A guest post by {grow} community member Leslie Lewis

Leslie Lewis is not my real name. You don’t need to know my real name, and you may never know it.  Here’s why.

I’ve worked in social media since 2005, and I knew I needed a tightly controlled message and presence online.   You could Google my real name and find my blog, or find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, or Facebook.

Like you, I used my real name, shared real stories, photos, and details from my life.  I was as transparent and authentic as I preached to my clients that they needed to be.

All of that ended in early 2010 when someone launched an online smear campaign against me, with allegations that were wholly baseless and untrue but were professionally damaging.

I contacted law enforcement officials, but they were helpless to stop the flow of fake accounts being created in my name due to issues of state, federal and international jurisdiction complications.

After consulting with several lawyers I was told that civil action would be a long, disruptive, and expensive process.  In the end I was advised that my best option would be to directly contact Google or LinkedIn every time a new one appeared. Not very practical.

The end of my brand

My career nearly ground to a halt. After several months, I consulted with friends, family and people in the social media community, and I decided I needed to go “underground.” I locked down, and in several cases deleted, my social media presence.

Five years of community building and establishing a brand behind my name were gone.  For nine months I had virtually no social media footprint, but at least the attacks finally stopped.

The transparency that we all advocate to our clients was what was used to harm me.  While going underground brought an end to the attacks, it has hurt me professionally.  Social media strategy is a practical discipline: We show that we are able to do for our clients by doing for ourselves.

In December of 2010 I inched back online, using Twitter with a pseudonym.  As I began making and rebuilding connections the pushback I have received from social media professionals on Twitter has been unexpected.

When my email address and Twitter name don’t correspond, I am frequently met with stark skepticism of my intentions or the implication that I am “doing social media wrong.”

As social media professionals we tend to conflate the concepts of “transparency” and “authenticity.”  Frequently they are used as synonyms, or, that if one is not present it invalidates the other.

Transparency is not the same as authenticity and authenticity is not dependent on transparency.

Moving forward

In the real world we meet people every day and accept them at face value, rarely stopping to question their identity.  In real life we don’t demand the type of immediate transparency of each other that we do online.  The neighbor with the unlisted phone number, the friend who goes by his middle name or the parent with a different last name than their child; we don’t (or at least the polite among us don’t) demand explanations of them.

We shrug our shoulders at these incongruities and don’t allow them to take away from our enjoyment of, or the credibility of these individuals.  Why then, don’t we do this online?  I could just as easily be an SEO mole as the neighbor with the unlisted phone number could be a bank robber.  Why don’t we explain away similar incongruities in online identity that we do offline?

These are issues that are not new to online communication, yet they seem to linger.  We have all seen social media go wrong and unfortunately we have all seen it used as a weapon of destruction.  My situation is, sadly, not all that uncommon.  As a profession we need to move towards a framework wherein privacy and security concerns are not trumped by demands for transparency and authenticity.

Don’t we?

Leslie Lewis is a digital media strategist working in public health, social marketing and behavior change at a Washington, DC based
NGO.  She’s still trying to get this pseudonym thing worked out and is accepting suggestions

Illustration: citypeoplefashion.com

I am in the middle of a heavy travel schedule and I seem to be carrying around more and more electonics to support my office on the road. I laid everything out on the hotel room bed and … it is getting to be a little ridiculous.

But for your amusement, here are the electronics in my briefcase on nearly every business trip:

A- Power cord for computer.

B- iPad 2.  This is sometimes optional, but it is required for the classes I teach at Rutgers. The iPad comes standard issue for all students, so when I’m teaching, I pack it. It is also handy for reading while working out or hanging out at the hotel bar.

C – Toshiba Portege R835.  Please … no lectures about Macs!  For my work, this computer is perfect.  It is extremely light, durable, boots up quickly, and has a nine-hour battery life.  I love this laptop. This is my rock. All of my writing is done on this computer.

