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How to Wear the Hats of a Social Media Champion — 5 Key Traits of Credible Social Media Champions

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It Starts with Amber’s Hats

The Living Web

Last week Amber Nashlund wrote post about the hats a social media champion wears. Whether we’re working inside a company or independently, anyone who offers new ways to do anything knows the challenge is not meant for the faint of heart. Knowing which of Amber’s hats to wear and which skill to call on for each situation is part science and part art. That’s the expertise of a social media champion — it’s the key leadership trait of any business manager leading change.

The proverbial hats — the know how, the expertise — won’t get far with a group that doesn’t know and trust the person wearing them. I know that Amber agrees. We’ve talked about this on other projects we’re planning together.

Remind You of Anything?

In the early years of educational publishing, dedicated teachers wanted more authentic materials than those offered by big publishers. So they made their own tools, activities, and classroom materials. Soon other teachers noticed and asked to use them. A business was born. Teachers made products and sold them to other classroom teachers they knew. The products were handmade, bound with plastic, and copied somewhere like Kinkos.

Rough edges were a mark of authenticity. Hand drawings and low-design meant the quality was in the content. Those qualities said “A real teacher made this.” New customers knew the books were good because they knew the teachers who made them.

The best of those dedicated teacher-publishers gained experience and perspective. Some left their own classrooms to serve more classroom teachers full time. However, they found growing their business wasn’t as easy as starting their business had been.

Our dedicated teacher-publishers saw other dedicated teachers offering homemade products for individual classroom teachers. Inexperienced copycats and opportunists were selling look-alike products that made empty promises and offered bad practices. Big educational publishers began to make books for individual classroom teachers too.

Classroom teachers had trouble discriminating the value from the noise.

When their customers knew them, the “rough edges” had been a certain kind of credibility, now those same homemade values made their products look shabby. Dedicated teacher-publishers needed a new way to connect their expertise with the classroom teachers they served.

Remind you of a situation anywhere near us right now?

How to Wear the Hats of a Social Media Champion

In the early days of blogging and social media, people learned by trial and error and then taught other people. We read their blogs or worked with them personally. Only so many sources existed. Someone new could recognize a wise teacher from a fool by seeing what the wise teachers had in common. We knew who was credible.

Then the blogopshere and the world of social networking exploded. Whole populations exist that have no contact with each other. Anyone can put on the social media hats. It’s hard to discriminate the value from the noise. We need to find new ways to connect with the people we want to serve.

When faced with the same challenge, those teacher-publishers shifted their thinking. They took their expertise out of the handmade package. They raised their production values to match the market. The successful dedicated teacher publishers made careful choices to convey their shared values with their classroom-teacher customers.

They offered the same solid expertise, the same content, in a new presentation.

In any noisy market what newcomers first encounter is presentation. Presentation is more than first impression. Presentation lays the groundwork for connection and relationship.

The way we wear the hats of a social media champion — our presentation verbally, visually, in text, in tone, in personal relationships — is a vital part of the expertise those hats represent.

A social media champion is a living presentation of his or her social media expertise.

Our presentation shows whether we understand who we’re talking to and what they value. From the choice of the photos and the type on a blog — new design in the works — to the choice of whether to wear a grunge jeans to visit a lawyer client, the way we “package” a message communicates even before our first word is offered.

5 Key Traits of Credible Social Media Champions

I’m not thinking we should change our identity. Just the opposite. What I’m proposing is that we make our best traits visible — that we walk our talk in the following ways. I see 5 key traits of in the social media champions I most admire and so I recommend them here.

  • Know who you are. — Be a person, not a personal brand. People make credible relationships. You make things happen. Your brand is a reflection of that. Credibility is based in actions that build trust and relationships.
  • Communicate what you stand for. — Define social media in detail in clear terms. Expertise leads a champion to have opinions about what works and what doesn’t. Be certain about your philosophy so that like-minded folks can find you.
  • Connect through the tangible and the intangible. Social media is about connections. An expert connector is focused on meeting other people where they feel comfortable. Everything from the vocabulary we use to our choice in dress code can be a bridge that connects. Great connectors show relationship expertise by using every chance to relate.
  • Be able to explain the social media culture in concrete world terms. Incidents like what happened to the Motrin ad earlier this month cause concern. Champions offer a open doors and reach out with guidance. Give context and offer familiar analogies. You’ll build bridges to replace what was fear.
  • Value Their Expertise and Be Available to Them Champions know that every voice brings value expertise of its own. They see the potential of new ideas adding to the culture. Find small, low-risk ways to invite interested questioners to listen, watch, and participate. Be available to explain what they encounter.

