The ability for all of us to publish on the social web — to have a voice — is among the most profound sociological, economic, and political developments of our lifetime. It gives us the power to elevate a little boy from Canada to an international singing superstar or to unite a group of people to tear down a dictatorship.

This democratization of power is the central theme of my new book, Return On Influence.  This new power is breathtaking and beautiful. It is inspirational and revolutionary. And, it can be deadly.

We have all seen how social media can be used to bully and destroy. A few months ago on {grow} Leslie Lewis told the story of how her career was destroyed by a social media stalker.  A year ago, a student at Rutgers (where I teach) killed himself after Internet humiliation.

Last week, I was also in a position to use social media power to destroy.

My wife had been admitted to a local hospital for a routine procedure.  We experienced the usual delays and administrative foul-ups (had wrong name on her bracelet!) that we have come to expect from the medical profession but nothing prepared me for the horror I was about to experience.

When I was called to her recovery room (where she was still asleep), I could not believe my eyes. The room was filthy. The trash can was filled with tubes and debris from another patient’s procedure. There was trash all over the floor — paper, a used drinking straw, and pieces of some strange green organic material. Worst of all, there were drops of blood (not hers!) across the floor. I was disgusted and outraged. These were like the conditions I have heard about from missionary doctors working in a Third World country.

I took out my phone and took both pictures and video to document the mess … with my wife sleeping peacefully in the middle of it. Nobody would believe this.

I finally was able to flag down an attendant and angrily pointed out the problem. Her response was “Oh … I didn’t see that.”

Perhaps you could overlook a clear drinking straw on a white floor, but certainly not bright red blood drops or a trash can overflowing with used plastic tubes.

When the surgeon came in, I explained how repulsed I was … and I was still feeling ill about the unsanitary conditions even after the blood was wiped up (with a wet paper towel). He said that he would report it and that I would be getting a call from the hospital administration.

Twenty-four hours later I had not received a call and I was still seething.  My adrenaline was saying “post the video.” Instead, I posted a query on Facebook and asked the world what they would do. The recommendations ranged from “keep it in-house” to “get the media involved.”

I called the patient advocate and reached a voice recording, notifying me that she was only available during certain business hours. I also tried to leave a request through the hospital website but the form was broken and I just got an error message.

Later that day, I received a return call from the patient advocate. She was professional and apologetic and said she would investigate the situation.

Two days after this discussion, my wife got a call of apology from the head of the department and a letter from the patient advocate. And that’s how it stands.

This episode represented the first time in my life that I had a “social media voice” go off in my head … “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I HAVE A VOICE!”  I knew that I could have humiliated this hospital on the evening news … maybe even caused an investigation of some kind. Perhaps I should have.

But whether you agree with my decision or not, I hope you will consider this advice: If you ever get into a situation where you can use your social media power to destroy, don’t let adrenaline make the decision for you.  That’s how people are getting hurt and humiliated these days.

When I let the adrenaline subside, I thought about the situation and realized that if I went public with this, the most likely outcome would be that some hourly-wage attendant would lose her job. I would probably be hurting a family more than a hospital.  That is not what I’m about. That was not the right decision for me.

Every day I see destruction, hate, and viciousness on the web from people who can’t keep their adrenaline in check.  The social web is a place of stunning beauty and terrible darkness … just like the human race I suppose.

I’ll open myself and my actions to public scrutiny because this is an important topic we are all likely to face at some point. Did I do enough as a civic duty in this case?  What would you do if you were in a position to use social media to destroy?

Note: If you’re just stumbling on to this post, both bills have been withdrawn at this time but keep reading. The points are still valid. An excellent wrap up of the issue is contained in this New York Times piece: It’s time to put down the pitchforks on SOPA.

The current controversy over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as U.S. House Bill 3261, is highly disturbing on several levels, and the actual bill might be the least of our worries, in the long-term.

I am against piracy, but I’m also against this bill.  The proposal is so out of touch with reality that it is embarassing.  It looks like the opposition is gaining momentum, so that is a relief.

But here is something that is just as disturbing to me. Many people I know became “Stop SOPA” lemmings.

Follow the leader?

Legend has it that a lemming is a little rodent that blindly and unquestioningly follows their leader, even when they follow them over a cliff to their death (they don’t actually do this but that is another story).