D – Kodak Zi8 HD video camera. I always carry this with me in case I have an opportunity for a great interview. This device packs a wallop in a small package and it was less tham $150. Fantastic picture quality and it has a very handy built-in USB jack that pops out of the bottom for easy uploads.  Sometimes I also carry a small tripod but left it home this trip.

E- Remote for video camera. With this, I can switch the thing on and off remotely so I can set it up and go. This saves editing. Every video I have published on {grow} has been done with one take and no editing.  Just don’t have time for it!  The remote did not come standard.  I got it off Amazon.

F- iPod. I know I could use my iPhone, or even my iPad for music, but I just like the idea of carrying 10,000 songs with me at all times.  Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep in hotels and the iPod is what I need to settle my mind. I know I can leave it behind, but I won’t.

G – Shure noise reduction headphones. These cost more than the iPod. Why? Because life’s too short for grainy music. And when you’re in the airport, those crying babies, annoying beep-beep-beep golf carts, and ridiculously loud gate announcements all fade away so you can concentrate on writing. Good headphones are a little luxury I allow myself!

H – External Flash Drive.  I carry two with me actually because I’m paranoid about losing data.

I – Energizer brand external battery for iPhone. I am a heavy data user and the battery life on the iPhone does not last the whole day so I always carry some reserve power.

J – Charger for reserve battery.

K – External mouse. I don’t use this very much but it comes along for the ride.

L – iPad/iPhone charger.

M – Targus “clicker.”  I don’t know what the offical name for this is, but this is what moves the Powerpoint slides along. Very well-crafted device. Has internal compartment for an extra battery and the USB thingy.  I have to figure out a way to stop losing these things. This is the third one I bought this year and they’re not cheap.

N- Sony external microphone. If you buy a video camera, make sure it has an external microphone jack.  This mic works well but I didn’t buy a long enough cord. This is only like four feet long. I need one about 10 feet long!

Missing from photo – iPhone 4.  It was missing because I was taking this photo with it!  The iPhone4 is the greatest productivity device known to mankind. It does everything except take quality videos.

So now I would like to hear from you.  What does your blogging arsenal look like?  Any key tools I’m missing?  Any you would take away to make my bag lighter!! : )

Disclosure: I have no official ties to any of these products or brands, and have received no compensation for this article.

I have been trying to figure out how to deal with this tragedy.  I’ve been pushing it down, pushing it down.  I want it to go away.  But I decided that not writing something would be cowardly and a disservice to a man who has helped me and so many people around the world.

Trey was one of my first mentors on the social web and I tell part of our story in my book The Tao Of Twitter … I also use his story of generous networking support as a best-practice case study in many of my college classes.

I had the pleasure of meeting him in real life several times over the years and we had some really great times together.  I began to get closer to him as he planned to be a keynote speaker at Social Slam, an event I curated and hosted earlier this year.  I didn’t know Trey as well many of his long-time friends, but he felt comfortable enough with our relationship that he visited me again this summer and confided in me some of the deep troubles that I can only assume led to this tragedy.  I promised him that I would be available to him, whenever he needed me. Based on the outpouring of emotion on his Facebook page, there were a ton of people who had made the same offer.  And you know, we meant it.  In the ensuing months, I called him and sent him emails, letting him know I was still there, I was there, I was there.

A few weeks after we met, Trey tried to commit suicide and was hospitalized. He seemed to come out of it OK and he approached his work with an air of confidence, at least through his public persona.  I tried to stay connected with him and when I heard back from him, he assured me that he was on his way back, although he still had some serious, and growing, problems to overcome.

To view his Facebook and Twitter updates, you would think he was fine. He was proud of his speaking career, appreciative of his friends, seemingly excited about an upcoming trip to Europe.

In recent months, I thought it was a little strange he posted photos of himself so often. In a car. In a bus. At a coffee shop. Hauntingly, in front of the bridge that was the site of his first suicide attempt. He said he was losing weight.  But these photos were sending another message.  In reality, he was telling us that he was literally fading away before our eyes.

