OK, Twit­ter For Dum­mies should be called Twit­ter for Every­one. I may be con­sid­ered a pretty heavy Twit­ter user and was #here­be­fore­o­prah but even I really enjoyed get­ting into the heads of Laura @pistachio Fit­ton, Michael @gruen Gruen, and Leslie @geechee_girl Poston.

If I were to boil Twit­ter for Dum­mies down, I would say that you can’t dumb down Laura, Michael or Leslie — they’re lead­ers in Twit­ter­ville and you really can­not be dis­ap­pointed if you grab the book.

For me, the entire book only took me the length of a Hol­ly­wood movie to read; how­ever, they threw in kitchen sink in this book, extend­ing into rarely used fea­tures such as the Pub­lic Time­line and really geeky command-line access to Twit­ter such as “d chrisabra­ham” or “fol­low chrisabra­ham,” etc.

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If you’re smart and savvy but have not yet been wooed to the world of Twit­ter, All a Twit­ter is for you: All a Twit­ter: A Per­sonal and Pro­fes­sional Guide to Social Net­work­ing with Twit­ter.

Author Tee Mor­ris writes this book more to the folks who are not quite wooed by Twit­ter yet but who are twi-curious. The first half of the book is bor­ing but addresses all of the ques­tions of the what, when, where, and how of Twitter.

The sec­ond half of the book is not only inter­est­ing but has Tee writ­ten all over it and offers up the who and the why with quite a dose of sub­jec­tive opin­ion, which I find very attrac­tive since too many of these Twit­ter books don’t come from a place of the per­sonal testimonial.

While the first half may be bor­ing, it is super-useful, tak­ing you by the hand and show­ing you through all of the steps required to wade into Twit­ter fully out­fit­ted, includ­ing help with my Android G1 phone (some­thing sorely lack­ing in Twit­ter for Dummies).

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Spent Fri­day at Seiz­ing the Moment, the sold-out, end-of-summer Garage/Summer Insti­tute at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity fea­tur­ing a rich array of speak­ers who pro­vided train­ing in mul­ti­me­dia, new media, social media and more. I gave a 90-minute Social Media Boot­camp with Susan Mer­nit, and I’ll post the pre­sen­ta­tion on Monday.

Above is Ben­jamin Jeal­ous, pres­i­dent of the NAACP, whose talk ended the con­fer­ence. (I enjoyed meet­ing him and admire his work.) Here’s an 11-picture photo set of Seiz­ing the Moment.

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New study doesn’t dis­tin­guish between flaws and healthy behavior

I’ve long believed that the Inter­net exists solely because of our ego. Every­thing we do pub­licly online is an effort to be acknowl­edged. This week, two sto­ries pointed out the fright­en­ingly obvi­ous: That stu­dents who use social net­works are nar­cis­sis­tic and that a cen­ter for Inter­net addic­tion has opened up in Wash­ing­ton.

Please researchers, enough with the lead­ing questions

The first story should be filed under the cat­e­gory of “Trees are made of wood and other stuff we already knew that didn’t require the expense of a university’s resources.” Regard­less, bring­ing up the issue of what moti­vates stu­dents to use social net­works makes us all real­ize why we’re using the Inter­net. And that’s to be acknowl­edged and to get rec­og­nized. The prob­lem is the study lumped in diver­gent traits — nar­cis­sism, self-promotion, and attention-seeking — as being syn­ony­mous. Self-promotion and nar­cis­sism are two very dif­fer­ent things. Nobody seeks or admires some­one who is nar­cis­sis­tic, but we admire peo­ple who effec­tively and non-offensively self-promote.

The study cre­ated many lead­ing ques­tions which has been a chronic irri­ta­tion I’ve had with orga­ni­za­tions such as For­rester and IDC that con­duct social media research (Read “Social media research is chock full of lead­ing ques­tions”). In my cri­tique, IDC asked lead­ing ques­tions as to what adver­tis­ing peo­ple would be will­ing to see online and For­rester asked lead­ing ques­tions about trust­ing cor­po­rate blogs. No one “wants” to see ads and the brand of “cor­po­rate blogs” is like that of a “used car sales­man.” No one wants either, but we use both.