I questioned three well-known social media leaders about why they were supporting SOPA and actively encouraging their followers to attach a “Stop SOPA” badge to their profiles. Here is a summary of their responses:

“I’m not what you would call an expert on this. I haven’t even read the bill. I’m trusting what I read from others.”

“To be honest, I don’t know what is in the bill. But based on how people are reacting it must be bad.”

“I have not read the bill and I do not intend to read the bill. What is in the bill is irrelevant. They are taking away our rights.”

You see, on the social web, “Stop SOPA” is not a political issue, for many. “Stop SOPA” has become a meme.  This movement was passed from person to person without much independent thought or an educated response. It has become the Keyboard Cat of political statements.

I fully appreciate the importance of “social proof” on the Internet. In the absence of direction, we may look to trusted others for an idea of what to do. But come on folks. This proposed legislation directly affects the very heart of our lives and our livelihoods. There is no excuse in encouraging action from your trusting followers without doing a little homework.

But what about the problem?

The third level of concern this proposed legislation created was the fact that everybody seems to be against SOPA but there has been little  intelligent dialogue about the actual issue of stopping piracy.  And stealing is “our right” is not a viable answer in my book.  Please, take a strong stand … but also help provide some answers.

Here is the problem in a nutshell. I just spent nearly a year of my life writing a book. If there is no hope of getting paid for the difficult work and sacrifice that goes into creating content like this in the future, I will never write another book.  And so on.

When you steal content, you’re not beating a greedy corporation. You’re not sticking it to “the man.” You’re sticking it to me, and millions of other writers, filmmakers, musicians, software developers, and other hard-working content creators.

Some claim that alternative monetization models will emerge to allow people to continue to create and prosper in spite of what seems like unstoppable piracy.  But we have been stealing legally-protected content for 20 years now. If an easy monetization alternative were available, wouldn’t it have emerged by now? It hasn’t, and it won’t. And yes, I’ve read the book Free by Chris Anderson and still believe there is probably no answer to widespread content theft other than some sort of legislation. We need to come to terms with that fact and be part of the solution.

OK, that is enough of the rant. This time it was SOPA. But the next time we “go lemming,” will it be something even more important? And at what cost? I was really disturbed by the herd mentality I witnessed.  What about you?

I had a very interesting question come across my desk from {grow} community member John Bethune:

In the minds of most people, journalism and marketing were once diametrically opposed. Has that changed in the social media era?

A great question!  And, in fact, I think the social web has brought these disciplines together in a number of surprising ways.

The ideal of journalism is a quest for truth. Marketing is the quest for a product’s “truth.” By that I mean the best marketers are on a journey to know how their company’s goods and services exist in the hearts and minds of their customers. Then, their job is to express that consumer truth to the best of their ability.  So in this way, the disciplines are unexpectedly similar, although the end product is quite different!

But the social web has created an important shift for both disciplines.  What does it even mean to be a journalist today? Through blogging and technology like smartphone video cameras, journalism has been democratized.  Anybody can report, anybody can publish.  Jeff Jarvis of City University of New York recently defined a reporter today as simply somebody who can say, “I was there and you weren’t.”

The democratization of marketing

To a great extent, marketing has been democratized, too. Remember last year when Gap changed their logo and there was such an outcry? I felt empathy for the company because they are probably good marketers who followed a traditional protocol — work with graphic designers, test it, get feedback, and roll.  That system has worked for decades and changing a logo is not an easy or flippant decision for a consumer product company to make. I’m sure they had done their homework … or at least they thought so.

But a few vocal people thought the new logo was stupid (perhaps people who were not even customers!). Through Twitter and Facebook, they created an anti-logo movement. and suddenly it became an embarrassing meme. I can imagine the Gap marketers waking up to this one morning and thinking “Wait … what?”

So something as important as an adjustment to your brand image may not even be in the hands of marketers any more. The Gap’s marketing strategy had essentially been crowd-sourced!  Like journalism it seems, marketing has also been democratized.

Content as power

The production of content has also been an output of the marketing process, usually in the form of advertisements. But now content is at the very centerpiece of many strategies as companies fight to attract attention on the crowded social web.  The journalism schools are full of new applicants. Why? Because content is big business now and the new media channels have an insatiable need for it.  Companies need story-tellers as much as marketing graduates.

