipe for the best oatcakes we have ever tasted.

Greg’s oatcake baking hobby turned into a little holiday season business in November 2011 when Greg decided to put a price on his wares and promote them to friends on Facebook by starting the Cape Breton Oatcake Society. Repeatedly selling out, Greg decided to explore this hobby as a long-term business idea in January 2012 and, after hearing what Emmanuel was up to with Spinzo, I introduced our two friends to each other to see how they might work together.

Today, after his première earlier this month, Greg launched his second Spinzo deal and we’re excited to see the early days of both businesses.

What This Means to Greg’s Business

Greg gets to show up at a specified place like a city market or other venue with a fully paid-for order of oatcakes. Distribution costs, waste, and uncertainty are all drastically reduced and his customers get a lower price.

How It Works

Greg creates a Spinzo deal with a starting price and shares it with his Oatcake Society members. Oatcake lovers give their credit card info through Spinzo and commit to the current price but know that the price they will pay at the end will decrease for every single additional buyer.

As lovers of the product, there is an incentive to spread the word and drive the price down (like I'm doing now. I'm in on this deal!). Every new convert is a new buyer and a new price-reducer for the other buyers.

There is no tipping point that triggers the discount. The sale happens, and the price just keeps getting lower with every new buyer.

Payment, Tracking, and Marketing Built In

Greg identified a few needs to grow his business that Spinzo could meet for him. He can now accept orders online, track orders to bake them when needed, and he gets added, exponential exposure to new customers through the personal networks of his buyers.

Understanding and Helping

It’s obvious from looking at the business model that Spinzo is flexible and genuinely eager to work with merchants. Their process now and as they scale focuses on significant effort up front to forge a partnership with their merchants instead of just selling a one-off deal.

They promote their “other” (non-Spinzo) deals on their Facebook page, their commissions are a lot lower (about 20% vs. 50% for many others), they are more open to featuring individual items, and they insist on profit for the merchant in every single deal.

Technology companies are famous for putting their innovations ahead of their customers. Many of them don’t even consider who might use their product or service until it is already built. When it comes to group buying and merchant-enabling, Spinzo is obsessed with making life better for merchants and their customers and making their own profits a function of their partner’s success.

Spinzo didn't start with a technology, it started by figuring out how to feed the growth of brand communities with a better buying model. And now a true society of oatcake lovers is born and bred.

A key part of a brand community built by focusing on a better buying experience, demonstrating how social business is more than just awareness and branding.

If you loved a product, would this kind of sales approach encourage you to share it with friends? Let us know in the comments.

Social Business: Knowing Where To Start

"When you walk into a room full of people, what’s the first thing you do? For me, my goal is to find people I might know and just say hello.  Yet, when it comes to social media, most businesses still don’t see social networks as a place to socialize but as mediums to broadcast, which is a very big and costly mistake. Some businesses even forget that social is about connecting with people. Many, determined to continue operating as they always have, shove their ad messages through social mediums that eventually end up detesting them.

So how can businesses avoid making the costly mistakes mentioned above? Here are two key principles to starting off right..."

Above is an excerpt from a guest post I wrote yesterday for my friend Dave Gallant's blog.

Dave is an eastern Canadian social business consultant who understands the "social" side of social business more than most and emphasizes it well in what he does. Dave is also working on a new startup called Recommendur that focuses on helping people get started using social media in the early days when people are often unsure of what their first steps should be.

My guest post speaks to the people Dave hopes to help with Recommendur. Dave's interest in helping people learn social media, especially in a business context makes his new startup a likely partner for Sociallogical and we're looking forward to seeing what he builds.

What advice do you have to give someone just getting started in social business?

Training Wheels: How I Introduced My 10 Year Old to Social Media and Why

For  one  very important reason, Google+ is the social network that a huge number of families are about to discover as a safe place to introduce their kids to social media.

Why do I believe this? I'm a parent and I know many more like me who have reservations about social media at a young age for a variety of reasons. We are a huge untapped market of families who are keeping our kids off of social networks, reluctant to introduce an accelerant to our kid's socialization. We have a sense that building the foundation for healthy relationships isn't rushed and the best learning environment is small with controls on how it grows.

We are parents, after all. It's our role to mentor our children into adulthood and we all know now that social networks are a big part of their future.