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Shel Israel dis­cusses the impact of the real-time Web on soci­ety & business

Shel Israel’s new book, Twit­ter­ville, is due to hit hit book­stores next week. (See Twit­ter­ville site, the Global Neigh­bour­hoods blog or Ama­zon page.) A day after his book release party at the Hiller Avi­a­tion Museum, San Car­los, Calif., Shel took time out to answer five ques­tions from Socialmedia.biz.

1In the early stages of your book research you were focus­ing on the con­ver­sa­tional Web. Why did you zero in on Twitter?

Shel Israel: When you and I talked about the con­ver­sa­tional web, I was still explor­ing new book pos­si­bil­i­ties. I wanted a story that was an obvi­ous evo­lu­tion­ary step from Naked Con­ver­sa­tions.

My focus nar­rowed and locked in April 2008, when James Buck tweeted the word “arrested” on his Black­berry as he was being taken off to pos­si­bly rot in an Egypt­ian jail. A day later, when he posted a sec­ond word, “freed,” I real­ized that some­thing was hap­pen­ing on Twit­ter that exceeded what I orig­i­nally thought was there. In another cou­ple of weeks I started see­ing a very broad story that also went quite deep. I felt pas­sion­ate about it and became con­vinced that Twit­ter was about to have a very sig­nif­i­cant impact on the Con­ver­sa­tional Web.

2At the 140 Char­ac­ter con­fer­ence, some speak­ers sug­gested that the real-time Web was as momen­tous as the birth of the orig­i­nal Web. Do you agree? How do you see Twitter’s poten­tial impact on cul­ture and society?

Shel Israel: I’m not very good at “most momen­tous” type judg­ments until I can look back at an event with some his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive. I regard the birth of the real time web as a more recent point on a con­tin­uum that started back when our ances­tors were grunt­ing and ges­tur­ing around the cave fires telling sto­ries about the hunt; using blood and berries to tell sto­ries on cave walls. The birth of the web is a really big dot in that con­tin­uum. It is the moment when our com­mu­ni­ca­tions tran­scended tan­gi­ble spaces and allowed email and other inter­ac­tive activ­i­ties. How big a dot is the real time web? I think it’s huge, but we are still in nascent times. I may be opti­mistic, but we need to be able to look back fur­ther to see how it impacts human interactivity.

3Can you cite some best prac­tices about how com­pa­nies are using Twitter?

Shel Israel: The term “best prac­tices” tra­di­tion­ally his­tor­i­cally refers to refined, redun­dant, mea­sur­able activ­i­ties that can become the stadard of busi­ness pro­to­cols. I think we are still in an early phase where noth­ing is yet a best prac­tice, but merely a really good idea.

There’s a gen­eral con­sen­sus that social media has been a com­mu­ni­ca­tions game changer. Most peo­ple think it is a good idea to be trans­par­ent and not decep­tive; to lis­ten at least as much as you speak; to show a human face rather than a brand image; to build rep­u­ta­tion by being gen­er­ous to a com­mu­nity rather than mak­ing noise and to gen­er­ally tell more than you sell.

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The Soci­ety for New Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Research solicited cap­sule sum­maries of cor­po­rate blog­ging best prac­tices offered by some of its mem­bers, who are among the top social media con­sul­tants in the country.

Shel Israel
Author, Twit­ter­ville, co-author, Naked Con­ver­sa­tions

Human­ize: Remem­ber that one fun­da­men­tal rea­son for blog­ging is the human­iza­tion of the cor­po­ra­tion. Be a real per­son when you blog. Show your­self doing a job that you have some pas­sion for. Show your fal­li­bil­ity and, above all, do not fall into the trap of medi­oc­rity, where so many cor­po­rate blogs wind up.

Serve your reader more than your employer: This is a suc­cess strat­egy. The more gen­er­ous you are to your read­ers, the more influ­en­tial you will be. Send peo­ple away from your site through links to com­peti­tors when appro­pri­ate. You may lose the sale, but in the long run you will gain a loyal customer.

Join con­ver­sa­tions before you start new ones: Peo­ple are already talk­ing about the issues they care the most about. Read what they have to say and add value to the exist­ing con­ver­sa­tion. Then when you start a new con­ver­sa­tion, you will already have cred­i­bil­ity and trust. If you try to ini­ti­ate a con­ver­sa­tion and peo­ple don’t know who you are or where you are com­ing from, then they will either ignore you or mis­trust you.

