A Bigger Voice

Observations of a New Twitter User

I first heard about Twitter nearly two years ago and at the time, I didn't get it.  I gave it another try last fall, after seeing Twitter in use at the Thin Air Summit by afficionados. I saw enough to stay interested but not invested. Over the last month, I've invested both time and energy into figuring out how best to use this robust tool. Yes, robust, even with a limitation of 140 characters per message or "tweet." 

Here's what I'm noticing:

• Twitter is its own world, with a tailored language and toolkit, rock stars, and community consisting of a rich stew of people, just like in the offline world. As such, it takes some getting used to. You'll see good and bad content, rude and gracious people, scammers and credible business people, highly intelligent and barely intelligible, all conforming to the constraints of Twitter and making ample use of the basic functions. Photo by ooOJasonOoo
• Twitter is versatile and thus, serves different purposes for different people. That's where the stew comes in. What can you do with a series of messages, 140 characters at a time, broadcast to a group of followers who can easily unsubscribe as subscribe? Turns out, a lot. I've seen Twitter used as a virtual picture on the side of a milk carton by asking "tweeps" to spread the word about a missing teen, a promotional vehicle for businesses (@guykawasaki consistently has tweets that refer to his biz, alltop.com), a research tool and of course, a way to expand and deepen connections. I use Twitter as my virtual newspaper, customized to follow people who talk about stuff I'm interested in (e.g., creativity, coaching, social media) as well as current events. 
• Know what you want to optimize.  Many years ago, I got a master's degree in Operations Research. One of the few things I remember from that curriculum is knowing which variable to optimize in a multi-variable problem space (think scheduling airline crews and airplanes for hundreds of destinations.) What you choose to optimize gives very different outcomes. Twitter is the same way. Some people optimize for number of followers. Some people optimize for connecting one-on-one to followers. (This has to explain tweeps whose tweets all start by addressing a single person.) Some people optimize on sharing interesting information. (Thus, my virtual newspaper quickly gets filled up with just a few of these people.) The people who know how to use Twitter well are those who can provide a mix of tweets that optimizes for creating trust and community. I'm still learning how to do that. Photo by edelmandigitalbootcamp
• Twitter can quickly expand your connections, both in depth and breadth. It wasn't until I left the corporate world and became a solopreneur, that I realized how big the world really is. It's easy to get focused on what's happening inside a single company and forget about the diversity of people, ideas, organizations in the world. In the course of checking out people who have followed me on Twitter, I've found sites on new media in Australia, activities for babies and moms month-by-month, traveling the world with minimal effort, affirmations that naturally bubble up and heal others, living as an expat in Prague, and creating modern music in the style of Bach. This is just from the sites of people who have somehow found me. Twitter is also good at connecting people around a single topic, with not much effort. I was amazed at the number of conservatives who followed me, based on a single tweet to a well-known conservative tweep. (I'm still puzzled as to how other followers find me--whether it's more random, as in the recent follower who specializes in discussing dating relationships, or whether it goes back to a case of six degrees of separation.)
• It helps to set boundaries. How many Internet marketers do I want to follow? (BTW--why is it that 90% seem to men and 50% of them have sleazy looking sites?) How many conservative leaning bloggers do I want to follow? How much time do I want to spend deciding who to follow back? How much time to tweet and to read my Twitter feed? Just like I would allocate time to respond to email and read the Wall Street Journal, I've found that allocating Twitter time can keep me from losing the entire day in a flurry of tweets.
• The numbers tell the story. Call me a Twitter snob but I initially distrust someone who is following more people than they have followers (e.g.,, Following: 15,000, Followers: 10,000.) My mind goes to someone who is optimizing around number of followers. (By following someone, there's an unspoken rule of following back.) Yes, there are some people I like who have a larger number in the "following" box than the "follower" box. But they are the exception to the rule. A big red flag gets raised if you have very few tweets and thousands of followers (e.g., Following: 15,000, Followers: 10,000, Updates: 50.) It says to me that you didn't get the followers organically, through conversation and good content in your tweets, but through some other means. People who have many times more followers than people they follow (e.g., Following: 100, Followers: 4,000) seem to be individuals who already built an audience through other means before getting on Twitter (e.g., books, blogs.) They've bypassed the mentality of having to follow in order to be followed. Even number of following and followers?  The jury is still out. Photo by "Solar ikon"
• Inherent in Twitter is a sense of community. Search on #Oscars or #Superbowl09 and you'll never again feel alone while watching an event on television or in person. Unlike users of other social networking tools, Twitter users like to get together in-person as well as online. Look for a Tweetup (meetup for tweeps) in your local area. Read about Twestival, a charity event organized by tweeps that produced in-person events in over 200 cities around the world and raised over US$250,000. Check out the first ever Tweet-a-thon, again a charity event (this time online.)  When you are on Twitter, it's easy to be part of a community. Photo by Annie Mole
• Twitter feeds my creativity and grows my network, at the same time. Twitter connects me to  like-minded individuals, triggers ideas for new blog posts, and creates opportunities for conversation. It's up to me to develop a vibrant community from that. Which brings me full circle back to A Bigger Voice. I'm in the Build Community phase. Find me on Twitter: @carolross.

