From the noise around the web they have certainly achieved that goal. Whether you support their efforts or think that they are misusing funds, the misconception that we can make a difference with a few tweets without researching to get the bigger picture is irresponsible at best. (And though it’s inflammatory I have to mention that photo of the filmmakers with guns, a joke or not, is chilling in it’s implications.)

The truth behind the conflict and violence merits more than 26 minutes of video.  Be responsible enough to look for more information and understand what you’re supporting before sending out a tweet from your couch in the US.  True understanding comes with educating yourself.

Reading a declaration from documentarians at SXSW has left me with the feeling that we need a better understanding of what making a difference truly means. “Dyer, however, thinks, there’s a larger achievement here. “Now 13-25 year olds around the world are at least talking about it [strife in Uganda]. That’s the most important thing to come out of that film.” I very much disagree with that statement. I’m disheartened that the attention could cause more harm to come to children who have already experienced horrors that thankfully our children never have.

What’s done is done now, we are limited in what we can do to prevent the harm of children so many thousands of miles away.  There are some reputable charities that are able to help feed those children. I would caution you to do some research and investigate which those are and give to them instead of Invisible Children.  IC’s quest to bring attention to the unjust methods the LRA is idealistic and not realistic in truly providing help. If you aren’t sure where to donate, I would encourage you to consider the International Red Cross Uganda’s National Society. Recommended reading: Wil Wheaton on KONY2012

If you aren’t familiar with Inbox Zero, it’s a system designed to help you tame your inbox.  The goal is to have a inbox with zero messages in it. Everything filed, saved to a list for later or otherwise archived.  The actions of Inbox Zero are Do/Defer/Delete/Delegate/Archive.

We’re always looking for a ways to be more productive.  We want more time to focus on the projects and people that matter.

Managing Information from the Firehose

If you participate in social media for your company or as a brand ambassador, then you know that sometimes there is a lot of information to manage or respond to in some fashion.  It’s not cluttering your inbox but there are replies, search mentions, direct messages, Facebook wall posts, LinkedIN groups, Quora questions, blog post comments, comments on other’s blog posts, friending, following, and more.

If you’re really good at what you do, you spend time analyzing data to find actionable intel.  Some sense of where your target audience is, what they are doing, saying, how they feel and what they want and/or need.

That said, you control the social media firehose of information pointed in the direction of your head.  After you’ve put a system in place to tame that firehose, the chances are that you have items left over that require action.

Converting the Inbox Zero actions over to Social Inbox Zero

Remember the set of actions that Inbox Zero boils down to?

Actions of Social Inbox Zero are Act/Save/Unfollow/Send/Share.

Act

If you’ve gotten several replies or direct messages, complaints on your Facebook page or questions over on the company LinkedIN group, you’ll want to respond quickly.  Take action on those messages before you say hello.  This is a signal that they feel they have a relationship with your company enough to interact, who knows where that relationship may lead.

Save

As with sharing, there are a number of ways you can save something to read later.  You can mail it to yourself, star it in Google Reader, or use a service like Instapaper or Read It Later.

Unfollow

You may wonder why I’ve included unfollow here, but for me, unfollowing spammers on various networks is a daily must.  Some days you won’t have to do this.  This does *not* apply to people who leave negative comments on various networking tools.  I strongly advise NOT to do that but to limit this to spammers.

Send

Did you find a piece of interesting information that could affect your  marketing later?  Find a complaint overnight about your product?  Receive a compliment on the support a client received?  Does the CEO need to respond?  The sales team?  Tech support?  If so, find a quick and easy way to assign those items.  Email the conversation or complaint to the appropriate person, so they know the details and can choose how to handle and/or answer.

Share

Share the items you’re reading with someone else that will find it valuable.  Since the tools are build into most devices, blogs and websites, this should be instant and easy to do.  If you’re sharing from Google Reader, I find it handy to tag all the possible shares with stars then go back to do the sharing when finished.

Moving forward

Social Inbox Zero is a system to help you to think about getting through actions quickly just as Inbox Zero does. If you practice it, it will become a daily routine giving you back your time and attention so you can focus on moving the needle.

What processes do you use for navigating the social waters?

Filtering social networks is YOUR responsibility.

In 2007, FriendFeed was the shiny new tool at the moment.  A lot of folks went to great lengths to add every other social network they were a part of.  Including Twitter.  The redundancy was incredibly annoying.  I decided it wasn’t the best use of my time to read the same content twice (especially breakfast updates!) and promptly stopped listening to FriendFeed.