John Cass
Author, Strate­gies and Tools for Cor­po­rate Blogging

Com­ment­ing: Cor­po­rate blog­ging is not just about the con­tent on your site, it’s also about par­tic­i­pat­ing in con­ver­sa­tions on other blogs. Respond to com­ments on your blog, and also com­ment on other blogs. These con­ver­sa­tions can be just as impor­tant as build­ing rela­tion­ships with peo­ple on your own site and estab­lish­ing your rep­u­ta­tion in your community.

Track­ing con­ver­sa­tions: Track­ing con­ver­sa­tions on other blogs is one of the most dif­fi­cult aspects of blog­ging. For­tu­nately there are now tech­nolo­gies that enable you to track con­ver­sa­tions. These include coCom­ment, deli­cious, Co.mments and Com­ment­ful.

Per­son­al­iza­tion: Per­son­al­iza­tion is impor­tant in writ­ing a blog, as blogs pro­vide employ­ees the chance to break down some of the bar­ri­ers that exist between cus­tomers and com­pa­nies. The infor­mal style of writ­ing that is pos­si­ble in a blog can help reach cus­tomers who would not pay atten­tion to a company’s state­ments otherwise.

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This week I attended one of the more inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions around brands’ use of social media that I’ve taken in dur­ing the past year.

Your Brand, Their World at Razorfish’s cor­po­rate head­quar­ters in San Fran­cisco brought together a highly engaged audi­ence of 100 social media and mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ists dur­ing an open­ing pre­sen­ta­tion by Gar­rick Schmitt, GVP Expe­ri­ence Plan­ning for Razor­fish (@gschmitt on Twit­ter) fol­lowed by an inter­est­ing panel with Megan O’Connor, Levi’s; Michael Brito, Intel; Marisa Gal­lagher, Razor­fish; Sam Fail­lace, Shut­ter­fly, and Jon Swartz, USA Today (moderator).

“We’re all intu­itively going through these changes and we’re all intu­itively inter­act­ing with [brands and media com­pa­nies] in dif­fer­ent ways with­out fully under­stand­ing what it all means,” Schmitt said.

Slide high­lights: social media spending

• Schmitt offered met­rics to back up the excite­ment around the explo­sion of inter­est in social media. For instance, in slide 3 of the deck above, you’ll see that in Inter­ac­tive mar­ket­ing spend­ing (US), search mar­ket­ing and dis­play adver­tis­ing far sur­pass email mar­ket­ing, social media and mobile mar­ket­ing social media in terms of dol­lars spent today. Social media spend­ing will grow from $716 mil­lion this year to $3.113 bil­lion by 2014, accord­ing to Forrester’s projection.

• Adver­tis­ing dol­lars haven’t fol­lowed the audience’s migra­tion online yet — but it will. Amer­i­cans spend about an equal amount of time watch­ing TV and going online today, but ad spend­ing remains at 31 per­cent for tele­vi­sion vs. only 12 per­cent for the online medium. (slide 5)

• Bad news for news­pa­pers: Indi­vid­u­als spend 7 per­cent of their media con­sump­tion with print news­pa­pers but the ad spend for news­pa­pers is 14 per­cent today.

• You’ll find richly tex­tured analy­sis of the trends in social influ­ence mar­ket­ing in Razorfish’s recent flu­ent pub­li­ca­tion (free download).

Panel high­lights: rock stars and the 80–20 Rule

• I love those new Intel com­mer­cials (“Our rock stars aren’t like your rock stars”) on PBS’s New­sHour and else­where, espe­cially the ones fea­tur­ing Ajay Bhatt, one of the inven­tors of the USB. I guessed that it wasn’t really him (Wikipedia is silent on his age), but thought those were real Intel employ­ees. How­ever, it’s an actor play­ing Bhatt, Michael Brito said, and indeed, all the employ­ees por­trayed in the ads are actors.