Trey was simply one of the nicest and most generous people on the planet.  Even when the chemicals in his brain were relentlessly pushing him into overwhelming depression he was thinking of others. They say that suicide is a selfish decision. It doesn’t make sense.  It’s totally confusing. Trey? Selfish? No.

Some of his last Facebook posts and tweets didn’t make sense either. They were not messages from a man about to kill himself, were they?  An hour before he died, he “liked” Jay Baer’s Facebook update about going to a rock concert.  Why wasn’t he asking somebody for help???

Trey is the second person I have known to end his own life.  In both cases, they were literally the most unlikely people ever to do this. You just shake your head and think … No way. No freaking way.

So many questions that will never be answered. So much pain. I’m angry that the chemicals won. That they wouldn’t let him alone long enough to get one moment of clarity … to be able to see clearly enough to consider the implications for his six children. For his baby grandson. He was so proud of that baby.  For the hundreds of people he touched in his community and the thousands of people around who are in shock and are in mourning today. These are people who sincerely loved him and would have been on his doorstep in a heartbeat.  All he had to do was ask.

Oh Trey.  Why?  You are so loved.

From the Suicide Survivors Support Group:

I’ve figured out Google’s grand plan for world domination. More or less.

See if this makes sense to you.  It sure did last night when I was sipping whiskey on my back porch.

Google’s business is built on collecting data about people and then selling those people highly targeted ads.  The more data they collect, the more ads they can sell.

That’s why they introduced Google +.  Facebook was getting too doggone much of the information collection market.  Even Twitter was honing in.  Every tweet was one little snippet that was out of reach of Google. So Plus was a bold grab at world info marketshare.

if you don’t think this is the name of the game, look at what happened this week with pharmaceutical companies.  Facebook reversed their decision that had allowed pharma companies to not have comments on their pages.  This provides potential costs, complications and legal ramifications for these folks that I won’t get into here, but you can read about it more thoroughly in this scintillating coverage from the Pharma Times.

Nobody seems to know why Facebook did this.  Except me of course.  It’s all clear.  Or a wild guess. You decide.  The way I see it, if Facebook pages don’t have comments, Facebook can’t collect information. If they can’t collect information, they can’t sell targeted ads. And they HATE that.

But I digress. In the whole big global pie of digital information, there is one gold mine that has yet to be tapped. In fact, it might be the motherlode of personal information and it lies tantalizingly out of reach of Google, of Facebook, of everyone.

Text messages.

The world sends billions of text messages every year. Or is it every day?  I can never be sure of these numbers. I usually make my facts up anyway. 57.8 percent of all statistics are made up. You can take that to the bank.

But I digress again.  Now, how in the world would Google ever get access to text messages? Hmmm … perhaps they should buy a mobile phone company like Motorola! Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit. They just did that.

Android Shmandroid.  Google wants the text messages!

Now there is this sticky little issue of privacy to overcome.  To really get access to text messages, you would have to obtain people’s permission to actually give up their most intimate thoughts and dreams to the Internet.

Who would be stupid enough to do that?  Wait, wait … I know this one!  TEENAGERS.  Hell, they already spill their lives all over Facebook every day anyway.

What would it take for a high schooler to give up the nano-particle of privacy they have left and let Google listen to their text stream? How about a free smartphone, complete with all the latest Google Goodies?  How many teenagers would give up their text privacy for a new smartphone every year?  All of them. That is a scientific fact. I saw it on The View.

Let’s look at how the economics would play out. Let’s say the manufacturing cost of a smartphone is $25.  Do you think Google could sell the equivalent of $25 worth of new ads over the course of a year to reach a break-even?  You betcha. I’d buy stock in that.

So that is the plan.  While Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune is climbing by a billion dollars a year (or is it a day?) Google is going to data-mine text messages all day long and kick his Silicon Valley ass to the curb. That really is the plan. I read it on Twitter.  Or maybe it was Harvard Business Review. Oh well, same thing.

Does any of this make sense or do I have to cut out caffeine?

The other day in my Twitter stream @joe_sharkey asked:  ”As a new graduate, how do I stand out in the social media jungle?”

