It was my privilege today to speak to the Texas Council on Family Violence Executive Directors’ Conference. TCFV is a statewide organization representing a network of domestic violence programs that provide direct services to victims and their families.

Here are the slides from my presentation.

I’m getting ready to leave on a press/media trip to Hutchinson, Kansas;  several of the city’s public relations and marketing folks decided that bloggers and wired writers offer a different way to get the word out about their destination.

My travel-related posts will be over on my Family Travel blog and the Perceptive Travel blog, but there’s an online angle here that’s intriguing. Some in Hutchinson have already impressed me with their Web connections – over 1,100 in the WhatsUpHutch.com Facebook group. Go, small town social media!

I don’t know that everyone I’ll encounter will be quite as plugged in, however.  Something that I noticed on the China 2.0 Tour was bouncing around in my head this morning, and as I was getting ready to send an email to one of the trip organizers about dealing with wired writers, it occurred to me that I should write a blog post instead.

That’s because someone like me thinks a bit differently than a mostly-print writer. We’d rather write a blog post to reach many than an email to reach only one, and we’d rather do it NOW.

Public. Rapid. Sharing.

That’s why we’re different, and for people who are used to dealing with print writers and journalists, there are a few other things you should know:

• We may be talking about your organization or destination before we even get there. We talk about it on Twitter and on Facebook. Our TripIt widget on our LinkedIn profile says we’re coming your way, and we’re bookmarking Web sites using StumbleUpon or Delicious for some advance research. Can you hear us?  Do you have rudimentary Google Alerts set up? Do you know how to search Twitter?
• We’re immediate, or at least pretty darn quick. You’re used to seeing print articles a few weeks to a few months after a journalist visit, but bloggers are different. Many of us are blogging while we’re still hearing briefings or touring attractions. We’re posting videos on YouTube. We’re uploading photos of your destination on Flickr.  We might be talking about lunch and dinner on Yelp. We’re uploading photos and comments to our Facebook page.  Constantly.
• Where are you on the Web? Does your organization have a blog? A Flickr pool? A video channel? Are you on Twitter? Where’s your Facebook page or group? Not to be dismissive of people’s efforts, but you’re not knocking anyone’s socks off these days simply by having a Web site.  A Web site is a given, like a phone number. Please tell us where you are – if we like your stuff, we’ll be linking to it and talking about it.  Do you see our links coming in? Come on over and comment on whatever we’ve posted.
• Everything is on the record and recorded unless you say otherwise, right up front.  Our style with speakers is a little different   –  for presenters or PR folks who aren’t used to geeks, it’s like a digital Normandy invasion. We all arrive in some conference/briefing room and swing into action. We’re crawling under tables looking for electrical outlets to plug in our stuff, we’re opening laptops, we’re aligning our Web cams to live-stream your presentation to the Web as it happens, we’re firing up to live-tweet on Twitter using our iPhone, we’re holding up our Flip video cameras to start shooting, we’re snapping photos and uploading them right then.  You’re ON, not only to the bloggers, but to everyone outside the walls who is in the blogger’s many networks (and questions will come in via Twitter and video chat boxes from those who are watching and listening outside the conference room.)  Don’t be alarmed. You want reach, you got reach!

For organizations who are used to a lot of “control” and one-way broadcast of their message, it’s a bit disconcerting to look at people who all seem to have data streams coming out of their bodies, going who knows where.

In my experience, wired writers and bloggers are generally a pretty sharing, friendly group although our communications techniques may be different than what you’re used to.  We’re big on authenticity and transparency, and we talk about things that we like.

Be the one we talk about. Be ready to engage.

I’ve never been in the camp of those who follow back every one who adds them on social networks. While the reason people reciprocate all follows–it does seem the polite thing to do–is understandable, I know I’ll never be able to have any kind of meaningful interaction with all of them (over 6,000 now on Twitter). So to me, it seems the more courteous thing to do is not to follow everyone back, but to make sure I respond to anyone who sends an @ message to me.

My question in this blog post is to ask how you determine your “friending” policy on social networks, especially Twitter.

Yesterday I started a TwtPoll to ask the question. Of course, this is not a scientific survey, and is only a small sample of people–83 people who follow me on Twitter or who follow someone who kindly retweeted the poll for me. And the number 1,000 is an arbitrary threshold.

The results, frankly, surprised me a bit. I thought there might be more who valued reciprocity so highly they would unfollow someone who doesn’t follow them back. That is certainly the gambit of those trying to amass followers as quickly as possible, since Twitter seems to limit a person to following 2,000 people or 110 percent of those who follow them, whichever is higher.