Etsy: E-Commerce Meets Community

Etsy, the online marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of "all things handmade," was named to the Fast Company 50, a listing of the world's most innovative companies. An interview with the CEO by Fast Company reveals the focus on community as well as commerce--profiles of Etsy sellers with personalized videos, virtual gathering places to share learning and interests, forums for niche groups to form.  An excerpt:

Fast Company: Is there a bigger idea behind Etsy?

Etsy CEO: To help people make a living by doing what they love and making things. Technology makes the first part happen because it gives people access to markets that were previously bounded by geography and other variables. But we also wanted to go back to a time when markets meant personal interaction--when you knew who you were buying from.

Financially, Etsy is doing very well. They make their money when goods are listed, sold, and promoted on the site. According to Fast Company, "it tripled its gross sales in 2008, to $90 million." It's also attracting venture capital.

Community works. And works. And works.

Enabling Social Change Through Social Media: Learning From Each Other

What happens when you put an Internet icon (Dave Taylor), a marketing expert at the crossroads of new media and old media (Dave Webb), and a digital immigrant who bridges top down with bottom up approaches (Kim Dority) on a panel and mix with an enthusiastic group of students, professors, and activists? I wish I could thoroughly convey the energy at Regis University last night, as we explored the nuances of social media, marketing, leadership, and social causes. A lot of wheels were turning as we learned from each other.

I started off the evening describing the three phases of A Bigger Voice--Crystallize, Build Community, and Sustain--and was followed by the knowledgeable and ever entertaining Dave Taylor. Dave talked about the "burning desire" for humans to express themselves and gave us a great perspective on how technology has helped us meet that need. His talk was similar to one he gave last November at the Thin Air Summit, which I reported on for this blog. What struck me this time around was his theme of "You have a voice. Use it." Amen!

The real juice of the evening came with our panelists providing stories and viewpoints from the field and interacting with the audience. Questions ranged from how to get digital immigrants to see the value of social media (answer: mutual respect of what digital immigrants and digital natives already know, point digital immigrants to Facebook and have them look for fellow alums), to how to publicize a local event through social media (answer: find and contact the influencers in your field and geographical area, make use of the social networks that the organizers are already on), to how to build a business using social media (answer: create trust, give away something of value, contribute to others' goals.)

Themes that emerged:

• Passion. Social media allows people who are passionate in niche areas (e.g., Kurasawa films, breeding English settler dogs) to connect with each other. Find what you are passionate about and participate in that community (or create a community of your own.)
• Ease into the conversation and become a part of the community. Contribute, build trust, develop relationships online, just like you would in the offline world. Dave Taylor gave a wonderful metaphor of being at a party and how different behaviors either alienate people or draw them to you. (You had to be there for the full effect.) Contribute to conversations where there are already like-minded thinkers and add value.
• Start with consuming before creating. Build your expertise by reading and researching online, observing the conversation and then get ready to contribute/create, either in small bits with comments and tweets or in larger chunks with blogging. 
• We need both "old media" and "new media." The panel discussed the demise of the newspaper industry and the dangers of losing that "voice" in the mix of today's landscape, where citizen journalism is on the rise. In addition, old media still contains major influencers in different areas (e.g. Walt Mossberg with the Wall Street Journal on technology.) Dave Taylor gave some tips on how to create a relationship with old media (e.g., email reporters with additional thoughts on something they've written and offer to be a possible source of information when they are working under tight deadlines.)
• Move into action. Social media has the power to connect individuals more broadly, deeply, and quickly. It also can and should be a means for inspiring others to act. Passion and vision are great but without action, it doesn't mean anything. Dave Webb said after the panel that he didn't have the chance to talk about Twestival but wished he could have. Twestival was an event organized by Twitter users that took place on Feb 12, in over 200 cities around the world, to raise money for a non-profit that digs wells in places that don't have access clean water. 
• Learn from Obama's election campaign. We talked about this as great case study on how to use social media to create a grassroots movement. Kim Dority gave us a specific example of Obama's campaign reaching out to her company, disaboom.com, as the voice of the disabled population, to create a win-win. An extensive analysis of the Obama campaign's use of social media was just released by Edelman, the PR firm.
• Social media is everywhere. From Club Penguin to World of Warcraft to Facebook (where the greatest growth is with women over 50 years old.) You can start using it or be left behind.