I promised I would write him a blog post in response, so here it is!

I believe today’s most successful social media marketing candidates will have three key qualifications:

1) Demonstrated understanding of marketing fundamentals.

2) An ability to rapidly identify, assess and deploy appropriate new technologies.

3) Possess superb writing and communication skills.

Here are some ideas to help you stand out in those areas, even if you’ve already graduated:

Resist the temptation to be a social media guru. When I graduated from college, I thought I knew it all. Turns out, I didn’t know shit. Then, when I was 30, I thought I knew it all. Turns out, I still didn’t know shit. I know … You’re different. And you probably are. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to be smarter than me. But consider getting some actual marketing and client experience with a company or an agency before hanging out your shingle. Better yet, work at a couple of different places first.

Become a beefy marketer.  An ability to navigate Facebook or YouTube might be enough to get you an entry level job at some places but to really build a career you should become proficient at the fundamentals of marketing.  Star performers will be able to apply their love of the social web to marketing research, consumer behavior, product development, personal selling, and brand-building.   Get a degree if you can. If that’s not possible, join the American Marketing Association and immerse yourself in their journals and webinars. Read all you can, attend free webinars every day of your job search, create an effective RSS feed for yourself.

Don’t goof off.  OK, classes are over and you want to head for the beach or Europe for a few weeks. Whatever you decide to do, don’t be out of touch for a few weeks and then head straight into an interview. You need to stay on top of the latest developments and be able to discuss them intelligently when you get an audience with a prospective employer.

Immerse yourself.  You can’t learn social media marketing in college. In fact, you can’t learn it anywhere. You have to do it. Nobody can help you can find your blogging voice. Nobody can help you sense the rhythm of Twitter. You have to jump in and show people you have the chops.

Get experience, even if you do it for free.  Building on the last point, if you really want to do social media marketing, you better be ready to show some examples of what you can do. In this competitive job market, there are just no excuses not to. Lots of people need help. Charities. Churches.  Schools.  The needs are great and budgets are tight so if you can’t find an internship, go make one.

Build your power base.  If you’re looking for a job, this is a good time to start building some online marketing muscle.  Surround yourself with targeted followers, especially on Twitter and LinkedIn.  Engage with them in a helpful way.  Identify yourself in your bio as a job-seeker.  Identify local business people and marketers you can learn from and try to have lunch or coffee with different people a couple of times each week. Check out how Antonia Harler did this.

Blog strategically.  It makes a lot of sense for new graduates to blog like a house on fire. It’s good skill development, but it will also extend your job interviews.  Here’s what I mean.  You go for an interview. Maybe they give you 45 minutes or an hour. Here’s the last thing you say to them: “You don’t have to take my word that I know how to do this stuff.  Go see for yourself on my blog.”  Which, they will do. You have just extended your job interview by at least another 30 minutes.

Hone your writing skills.  Blogging isn’t enough. You need constant feedback, so connect with bloggers who are great writers and see if you can do some guest posts. Be humble. Ask for ruthless editing.  Repeat.

Emphasize secondary skills … even if it’s just a hobby … to provide an extra bonus to employers. If it’s a tight call between two applicants, you might have an edge if you can offer an employer a “combo deal” based on your passion for photography, editing a newsletter for a charity, doing the books for your spouse’s business. This is especially key if you applying for a job at a start-up where everybody has to wear a lot of hats. Find every possible way to differentiate yourself!

Ask for help. See what happened when you sent a tweet asking for help?  You got a whole new blog post out of it.  In general, people on the social web are really cool. If they’re not, find some new ones.  We rarely say no to somebody who is authentically trying to connect with us.

What are the community’s ideas on this one?  What advice would you give to people trying to stand out and break into a social media marketing position?

If you can’t see the video above, please click here: Mark Schaefer interviews Dr. Jon Buscall.

What if you had the opportunity to establish yourself as a pioneering voice of authority in a region of the world that is relatively new to the idea of social media marketing?  How would you start?