But the vast majority of respondents indicated that it either didn’t matter whether I follow them back (46%) or that it was fine as long as I made an effort to respond to messages directed to me (42%). As Dave Shaw said, “Following is the ultimate opt-in and doesn’t require a follow back. Nice but not required. Responding to @’s and DM’s is just good manners.” (Please click through to the poll to read all the comments.)

As a result of the poll, I will be trimming back the number of people I follow on Twitter. If I can’t remember having any exchanges with someone, I’ll drop that person. Why? Because I’m following over 1,200 people but only paying attention to a few hundred at most.

And that meshes with the well-known Dunbar number, an estimation of the number of people with which one can realistically maintain relationships. For “real-life” friends, the average number is 150, with some people able to keep track of around 300.

I share Ross Mayfield’s view that social software allows us to augment the Dunbar number, which he based on the size of the neocortex in primates and then extrapolated to humans. Ross cites recent research that shows:

Twitter users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare. This implies the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and followees, and a sparser and simpler network of actual friends. The latter proves to be a more influential network in driving Twitter usage.

That describes my experience. When I was using Twitter exclusively on the Web, I was easily following 500 people. Using tools like Twhirl and TweetDeck, I began to follow more people. TweetDeck gives the illusion of following 1,200+ people. But in reality, I ignore most of them. As the research shows, I have a group of “top friends” I keep in contact with by using the Group feature in TweetDeck. And the rest I try to read now and then–but that turns out to be so infrequently that those other people might as well not be on my “following” list.

This topic has been on my mind since attending a salon discussion at South by Southwest Interactive led by David Armano and Russ Unger. Summarizing his thoughts about the Friendship Is Dead conversation and the concept of ambient intimacy on his Logic + Emotion blog, David concluded:

Most of us intuitively know who our friends are. … But, with networks we have access to more individuals then ever before in history. We know when they are sick, when they are traveling and even when they’ve lost a loved one. Some of us stay in constant communication with people who would have normally been considered “loose ties”, people we’ve met at an event, a party, a former co-worker, or college friend. These ties can become strengthened and feel like something more than they used to be.

What are your thoughts on the relevance of the Dunbar number to social networks and the proper etiquette for following people on Twitter?

“Birds of a feather….”

Connie and I do realize that when you spend a lot of time around the feathered tribe of tech-savvy folks (thereby miraculously becoming two of Austin’s Social Media Mavens) it can be easy to forget that not everyone’s world revolves around LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and blogging, aka “the tech-o chamber.”

As my teen would say, “Duh.”

We know that lots of people find social media to be one big confusing alphabet soup of applications, jargon and insider jokes.

That’s why we run classes and workshops; to demystify the gobbledygook, and that’s why we love speaking engagements with great organizations like Austin’s venerable Metropolitan Breakfast Club.

From the MBC Web site:

“The Metropolitan Breakfast Club is a 20-year Austin tradition that’s anything but traditional.  Every Wednesday morning our members are informed and entertained by a variety of local and internationally recognized experts in business, politics and education. Our speakers share stories of Austin’s past, our current challenges, and future opportunities in and around Central Texas.”

Since 1984, the Club has been renowned for its extraordinarily eclectic speakers – everyone from the city Police Chief to historians to company CEOs to astronauts to the person who organizes the local rodeo.

Connie and I are thrilled to be included in the distinguished lineup on this coming Wednesday morning, March 11 – you can RSVP here if you happen to be in Austin.

We will do our best to rock the house with a combination of two of our favorite presentations:

• Email is for old people – Connie gets laughs and lots of attention with this one because, just like me, she IS one of those “old people.” More mature and particularly more skeptical audiences tend to listen to someone who does not appear to be 22 or live in her Mom’s basement, especially when she cheerfully blows up preconceived notions about social media for businesses and nonprofits. 




• Follow the bouncing blog post – I use a series of tabbed Web pages to show audiences how the information in a single blog post moves through the Web on other blogs, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, StumbleUpon and even (how retro!) email. Newcomers to social media say that it gives them a clear visual demonstration of the power of Web communications.

We’ll then open the floor for lots of questions and answers.

If you’re in town, we hope to see you bright and early Wednesday morning!

It’s that time of year again, when the tech universe is abuzz with the digital creative delights of the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference in Austin, Texas.