I have recently been working with the president of one of my B2B customers on a blog and a series of how-to videos to demonstrate their new robotic technologies. I’ll bet five years ago he never would have dreamed he would be in the publishing business!

So this idea of content and storytelling is another way that journalism and marketing have been brought together.  For both fields, content that moves virally through the social web represents success and power.

Truth as a strategy

I think expectations of “truth” and transparency is another way the social web have brought journalism and marketing together.  For a brand to have integrity and to be successful, it can’t be spinning the truth around any more. There are a million watch dogs out there now and any one of them can sniff out a fake.

A few weeks ago, I was working with some marketers for a hotel chain and we were discussing negative hotel reviews. “We don’t mind them,” they told me. “It makes us more real.”

Interesting. Truth as a marketing strategy.

My hunch is that a few years ago, that is not necessarily what their reaction would have been.  In marketing, truth is the new black.

Maybe journalism and marketing are getting closer than we thought?  What do you think?

Note: John Bethune’s full interview with me can be found here: “Content is Power: A Q&A with Mark W. Schaefer.”

A while back I was working with a new client in New York.  In the lobby of their impressive building, there was a huge plaque with the corporate philosophies of the company’s founder — a man who had died 25 years ago.  In every meeting I attended, his name, and his values, were mentioned at least once. As I learned about this company, it was apparent that this beloved man’s influence extended far beyond the grave into the daily activities of the company life today!

Corporate cultures are a complex amalgamation of executive personalities, external events, and history. Culture affects almost everything … from how employees are treated to how they compete in the marketplace.  When I talk about social media strategies, inevitably the conversation turns to cultural fit.

Social media success and failure is not usually determined by resources, vision, or ability.  It is inevitably a function of the personality of the organization. Here are five signs that your company culture may be getting in the way of your progress:

Corporate culture mis-match — You need to build your strategy around the realistic capabilities of your company culture.  As grandma used to say, you have to deal with what is, not what you wish for.  Is your company ready to become a publisher? Are they able to react? Are they truly open to the idea of customer dialogue? If the honest assessment is “no,” move on.  That doesn’t mean you can’t be successful, you just have to adjust. Your culture is your culture. Your desire to have a blog isn’t going to change it.  But your strategy can probably conform to your situation and still have an impact. You need to think about education, not execution.

Lack of executive sponsorship– On a related topic, if you’re counting on a “grassroots” effort to establish a company social media program that will “change the culture,” you’re setting yourself up for problems.  To be successful in the long-term, you must have support from the top. Why? That’s who controls the purse strings and resources! That’s the person setting the strategy.  You can’t make this happen alone. Here’s an article on selling your boss on social media  that might be helpful.

Lack of executive engagement — To really build a social organization, you need your executives to be involved, as well as sponsoring the initiative.   I’m not saying executives actually have to blog or tweet … but they have to be connected to the point that they intimately understand the vast implications and opportunities. Some executives will relish this change. Others will resist it. If your boss is in the second group, you need to lower your expectations and slow down.

Unwieldy politics. Every organization has politics.  But when everybody is trying to own a piece of your blog or customer service strategy, watch out. If you find that Legal, HR and the janitorial staff demands to approve every tweet, it might be a sign that your company is just not built for social media.  Remember, the beauty of the social web is an ability to be flexible and reactive.  Most companies have been conditioned to broadcast. This is a very difficult change to make and it make take re-organization. One large brand I work with has re-invented its approach by creating a new department called Customer Connections.  That’s the idea.

Unrealistic expectations — … and her brother “impatience.”  It takes time to build a strategy and connect to customers, especially if cultural change has to occur first. It may take YEARS.  If your boss is making your employment contingent on Facebook Likes or the number of blog comments you get next month, it might be time to consider another position!

One of my B2B customers is just getting into social media marketing after I have worked with them as their “rented Chief Marketing Officer” for more than two years!  Why did it take so long? First, they had other low-hanging fruit to take care of (I’m a marketing consultant, not just a social media consultant!). And culturally, they just were not ready.