How I Introduced My 10 Year Old to Google+ and Why

My kids are on Spring Break this week and today my daughter and I set her up on Google+. She has asked for access to Facebook for years now and I have refused and continue to refuse her request. She said her friends are all on and sharing things with each other constantly. That's why I'm concerned.

Instead, we opted to break the age rules and created a Google+ account. Then we landed on 3 circles:

1. Family - any and all family members (3 generations)
2. The Lawson-Roaches - Just our immediate family that sleeps under our roof
3. Following - brands and celebrities she wants to hear from

We deleted the 'Friends' and 'Acquaintances' circles that are set up by default. The rule is that, until she is 13, she adds no one to any circle without my permission. She and I will regularly sit down together and look at the brands and celebrities she has found that she likes and we'll check if the content they are sharing is good for her and why before adding them to her "Following" circle.

Our Family Only Policy

The nature of Google+ is much different from Facebook because it makes choosing who to share content with a required decision to make at the time of posting. While Facebook presents clumsy options that few users know anything about, Google+ doesn't share anything with anyone unless a person or predetermined group (circle) is selected. These "circles" need to be carefully considered beforehand so that when we have something to share we give thought to WHO we want to share it with and circles make it easy to make that choice.

There is a detachment that I see many kids (and adults, for that matter) developing when it comes to online activity. In the same way that a driver's behaviour and sense of respect, responsibility, and civility is often greatly decreased when they get behind a wheel, relating to others online can also breed a similar regard for others that is unhealthy and unwanted.

By keeping a family only policy for the first few years, the respect and high regard she has for her family will hopefully frame how she learns to socialize online by socializing first with them.  When she is eventually unleashed on peer groups and, later, people she works with and meets in her travels, this respect and responsible approach will hopefully be preserved.

As my wife has pointed out, online sharing appears to be an important tool for kids to express themselves. Social networks allow kids to discover who they are by expressing what they care about most. These expressions are played back to them in an accepted medium that is the television of their times. How might we have perceived ourselves if we saw our lives played out on TV as kids?

This is incredibly powerful! Kids need to be mentored into responsible and thoughtful use of social media, not thrown into the playground to figure it out themselves. This is a blind spot for many parents who are looking for a solution.

Characteristics of Conscientious Parents

Because social networking is a blind spot for most parents, the conscientious ones are cautious and careful. The deserved Google+ reputation as a platform that gives users more control over who sees what they share is slowly being discovered by this group of parents and the word will spread.

The same parents who buy organic foods, try to make ethical purchasing and investing decisions, recycle, pay attention to safety warnings, and study family vacation choices are likely to share a concern for how their kids learn social networking and I believe many of them will turn to Google+ first.

A Network Still Growing at a Manageable Pace

Google+ is less than a year old with 50 million regular users. Facebook is over 6 years old with over 800 million users. For careful consumers and children, this presents an opportunity to grow slowly with this network that, unless you believe Google is on the decline, is going to grow and become mainstream, likely in 2013 or 2014.

Be there first and use the advantages of this network to be social with your audience. The obstacles to broadcasting and advertising on this channel will do us all some good.

Are you on Google+ or do you plan to be soon?

Pinterest and the Fear of Rapid Change

How will you ever figure out what to do with social media when everything is constantly changing? Are the expectations and methods outdated before you get to use them? The breathtakingly rapid rise of a new social network this season, Pinterest, makes that fear acute for many clients I talk to.

According to TechCrunch earlier this month,

"It’s beautiful, it’s addictive, and now Pinterest is having its glorious hockey stick moment. TechCrunch has attained exclusive data from comScore showing Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history."

Some are even saying that the visual nature of Pinterest is going to permanently challenge the attractiveness of blogs as desirable and sharable content for brand building.

3 months ago I had never heard of Pinterest. Had you?

Know What You Want to Accomplish

Social is more important than ever now as the world of business and communication changes faster and faster. By 'social' I don't mean social media business or any other buzzword.

What I mean is that when your goal is to build relationships with real people and bring them into your community to buy your products and feed your shared interests, you can't lose.

Evaluate every new platform, tool, and trend on its ability to accomplish this goal.

Is Pinterest Social?

Pinterest is a fantastic medium for curating visual content. It allows us to share content we like easily, so in that sense it is social.

But we don't talk to each other on Pinterest (yet) and that is a major drawback. When I get a notice that someone has shared my pin I can't thank them like I might on Twitter. There's no way to start a conversation based on something shared on Pinterest, unless it is fed into a more social channel like Facebook.