Since I live in the Austin metro area and this is my third “South by,” I thought I’d update last year’s post on why SXSWi is like Disney World and revisit the lure of conferences.

Just yesterday at Jelly Coworking, I discussed the five geeky days of craziness with City of Round Rock communications guy Brooks Bennett.

This will be his first SXSWi and he’s really psyched about it, but also a bit overwhelmed by the barrage of offerings.

Here’s the advice I gave him….

• Forget about seeing everything. Heck, forget about seeing half of it! There are the big keynote speakers, a crazy-huge number of panels, the smaller Core Conversations (I’m speaking at one with writer Pam Mandel, about travel blogging) plus book readings on the Adobe Day Stage (where I heard then-unknown Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Workweek speak in 2007,) early evening salon discussions and my personal “secret” favorite that often has big names in a small setting, the Studio SX discussions in the northeast corner of the Exhibition Hall.  There are hang-out lounges and parties galore, both official and “unofficial.” This goes on for five days – you’ll be fried.
• Pick everything that sounds good, and weed it all out later. Here’s what I do – I go through the online schedule and say, “Yes, Yes, Yes” to everything that sounds good and every speaker that I know and/or like.  I don’t worry that I’m double-, triple- and quadruple-booked for events. I print the whole thing out (yes, print – paper always boots up & never needs a power outlet or WiFi) and stuff Beast Schedule in my purse. Each morning of the conference, I do ruthless triage to pick the happenings that it would KILL me to miss, saying a fond farewell to the rest. It really sorts itself pretty clearly as the conference wears on;  some people hardly make any panels, but their whole day is a schmoozefest in the hallways and lounges. Whatever works for you!
• Loud, packed parties are overrated. Networking and socializing are not. Look, I’m not a big party girl if it means jammed, loud rooms full of people that I don’t know.   I assure you, however, that I get plenty of fun time at South by – I’m socializing in smaller gaggles, with lots of folks I don’t know but a few that I do, hanging out in places where we can actually find a seat.  Many people do the same thing – go to the “big” parties, discover they’re not all that insanely fun, go back out on the sidewalk and regroup, run into someone from the day’s panels and all go off together to have a civilized beer and proper geek bonding. (OK, you want a nice bar? The Driskill Hotel, since 1886. Take that, Sixth Street lemmings.)
• The basics – bring business cards, check that your cell phone has unlimited texting, pack a couple of energy bars, bring a water bottle, comfy shoes, power cords. It is truly an endurance event, but I mean that in the most positive way.  While we’re talking basics, there’s good BBQ right around the corner from the Convention Center: Iron Works BBQ at 100 Red River.

I hope to run into any and all of you during South by Southwest – I’m @SheilaS on Twitter, Connie Reece is @conniereece and Jennifer Navarrete is @epodcaster (don’t forget @sxswi – unofficial tweets – and @sxsw – official tweets.) See you there!

More good advice:

• Attend Friday’s How to Rawk SXSW: The Basics
• A guide to SXSW Interactive networking, from the Austin American-Statesman (and the Statesman‘s latest Austin Dining Guide.)
• The SXSW09 PBWiki.
• SXSW Interactive survival tips, from The Adventures of CindyLi.com
• SXSW Baby! especially the forums.
• The SXSW09 Insider’s Guide Ning group.
• Kent Brewster’s Things to Remember About SXSW

(If this post was helpful for you, please vote it up on Kirtsy, or Stumble it on StumbleUpon. The Digg and Delicious links are just below the post as well. Thanks very much!)

My first piece of advice is that you DON’T want to “quick-launch” on LinkedIn; do it slowly and deliberately and do it right the first time.

What?

You say you’ve just been laid off, or there’s some other career crisis, and you didn’t “dig your [networking] well before you’re thirsty?”

OK, it happens.

In our Every Dot Connects social media workshops, here are some of my top tips for starting a good LinkedIn profile:

• Upload a photo. People like to see a face, and when you connect with folks after conferences and meetings, it also helps jog their memory about who you are and what you do. Get a professional headshot, not some fuzzy picture with your head against a blank wall taken with the family Kodak by your long-suffering spouse.  If you are located in Central Texas, I recommend Korey Howell.
• Personalize your public profile URL.  The default URL for your profile is an alpha-numeric jumble, but you can change it to read “www.linkedin.com (slash) YOURNAME.”  It looks a lot more professional, especially when you add your profile URL to your standard email signature, which essentially attaches your resume to every email you send.
• Spend a lot of time crafting your one- or two-line “elevator speech” that goes under your profile name.  Freelancers are sometimes too quick to demonstrate “versatility” by saying they can do everything.  No one will search for that or want to spend money to hire that – they will look for specific expertise.  I do lots of things, too, but in my own profile, I aimed for a pithy distillation of the most important skills:

“Sheila Scarborough – Travel and motorsports writer, Web 2.0/social media trainer and teacher. Austin, Texas Area. Writing and Editing.”