During my recent trip to Scandinavia, I got to sit down with Dr. Jon Buscall, who is familiar to many of you here on {grow}. Jon is one of the most active marketing bloggers in Northern Europe and is probably the only one who is on his way to establishing a global voice from that region.

In this interview, Jon talks about:

• Establishing a blogging foothold and establishing his personal brand
• The choice to blog in English versus his local language
• Building a global audience
• How companies in Europe are beginning to use social media

I’m sure you’ll enjoy this conversation with one of our community favorites!

Community Week Post by Natasha Gabriel

Sigh … yes … BIG sigh.

I have had quite an interesting experience with a vendor — [note I am being generous by using the adjective interesting]. Despite the fact that we live in this hyper-service economy, this FAIL made pause and realize how far we have to go as marketers!  An article from the Temkin Group indicated that “the engagement phase is a critical phase in the customer lifecycle that very often gets missed.”   I’m inclined to agree. Here is what happened:

A few weeks ago I called XYZ Corporation to see if their service offerings could meet my needs. Their content marketing effort had hooked me with precision — I was an “inbound lead” and had already received a lot of good information from their website, newsletter and podcast that had turned me into a hot sales lead — and now I needed to make that personal call.

The sales representative was knowledgeable and even suggested an additional product as part of the package.  I bought into the up-selll — good for him! For about two weeks we went back and forth on details as I had a lot of questions and needed to pull other individuals into the decision process.  And most important, we needed a specific product change which he assured us was very simple and would be done promptly.  Assured that we were getting an excellent deal we signed the contract.  This seemed like a the perfect, seamless marketing and sales effort. But then nothing happened.  There was silence: crickets, crickets, crickets…

The ultimate sales FAIL

“What you do to get me, you need to do to keep me,” is that too much to ask?  I had to chase these people down to find out when our solution would be complete and the go live date. They were completely unresponsive. To add insult to injury, we were told that the changes we were promised would not happen, as service was pushing back on sales. Huh?

Unfortunately many buyers have this same experience. Too many companies focus on the on the point of sale as the key milestone, doing everything they can to close a sale. This is a flawed mindset. Instead of just trying to get money from customers, companies need to focus on getting customers satisfied with their purchase.  A big part of this is the disconnect between sales and fulfillment. Account information and key sales notes stay with the sales representative. Many times too, sales representatives make decisions and promises with limited or incomplete information.

Unfortunately our account information had not traveled from sales to fulfillment.  Development informed Mr. Salesman that the change he thought was so easy, now involved more moving pieces and he would have to renege on his deal!  Why did he not have this information before we signed the contract? It’s not enough for sales and customer service agents to provide the right information at the the right steps in the sales process — they also need to have quick access to knowledge experts to RESPOND to those pesky curve balls that customers like myself come up with.

Damage control is costly

Once an experience is damaged “It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience” and all the work the sales team placed in winning the account is lost.  Mr. Salesman offered me an additional discount, and even as a last resort offered it to me FREE!  Can you see how a great content marketing achievement without excellent fulfillment is actually COSTING them money!  Regrettably, “free” without the requested changes still does nothing for me.

I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the entire experience as I wait, hoping for a resolution.  How are you connecting content marketing to the fulfillment process to make sure something like this never happens to your customers?

Natasha Gabriel was probably one of the first 10 readers of {grow} and is a professional marketer with an unmatched energy, initiative & tenacity balanced with creativity and attention to detail.

A superb Community Week Guest Video Post from Erica Allison!

If you’re just starting out with blogging and feeling overwhelmed, this video is a MUST!

By Neicole Crepeau, Contributing {grow} Columnist

Love it or hate it, the topic of “who is an influencer” is hot, right now.  There are plenty of tools like Klout and PeerIndex to drive you crazy on this subject, but here is an important thought. How can we use this information to help our businessess?

The idea behind being an “influencer” is that you are at the top of the “Word of Mouth” foodchain. This is important because Word of Mouth can be the most powerful, inexpensive and effective promotion you will ever receive. The big brands are spending mega-bucks on this stuff. What about you and me? The little guys? How do you apply this idea to OUR world and get a piece of the action?  How do you even decide which of these influencers is most valuable to your particular business?

