Soci@lByte

I like to ask people questions. It’s how I stay so smart. Rich Anderson, CEO of ClearView Water, is infinitely smarter than me. That’s why I asked him a bunch of questions. See how this works? ClearView Water helps families receive the healthiest, purest water available. As someone who doesn’t drink nearly enough water, that kinda makes me guilty. Anyway, here’s the Q&A – please note that Rich reveals he is pro-pancake. Daring!

1. You run ClearView Water. Gimme the scoop.
Easy…it started when my position as VP of Sales with a water filter manufacturer was eliminated at the end of July 2009.  Not my best day, but I can assure you that the world did not end that day either.  I took a few days off and on the morning I was to start my reach-out to get a new job, I couldn’t even turn on the computer in my home office.  Not a good sign!

Red Rocks is an amazing place for me, so I took a day trip up there and sat in the ampitheatre.  Call it what you want, but I totally opened myself to ideas about what Im looking for….what I want…what I stand for…what won’t I do….who I am…and jotted them down.  It only took about 90 minutes, but when I left that park I had the sketch for the business and went from there.  I’d say it was the most important 90 minutes of my life….so far!

In a nutshell we empower families and businesses to make better choices about their water and water services.  We’re passionate about actively making our world and environment a better place namely by helping people understand they can make better choices than using any type of bottled water or water delivery service.  I have a total blast doing it – it has been unbelievably fun to start with a dream and build from there.  Plus, I wear Keen’s everyday to work now vs Cole Haan’s and suits.  I’ll take it.

2. What role did social media play in the development of your business?
Social media is the branding arm of the business and has been incredibly successful – especially in building our Google presence.  I actively use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn about an hour or so each day to post about events, news, celebrate others and talk about ClearView Water.  YouTube is coming along, but I really need to start utilizing Digg and Delicious as well.  Every single networking event I attend today is a direct result of the conversations that I started on Twitter and Facebook.   Building relationships is the key in life and certainly a huge plus in business.

The other cool thing has been crowd-sourcing.  I’ve found out about charities, conferences, marketing ideas and cool restaurants like the Larimer Hot House to support through social media.

3. What are some of the pitfalls in that approach that you would warn other entrepreneurs about?

1. Do not sell.  You/we/us are all using these channels for the conversation, build brand awareness and community.
2. Be consistent and authentic.  If you are not prepared to tweet/update daily, you shouldn’t even start as you’ll be wasting your time.  Also – your online persona had better be the same as you in real life or you will lose all of your credibility.
3. Celebrate others.  60-70% of your tweets/posts should be about brands/businesses/people that fit with who you are.  When you honestly champion someone else’s cause or business, that pay-it-forward will come back in many and usually unexpected forms.
4. Be social.  To what degree is up to you and how you want the world to know you and/or your business.  For example – I think eating pancakes from time to time is a good thing, but I do not tweet/post about every time I eat pancakes because that does not fit with the brand proposition of ClearView Water and what our customers want from us.  But for the record – I don’t eat pancakes a lot, but I am staunchly pro-pancake.

4. How do you manage your social media presence?
I’m the owner of the business and I do it personally vs. contracting it out to folks.  I really enjoy the real relationships I’ve been able to form through social media.

5. Final thoughts? On water, business, Colorado…?
My company and I are in the business of helping people understand their water and make better choices.  I had been in leadership roles in Corporate America for 17 years and had many successes, but this has been far and away been the most fun and rewarding time of my life.  I’m all about possibility and can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings all of us.

I go to a lot of tweetups. (Find a definition here, as I’m too lazy to bother.) The ecosystem that rapidly takes shape at the average tweetup could sustain years of sociological study. For me, it gives me about 15 minutes of amusement before I duck out to charge my iPhone again.

What I’ve discovered is that most people act a fool at tweetups. And that’s not acceptable, though it is hysterical. This is part of a series of tweetup etiquette nuggets, so I encourage you to print them out and add them to your scrapbook.

No one cares that you’re a Twitter veteran
When you’re at a tweetup, you might end up chatting with someone who is quick to point out how long they have been on Twitter. While it’s true that Twitter sends its longtime users trophies, medallions and rare trinkets, it’s poor form to go boasting about it in public.

This is something I’m guilty of myself. I ninja’d my way onto the Twitter freighter in June 2007. Does my 2.5 years of Twitter “experience” mean much in social situations? No, it doesn’t. And I should be slapped across my smarmy face for thinking such nonsense.

Most people boast about that kind of thing because it’s a seemingly easy way to feel superior. That’s dumb. If I bring it up at all, it’s to illustrate how much the site has changed since then, which I find fascinating.

So, the next time you’re at a tweetup and someone asserts themselves haughtily because of their Twitter tenure, please slap them across the face. And if it’s me, slap me twice. I go for that.