But a few months ago, the president approached me and said, “You know, I think we need to begin working on this social media stuff you talk about.”  He was beginning to feel expectations from customers and suppliers and, along with a constant drip of education from me, there was a catalyst for change. The transformation is beginning, and we will be doing it the right way — with understanding, executive sponsorship, and cultural readiness … but it took me a long time to get them to that point.

Any of this sound familiar?  What are your experiences with corporate culture and social media success and failure?

September 11, 2001.  That was a day many of us experienced a single emotion for the first time — horror.  Not the movie kind. True, real-life, gut-wrenching, nauseating horror.  I will never forget it.

And as I watched the tenth anniversary news coverage, I had this weird thought.

I’m so glad we didn’t have Twitter back then.

“Nine eleven” was a day of complete chaos.  Planes were falling out of the sky. We didn’t know what was happening or why. And maybe most profound, we didn’t know what was going to happen next.  Agents of terror had seemingly used the nation’s infrastructure at will to kill thousands of innocent people on our own soil.

What would be the next target? The water supply? A nuclear power plant? The air that we breathe? You’ll recall that within the week there was an anthrax letter attack on the nation’s capital too. Did we need to lock ourselves up in our homes? Prepare for a nuclear or biological attack?

Can you imagine having Twitter on top of that confustion? What would Twitter be like in the midst of terror and chaos? Although there might be ways that Twitter connections can help in an emergency and maybe even save lives, certainly, when applied to the scale of the 2001 attack, it would also magnify the terror.

When every confused eye witness with a cell phone becomes a reporter and the most ridiculous innuendo can become a viral “fact” today, I shudder to think how much more emotional and psychological damage could have been done had we been following a Twitter stream that day.  How would terrorists use social media to spread misinformation to make the situation even more dangerous?  It would have been another layer of chaos on top of chaos, horror on top of horror.

Instead, we had to rely on “traditional” media.  And for all its faults, there was probably some psychological and emotional advantage in waiting for official statements from emergency services and the government.

Think back to that terrible moment.  Would social media accounts of that day have made the situation any better? Or like me, do you think it would have just added to your fear and confusion? Any lessons or thoughts on this?

Photo:  AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett

Back in my 20s I was full of energy and ambition. “Piss and vinegar” we used to say.  I was aiming for the next rung on the corporate ladder, getting my MBA, raising a family … and I always seemed tired and stressed.

I had a very special and influential teacher when I was in grad school who was a living Yoda.  One time we were sitting around having coffee and I was whining about the increasing anxiety in my workplace.

“It doesn’t have to be that way you know,” my teacher said.

My defensiveness was up. He was just so out of touch if he thought the pace of this world wasn’t stressful!

“Well,” I said, “If you don’t feel anxiety all the time, what DO you feel?”   Without hesitation, he stated “joy!”

This opened up one of the most important discussions of my life, a discussion that has influenced me to this moment.

Joy.  I had never really stopped to consider that as a goal for my life.  I decided I wanted to figure that out.

One of the things I discovered is that there is a difference between happiness and joy.  You can be happy about a hamburger.  You can be happy about a song. Happiness is temporary.  Joy is peace.

Living in a joyful way is a challenge but one key idea is staying focused on the reason for your journey.  If you KNOW why you are on your path, then you also have internal guideposts to lead the way. Stay focused on WHY you’re doing something.

But if your life is guided by external guideposts like Twitter followers, blog rankings … and even money … you might experience happiness but you will never experience joy because you will never achieve your goal. There will always be more, more, more to acquire. You won’t experience joy in the journey.

When you become active on the social web, it can be easy to be knocked off center because we are all being constantly measured — publicly.  There are so many ways to quantify you, and what you do, and compare it to others. Suddenly the journey is much less important than hitting that next level of Twitter followers or a higher Klout score.  And it just never ends.

For the past few weeks I have been immersed in a project that has brought me close to many people who are unquestionably obssessed with their online personas, appearances, and scores.

One guy told me he spent all his spare time tweeting at a high rate just to keep his Klout score up. I told him that it would certainly go down when he goes on vacation. “I can’t stop,” he said. “Even on vacation. There’s too much pressure to keep it up.”

Where is that pressure coming from? Something about the conversation made me sad.  All this social media stuff can be fun in its place but should it become a life goal?  Nobody is going to list the number of Twitter followers on my tombstone.