Here’s a framework I developed to help you determine which influencers to target for your commercial activities:

Influencer Categories and Activities

We need a way to categorize influencers. Here’s one take on it:

• Opinion shaper—Influential in an area because of expertise, and therefore tends to shape people’s opinions with reviews, posts, comments. Think Walt Mossberg
• Amplifier—Shares information or ideas widely, has broad reach.  Think Guy Kawasaki.
• Thought leader—Develops new ideas and concepts that are widely recognized and well-regarded. Think Jeremiah Owyang.
• Conversationalist—Interacts with large numbers of people in one-on-one or small-group conversations, perhaps through a blog or a social network. Think Gini Dietrich.

There could be additional categories. And I’m not saying this is THE categorization for influencers. It’s a proposal. Something to think about.

Next, we need to consider the activities that these influencers participate in. “Influencer” has become synonymous with blogger and social networking. People can be influential through other activities, as well. Here’s a list of the activities I thought of:

• Creates content—Creates a lot of original text, video, podcasts or other content.
• Speaker—Attends events and speaks at them.
• Social networker—Participates regularly and very actively in online communities.
• Consultant—Consults with businesses and makes recommendations.

Again, there may be others.

Create Profiles for Each Influencer

Now, create a profile for each influencer. Your profile lists the categories the influencer falls into, and the activities the influencer participates in, within each category. Also, do some research to identify the venues for each activity. For example, if the influencer is an Amplifier through Social networking activities, which social networks is he or she active in? Include information about each influencer’s reach, too. Your influencer profile might something like this (Kay is not a real person):

Kay Alexander

Type:

• Opinion shaper
• Amplifier

Activities:

• Content creator
  • Blog (audience: 5,000/month)
  • Books (average sales: 20,000 per year)
• Speaker
  • Social media conferences (40/year)
  • Content marketing conferences (10/year)

• Consultant
  • Large organization (Fortune 1000 and up) in B2B (Number of clients: unknown)
• Social networker
  • Facebook (12,000 fans)
  • Twitter (30,000 fans)

Once you have the profiles, you can start to filter down your list of influencer.

Determine the Types of Influencers that are Most Valuable

Based on your social media goals, you should have a good idea of which influencers are going to be most valuable to you.  For example, if you’re looking for brand awareness, then content sharing and brand mentions might be particularly valuable to you. In that case, you’re probably most interested in the influencer categories of Amplifier, and maybe Conversationalist. If you’re especially interested in brand reputation, then you are probably most interested in Opinion Shapers.

Brand awareness = Amplifier, Conversationalist

Brand reputation=Opinion shaper, Conversationalist, Thought leader

Word of mouth= Amplifier, Opinion shaper, Conversationalist

Website traffic= Amplifier, Opinion shaper, Thought leader

Compare the profiles with your audience analysis

I’m assuming that you’ve done an audience analysis to determine things like where your audience lives online (in what social networks and communities), what kinds of content they consume (videos, podcasts, blogs, etc.), demographic data, and so on.

Now, you should have a shorter list of potential influencers. So, compare the profiles with your audience data. If your audience isn’t on Twitter, you don’t need influencer’s whose primary activity is social networking on Twitter. If your audience doesn’t like videos, Opinion Shapers who primarily distribute content through video move down on your priority list.

By the time you finish this process, you’ll have a good list of influencers to target. You should be pretty confident that these influencers are worth building a relationship with. Now, you just have to figure how to build that relationship!

Here are some resources to help you:

Stop the PR Madness By Ardath Albee

The Art and Science of Blogger Relations – Updated eBook by Brian Solis

Six Steps to Better Blogger Relations By Jen Zingsheim

Neicole Crepeau is a partner in Coherent Interactive, which specializes in web, mobile, and social media design and implementation for small and mid-size businesses. You can read more of her original material at her blog, Coherent Social Media or onTwitter where she is @neicolec.