I have previously written about how I judge people based on the apps found on their iPhones. What I neglected to do was recommend some good apps to replace them with. My apologies – here’s a new app that I love and hope many of you will find useful:

Ask Dave Taylor
Local tech blogger Dave Taylor recently launched an iPhone app version of his tech support blog that has quickly become one of my favorite on-the-go resources. The app houses thousands of his best Q&A posts. And when I say tech support, I mean far more than troubleshooting. He answers questions about blogging, social media, business and management, and totally sexy shell script programming.

Dave’s warm, folksy way of writing is preserved in the speedy, stable app. Many of his answers include images, which I find helpful. There’s also an option that allows you to send a question of your own to Dave, in the event that you want to know something that’s not covered in the loads of articles available in the app.

The app will cost you a dollar, but I recommend it highly. This link will take you to the app via iTunes. Enjoy!

Twitter will be down tonight as part of its scheduled maintenance. For those of us in Colorado, Twitter will be down from midnight to 2am. If you’re one of those folks who stays up late catching up on tweets (and learning how you can have perfectly white teeth for only a couple bucks), you might be at a loss as to how to spend that time.

Fear not, I’m here for you sleep-deprived zombies. Here are three things you can do during Twitter’s downtime:

Hop over to Yelp and review the last couple of places you had lunch. Businesses love your feedback, and so does Laura L., community manager for Yelp Denver. Be constructive, be fair and please proofread what you write. Which leads to No. 2…

Work on your grammar and spelling. Last week I chatted with Mignon Fogarty, host of the peerless Grammar Girl podcast, and she concurred that Twitter is home to some pretty appalling displays of poor grammar and spelling. Take this time to review your last few pages of updates, and assess how well you’re communicating. Specifically, learn the difference between its and it’s.

Unfriend some people. The Oxford University Press recently named “unfriend” its word of the year. In celebration of this feat, spend a few minutes unfriending, unfollowing and unfanning those users who plague your social media salad with fail sauce. It’s cathartic and will make you more attractive to the opposite sex.

There you go! By the time you’ve done the above, Twitter will be up and running and you can be micro-hilarious all over again. Yay! I would advise you to get some sleep instead of playing on Twitter, but that level of consideration makes me uneasy. I only want the worst for you. Enjoy!

I was trolling #journchat last night, periodically weighing in with my usual blend of calculated nonsense when I found something worth blogging about. I think a lot of new grads and job seekers read Socialbyte, so I thought it would be extra intriguing for those peeps.

(For the record, #journchat is a weekly tweetchat centering on media, PR, journalism and social media. Questions are asked, and loads of Twitter peeps respond. It’s a gas, and I recommend checking it out sometime.)

One of the questions put forth was “What can new graduates do to market themselves, esp. online?”

My response was “New grads should leave the headshot at home when marketing themselves online. So hideously formal. Ew.”

A conversation happily ensued with folks weighing in on different aspects of professional portraits and their utility in the social web. Some pointed out that broadcast professionals’ credibility is tied to their faces and that starchy portraiture is the only means of capturing their austere stewardship. Others implied (privately) that a lack of work experience can be somewhat mitigated by a professionally captured photo.

I have never found a use for my professional headshot that didn’t end in ridicule. Largely because I don’t care about being a professional. I’d rather be personable. And I think that’s a better bet for most new grads who are trying to market themselves online. So when it comes to selecting an avatar for any social network (whether it’s Twitter or Gowalla), I would advise against anything too stiff.

Here’s mine. Incidentally, the file name is dorkasaurus.jpg.

I should clarify that some professional shots are totally sweet. The ones that are lively and artistic. Lots of my friends are photographers, and they’re capable of amazing portraits. For the purposes of this post, I’m talking about the suit & tie, studio background, “Did someone say insurance?” kind of photos.

When I see professional headshots on Twitter, I brace myself for a sales pitch. There are exceptions – there are ALWAYS exceptions – but for the most part, a dressy photo trips an alarm in my pointy head.

What do you think? Is it peachy to rock a formal headshot in social media?

There was a time before social media gurus. It’s true. When I couldn’t sleep, my parents would tell me stories about those long ago days – when the world was purer, quieter. When everyone wasn’t so eager to call themselves an expert at something they’ve only been involved with for a few months.

But those days are no more. And we are plagued by social media gurus, for which no pesticide has proven effective. If chemical agents cannot diminish their number, perhaps reason will.

Here are five reasons that you should stop calling yourself a social media guru:

1. The word looks cool and is fun to say, but it has been irrevocably corrupted by bad marketers and other naughty knaves. Using it instantly casts you in a bad light – as a pompous, thickheaded dolt. Calling yourself a guru is the equivalent of boasting about having a cameo in Paul Blart, Mall Cop.

2. There are plenty of other words you could use that describe the same stature. If you truly must trumpet your mastery, prance over to the Thesaurus.com and get two scoops of synonyms.

3. Humility.

4. See reason No. 3. It makes a lot of sense. Seriously, go read it again – perhaps out loud. Stress the vowels. I’m not kidding.