The point is that Pinterest is not scary and neither will any new social platform be if you learn how to build relationships and community online. Then new platforms are just new ways to connect and our online lives become easier and richer.

Does the constant change in social media scare you? Here are a few useful links if you'd like to know more about this explosive new phenomenon:

• Pinterest Now On Par With Twitter, Google For Driving Traffic, Says Study [STATS]
• Pinterest Demographic Data: The Marketers Guide to People Who Pin
• Pinterest for Brands: 5 Hot Tips
• Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Retailers
• How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Business [Infographic]
• 56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest

Relationships Begin With A Gift

Relationships begin with a gift. It may be as small as a smile or a suggestion, but something is given so the other can reciprocate and the back and forth of relationship has begun.

It's no different when we go online and it is unreasonable for anyone to expect relationship to emerge without this interpersonal volley. When we retweet someone's post, comment on their article, tag them in a photo, or recommend them for their work, we are giving something of value to them that feeds a relationship and we all know it.

Think of how you feel when you get the message that "Arnold @Schwarzenegger favorited your Tweet". Even if the message comes from someone who works two floors down, that's a small gift that validates your choice to share something and draws you to that person.

Our Small Gifts

In our company we give things away all the time. We use the #learnsocial hashtag on Twitter and Google+, the Learn Social group on Linkedin, our Facebook page, and this blog to share articles, advice, and perspective that we hope our clients and partners will find useful and helpful to learn social business.

And today we are giving away a free intro course on social business:

"Businesses grow when their people get social. That's where we come in." Take a free course and #learnsocial: awe.sm/5fE6k

— Sociallogical (@soclogical) February 11, 2012

We know that our learning environment creates a mentorship among a small group that is incredibly helpful for people who want to learn how to do business online. Our courses give the understanding and knowledge of this new medium and culture that tactics and strategy are built on.

And as we grow and develop our platform over the coming months, this free course will gain the new changes and features of the rest of our mentorship platform so visitors can see for themselves, with no risk, if the help of our community and knowledge might help them do business better.

Our free course isn't fancy, but it's got some great insight and knowledge as a sample of what someone will learn if they signup for our full course or one of the new courses that we are now building. This is just a small gift to those who want to get to know us better.

How do you start relationships online?

Foursquare: Flourishing or Fruitless?

Scenario: You're meeting a friend for dinner in an unfamiliar city. They ask you to choose a place. You don't really have time to sift through online reviews; they can be unreliable, even fabricated. So, when you have a free moment, you log into Foursquare. You search restaurants and explore what people (maybe your own friends) are saying about different stops. It doesn't take long; you find the ideal spot, save it to a list and carry on with your day. You can relax knowing your friend will (likely) approve.

This whole notion of "checking in" and applications that track our location (Gowalla is another example) is still emerging, relatively new to our society. Many are slow to warm up to the idea of social media at all; maps and location add a whole other dimension to the experience.

Reviews From People You Trust

On Foursquare we leave "tips" which help out future visitors at any given location. We can feel good knowing the reviews come from REAL people, with bios, and linked accounts. Many of them will come from our own friends.

There's something to be said here: it's another example of how traditional "word of mouth" has been replaced. Of course, there are endless review sites online. But, it's not always clear who's writing them. In many cases, it's easy to pose or "astroturf," writing calculated reviews with a secret agenda.

Most people are on Foursquare to connect and share their favourite places with friends and their community. And maybe have a little fun while they're at it.

Love it or Leave it

In my research I've encountered a trend: reviewers fall into one of two categories: early adopters who love Foursquare, and those who don't see it's value at all.  To further my point, here are good examples of arguments for and against adopting the application.

A blog post by David Pierce explains the advantages of this media tool well. While the linked review site is no longer active, Pierce is now a Reviews Editor at The Verge, a prominent technology news source.

This post opposes the former. The author is a Senior Brand Planner at SapientNitro, an established marketing and technology services firm in Boston. He argues that most check-ins are of little value to our audience. No one cares when we're at the gym or sitting in our office. He says the application isn't used widely enough for the tips to be resourceful in catering to our tastes.

But, as Pierce explains, Foursquare doesn't just give us a list of check-ins. It notifies us if a friend is nearby. It also plays on our natural competitive sides with its points system, making it a place to have fun.