It makes me sad that increasingly, these external guideposts seem to be driving our behavior. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

I read a story where a guy was giving tips on how to cheat at Foursquare. So he’s cheating a system in order to earn an electronic badge to be a fake mayor of a donut shop.  And then what?  When will he have enough mayorships?  Will he ever experience joy?

I want to make sure you know I am not in a position to pontificate.  I am a work in progress too. I get knocked off center — at least just a little bit — every day.

For example, this week I was offered a lot of money to begin having “sponsored posts” (aka paid product reviews) on my blog.  Wow.  Money for blogging?  But after checking my internal guideposts I found violating the content on the blog with sponsored content does not support WHY I am blogging.  So I declined the offer.  Maybe you think I’m an idiot, but I feel peaceful about the decision.  I’m on the right path, at least for me.

Are you finding it harder to focus on your internal path when there are these numbers blinking at you, screaming to be optimized for your personal brand?  Do you see it differently, or are you experiencing the same concerns as me?

The only kind of cat fight I enjoy.

There is this great man I knew. We’ll call him John.  Because that was his name.

I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my career but probably none so challenging as serving as a facilitator for company-union labor negotiations.  It was an emotional and bruising experience.

The first time I met John, a union official, he told me within five minutes that he didn’t like me. He went on to explain that I was a “company man” and so he would always distrust and dislike me, no matter what.  This really pissed me off.

But truth be told, I didn’t like John either. He spoke in this thick, hick accent and I judged him to be an uneducated rube blindly following orders from shady union bosses who filed costly and ridiculous claims about work rules just to stonewall our progress and manipulate the negotiations.

Over a few days, John and I got to know each other better through the facilitated activities and over long lunches where we talked about our lives and families.

After the third day, he came up to me at a break and said, “I was wrong about you.  I just assumed all company people were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. You weren’t. You had to work for everything. I think the real reason I hated you is because I was jealous.  You worked hard and got somewhere.  I never did that.”

I’m sure the look of shock on my face was apparent.

But I also realized that over those days I had gained a new respect for him, too. I learned that John had been dragged through 39 different schools over his 12 grades of schooling.  He never really had a chance for a meaningful education or any close friendships during his entire childhood. He had bravely tried to salvage his alcoholic father, even when the man was waving a loaded gun at him as a child.  And John had become a great husband, father and grandfather who always had some new pictures of the kids to show me.  He was a lovely, caring man, forged by a lifetime of suffering.

I felt ashamed at how I had judged John.  Getting to know the real man was a life-changing discussion and I swore never to make rash judgments about people again.  I have never forgotten John’s “back story” and how my initial impressions were so unfair and wrong.

Through technology like the social web, it is easier than ever to make judgments about people. Usually we only see a little avatar and some written words. Maybe a phone call if we’re lucky. The technology is a convenient way to avoid personal contact.  And yet, I so often hear people putting others in categories they don’t deserve based on partial information.

From John, I learned that we really don’t know a person until we have walked in their shoes. We don’t know where they have been.  We don’t know how they have suffered.

You know, everybody starts out as this pure little baby with unlimited goodness and potential.  Then a lifetime of hurt and crap builds up around them and who knows what it does to somebody.

There are a lot of people I know who I wish had their own ”John” moment.  The cattiness and politics on the social web can be so disgusting.  It’s too easy to give “hit and run” feedback without thinking about the person behind the avatar.  Sometimes I feel like I’m watching “The Real Housewives of Facebook.”

I’m not going to accomplish much with this post.  Catty bitchy people will probably be catty bitchy people whether they read this or not and I realize this post is not going to provide a life-changing moment.  Maybe it’s more of a vent for me because sometimes people make the most audacious and hurtful assumptions and accusations when they don’t even know me.  It sickens me.

When our relationship is limited to 140-character sound bites, we really don’t know each other.  Let’s give each other a break, OK?  Love one another, even when it’s hard to understand.

This poignant post comes from {grow} community member Jenn Whinnem …

Remember Friendster? The social network that predated even MySpace (or am I showing my age?)? At any rate, it shuts down at the end of May, and I’m having a hard time with this.

See, Friendster is my last connection to Curtis, a friend of mine who died nearly eight years ago. That’s why I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete my account, even though Friendster stopped being a truly viable social networking service in 2005 (I think).