One of my big take-aways is it is easy to get wrapped into the social media bubble, thinking that individuals are knowledgeable about tools and lingo and comfortable with it all. For example, out of more than 70 people, only one or two were on Twitter and only a small percentage were bloggers.  If we are to bring the power of social media to both digital immigrants and digital natives, we must meet them where they are at and help them find ways to move forward. My hope is that last night's presentation made a small contribution to that end.

My thanks all the panelists, Kim Dority, Dave Taylor and Dave Webb. Special thanks to Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas, director of the leadership development program at Regis, for sponsoring this event. (That's her on the left, with the two Daves.) Judging from comments from panelists and audience members, I'm not alone when I say that the evening was inspiring and energizing and I walked out feeling smarter than when I came in. Check out the following interviews with  panelists and audience members.

Interview with Dave Taylor and Dave Webb:

Interview with Kim Dority. UPDATE: Please note that Kim mentions having "Obama's adminstration on staff." Kim later listened to the interview and informed me this should have been "Obama's campaign on the site."  Interestingly enough, the Obama staff has continued to reach out to disaboom.com, this time soliciting stories of people with disabilities who've gone back to work because of the stimulus plan. Yet another example of Obama's adeptness at using social media to engage, create conversation, and build community.

Interview with Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas:

Interview with Dan "The Can Man":

Interview with Janice, Social Marketing professor:

Enabling Social Change Through Social Media: A Bibliography

New to social media and wisdom entrepreneurship and wondering how to move up the learning curve faster?

I'll be part of a presentation on enabling social change through social media. The audience is a group of Regis University students who are learning about leadership.

I've asked my fellow co-presenters, people well-versed in using social media to do good, to provide their recommendations for books, articles, and  blogs related to this topic. Here's our collective bibliography, from Kim Dority, Dave Taylor, Dave Webb, and myself:

Books and Articles

• CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World by Tom Watson
• Saving the World at Work by Tim Sanders
• Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li
• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
• How to Use Social Media for Social Change by Sarah Perez
• Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Tribes by Seth Godin
• Wikinomics by Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams

Sites

www.web-strategist.com

www.change.org

www.mtdn.com

www.socialactions.com

www.causecast.org

www.socialvibe.com

www.globalgiving.com

www.networkforgood.org

www.frozenpeafund.com

www.giving.casefoundation.org

www.twestival.com

www.beth.typepad.com

www.donorschoose.org

It always makes me happy to find interesting books to read and new sites to explore. Many thanks to my fellow co-presenters for contributing to this list. What books, articles, blogs do you recommend for wisdom entrepreneurs?

Update: During our panel discussion at Regis, Dave Webb suggested a paper just issued by Edelman, the PR firm, titled, "Social Pulpit: Barack Obama's Social Media Toolkit."  It's a thorough analysis of the Obama campaign's social media strategy and use of tools, to create the desired outcome--a landslide victory fueled by grassroots support. A must read.

Photo by brittanyculver

Three Cups of Tea

I just finished the book, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Dave, my friend from Traverse City and a partner in crime on spreading the word about A Bigger Voice, had seen Mortenson speak last month at a local school.

Dave described Mortenson as an ordinary, humble man, doing extraordinary things, against all odds--a single voice that had turned an idea into a movement.  I was hooked enough to order the book.

The book is a wonderful example of how one person can make a difference and what it takes to be successful on that journey--listening more than speaking, humility, persistence, a compelling vision, an ability to create allies in unexpected places, courage, and faith. Faith that despite the lack of you name it--money, supplies, time, people--there is more than enough in the world to manifest our vision. More than enough willingness. More than enough know how. More than enough heart.

Mortenson's story reinforces the principles of A Bigger Voice:

• One voice can start a community. Starting with an idea and a promise to a village elder in Pakistan to return and build a school, Mortenson grew his community into a melange of tribal leaders, religious clerics, mountaineers, school children, taxi cab drivers, military personnel, widows, philanthropists, librarians, journalists, well, you get the idea. Just about anyone that he came into contact with who resonated with his cause became part of his community.
• Community creates stunning results. Schools that normally would take the better part of year to build came together in less than three months, with the help of villagers who embraced the vision of a place to educate their children. Religious leaders banded together to support and endorse Mortenson's work, to remove the obstacles of local village politics.
• Sustainability requires monetization. Mortenson tells about being on the edge of financial disaster, for long periods of time, even with benefactors who provided substantial donations. With the publication of a bestselling book, and a speaking schedule that is booked a year in advance, I'm guessing that monetizing is no longer an issue and that sustainability is now a reality. The point is that even with a non-profit in place, a board, and a thriving community, this work was not sustainable until Mortenson was able to create a steady revenue stream.