It's usefulness is entirely subjective. It depends fully on whose opinion you value, and how many people in your social circles are using the application. The technology will evolve and it may even become recognized under a new name, but in the future its purpose will only become clearer as the world grows social. How many of your friends are on Foursquare?

Introducing Timely.is: Tweet in Your Sleep

Are you one of those hit-snooze-at-least-three-times types? If you're anything like me, the early mornings can be rude awakenings. At least before a cup of coffee.

When my colleague introduced me to Timely.is, I was amazed. The application, in a nutshell,  schedules tweets "automagically" for the time of day when your network is most likely to see them and posts them for you throughout the day. I hate to admit it, but my first thought was "brilliant! I could sleep in and be 'tweeting' and no one would know the difference." As Jeff says, timelied.

But, on a more serious note, time flies. I've spent my whole life, and will continue into my adult years, learning how to manage my time well. It's not something of natural evolution, at least for most people. It's just part of the human struggle, making the best use of our time with what hours we have in a day's work.

So, Timely.is may just be an application but it has two major benefits for the user: it saves us physical time, and it allows us to focus on what tasks we have at hand, by being completely present.

An Application With a Mind of its Own

Developed by Flowtown, a team of social marketing innovators, Timely.is is a smart application. It allows us to schedule a given number of tweets (three by default,) and delivers them at spaced intervals throughout the day. What may seem like random times, are actually the product of specific calculations.

Timely.is relies on an algorithm that takes data from our Twitter accounts, and calculates what times of the day we are most likely to reach our audience and followers. It gets to know us based on when we tweet, and how often, and takes all of that data into account. For a more detailed explanation, you can read about it here.

So, we make the best use of our time. When we have a free moment or two, we can add tweets to our queue. There are surely things your company should be sharing; whether it's relevant news to potential partners, customers or clients, or a simple statement. Realistically, what working professional has the time to constantly engage with their community via social media? Not many.

Listening and Engaging is a Balancing Act

It's important to stress that applications are here to assist us, not replace authentic human transaction. Social media loses its value when only used to broadcast messages on a schedule. This will only work in conjunction with (a bigger role) in listening. Responding to those in our community is essential to grow the relationships we want to have with clients and customers.

Respectively, no one likes the guy in a board meeting whose eyes never move from his phone. We can't let ourselves become so attached to new technologies that we forget how to be social in real life.

As a kid I was often told, "You can tell a lot about a person by the way they shake your hand." I still believe it. I've always believed in authentic, face-to-face communication. Our interpersonal demeanour is certainly important, both online and offline. Adopting these new technologies can help us in balancing our social demands.

5 Steps to Connect With Your Community via SoundCloud

Okay, so podcasting for the average business is still a relatively new trend, but the print and audio industries have made the shift online. Many websites; news networks, online radio channels, now require you to subscribe and pay user fees. We all realize that most of what we consume on an average day is fed to us through the big, bad internet. Personally, I read the news via TweetDeck on my cell phone. To bring my point into focus: we all need to become producers of good content. And we need to do it through the latest, most effective mediums. The more ways we can engage our audience/clients/partners or whoever we’re trying to reach, the better.

Most of us wake with tired eyes. With this medium, it doesn't matter. We engage the senses through the act of listening.

SoundCloud is a user-friendly, versatile, and captivating application. It was originally created in Sweden for the purpose of sharing music among artists. It’s now recognized as a dynamic social tool among communities of people everywhere.

Why SoundCloud? Audio has a unique effect on us. As a journalism graduate who specialized in radio, I came to realize a few things. When we’re forced to listen, we tune out everything else. There are no visuals to distract us. The human voice, when used in a way that’s compelling, has an incredibly powerful and humbling effect.

Step 1: Sign Up

It’s very easy. All you need is a valid e-mail address. Once you set up a password and confirm your login information you can start uploading tracks. I uploaded a 5 minute piece in a matter of seconds. And what’s better: it’s completely free.

Step 2: Start Thinking in Terms of Sound

Maybe you were at a conference and someone said something moving that you just can’t remember. Or you went to a launch and heard an important tip for a new application you’re using in the office. Whatever it was, you didn’t have time to take notes.

A digital recorder isn’t something a lot of people think to have on-hand (or even realize they have in their possession.) Most cell phones today have audio recording capability. You don’t need a fancy recorder to document the interesting things happening around you.