Long before they offer us a chance to speak or show off our social media hats, people evaluate our credibility. By the time we talk, they’ve already decided whether they will listen. Jason Falls says it best,

“Social media, you gotta live it.”

It takes quite a skill set — and several hats — to be a social media champion: listening, understanding, building on what went before, showing proof of success, engaging skeptics in meaningful conversation, inviting them into new ways of participation, planning action appropriate to their history, demonstrating ways that make jobs easier, more effective, and more efficient, helping keep the focus, and cheering people on when they lose the faith.

That’s why it’s a called champion, not a manager.

What traits do you see in the social media champions you trust? Who’s earned your credibility?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

What’s Your Best Advice on Hitches, Glitches, and People Who Don’t Show Up?

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Even Big Hairy Audacious Goals Get Stuck

What makes me think that everyone has been here?

We get an idea. The concept seems whole, simple, brilliant. We can’t wait to start. So we set a dream on the horizon, and we go for it. Enthusiasm, drive, and determination propel us.

We set a plan.
We get to work.
We talk about what we’re doing.
Things are rolling
until …
a hitch, a glitch, someone doesn’t show up.
Now what?

Gotta Get a Big Hairy Audacious Goal

Putting a dream on the horizon and moving toward it is a start, but it isn’t quite enough. We need to make it a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
Suzie Cheel and Glenda Watson Hyatt live by their Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Lots of folks believe in BHAGs. Tim O’Reilly and Rosa Say blogged about their value. Geoff Livingston wasn’t shy about explaining what he why he thinks big hairy audacious goals make things happen.

When they name the BHAG, marching orders crystallize. It’s messy and non-linear, but voracious. Just the ticket for a little magic. The Buzz Bin

I agree. Big hairy audacious goals are messy and nonlinear. The very “big, hairy” name makes it clear that they’re likely to offer deadends, detours, and doers who don’t do what they said they would. Those big hairy interruptions are when too much thinking can get us stuck.

It’s the thinking … questioning?
Is it us?
Is the goal too big and too hairy?
Are we up to the struggle?
That’s the danger. The goal didn’t change, nor did it’s value. What changes is our resolve. Enthusiasm, drive, and determination fade into black and we’re left with voices saying we might have misjudged.

Hitches, Glitches, and People Who Don’t Show Up

I said I’d tell you about the barns and bridges project as things moved forward. It’s been a week since then.

Here’s what’s going on.

  • Hitches: People are asking how to help and I don’t have a system for answering them.
  • Glitches: Bad code stole time from the project and other work needs to get done.
  • People who don’t show up: My designer has gone into the code cave. I think I need to find a new one.
  • What’s on track: conversations with possible sponsors are moving forward, I’ve got help forming the message and the documentation they’ll need to see the project clearly and know their part.

As my friend, Lorelle, often tells me, “You’d be brilliant for other folks, now’s the time to be brilliant for yourself.” With that in mind, I’m offering these plans for now.

The next few days, my free time will be about: keeping the sponsor conversation alive; planning out how to get 2 or 3 key volunteers committed to help manage the project for 2-3 hours a week; start the quest for a new designer; finish the details left open by my computer mess.

Action has always been my best response to making sure a big goal doesn’t get stuck. That’s my advice for me. What’s yours?

Here’s the keys. I hand it over to you …

What’s your best advice about hitches, glitches, and people who don’t show up? What action steps should come next to keep this Big Hairy Audacious Goal of Raising Barns and Building Bridges moving forward? What good things have you been doing that we don’t know about?

Looking forward to what you write in the comment box.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related:
Why Play the Game, If We Aren’t Playing for Keeps?

Credibility: How to Connect with New Arrivals to the SocialSphere

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What We Do Well

Susan Reid’s thoughts on women entrepreneurs got me thinking about the SocialSphere and what makes us all successful when we are. It’s no surprise that those entrepreneurial traits that she outlines are found in familiar places online.

Susan points out that successful entrepreneurs have several traits in common. I found those traits alive and well online.

She added business leadership characteristics that seem to be found more often in women — an affinity for balanced, life-style businesses; a bias toward service-focused, customer care; values-led business leadership; faith in intuition, trust, and holistic decision-making; and a success definition that includes relationships. Great social media practitioners — men and women — work toward those same people-centered values. . . . This framework for measuring social media from Peter Kim points to the core of that likemindedness. The very word social in social media and social networking seems to make that people-centeredness an obvious trait.