All entrepreneurs, not just wisdom entrepreneurs, should read this book. It has given me perspective and inspiration on my own journey with A Bigger Voice.

Power Chicks in Houston

I was in Houston last week to work with a group of budding wisdom entrepreneurs--members of a women's networking group, lovingly known as the Power Chicks. (There was also one Power Dude, as you'll see from the following videos.)

At the end of the three hours, all of the participants had identified a next step that got them into action and moved them towards doing well and doing good in the world--from supporting caregivers to youth at risk to parents of kids with juvenile arthritis. See this quick video to get a feel for the energy in the room:

Houston, Feb 2009, A Bigger Voice seminar from Carol Ross on Vimeo.

What this means is that you can start from anywhere and make progress on transforming an idea into a movement. The concepts and principles of A Bigger Voice are sound. Well, I guess I knew that already but it's always good to confirm it in the field with a diverse group.

My thanks to the fabulous Laura Bellomy, the alpha Chick, who hosted this event. You'll be seeing more of Laura in the future, as I've lined her up as one the wisdom entrepreneurs I want to interview.

An offer for 2009:  Want to get some help transforming an idea into a movement? I'll do a four-hour seminar on A Bigger Voice, with up to 25 participants, anywhere in the US, for free. You'll need to pay my expenses, airfare from Denver, and do the marketing.  So start thinking about the budding wisdom entrepreneurs in your community who are ready to move into action. I can't wait to see what happens. Contact me through Twitter (@carolross) or via email: carol [at] abiggervoice [dot] com.

Dan Pink: Finding New Ways to Connect to Community

I'm a big fan of Daniel Pink's work and discovered him when I read his book, A Whole New Mind, several years ago. Since then, I've been following what he's been up to via his blog. You might even say that I'm part of his tribe. I'm an evangelist for his wisdom--using the creative right brain alongside the analytical left brain--and have interviewed him in person and over the phone. 

Now, Pink has ventured into online video, with his short (1-2 minutes) travel tips. It's completely different content from what I normally look for. Nevertheless, I took the time to watch all six travel tip videos. Why? Because it gives me another view of him that I don't get in his writing. Take a look:

Pink's Travel Tips -- Tip #1 from DHP on Vimeo.

The lesson for wisdom entrepreneurs and  community-building is simple: Use multiple ways to connect to your community, even when the content may seem peripheral to your cause.

People want to see different facets of the same person. Video is a great way to start to show those facets. I've been playing with a Flip camcorder for about a month. With easy-to-use and reasonably-priced tools like the Flip (I got mine for $120 on Amazon, and uploaded my first video to YouTube within the hour of receiving it in the mail), there are no more excuses.Stay tuned.

Twitter's Community of Super Bowl Fans

For a fascinating look at the Twitter conversation among people watching the Super Bowl, click here. My thanks to @jowyang for pointing to the site in his Twitter feed.

The technology is now able to capture "communities of the moment," what they are interested in and how they respond to external events. Very cool. 

I'm not sure what this means for A Bigger Voice other than the fact that technology continues to enable new voices to be heard.

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik

Resources for the Wisdom Entrepreneur

A few resources that I recommend:

• NCWIT Entrepreneurial Toolbox Interview Series. Designed to promote fundamental skills of entrepreneurship, the audio series is sponsored by the National Center for Women and Information Technology Entrepreneurial Alliance . The series interviews both men and women about a range of topics critical to entrepreneurial success, such as networking, how to procure funding, writing a business plan, and the importance of failure.
• Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li.  I gave a snippet of the valuable information covered in this book in a posting last October. After reading the book late last year, I consider it a must read for any wisdom entrepreneur planning any use of the Internet to attract like-minded souls to their cause. Groundswell gives you the landscape of how your demographic is using the Internet, based on levels of participation. This, in turn, drives the strategy for community-building.
• ProBlogger and TwiTip. These are blogs on blogging and using Twitter, a form of micro-blogging. Darren Rowse, the blogger behind both sites has useful, actionable information if you want to use blogging as a way of growing your community. While the name ProBlogger implies blogging for money, the stuff Rowse talks about is about creating a blog that's valuable to others, whether it's done for money or for community or both.

And while there are plenty of resources that get at the pieces of being a wisdom entrepreneur, I hope to provide you with real life examples of wisdom entrepreneurship in action, through interviews on this blog. I'll conduct my first interview this week, with Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom.  We'll talk about her dreams for using wisdom in the world to help others, what the Crystallization phase looked like for her, and what building community might look like to turn her wisdom into a movement. I'll post the interview with Madson later this month.