Think of what you’re trying to sell: whether it’s a product, a brand or an idea, and then start thinking in terms of sound. The sooner you do this, the sooner you can piece together bits of your experiences and share them with your audience through a new and exciting medium. If you’re really keen, you can tap into editing software and create podcasts, incorporate music.

Step 3: Start a Friends List

You can search for people and groups that peak your interest. Slowly you’ll build a community of podcasters who are producing content that you relate to, or could even draw advice from. You can sync SoundCloud with your Facebook list and see who in your friend’s list is engaging with the application on a daily basis.

Step 4: Tag, Tag, Tag

If you’ve read anything about SEO you know that tagging is important. Focus your posts, and tag them to your heart’s content. Make yourself easily searchable by using keywords that relate to your business goals and the message you are trying to send within the post. It’s the beauty of inbound marketing: people are able to locate and contact you.

Step 5: Share Like Crazy

Your SoundCloud tracks are easily shared through applications; Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress and Tumblr to name a few. You can easily link to your SoundCloud page. What’s even better is that you can actually embed the SoundCloud widget to your personal blog or website by copying a generated HTML code. Not many applications seem to allow you to do this. SoundCloud makes your audio creations easily accessible to anyone, anywhere. The idea that I could be listening to your podcast on my cell phone from your Twitter feed while riding the bus (and it all links back to one application) is really cool, and kind of a brain-twist.

It’s time to hop on board. It’s fun, it’s social, and it’s a great way to get people talking about your brand. Have you interacted via SoundCloud?

The Lonely Battle of the One-Eyed Man

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." - Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)

In every working environment there is a person regarded as the one who "gets" social media and will, therefore, figure it out for the company.

Because they are comfortable using Twitter and more, compared to the others in the company, resting on their shoulders is the weight of guiding the company through the greatest shift in how businesses work. Often this person is aware of the enormous expectation or of the naïveté of the rest of the company in perceiving this as a minor role for one person. Occasionally they relish it and rise to the occasion.

Being comfortable using a social network is not the same as knowing how to make money and grow a business in the internet age.

Social media is not a marketing thing.

...Not JUST a marketing thing. It is a complete shift in how we grow a business and it affects almost every spoke in an organization's wheel. It requires us to reconsider why we do what we do and who we do it for. For some of us, it changes how we spend our time when we work and it changes how we are expected to communicate and make ourselves available.

Having lived in the internet world for all of my adult life, the proverb above that I first heard from my brother many years ago has always been one of my favorites. There is one of these people in every company.

A lot is expected of the one-eyed man. What he really needs is for others to join him in his enlightenment so they can figure out the future together.

That's the only way that we change cultures and make progress.

Who is the one-eyed man of "social media" where you work?

Sociallogical Learn | Taking Classes to the Cloud

Snowed in at Jeff's house with laptops, Costco croissants and a french press back in January.

“It’s amazing how rapidly it all starts to fall into place once you plan out the platform you’re going to use and how you’re going to deploy it.” There, as they say, lies the rub. That’s me to Jeff in February of this year.

It sounds pretty straightforward: you set out to do something, identify the tools you need for the job and get to work. But when we started out to build Sociallogical Learn, we hadn’t done anything quite like it before – and it required some heavy lifting to get it to where it is today.

If you haven’t heard of Learn, you should check out Jeff’s launch post about it. He covers a lot of the high-level hopes and dreams that we’d like to achieve; how it benefits businesses and people alike and the outcomes one can expect from leveraging it.

As all of that fun stuff has already been hashed out for you, I won’t go into it. What I will go into is a breakdown of how we built Learn to best serve our students and mentors alike.

Learn is an ecosystem. Educators can author rich materials and assignments for students, who keep track of their readings and personal portfolio as they dive, at their own pace, deeper into the course.

Those students always have direct access to their mentors, who lead them through the different modules. Meanwhile, all parties can engage in relevant discussion around the course materials in real-time.

All of this is possible thanks to the heavily customized Drupal platform that we deployed – it acts like an operating system, allowing us to write and plug-in anything we need to fit any specific purpose. I’m a geek through and through, one that could go on and on. But there are three especially important elements that make Learn unique.

1. Real Conversation

Communication is extremely important in both learning and in social media, making it a two-fold top priority for Learn. As such, we’ve made painstaking effort to make sure that participants are able to connect on every level. Though they’re able to move along at their own pace, students are never alone in Learn.