I never met Curtis – he was someone I knew through a message board and chat room. This was how I amused myself while I attended a rural college nearly ten years ago. Many of the people I met online became friends in real life.

Curtis was in his early 20s and very, very into music. In fact, he ran the site rantcore.com (no longer available), and it was pretty well known in punk circles back during that different world that was the internet in early 2000′s.

Curtis and I bonded because we were sickies. I have cystic fibrosis and Curtis had something called demyelinating polyneuropathy. This meant his nerve sheaths were destroying themselves, and he was becoming weak enough that he had just started walking with a cane. He was in pain every day.

At one point, he confided in me that he had found a blog (a newish thing, at the time) by a guy with an advanced case of the disease. The post that got to him was the one where the guy purchased a car for the handicapped that would load his wheelchair into the car for him.

When you have a fatal disease, you have these moments where you realize: this is going to happen to me. You feel your mortality. This was one of those moments for Curtis as he realized what his disease was going to do to him. If he did attend one of his beloved punk shows, it would be in a wheelchair. That was, of course, if he could even breathe. Curtis and I talked a long time about what this would mean for him.

And yet, this never happened.

Curtis slipped in the shower and hit his head. He lived alone, so he bled to death. We found out because his girlfriend logged into chat one day to tell us he had died. A friend verified this with the county coroner.

I can’t tell you what this felt like, to grieve for someone I knew but had not met. I talked to Curtis everyday for almost a year. He sent me a .zip file of The Bangs to cheer me up once; I told him stories about my job taking care of the elderly. You can’t tell me that that’s not a friendship.

Curtis died November 25, 2003 – just a few months after Friendster started and we joined. Every year I get a little reminder about his birthday, and I log into Friendster, see his photos, read the funny comments people wrote about him. Friendster shutting down means I lose one more little piece of Curtis.

It’s something that many of us don’t like to think about, but I’m going to ask, because what I learned from Curtis is that it can sneak up on you way before you’re ready for it: what’s your digital legacy? How will we remember you after you die? What do we do when the comments are gone?

Jenn Whinnem is the Communications Officer for the Connecticut Health Foundation (www.cthealth.org). In this role, she is in charge of the web and social media for the foundation. You can find her on Twitter www.twitter.com/jennwhinnem.

Lori Witzel, a newcomer to our community, asked me a good question the other day. “Did you get any phone calls? You left me hanging!”

You see, she had just read a blog post I wrote last year called “Social Media and the Big Conversation Fail.”  The summary of the story is that my entire view of social media relationships had been shaken when I realized somebody I had considered a social media “friend,” Jenn Whinnem, had cystic fibrosis.  I felt humiliated that I had not known this collaborator of mine suffered each day.  What kind of a friend is that?

So I vowed to do better.  In that post I issued a blanket invitation for my blog community to call me. It was a risky move. Many thousands of people read my blog every day! But it was also a necessary move.  Is this a community or not?

The answer is, yes, this is an amazing blog community and lots of people called me in a very respectful and manageable way. Generally people DM’d me and we set up a time to talk. I allocated time each week for community chit-chat. I stopped counting, but if I had to guess, I would say that I’ve talked to at least 75 people from {grow} since that post.

This was by far the best thing I have ever done on this blog.  You see, lots of people COMMENT on my blog, but few really give me feedback. There’s a big difference.  I found the unvarnished conversations with my audience brought me closer to them personally and helped me improve professionally as well.

Here’s an example. One of the most profound conversations was with Caroline Di Diego, an entrepreneur in Singapore. I didn’t know her at all. I had not recalled her ever commenting on my blog, and maybe she tweeted it a few times but other than that she was a blank.

“You asked me to call,” she said. “So I thought I should.  Your blog has changed my life.”

And the conversation just got more interesting from there.  Sometimes I get a little down when a “smart” post I write bombs and then something silly like “The 20 Craziest Things You Can do on Twitter” goes viral.

But Caroline could recall every “smart” post I had written.  And not only could she recall them, she could recount how it made her re-consider how she was conducting her business. “You write a blog that makes me stop what I’m doing and think,” she said.

I’m a lousy golfer. But if I have just that one great shot, it keeps me coming back. Caroline’s phone call was kind of like that.