• Brito (@Britopian on Twit­ter) uses the 80–20 Rule in his tweet­ing: 80 per­cent is per­sonal, 20 per­cent is busi­ness — an excel­lent frame of ref­er­ence for com­pa­nies just jump­ing into the game. He talked about the impor­tance of reach­ing out to the com­mu­nity “in an authen­tic man­ner” through their social media efforts, such as the Intel Insid­ers (dis­clo­sure: I’m part of that team). “I’d rather have 100 peo­ple I have an authen­tic rela­tion­ship than 5,000 fol­low­ers” and an arti­fi­cial rela­tion­ship or no real nexus to you or your brand.

• “Social media is not the be all and end all,” Brito added. “Not every com­pany needs a Twit­ter account or a Face­book app.”

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Here’s a slightly revised ver­sion of the Social Net­works: Engag­ing Users With News webi­nar I gave to a few hun­dred vir­tual atten­dees when I flew out to the Poyn­ter Insti­tute in Florida in May.

The slideshow offers eight dif­fer­ent areas of social net­work­ing that news pub­lish­ers — any­one from a sin­gle indi­vid­ual to a full news­room — can lever­age to engage peo­ple around news events in a more robust, inter­ac­tive way. Specifically:

• Blue skies: new approaches to news
• Google Map mashups
• Instant social networks
• Geocod­ing and cit­i­zen photography
• The awe­some­ness of Twitter
• Wid­gets: tap­ping into local conversations
• Face­book & the news
• Com­mu­nity video

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Expe­ri­ence Project treats its mem­bers as indi­vid­u­als, not conditions

Feel­ing alone dur­ing a moment of cri­sis can com­pound the grav­ity of a sit­u­a­tion. While it may not be pos­si­ble for peo­ple to be phys­i­cally by your side, social net­works allow peo­ple to find you and com­mu­ni­cate with you, mak­ing you feel less alone.

Some­times you don’t want your friends to help you because you don’t want your friends to know your prob­lems. That’s why we often divulge our dark­est con­cerns to ther­a­pists and psy­chi­a­trists. Beyond hav­ing the train­ing to help us, they’re morally and pro­fes­sion­ally bound to not repeat any­thing you say to them.

Prob­lem is pro­fes­sional ther­apy costs money. But anony­mous social net­works don’t.

Expe­ri­ence Project (EP) is a unique social net­work in that it pro­motes anonymity. Most social net­works focus on pro­mot­ing your­self as a brand and con­nect­ing you to your friends by name. EP mem­bers are anony­mous and are able to con­nect through each other’s sto­ries. EP is not the first anony­mous social net­work. It’s just the first one I know of that doesn’t have a pre­de­fined agenda. With other social net­works join­ing them auto­mat­i­cally iden­ti­fies you as a rape sur­vivor, some­one suf­fer­ing from MS, or some other ail­ment or a physical/emotional tragedy. While these social net­works are all valid and help­ful, peo­ple are first seen by their issue or ail­ment. It’s hard to break out of that image and when you over­come that issue, then there’s no rea­son to be on that spe­cific social network.

I spoke to many mem­bers of Expe­ri­ence Project to learn how they came upon dis­cov­er­ing EP and how the anony­mous social net­work helped them cope with their concerns.

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This morn­ing at 8:42 AM East­ern, Beth Brody sent out an email titled, “[Dig­i­tal­brand] New Social Media Mar­ket­ing for Small Busi­ness e-book.”

Don’t get me wrong, I receive — and send — so many of these email pitches as a blog­ger and the pres­i­dent of a dig­i­tal PR firm — and this was like any other — except for three impor­tant mis­takes:

1) Brody spammed a list of hun­dreds of social media, mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing, and PR A-list blog­gers and journalists

2) she sent out the pitch as an open CC email, so every sin­gle recip­i­ent of the list could a) see each-other b) reply-all and

3) Beth Brody or some­one from Brody PR has yet (at 1:52 PM East­ern) to apol­o­gize via the “Open CC” email list, via Twit­ter, via per­sonal email, via a blog post, via post, or even phone!

Learn more by check­ing out Twit­ter search and the recent blog posts by Jen­nifer Leg­gio for ZDNet’s Social Busi­ness, Pub­lic rela­tions fail: A les­son and a rant, and Ken Wheaton’s ADAGES, PR, E-Mail, Social Media: FAIL.

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