5. You’re not a guru. The kind of sincerity required to be a guru is inevident among the people calling themselves such. You’re a specialist. Or perhaps an enthusiast. Or some other applicable word culled from No. 2 – but certainly not a guru.

There are more than 8,800 gurus on on Twitter.  That fact just gave me two grey hairs. Damn it.

A good friend of mine was laid off yesterday. He’s certainly not the first friend of mine to lose his job this year. Not even close. If 2009 is remembered for anything, it will be layoffs or that movie with the talking guinea pigs.

So layoffs are nothing new. But what intrigued me was his decision to post about his layoff publicly to Twitter*:

I’m seeing more of this on Twitter. And I kinda like it.

I like that people are taking something that had previously been an undisclosed vexation and sharing it with the internets. Because, really, there’s a tactical advantage to it. The more people that know about your bouncing bundle of unemployment, the more people there are to help you recover from it. People know people. And those people may have a great opportunity for you. Never forget that social media is a tool – and tools [often] set things right.

However, what I don’t recommend is furiously ranting on Twitter about your previous employer and all the factors that may have led to the layoffs. Both facts and opinions have their place online, and most peeps are sensible enough to know when and where to share them.

In the case of layoffs, I think Twitter is an increasingly appropriate venue to spread the word. Losing your job is a significant life event – like getting married, getting divorced or getting a Google Wave invite. The private, sensitive details should be withheld, for sure, but if you’ve got a great network of friends that would help you out in a heartbeat, do yourself a favor and let them in on it.

Thoughts?

* Tweet used with permission.

I am amused by many things – limericks, classic episodes of Golden Girls, Dinobrain. What I am not amused by is that strange, perplexing group of people who incessantly complain about Twitter’s:

• Instability and pending demise
• Trivality and pending demise
• Incoherence and pending demise

Yet! These people stick around, their Twitter accounts serving as glorified RSS feeds of their latest bloggy prognosticating about how Twitter is a flawed monstrosity, according to the latest findings from Such & Such (as you know, they are the premier, industry-leading providers of cross-platform solutions).

I, for one, am tired of their prattle. I am tired of their babble (I get enough of the latter on Twitter itself). The chip on their shoulder would look much better on a TV series about highway patrolmen on sweet motorcycles*.

So I’m asking them to leave Twitter.

Bid your followers farewell. Uninstall TweetDeck. Bye-bye, bit.ly. Find other sources of traffic. No more Twitter for you. Delete, delete, delete. You never understood how to use it anyway, dummy.

Instead, saddle up and wait for someone to tell you about the next big thing you should kvetch about. (The NYTimes says it’s Foursquare. Sharpen those barbs!)

Twitter doesn’t need you befouling its dreamy streams.

* “CHiPs” reference, y’all. Unbelievable.

From the Desk of Ef Rodriguez…

We judge people every day. Sometimes based on appearance (“That boy could use a perm!”) or sometimes by word choice or diction, as our vocabulary is often a window through which others glimpse how well we performed on the SAT verbal component.

[NOTE: The author achieved a perfect score. Raise the roof.]

One of the new ways that we judge people owes a debt of gratitude to Señor Jobs and his marvelous iPhone. Have you had coffee with someone recently, chatting amicably, when your cohort asked to see your iPhone to “see what apps you have”?

Beware! You are being judged!

For a skilled app appraiser (appppraiser?), it takes only moments to determine what kind of iPhone user you are.

• Which Twitter app do you use?
• Do you still have that wack lightsaber app from the iPhone’s launch?
• Is your iPhone stuffed with LITE versions of apps because your incurable avarice won’t allow you to put down a couple bucks for the full version? Jerk.

Think about these things as you scroll through your pages of apps (you do have more than one page of apps, right?). Are you proud of what your iPhone says about you? Just as this particular device enables us to be social at all times, the same schoolyard rules apply.

I’ll see you and your iPhone at recess, loser.

From the Desk of Ef Rodriguez…

On matters of style, PR peeps defer to the AP Stylebook as a rule – largely because some of our most critical interactions are with reporters and editors, almost all of whom adhere to AP style in their publications. To that end, we have all taken time (at one point in our careers) to learn AP thoroughly.

But as our communication targets widen to include consumers directly via social media, is our style changing to reflect that? As we reach out to people via social media, what are the new language standards as they relate to web parlance? (For example, I should have capitalized Web in the previous sentence, but that looks strange to me on a blog.)

At what point do we decide for ourselves how best to communicate with our audiences? Sure, the AP Stylebook is just a set of recommended guidelines – we are certainly free to write as we see fit. But for the sake of consistency, many pros side with AP style, even if it makes their online outreach seem a little stiff and oddly formal.

Consider words like:

• tweetup
• website
• email
• startup

How do you handle style issues as they relate to technology and social media? I know some agencies and companies have developed internal stylebooks – I’m starting to think that’s a good idea.