• Use that billboard just below your photo; the box that asks, “What are you doing?” at the top of your profile. Think of it as free advertising for your business activities. Keep it updated every few days with projects you’re working on, articles you’ve written or professional conferences you’re attending. Every time you update your status, your LinkedIn network will see it on their own Home page.

Filling out the rest of your profile is pretty self-explanatory, but be mindful of the unique challenges of writing for the Web.  Chunk up your text and provide plenty of white space.

Whenever you exchange business cards with anyone, add another step and connect on LinkedIn. You never know when a network might come in handy, and it’s a lot tougher to develop one when the situation is desperate.

In a future post we’ll talk about the benefits of joining Groups, and building credibility by participating in Questions and Answers.

I always enjoy writing for the Marketing Watchdog Journal, published by Austin-based Bulldog Solutions (see my March 2008 piece about how to build a blog that draws a crowd.)

Connie Reece stops into Bulldog as well; check out her article about whether your PR team is social media savvy.

The latest Every Dot Connects offering in the Journal is about networking on LinkedIn….is it a fly-by-night fad – or the best networking tool around?

I wrote about beefing up your LinkedIn profile, then some details about powerful tools on the site that are generally underutilized (Answers and Recommendations, for starters.)

For more details on becoming a LinkedIn power user, click here for the Journal article.

(This is cross-posted on the Perceptive Travel blog and my Family Travel blog on BootsnAll.)

I know that I’m a very fortunate freelance writer and social media/Web 2.0 trainer; I have a military pension and health insurance from my 22+ years in the US Navy. I can ride out the current economic storm (with a lot of belt-tightening) so it’s somewhat easier for me than for others to set fiscal angst aside and go to China next week….to meet a bunch of Chinese bloggers.

That’s probably what the China 2.0 Tour might seem like from a distance, and you might well ask; what is the ROI (business Return on Investment) from getting to know “a bunch of bloggers and tech types?” Is that how I should be spending my limited funds?

Here’s why — as a good friend once said about me, I’ve never been about looking back. I’ve always been about looking ahead to the future.

Unless I’m sorely mistaken, 245 million Chinese Internet users might be rather important to someone like me who mostly publishes online, and who consults and teaches entry-level workshops in all of this heavily-connected Webby stuff. Travel writing is only one activity supporting my overall life philosophy, which is to attempt to understand how things work and how people tick.

That’s why Christine Lu and Elliott Ng asked me to join China 2.0….from the Web site, here is what they’re trying to accomplish:

“Led by The China Business Network and co-organized by Web2Asia and CNReviews, the inaugural China 2.0 Tour is sponsored by Edelman Digital China and represents a unique opportunity for companies and individuals to gain a deeper understanding of China. Unlike a typical business conference or large trade delegation, we seek to go ‘one-level deeper’ by creating a series of small-scale, exclusive meetups where people can share more openly about their business successes and challenges, and provide a deeper view into the nature of building a successful venture in China.

We also are taking an interdisciplinary approach by looking at social media, clean technology, gaming, wireless, and other areas where trends in China will affect markets around the world.

We also seek to provide informal opportunities to go off-message and off-the-record, so that long-lasting relationships can be built….”

Not only will I meet all sorts of key people in China, including many directly related to my travel and social media work, but I’ll also get to know my fellow Tour attendees — people like:

• Shel Israel, co-author with Robert Scoble of one of the seminal Web 2.0 books, Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.
• Sam Lawrence, CMO of Jive Software and enterprise 2.0 influencer behind Go Big Always.
• Mike Butcher — Editor, TechCrunch UK and Ireland.
• Ernst-Jan Pfauth — Editor-In-Chief, The Next Web and Co-Organizer, Blog 08 in the Netherlands.
• Melissa Sconyers, who won a contest sponsored by Mashable to create a new kind of online resume, called VisualCV. She’ll blog for Mashable in China.

How much I’ll be able to post here while in China will depend upon Internet connectivity and more importantly, time available. I’ll certainly do my best, although this is more of a tech visit than a travel visit.