When I read the last section, Top Five Mistakes Made by Women in Business, I began looking at our online conversation and and how we might handle it best for new people arriving in the SocialSphere. .

How to Connect with New Arrivals to the SocialSphere

Credibility comes from the “context and content.” People meet us and try to place us among what they already know. They use their experience and our first impression — how we look, what we say, what we do — to recognize signs that might validate our consistency, integrity, competence, and trustworthiness.

Every person measures those qualities based on measures of content and context they have used in the past. Note this example and the differences in context.

When did you start using social media tools beyond blogs?

Three years of experience with social media tools can be a lot.

Three years ago, social media wasn’t discussed.
Three years ago Twitter didn’t exist.

Three years experience is still entry level in offline contexts.

It’s a contextual gap.

To establish an authentic relationships, we need to communicate within their context. If, for example, we want to do business, a first impression needs to convey credibly that three years of social media experience is more than entry level. Credible first impressions are crucial to authentic relationships. Authentic relationships are crucial to strong reputations.

Here are six ways to credible first impressions and authentic, lasting relationships.

  • Never let ’em see you sweat.
    When we’re at our best we’re authentic without the gory details. After they’ve been processed, we debrief on learning situations with appropriate distance. When we greet new situations with confidence and direction, it’s natural to invite colleagues into partnerships and collaborations. Our ability to deliver with speed and accuracy increases. That’s visible and professional authenticity. When a job is being well executed, the amount of sweat is irrelevant.
  • Positive beats negative.
    When we’re positive, we naturally gravitate toward supporting common goals and positive outcomes. Positive situations and positive emotions are attractive. Social media tools are made for building connections. Connections happen when we take positive action, offer solutions, and raise others and their work above us.
  • Show up and take ownership — even when it’s not easy.
    When we make every promise, even those to ourselves, unbreakable, we build integrity and credibility. Things as simple as returning phone calls and emails elevates a relationship when everyone else is too busy. Showing people that you value them and their time is respectful — respect is a core component to thriving relationships.
  • BE a product of the level playing field.
    When we’re level — outside of a hierarchy — it’s easier to be calm, assertive, and personally invested without taking things personally. On a level field, every point of view is worthy. It’s a matter of making space to step back to listen actively and responding with integrity.
  • Think and answer for the long-term.
    When we give our best response, not our “first response,” it takes longer, but we show confidence, courage of conviction, and reflective wisdom. Slowing down to allow our best ideas to catch up identifies us as a professional.
  • Make everything about them.
    We do our best when we make a space and make it easy for folks to be themselves, be successful, and connect with other folks. People remember most how we make them feel and how we offer a chance to find purpose or meaning in their lives.

  • Value their experience.
    When we invite people in and find ways to align their goals with our own, we ignite the power of community. Communities accomplish what individuals cannot do alone. The opportunity to share ideas and learn from new arrivals is thrilling. If we listen to learn as well as teach, the potential is only limited by our ability to dream. When we invest in other people, they invest back.

We’ve built a highly collaborative social media culture — one that thrives on learning from each other openly, honestly, and with minimal hierarchy. We know how to meet, interact, and build communities with our customers / readers. That culture is what we value. It’s also what we have to offer.

New folks coming are potential. They will change a culture, just as we did when we got here. If we reach out in the best ways possible, they’ll be our new readers and our new clients. They’ll be the new members of our communities, and we’ll be theirs.

How can we help each other make credible connections with new arrivals? If you’re new to the SocialSphere, what advice do you have?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

A Barn Raisers Guide: 7 Ways to Leave the Field of Dreams to Build a Thriving Reality

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Field of Dreamers and Barn Raisers

For quite a while, I’ve been working with businesses who have or are preparing to build or expand a web presence or social community. They ask me to help focus their strategy and to help bring people to their communities. They want to attract, impress, and ultimately engage fiercely loyal participants.

If you’ve been online for a while, you’ve probably noticed that a percentage of new arrivals get a key strategic point of community sites out of order. Field of Dreamers are sure if they build their idea their way the people will come. Except the people don’t necessarily see the same thing.

More strategic folks Barn Raisers avoid the risk by building the community as they build the site. They believe that people will help build a powerful idea. Barn Raisers invite collaboration from the people they’ll be serving and so what they build is often a gathering place for people even before it’s fully finished.

A Barn Raisers Guide

Here are 7 ways to leave a field of dreams and get people to help you build a thriving reality.

  • Look for similar dreams and listen to everyone who knows about them.
    Ask, search, and explore to find every reality that has the slightest things in common with your dream. Spend some time at each site you find. Meet the people there and see how they use each site. Hear every other guy’s dreams, wishes, needs, and point of view. Get curious. Ask questions constantly. Wonder about what people think of what’s old, what’s new, what’s in every space in the market. Have some ready questions such as this one: If you were going to build a space for people who like to imitate frogs, what features would consider important to include?
  • Turn your dream into promise to do one thing better than anyone else.
    Be able to articulate exactly what that is, why it’s important, and how fits in to a person’s life. Check back with those you spoke to and tweak your promised offer until the folks you’ll serve say it’s relevant to them and fits their lives.
  • Plan from conception to launch.
    Invite people from your outside usual circle to check in on what you’re doing along the way. Weigh their comments for value, sort them, and remember to put the good one to use. Thank everyone of them.
  • Turn your promise into a space for conversation, interaction, creation, and sharing.
    Build a connection conduit. If your promise becomes a blog, keep it sleek and without barriers. Make it easy to see and interact with you. Offer variety in resources and multimedia. Find ways to interact through events. If you’re building a community site, go easy on bells and whistles, execute your promise clearly, and better than anyone has before. Then use extra resources to find more ways for people to converse, interact, create, and share while on your site.
  • Be obsessed with easy.
    If you think something is easy, make it easier. When you’ve done that all you can, ask your grandmother or someone who’s never seen it to try using it without directions. If they don’t breeze through it, go back to the drawing board to make it easier.yet
  • Ask visitors for feedback and ideas on new ways to use the site.
    Let the rule be that everyone gets to pick their best way to do things. That develops into the kind of space that has the climate for relationships.
  • Build ways into your site to link out to and to celebrate your participants.
    Showcase your heroes. Begin with the folks who help you build the site. Give away five great referrals every morning and five more in the afternoon or evening. People notice folks who appreciate others.

If you invite folks to be part of a powerful idea, you’ll find that you suddenly have a knack for making spaces where people collect, connect, and start conversations. It might have something to do letting people help form the environments that they’re going to inhabit. It’s like painting a house that we’re going to live in — pride of ownership.

Barn raising has always been a brilliant strategy — building the relationships while you’re building a site.

It takes a little practice. And it takes leadership to let go enough to get the good stuff without getting the chaos. The best results always calls for the best from each of us.

I’m hoping as we build barns we might bring some Field of Dreamers to work with Barn Raisers on a community site. I thought maybe they might like the process. Do you think the two together would have a chance of success?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

It’s Time to Reach Our Best Hand Out to the Folks Coming In

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Did You See the Discussion?

Yesterday’s discussion about playing for keeps was a peek at a the idea it’s important to our best selves to what we do. The best people connections in life and business happen when our inside values are visible on the outside. Or as John Haydon said in the comments:

… whenever I am being honest with myself and authentic with others, I don’t even have to ask if I’m walking the walk.

Why Here? Why Now?

Each wave of new bloggers and social media practioners finds a different socialsphere. They arrive a little further from where it all began. The information, tools, and practices change and move from hands to hands. People find new uses for the tools. People use the tools and application in unintended ways.

The socialsphere changes a little with the integration of each new group.

It’s getting harder to tell the authentic practioners from the frauds. One cause could be that not enough of us are clear about the expertise we offer or how competent we are.

Soon the waves will be larger — more in the form of companies. The companies will come with goals / plans, money, and their own traditions and histories. Some wlll learn the tools, join communities, and understand the cultural shift the tools were made to facilitate. Some will learn the tools, but succeed by applying them in old culture ways. It’s likely some will try the tools and fail miserably.

And a new generation is arriving who’ve been using and testing the tools while they get their degrees. What changes will they bring?

We want mainstream arrivals to succeed and to grow what we started rather than accidently knock it down. Yet, it’s almost as if we’re the company and they’re the customers now. Like customers responding to a product, they’ll decide whether social media works for them.

Mainstream definition of social media and its success or failure will define the culture of the Internet.

In an apprentice environment such as this, new arrivals are only as good as the one who teaches them. It’s natural for people to study the folks they connect with most quickly and trust the most. That would be the first people who look competent, who talk with intelligence and confidence, and if at all possible, who already know their friends.