And of course the first person I called after the post was Jenn.  And a few weeks ago, we actually met in person when she flew from Connecticut to Knoxville to attend Social Slam.  Oh yeah. She was unemployed at the time she made the reservations. “I want to meet you,” she simply said.

I hosted a little event for the {grow} community and tears filled my eyes when she walked in the room. I was overcome by emotion as I met this person after two years of friendship — now REAL friendship I think — and collaboration.

The whole experience has been inspiring! I encourage you to try it with your own blog community.  Don’t be a stranger. Call people up and see what they think!  And by the way, when are you and I going to talk?

I loved Amber Naslund’s recent post about the always-on, world of digital media. As she correctly said, The New World of Work Includes Social Media.

But here’s the problem. That’s easy for ME to say.

It’s easy for Amber to say.

But is it easy for you to explain to your spouse?  How do you explain why you always need to be tethered to the Internet?

Before I get into the heart of the post, you have to promise me something.  Actually, three things:

1. You are not a workaholic/addictive personality using social media as an excuse to avoid your family. This is not a post about time management. This is a post about sensitively handling a shift in a person’s lifestyle.
2. You are not playing World of Warcraft or Farmville and explaining it to your spouse as social media research, and
3. You are responsibly trying to have a balance with family life most of the time.  That’s important.

If you can agree to these things, I think you’re probably just a stressed marketing pro like the rest of us trying to hang on and stay afloat.  If that’s the case, here are some ideas to explain to your spouse why you don’t have a 9-5 job any more.

Prepare martinis. No, that’s really not the first thing to do. The real first step is to “listen.” But if I wrote “listen” you would skip over this paragraph and that would be a big mistake, so I tricked you. I know you, don’t I?

Seriously.  You need to just shut up. Don’t explain anything at first. If your spouse doesn’t understand why you spend so much time on the social web, let them express their feelings and frustrations FIRST. This doesn’t mean be quiet and prepare to speak, this means authentically connect and try to truly understand what is going on. Don’t rule out that they may be right. Maybe you ARE over-doing it. P.S. Don’t skip this step.

Empathize. This would be expressed in words like: “Wow. I can see how much this is impacting you. I would probably feel the same way.” Or, “I had no idea this was having this kind of an affect on you.”  It’s important that you acknowledge the feelings of the other person as being legitimate.

Lead with feelings. Yes guys, that means you too.  How does it make you FEEL to be immersed in social media marketing? Energized? Depressed? Excited? Renewed? Overwhelmed?  Leading with these kind of words will help set the stage so you can have a non-defensive discussion. You can’t really argue with feelings. They just are.

Don’t explain, show. Chances are you’ve tried to explain what is going on before. Doesn’t work, does it?  There is no way people can understand why social media is so time consuming unless they SEE it. Let them into your world.  And before you have your talk, do a little homework. Have this ready:

1. Something to make an impression that the marketing world is changing relentlessly. The Qualman “shift” video is always good for something like this and I’m sure you can recommend others.
2. Be able to demonstrate your typical routine on each social platform. Show how it is connected to your work, your income and your future. Explain why there are no shortcuts.
3. Give examples of how quickly the technology is changing. Don’t make them read. Show graphs and videos where you can make quick, bold impressions demonstrating urgency and change. Mine Mashable for that stuff.

Be honest. Chances are, the time you spend on the social web is not going to lessen. Let’s face it. These productivity tools only pull us into new niches and corners and rabbit holes. The world is getting faster, not slower.

Tune in to priorities. Be prepared to make a concession to important needs. When are the times you absolutely, positively need to put the smartphone down? Dinner? Vacation? Playtime with the kids? Sunday mornings?  Listen intently, respond compassionately, keep your promises.

Follow-up. Check-in every other week or so and see how things are going on this issue. Are you keeping your promises?

OK.  Help fill in the gaps for me.  How are you handling the workload and explaining social media immersion to your family?

P.S. I have an urge to provide a little explanation here. Sometimes when I read “self help” oriented blog posts I think … “who are you to be giving advice?”  For the record, I do have a masters degree in applied behavioral sciences and spent a lot of time with conflict resolution. I don’t write about this stuff too often but I will probably be getting into those areas now and then because it is interesting to me.