I’m not going to be able to make the Guangzhou leg of the Tour (and will miss the Chinese Blogger Conference where Shel is a featured speaker – phooey) because finances wouldn’t allow it, but I will spend extra days in Shanghai and will have more pure-play travel goodies from there, I would think.

Thanks very much to my sponsors Every Dot Connects and UpTake – Your First Step to a Great Trip, and the support I’ve gotten from BootsnAll’s Cheap Air Tickets in order to get me there and back.

In the continued blurring of the lines between content creators serving as “new media”, public relations professionals, mainstream media and the combination of all of the above, I was given press credentials and a media kit for an excellent haunted house here in Austin. In keeping with the interactive nature of social media, I was even invited to participate.

The Mansion of Terror Haunted House, in its fifth year in Austin, is inviting members of the media, including social media, to interact with and even be a part of their haunted house.

If you choose to, and they think you can handle it, you can be a part of the Mansion of Terror, getting a full Hollywood Make up FX session, as well as a Hollywood quality costume and acting lessons.

If you’re not feeling that much of the exhibitionism spirit, but still want to see how it all works, you can still hang out with the actors while they perform. We received invitations, as media, to hang out backstage and shoot footage, interview the actors, and generally get a “behind the scenes” view of a night at the Mansion of Terror.

Or you can directly shadow a specific Mansion of Terror actor. By hiding in the shadows, wearing black, and staying quiet, the Mansion of Terror Haunted House will allow you to document how their scenes and scares actually work. You’ll know the all the secrets.

I opted to be on the receiving end of the performances and went through both sides of the Mansion of Terror. It’s some pretty scary stuff, and I grew up on this kind of thing – thanks Mom! – so I know more than a little bit about what’s scary and what’s just corny. The Mansion of Terror will make even the most hardened among us start looking for the exits.

I’d recommend to any social media types who are here in Austin to contact them and see if they will allow you to take them up on their offer. If you don’t feel like being a reporter, you can go as a customer. It’s worth it. I promise you. Check out the Flickr slide show and the film clips on the website.

To get in touch with them email dneff22@gmail.com or DM on twitter @daveiam.

The Mansion of Terror is very social media centric. When you check out the website you’ll see they’re on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and, of course, FlickR. With so many ways you can follow and connect with them, it’s great for really getting into the Halloween spirit.

The best way to really know the feeling of horror and fear you will get from the Mansion of Terror, however, is to go visit in person. Good luck and Happy Halloween.

WARNING:
This haunted house has intense sequences of graphic violence, extensive blood and gore, small claustrophobic enclosed areas, extended periods of total darkness, strobe special effects. This attraction may be too intense for patrons under 13 years of age.

~Mike Chapman

Meet David Neff of the American Cancer Society, Austin Social Media Club, 501 Tech Club of Austin, and social media true believer. This is David Neff demonstrating how social media and social networking are becoming increasingly effective in actually accomplishing social goodness in a busy and fast paced world.

The picture you see of David is his current avatar, his online image, on twitter (he’s @daveiam), Facebook, LinkedIn, and wherever else he can be found online. The message is clear. Send him a message and David will tell you how you can help do something about hunger. Hunger Bytes is the creation of the Capital Area Food Bank in Austin, Texas, and links the high tech crowd to the very critical issue of hunger. According to the folks who work at the Food Bank we’re in a time of critical need because of the state of the economy.

Following our successful tweetup blood drive last month, some of us have rallied around increasing awareness of the work Lisa Goddard (@lisa_goddard) and others are doing at the Food Bank. We’re having a tweetup in conjunction with Hunger Awareness Month and calling it a HAM-up. We don’t care if it sounds silly or even if we look silly, the cause is worth it. Judging by the success of the blood drive we think our approach just might work. September 13th is the HAM-up date.

Already we’ve had a major food manufacturing company step up to the plate after hearing about it online. They are going to write a blog post about the HAM-up and then donate 100 pounds of protein products for every comment, up to 360, they receive on their post. That adds up to a truckload of protein for the Food Bank, which happens to be something they desperately need. This is such a great contribution that I plan to do a separate post on just them in a few days.

Message David if you can help. Message Lisa. Message @MichelleGreer. Message me, @MikeChapman, @ConnieReece or @SheilaS. Create your own avatar like David did and spread the word. Add a comment below. Then be ready to help on September 13th in person if you can. The net effect of all of our activities can exponentially expand our impact. It works. Let’s see just how well we can make it work by working on it together.

~Mike Chapman