Synchronous and asynchronous discussions with real people happen via real-time, AJAX-powered class chats and DISQUS commenting respectively, and a built-in private messaging system is leveraged for direct one-on-one contact between mentors and classmates.

Class chats are automatically archived so students can review them at any time, giving an opportunity for those who missed out to catch up on the latest discussion. And, of course, there’s the occasional Google+ Hangout.

And, hey, Learn is still a baby; it isn’t quite perfect yet. So we’ve deployed a feedback tab on every page that, when clicked, brings up an overlay to our GetSatisfaction community - every problem or question that students have is immediately brought to the attention of our team.

2. All in Context

Confusing menus and other additional overhead have no place in a learning environment. Making use of Drupal panels and views, Learn’s Dashboard provides an engaging experience for students by providing them quick access to the course they’re taking, their fellow classmates, and their personal portfolio.

Assignments and latest discussion are clearly highlighted. Once a student dives into the course, all distractions are set aside. There is no annoying advertising; no fluff to lead them away from the task at hand. Their reading progress is clearly indicated in a dedicated navigation bar and they are carefully guided through each section.

3. One System, One Roof

Early on in its development, we looked carefully at our options for the features that Learn provides today. It became very clear that courses would lack cohesion if we had students jumping all over the place to keep in touch. Now, all of this happens in the same ecosystem.

From the moment a student enrolls, to the time they’ve completed their first course, Learn provides for them every step of the way. They are constantly connected; held up by their peers and their educators, and free to plug away at the material on their own time.

We’ve all been working hard on this system. As I’ve described Learn to the people this year, I’ve heard them say things like “wow, this is the way e-learning should be.”

Now it is.

We’re still at an early stage and we have a long list of plans to make Learn even better. If you’ve taken one of our courses, please comment below to tell us how you found the structure and flow of the course and how we might make it easier for you to learn in there.

Accelerating Mentorship - Clarity.fm Connects People to Guidance

The Sociallogical Team is for hire at any time by anyone who wants our mentorship by using a new service our friend built called Clarity.fm. I just added a link to my Clarity account from my Google+ profile and labelled it 'Mentor for Hire'. Anyone who signs up, can call me and pay by the minute for guidance, advice, or to just pick my brain about a big or a small decision that they know I can help them with.

Clarity handles the call from start to finish. Just hit the 'Call Now' button and Clarity will call me first to check that I'm available and, if so, we'll talk! If not, I can call you back later. So there's no need to even schedule an appointment. It handles the transaction between us and anyone can have access to my help any time I'm available!

The nature of our business is guidance and education. In transforming to social business practices, our clients are all learning how to be themselves online and how to represent their businesses in a personal way. Fear weighs heavy for some and others just don't have a sense for what works to build relationships. Strategically connecting to our communities of support isn't something we all just naturally know how to do and it's often a lonely and confusing time when you're getting your feet wet in this very public, personal media world.

Mentorship is the perfect approach for social business consulting and is the backbone of Sociallogical's new courses, the support teams we build for our clients, and now we are available at the drop of a hat to mentor our clients when they need us.

A Mentor In Your Pocket

Designed with the smart phone UI top of mind, clients can bookmark Clarity on their home screen, open the web app from their phone and contact any mentor they need - who could be anywhere in North America - as a local call (see below screenshots of how I did this on my phone)

Future plans for Clarity will make it an increasingly indispensable productivity tool for people who make a living on the value they provide with the advice they have to give. New functionality is added to the service every day.

A true consumer-based web service built in New Brunswick, Canada using a lean startup approach, Clarity isn't in alpha or beta, it's just being built, one piece at a time. It's being used by friends who understand it and share passion for its growth, and anyone who hears about it and wants to be part of making it better and better. The company is making money and enabling mentors to make a living, right now, right out of the gate. That's a model we need more of on the east coast.

This is an exciting new development in the world of connected business and we are very excited to be early adopters and supporters of such an incredibly useful tool. Try it. Call me.

Is Social Media the Elephant in Your Boardroom? This Can Help.

Avatars by Kelly Lawson

"Business has changed more in the past three years than in the prior 30." - Amber Naslund and Jay Baer

Today we launch an online course that collects the best insight, the best content, and the best ideas we have to share to help businesses understand social media and to merge it into their daily experience.

