I was watching the latest talk on Balmer and the example he made of the guy with the Apple iPhone. For Balmer, he is at war with Apple. What they do is bad and what we do is good. I know people that won’t talk to me because that dialog might give me some credibility. It’s a view that works for a lot of people.

For me, I’ve always had a problem demonizing competitors. Now that does not mean I don’t like competition. I love it! I think it is what makes great products. However, for me it’s more like football. I’m a Florida Gator and I love when we outsmart, outwork, or generally crush the competition.

At the same time, many of the fans of these other teams are my friends. I even have kids attending other SEC schools.  I love to watch a talented player on the other team, and have no problem acknowledging when they do something I think is pretty smart. It makes it better when we beat them

When it comes to Social Media, I’ve kept to this “Football” analogy. If a competitor has a conference coming up, I’ll retweet it just because I know some of their customers are following me and its useful for them. If one of their employees says something smart in a blog, I’ll repost it. Why? Because, I want to cater to the smart customers. Because, I think the real competition is on the field with the technology not in some poll that can be greatly determined by what happens off the field.

So how do you view your competitors? Does social media change things?

The thing many people hate about twitter is the noise.  If you are just there to socialize, it may not be a big deal but twitter can be pretty useful for more serious things too.  If you want to get information about cars or software or politics its there but likely burried in a bunch of useless information.

One way to filter out the “junk” is to use one of the twitter seach tools.  Tweetdeck has one built in.  You can go to search.twitter.com for others. Its useful in the way a search engine is useful but it doesn’t always help for getting the whole conversation in real time.

Another options is to try to follow tags. I was at a conference lately where we used #PLMCONX for our tweets. This helps but I had trouble remembering to use the tag. And then there were gray areas… do I tweet that I’m getting lunch at the confererence or stick to the topic?

The traditional way is to follow the person in twitter. If they don’t talk about what you like, don’t follow them.  I’ve got a good list of CAD, industrial design, car, virtual world, sports, Huntsville, and social media experts that I follow.  You see the problem here, right?  When I reply back to one of the people in these groups, all I do is increase the noise for the rest.

So, for the people that follow me, I’m sorry I’m inserting all that noise into your twitter stream. Now, to go tell everyone I’m getting some coffee.

From plmconx

I was off to my company’s conference last week.  I’ve been doing these things for many years, usually as a participant but more recently as someone that is actually working there.  My job this time was to make a couple presentations, help out on some hands-on presentations, talk with customers and squeeze in some social media (blogs, twitter, facebook) where I can.

A lot of people are still thinking social media is either:

A.      The job of marketing

B.      A waste of time or yet another task that gets in the way of your real job.

However, if you think about it, a conference is really not that different from social media.  Marketing definitely wants to use it to sell a product but attendees have other goals.  They want to connect with others like themselves, talk with folks making the presentations or manning the booths that they might not otherwise get to talk to, and find about things you just can’t learn about on the telephone or on the web.

There is also a big social aspect to most conferences. You might get together for drinks or play some golf or get together for dinner.  These might be pure fun but I’m sure most of us have good examples of some key contact we made or some important bit of information we picked up.

As you or your company thinks about social media, think of it as a conference. No one wants to go to a conference with just marketing folks.  It’s a great place to listen in and participate in the conversations your customers are having and the companies that send people to a conference are going to have a knowledge advantage over their competitors that stay home.

I’m surrounded by people just getting started or are thinking about twitter. These are people who really aren’t interested in the technology but more the utility or are just afraid of falling behind. Some are asking “Do I Really Have To Join Twitter”   ?  

So what is the minimum you can do to say you are on twitter?  First, get an account.  If you are doing it for work, you might put your company name it. Make it an easy name to remember.

Go find some people to follow, say 50 or so.  Don’t view twitter as instant messaging.  If you miss tweets, its not a big deal so that number of 50 is actually quite small (we’re going for minimal twitter use here).

How do you find people?  Try some of these ideas:

twitter search.  Type in some key words and see who looks interesting. 

search.twitter.com/

Go to WeFollow and pick a tag (I’m there under “CAD”, “VirtualWorlds”, and “SocialMedia”) 

http://wefollow.com/

Go to Twitter Grader Search.  This one will list tweeters by a “grade” and will also look at location. For example, you will find me if you search for “Huntsville”.

http://twitter.grader.com/search

You can run twitter from the web. You need to check it a couple times a day and you want this to be effortless, so you might put it on the toolbar.  Or, download one of the twitter clients or plugins or IM integrations.  We all use the interent differently so take a look at this URL and pick one that fits best into your environment: 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_twitter_clients_definitive_list.php

Now, the first few weeks, you are likely to get a lot of noise.  You need to manage the twitter stream by unfollowing those that don’t tweet things interesting or useful to you.  Some people are more focused on a subject.  Some people are like me, all over the place.  Some people tweet a lot. Some are easy maintenance. BTW, I don’t recommend following me until you get a few followers or if you do, be ready to cut me. If you are an occasional tweeter following few people, I might dominate your stream (and yes, I do tweet when I’m getting coffee).

At the same time, check out the people you don’t follow that are showing up on your stream. This will help improve your quality of tweets.  If following 50 people is not too much, increase to 100 or 500 or 1000 – you are in control.

You don’t have to tweet to use twitter.  If you want to stay off the RADAR, you can make your twitter private – then only people that you allow to follow you can see your tweets.  Note that these people can still retweet your tweets.  Never assume Twitter is private.

Having said that, much of the value of twitter is the conversation and exchange of information. You will get more value from twitter when you engage those you follow.

I’ve got a lot of friends trying to get a grasp of “social media”.  Why do it? How does it work? Should I we have special training or new security rules? How do I manage work and personal life on this new platform?

The fact is these aren’t new problems, they are old problems.  For training, I recommend you go watch the Andy Griffith show– yes, the Andy Griffith show, with Sherriff Taylor, Floyd the Barber and Goober, the mechanic.

 One question I see a lot is how to manage work and personal life in social media. The folks in Mayberry dealt with this just fine.  Andy switched between the two with ease as he walked around town.  Goober would fix your car and bring it to your house.  Floyd pretty much mixed personal and business together at the same time, cutting your hair while talking about the town.  It is not what most of us do today, but it’s hardly a new idea.

Is this an efficient way to work? On the surface, Mayberry looks pretty laid back but look a bit deeper at this pretend world.  Andy always knew what was going on in his town – knowing the people certainly helps him do a better job.  Goober didn’t always present the most polished image and wasn’t too bright but you knew him and you knew you could trust him. If you were going to get your car fixed, who would you pick?

And Floyd – he is the master of social media.  He created a shop where people like to hang out.  They play checkers, talk to the other customers, and even run across the mayor and sheriff from time to time.  Do you think all the “non-business discussion” hurts Floyd’s business?  No way… he is always cutting hair!

But here is the real key… Andy, Goober and Floyd don’t do this because of some clever plan to be more social and generate more revenue.  They were simply being themselves in an open and honest way.

One of my favorite presentations on social media is called “What The f**k is Social Media”.  Its makes some great points but is a bit too edgy to put on a work blog. Since this is a personal blog, I can get away with a bit more.

Here you go: