I was part of a manic panel discussion on sales strategies for a Web 2.0 world.  Amidst the usual Rorschach of social media advice were a few killer moments I have to share.

Framing Idea:
What’s the result of an abundance of information? Attention scarcity.
This is what makes insight a premium in the digital economy, and it makes simplicity the good manners of our age.

So What Should We Stop Doing For Simplicity?
My answer was “stop writing so damn much.”  I worked in my steadfast mantra “reading is for suckers” and suggested that if attendees cared about their readers and SEO, they should cut their copy in half and make a video or infographic.  The goal is to make such a great illustration or video that even competitors wouldn’t be able to resist linking to it or copying it.

This brought a follow-up question: “Where can I see a good infographic?” I probably should have mentioned a nice collection such as the one at Six Revisions.  Instead, I offered a single beautiful example, Flint Hahn’s Burning Man Infographic. The next follow-up: “What’s Burning Man?“  Somehow I was taking us way off track.

How Can We Make Email Marketing Work Better In a Social World?
My advice was to build a personal relationships with readers, to be real and relevant, and worry only about making kick-ass communications for the small group that is vital to their livelihood.  Again I was asked for a good example.  I could have referred to the nice marketing from Marketo that made the whole room turn out. Wouldn’t that have be supremely ingratiating? Do you think I did that?

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It’s been six months since my post that 2010 investment in digital marketing would occupy an increasing share of marketing dollars.  Since then, Oracle, CDC, and Hearst Media have taken the leap.

And now, social business software company Jive has taken a $30M series C investment round from  Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB).  Here’s the press release announcing the investment.

This milestone will allow Jive to move into a new category. Imagine Jive going up against other new social entrants (ie. Salesforce) or providing social tools as an enterprise social platform.

As they ramp this new capability for revenue growth, expect investment in the brand and talk of a 2011 IPO to fuel them way up the hype-cycle.

Read more:

• Michael Fauscette’s Interview on Jive’s Series C Funding
• Jeremiah Owyang & Altimeter’s SWOT analysis of Jive

Who Will Update My Facebook Status When I Die?
If you follow this blog’s Twitter feed you may have already seen me saying goodbye to people I’ve enjoyed in person and online.  MIT’s Bill Mitchell and Chuck Howes, formerly of the Christian Science Publishing Society, both good men, recently passed away.  In the case of Chuck, I often reached out to discuss “crazy-stage” publishing ideas on LinkedIn and Facebook.

When my mom died, I got her address book.  Every friend’s birthday, the names of their spouse and kids, even when they graduated was written there.  It was a record of her memory and some of her values.

I don’t keep an address book, not even really in Outlook.  Most of that lives in social media.  If I wanted to find Chuck, I’d zap him a note through LinkedIn, and regardless of where he was working, or riding his bike, the message would get through.

So this raises a question: How do we pass on those contacts and values to our survivors?  A recent  SXSW panel asked the practical question “Who Will Check My Email When I Die?”  The social media equivalent may be “Who Will Update My Status When I Die?”

Your Digital Legacy
My lawyer friends and I have always wondered about digital inheritance, and if businesses would rise up to provide escrow services for endowing our digital selves.  Who will be your digital executor?

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INTA, the International Trademark Association, is a group of nearly six thousand trademark professionals in 190 countries.  They protect the world’s brands.

They’re being Twitter-squatted.  There’s no pretty way to say it.

In 2007, someone apparently seized their name as a Twitter handle and posted one five letter word, “srrrr”.

This looks like a case of first-mover advantage again trumping mark holder in social media.

So what’s the lesson here: that squatting can happen to anyone, anywhere; that Twitter is tough; or that someone needs to drink their INTA juice?

Section 230 Isn’t for Bullies
Online communities such as Yelp are usually protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This online law protects publishers; without it, social media would likely never have been.  It’s such a valuable protection that I think even lawyers in South Carolina deserve it. However, Section 230 has limits.

Yelp may have stepped outside of  §230’s protection when it made offers to take down negative ratings for firms for a fee. From a distance, this seems less like providing a public bulletin board, and a bit more like a shake-down for brand protection.

That’s how Beck & Lee in Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego see it. They have filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court alleging unfair business practices.

Yelp Suit Connects Legal Marketing and Social Media
Of course, such a case requires a blog website where you can “share your Yelp story” and read damning coverage of Yelp’s sales practices before joining  the case. It is ironic that plaintiff’s counsel is asking those Yelp has reviewed to now return the favor. And it’s another example of social media getting into legal case generation.

Sue the Funded
At the turn of the year, Yelp was reportedly valued in excess of $500 million in a purchase negotiation with Google.  Yelp recently closed a private round of financing.  Though the pockets could have been deeper, the defendant is well funded … Although some would say that’s in part through unscrupulous sales practices.

Hungry investors stake their claim in digital marketing IPOs.
Back in December I suggested that 2010 will be a big year for digital IPOs. We’ve already seen this playing out in the FriendFinder IPO.

New theme: concern over foreign ownership of social networks.
As social networks become investment targets, international ownership may fuel new concerns over privacy. One of the things I learned from the FriendFinder prospectus is that the majority of its 135 million members are outside the US.

Do you think ownership of social networks by companies backed by foreign governments would have a chilling effect on users? Imagine how much advantage one could gain through detailed knowledge of social networks.  An adult site like FriendFinder is chock full of secrets, which could be useful in manipulation.

First off, I just wanted to thank Dave for inviting me to join in the conversation on Ghostwriting in Social Media. Secondly, I want to make something very clear before I stand up on my soapbox: I am a marketer—and founder & CEO of the interactive e-marketing firm ListEngage.com—and as a company, we do represent various clients and organizations in the social media space by helping them market their products and services on a daily basis.

As an organization, when invited to work with a client, although we may not initially feel one way or another towards, let’s say, the medical device industry for example—we do feel strongly about the real-life people, friends, and partners that we support with our efforts. So, when a client asks us to engage their audience because they don’t have the expertise, the resources, or “bandwidth” to execute their social media strategy, we lend a hand.

In my mind, this new “digital ghostwriting push” is actually nothing new: popular brands have been doing it for years—via customer service “response” letters, pre-recorded phone calls, emails and direct mail pieces. This is just the latest version of busy people outsourcing their surplus work to others who they have trained and who they trust.

Do you think that Teddy Roosevelt (or any President for that matter) really replied to every letter he received during his time at the White House? Do you think that the Beatles really penned back responses to all their swooning teenage followers?  Do you think that the President of Ford, Toyota, Coke, or (Fill in Big Corporation Here) always respond directly to letters, emails, or tweets that they receive? Do you “believe” that it is absolutely from them if it has their name on it?

Bottom line: the average person only has so much bandwidth with which to process and reply to the information coming at them—and if you’re @THE_REAL_SHAQ (a brand in and of himself), for example, there’s just no chance that you can reply to almost 3 millions followers’ messages and maintain any semblance of a life… yet someone is taking the time to reply to his fans every day…

Not only is it naive to assume that big names and small companies are executing 100% of their own Social Media—it’s also a bit silly to get offended if you find out otherwise.

Social media opens up avenues of conversations that customers and fans have never had before, but it also opens up the virtual floodgates to companies and people who are in the limelight, and if you don’t know how to manage this, don’t have the time, or the expertise—then you’re liable to get burned, unless you have the right (and properly trained) “support team” behind you.

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Last week a family member had serious enough surgery that I took time away from my job to be a caregiver. Surprisingly, this has connected me more to social networks and this blog. You see,  our hospital has wi-fi in its waiting areas, so writing online is productive way to pass time, and absorb the waiting with grace. When I wake up at night to give medication, the online community is there and I appreciate it. I’m finishing this in a waiting room now.

Research shows that more than three in ten U.S. households (31.2%) report that at least one person has served as an unpaid family caregiver within the last twelve months, leading to an estimate of 36.5 million households with a caregiver present. My own experience illustrates what sociologists have told us about caregiving for decades: caregiving is a social role that needs to be balanced.

You see, once someone in the family is the identified patient, their caretakers become reluctant to receive care or to be patients themselves. Many caretakers have untreated medical issues, preventative health needs, or just a chronic need for relief.  When your job is to be the one who helps, it’s easy to skip self-care.

Community Beats Isolation: It Keeps Drama in Check
Fortunately for me, our friends are instinctively hip to this. Our kids have had lots of play dates, church friends have dropped off some meals, and our extended family made all that hospital waiting-room time possible.  Which brings me to introducing this free online workspace for caregivers and their friends, Lotsa Helping Hands.

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This response was originally posted on Shava Nerad’s blog Memesplice. It is used with permission.

This is a response to Ja-Nae Duane’s article, which in turn responds to Dave Weineke’s article, both on UsefulArts.us, Dave’s blog.

You should go read both.  But briefly, Dave thinks a blog article written by one person and posted under another name is a violation of ethics.  Ja-Nae, speaking as a client, begs to differ.

Let me, as a professional, explain why Ja-Nae is not only justified, but supported by a long history that should be admired and respected.

Those of you who know me in person probably know I come off better in print than I often do in public.  I’m not a stylish dresser.  I’m a bit geekish, and when I am not on a podium, my speech is overly-mannered and too fast.

But I can write.  And I have a terrific ear.

I have ghost written a blog for a Harvard professor and have ghost written speeches for a major figure in philanthropy and a number of politicians.  I have written articles for CEOS and professors that were placed in major publications, and ghosted an article by a major magazine editor when he was asked to write a guest column for Newsweek.

My name not on those works.  Not only that, but in many cases, I am contractually or otherwise professionally obligated not to list those works on my resume or mention the clients by name.

But I have to say, I was paid well by most of them (some of the political work was volunteer).

Is it ethical to publish an article solely in our client’s name?  It always has been.  We might be listed as staff on a publication, or a roster.  The thoughts we write are not, technically, our own.  We don’t really do much more than a radio journalist does when interviewing a public figure, cutting small talk, removing the um’s and ah’s, and re-recording and restating questions to better fit the time allotted for a story.  Oh, wait — you mean you didn’t know they did that either?

Even when ghosting is transparent, it has been quickly forgotten or overlooked by the public in the past.  Every American history reader knows President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country!”

But Kennedy only *said* those words, which are attributed to him in every reference work of quotations in the world.  A genius speech writer, Ted Sorenson, wrote those words for him.

Sorenson, an intelligent, intellectual, modest man, did what he did out of purpose and love, with a finely honed sense of language — and an intimate understanding of the man he worked for.

His words carried Kennedy’s authentic voice around the world.

The job of a ghost or speech writer is to get so far inside the mind and skin of her/his client that you are no more “faking” the person’s words, than a hairdresser is “faking” the person’s hair. Ideally, a professional makes the expression of style a natural extension of the individual. The client runs a comb through, and every word falls in place as though it grew that way.

Sometimes, the “fix” is obvious.  Did anyone think Sarah Palin solo’d her book?  Authenticity is transparent with or without a ghost (Lynn Vincent, senior writer for the Christian publication World Magazine).  The Christian Science Monitor estimates that 90% of politicians’ books are ghosted, Obama’s being a notable recent exception.

Some of us do this better than others.  We have, in the parlance of social media, been “delivering authenticity” for longer than any media workers.

Continued

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to yesterday’s post, The Ethics of Ghost Writing and Marionette Social Media.

As someone who does a tremendous amount of outsourcing, this is a topic that is near and dear to me.

Blogging:
I am a huge advocate of outsourcing my blog writing. Why?

Well, I have two reasons:

• Time: I am an idea person. I think of more blog posts that I can actually write. It sometimes inhibits my ability to even outline a blog post. With that being said, it is much easier to create a topic and a few key points that I want highlighted and then hand it over to someone I trust with “my voice” and who can deliver it to me in a timely fashion.
• Trust: Tina and I have been working together for a while now. She gets who I am, what I am trying to say, and how I want to say it. She was the one who took my notes, outline, and previous articles and assembled my new book, “How to Start Your Business with $100”

Because she and I worked so closely on something so personal, it was an easy switch for her to start writing my blog posts for my blog as well.

Social Media:
This is an area where I change my tune.

SM interactions have to be personal. Sure, you can have someone scan news and articles for you, but at the end of the day, only YOU know how you would respond to a comment or how you would engage an individual.

As a social media strategist, my team and I have had to take on personas more frequently than I would care to share. I make the recommendation to have us teach the individual how easy it is to engage in the social sphere, however, many people still feel that social media is overwhelming and refuse to touch it.

On the flip side of that, how would you feel if you were corresponding with someone who was not really that individual? Would you feel cheated? Would you care?

My experience is that people absolutely care. They want to know that they are reaching that individual and not a member of their staff. It completely changes people’s perception of that individual.

Continued