Understand Social Business is a new online, mentorship-based course curated by Sociallogical. It shares the best advice and guidance we have to give in a course that people can take on their own time and use as a resource for many years to come.

A Tool For Business Culture Change

"The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic" – Peter Drucker

Sociallogical is a company that works with the leadership of a given business to embed social into their daily operations, their posture toward the people they serve, and their methods of growing their business.

One of the great hurdles to making these changes is the current corporate culture. If a company's personnel doesn't understand social media and social business then moving that company to a place where it can take advantage of this very significant paradigm shift is a difficult task indeed. Even if the CEO gets it, not much will happen until the troops come to understand it too.

This course educates entire teams so they can make changes based on a solid understanding of what is happening in social media today and what they need to do to make it work for them.

And it is mentorship-based, so experienced mentors guide the course with discussions, questions and answers. Classes are capped at 10 people to ensure good mentorship and dialogue among the students.

The course is so designed that individual entrepreneurs and large corporate teams can join with others in the course to read, watch, plan, and understand social business together.

How Long? How Much? How Hard?

"Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight" - Thomas Calyle

As we said when we began creating this course 6 months ago with 3 sessions in Saint John social spots, "the best way to learn social is to just do it. But most of us who feel comfortable with it have benefitted from a little mentorship and guidance to 'turn on the lightbulb' so we can understand the opportunities and risks and head in the right direction."

The course is comprised of 3 chapters designed to last 3 weeks in total. But students have permanent access to the lessons of the course, so as we update and evolve the content to stay current, students can always check back and update their own views and portfolios.

Did we mention it is also a portfolio-based course? Students build their online portfolios as they move through the course, signing up for accounts and answering the big questions about the roles these tools will play in their daily business activities.

In pricing the course we have made sure that the cost is low enough to not break any business's education budget. Group rates are also available for classes of 10 or more of their people.

The only skill required to take this course is a decent comfort level in navigating and using the internet. If you can find what you're looking for in an online newspaper or play a YouTube video, you'll be able to work your way through this course. It uses a familiar blog-style format for lessons and third-party resources that are widespread and user-friendly. The material is readable, digestible, and designed for a business audience, it's not a curriculum for a master's degree in social media!

Start Now

"I wanted to leverage social media but I didn’t know how to make it work in business. I definitely got what I wanted from the course. I understand my market better and I now know how to reach it." - Dave Legere

Students can REGISTER TODAY and start working on the lessons.

Once 9 others have registered, the class will begin with the first weekly live "Chapter Chat" a week later on Sunday evening.

These chats are valuable learning sessions, facilitated by a Community Manager Mentor, in which all students meet in the course online to discuss what they are learning and to learn from each other. (Chapter Chats can be purchased at a later time for students who are not able to attend the 3 sessions included in the course)

Informed and Experienced Mentorship

"Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction." - John Crosby

There is certainly a perspective we share and it's helped us design the delivery of our courses. We could not have helped organizations build cultures of real connection and efficiency if we didn't know what works and what doesn't.

Other courses will come later but this one is the foundational prerequisite.

It’s the one designed to ‘turn on the light bulb’ for people so they can start building better businesses with their customers.

We look forward to helping many more people transform into social business leaders and breed a new future of people-centred businesses!

Find out more about the course and how to get started.

In the collage above, from top left: Judith Mackin, Peter Asimakos, Peter Josselyn, Adam Donnolly, Tracy Hanson, Sean Moore, Jamie Bursey, Jodi Nadeau. All photographed by the wonderfully talented Kelly Lawson!

The Coolest "New Thing" I've Ever Seen - Our World As An Interface to Our World

Last night my friend @alexpesold showed me a video that turned out to be the coolest "new thing" I've ever experienced! The video above presents a new technology from Corning with examples of its application that can touch our lives in countless powerful and meaningful ways.

The embedding of connectivity so elegantly and meaningfully in our lives would accelerate even further the innovations and advancements that our current age will be forever known for.

There's nothing more intoxicating to me than a new idea or a new way of looking at the world. When it comes to consumer products and their roles in our lives, nothing has ever excited me as much as this vision Corning presents with their new technology. I hope others enjoy it as much as I have (over and over again since last night).

Update

Samsung Turns Any Window into an Amazing Computer awe.sm/5da2x Cool connectivity!

— Sociallogical (@soclogical) January 16, 2012