Right here. Right now.
It’s time to reach our best hand out to the folks coming in.

4 Steps to Raise a Barn and Build a Bridge

The plan that is unfolding begins with this model project. It’s planned to be the first of many projects for many people on the Internet. If you have a dream project on the shelf, you might start yours and track it alongside this one of mine.

This project that I’ve named “Don’t Tell ’em, Show ’em” involves bringing out the best of this blog, of myself, of the SOB list, and in a second part, help for others to do the same. It’s a barnraising and a bridge building endeavor that has these four traits.

  • The project is a business and community idea.
  • It’s a barnraising in that the community is invited to participate in building the space made for them.
  • It’s a bridge building in that businesses and individuals offline and outside the community are invited to participate. It’s a natural way for new arrivals to learn culture of the social web.
  • The project will have a date upon which it will be complete so that everyone gets the payoff of feeling and seeing success.

Then the folks who can will raise more barns and build more bridges on the next projects.

The process will be open. I’ll keep you in the plan as it unfolds. I’ll tell you what’s happening. I’ll ask for help when I get stuck. I plan to get attention, raise the bar, and show the value of what we’re about. If you have ideas how to do that better, faster, louder, or more efficiently — where to go what to start — if you have skills to volunteer, or if you want to track a project of your own, I’ve a comment box below. C’mon let’s talk.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related:
Why Play the Game, If We Aren’t Playing for Keeps?

Why Play the Game, If We Aren’t Playing for Keeps?

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A Story of More than That

I’ve bought five homes. From the time the real estate agent was engaged until the offer was made not one took longer than a week. Two offers were completed in a single day. The real estate agent in Austin told me that in 25 years we were his only clients who actually purchased the house we said we were looking to buy.

I chose my university the same way.

I married my husband 42 days after we met — 24 years and 11 months ago.

My point is I know how to make a decision. I have a good sense of who I am. . . .

Yet I’ve been thinking about redesigning my blog for almost a year. Obviously it wasn’t a case of finding a new template. It’s a story of more than that.

Unwieldy Blog Unwieldy Me

Sometime around last October I realized that my blog had grown unwieldy. People can’t see the content or how it reflects me. The writing blog, the business blog, the branding blog all sit buried beneath pages. That same October, I realized that my personal presentation was in the same unwieldy state of outward presentation.

I took time to map out how to solve the blog problems. I took even longer to work out the same things about me. That done, I started looking for how to get the work done and get my life in order.

I Was in the Game . . . Not Really

Every day, I kept bumping into things that reinforced what I’d learned or suspected. Some incidents were small. Some events were larger.

At SOBCon08, I came face to face with a fact.

I was in the game, but I wasn’t playing with all that was in me.

I looked around and saw I wasn’t the only one that was holding back.

And the question stood in front of me.

Why play the game, if we aren’t playing for keeps?

And it stayed with me.
They have their act together better than I do.
Oh God, another “bad hair day” video.

Why should anyone believe the shoemaker makes fabulous shoes if his own shoes are ratty? The shoemaker ought to be wearing the best shoes in town.

It’s a rationalization, a total disconnect to think otherwise.

Why do we let ourselves off the hook on that?
No famous shoemaker ever wore ratty shoes.

If we’re not the best examples of our own talents, if we’re not walking our values, might as well hang up our uniforms — why would anyone waste good time and money on someone who’s heart isn’t in the game?

This isn’t just about shoes. It’s about people seeing what we can do.

Can people see you?

I’m Getting in the Game for Keeps . . . How About You?

People have relationships with people they can “see” — real people — people they trust. Social networking, social media, social anything is about connecting people with people. It’s relating, showing up, revealing something about the who we are inside.

We trust people whose inside values are visible on the outside.

That means giving a sign that we see them too and understand their values.
Time to quit talking about blogging in our jammies. It doesn’t make sense to people who don’t know our culture.

I’m getting in the game for keeps.
I’m showing up for the people in my life and my business. Gonna let them and you see me learn as well as let ’em see what I already know.

I used to think “Don’t tell ’em, show ’em,” was just a writer’s line.

It’s more. It’s a way of living.

Talk is cheap.
Showing up, showing who we are is relational gold.
If you value people in your life — business, social, friendship, family . . .

It’s okay to let people see you trying.
Trying happens right before succeeding.

How much
can they hear
if what they see
isn’t all that we could show them?

What would be easier if we got the offline world to take the blogosphere seriously?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!