If you find that are feeling overwhelmed with the information firehose and aren’t sure where to start cutting the flow, here’s a hint.  My friend, client and a mentor, Howard Rheingold has a series of short videos to help with “retooling the way you pay attention” and creating an intelligence dashboard that helps filter streams so the important information finds its way through.

When you create a dashboard, it will not only help focus your attention, but it will also keep you up to date on the important things that happen in your industry.  Things that can change the game for your company if you’re listening the right way.  Until you organize and manage the data, it’s just data and noise.

Hearing users talking on Google+ about finally having a chance to “do it right” strikes me as saying that the control is out of the users hands.  It isn’t up to Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to keep the filters at an appropriate level.  It’s up to you.  Can the companies add features to help?  Sure.  But the responsibility was always yours.

Need help being more productive?  Get in touch!

It’s been a crazy 5 years, well, 4 for me, but 5 for Podcamp Boston.

For those of you who do not know the history of Podcamp:

A PodCamp is a usually free BarCamp-style community UnConference for new media enthusiasts and professionals including bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, social networkers, and anyone curious about new media. The first PodCamp was held September 8-10, 2006 in Boston, Massachusetts. PodCamps are now being held worldwide.

Podcamp Boston was co-founded by Christopher Penn and Chris Brogan in 2006.  These two guys wanted to learn more and share what they knew about podcasting without traveling over to the west coast to do it, so they came up with the idea to host an unconference in Boston, MA.  The first of many Podcamps around the world took place on  at Bunker Hill Community College.

Why I love Podcamp.

Podcamp Boston’s attendees have historically been overwhelmingly full of people new to online/news/social media.  The event is a great place for people who have questions and need answers on how to get started.  Last year, we focused on making the event discussion based as much as possible vs. presentation.  The goal was to make it easy for attendees to get their questions answered.

This year, I hope that speakers will continue that tradition.  The most important part of Podcamp to me is others learning what they need to know so they can take that actionable information back home or to their office and make it work for them.

Why Greater Boston Food Bank.

We’ve chosen the GBFB in the past for our charity because helping to feed kids is a no-brainer.  While we don’t know the total donation amount for this year’s event yet, we do know that it feels good to keep kids in the Boston area/MA from going hungry.

If you are an attendee this year and paid for your ticket, you should feel proud of how you’ve made the world a bit better with your participation in this event.

I hope that I’ll be seeing many of you this weekend and that you’re excited as I am for the 5th year.  Please enjoy the event and remember to ask the questions that will help you grow and prepare for the future.

There is one major goal that applies to small businesses marketing online: make more delighted customers.  Reputation and word of mouth are kings.

If you’re a business owner, you probably have a website and/or are involved in social networking. There are many great ways to learn more about how to improve your efforts and meet your goals.  Often time is spent doing research, attending genius webinars, reading brilliant blogs, watching videos, listening to podcasts, and downloading ebooks.  Of course you want to learn from others who have done a remarkable job.

But now it’s time to get to work with the knowledge that you’ve accumulated.

Here are 6 things you can do right now to make a difference in your marketing efforts online:

1. Tell your story. Why are you so different from every Tom, Dick and Jane, Inc.?  Customers want to know what makes you different, what makes you tick.  If you don’t know the story, how can you market it?  Freshbooks does a brilliant job with sharing their story and they stand out from other invoicing companies as a result.

2. Test. Test everything. Click on things.  I promise that button won’t make things explode.  Maybe.  Test links, test to see how the website looks in different browsers, test the forms, and when you get everything right, dig into A/B testing to see what makes visitors happier.

(Editor disclaimer: if you click the button that does make something explode, I’m in no way responsible for your failure to read.)

3. Make it easy. Every business has a call to action.  You want to sell something, raise money, raise awareness, or share information.  Help me find it when I land on your page.  Help your visitors find it.  Easily.  Big, red (not literally) and loud works.  A site can be pretty and loud at the same time.

4. Think locally. Online marketing is a fabulous thing, but local groups, meetups, networking and other events can help you get to know people around town and boost your business.  Target the local market with Google Places, find a way to share special deals with people in your neighborhood.  Even if your business is virtual, you can still find local customers.

5. Work on your inbound links. The first step in this is creating valuable content that others will want to share with their network. This again goes back to sharing knowledge, but make sure you’re doing it in keyword rich phrases.  Think of it as online word of mouth marketing.

6. Be extraordinary. As Chris Brogan says, if you can’t be extraordinary, be helpful.  Do the unexpected.  Send a customer flowers when their date cancels.  Monitor social channels and reach out if you have knowledge that will help.  Offer them a reward just for being your customer.  When you’re extraordinary, it makes you sticky.  Sticky in a world full of businesses in your niches is good, yes?

It’s now time to stop thinking and start doing.  Stalling runs the risk of the knowledge becoming stale before you have a chance to implement. Learn more and expand your understanding of how to build a better business through online marketing.  Then share it with the rest of us.

What other advice would you give small businesses?

This afternoon my mom called to tell me that the ice storm dumped 2-3 inches of ice in the area, downing over 3000 electrical poles and leaving a good majority of Arkansas without power.  This includes several counties in Northeast Arkansas’ homes, stores, schools and businesses.  I quickly covered the basics with her, my family has food, water and gas heat.  Trees are down everywhere but her house isn’t damaged. They are the lucky ones.

Some people are without gas heat, without stocks of food and without electricity.  All of these things add up to a pretty bad situation.  As it’s my hometown, I got a bit emotional and wanted to know what plans there were to get things that people need into the area and get the stores opened back up and operating.  (I’m currently trying to get in contact with a couple of officials in the town nearest my mom’s to see what people need. As soon as I do and if we can find a way that online contributions will help, I’ll update this post.)

One of the biggest presences in the area is Walmart. You may or may not know that Walmart was founded in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1962.  It grew across Arkansas quickly and, of course, is now a global chain.  What’s intriguing is they have their own infrastructure for transportation and supply chain.  The story about the history and how the corporation functions is compelling.

That said, I’ve had a hard time thinking of them as being oriented toward social media and how that would work for a corporation of that size, even though we’ve seen Scott Monty and his successful work with Ford Company.

Cutting to the chase, I contacted Chris after Christopher Penn reminded me that Walmart did an astounding job during Hurricane Katrina, surpassing what the federal government was able to during a time of crisis.  Given that reminder and this is the state in which they were founded, I wanted to know if they had any plans to help people in the area and if there was a way to coordinate such.

Mr. Brogan connected me with Walmart’s Emerging Media Strategy team member, John Andrews (@Katadhin).  He’s actually in the midst of dealing with the same issues as the ice storm hit the city he resides in as well (Fayetteville).  However, when I got on the phone with him, he was more than happy to give me a few minutes of his time to not only tell me what he did know but find out what he could. While nothing is currently being planned by corporate affairs the door is open and he’s willing to keep in touch me as he learns more.

John’s response gave me a bit of information I didn’t have before.  He certainly does not have to call me or direct message to tell me if anything changes, but he’s willing to do so.  While corporations can’t always respond the way we want them to do so, sometimes just a little human voice makes all the difference.  Even if there are no real answers.

Thank you, John.

Afterward I was thinking about social networking and overload and we all have that problem.  We’re focused on email and bacn and things that *should* be done but when it gets so overwhelming you don’t know where to start, it’s time to rethink what we’re doing.  We’re responsible for creating our own filters and we need to make sure that we don’t have a filter problem. If you do, find a way to resolve the situation.  If you need help and advice getting things under control, may I recommend a virtual assistant?

Also, I think that social networks should find their niche and appeal to it in a very useful away. We shouldn’t overwhelm individuals and businesses that are new to social media with every social network out there.  If you know someone who is just getting used to the space, make sure you get to know their interests and then suggest one social network to get them started.

It was Sarah‘s last podcast before moving to the beautiful D.C. area.  We’ll miss her here in New England and hope she comes back to visit very very soon!

The first meeting will be on October 27th at 7 PM over at Andala Coffee House in the downstairs room.  I’ve asked Todd Van Hoosear to speak for about 20 minutes on the topic of how to market and outreach influential bloggers.  Then will open the floor to a discussion and forum for folks to get advice marketing techniques.

I’ve been looking for a way to help people around the Boston area for a while and in the future will have more advanced topics for pursual but for now I thought this would be a good introduction topic.  If you have questions or even advice to give on the subject I would love to see you come out and talk with a group about it.

I’m looking for the focus to be strongly Braintorrent-like in it’s structure because I look for opportunities to help others.

You can RSVP on Meetup.com or on the Facebook event.