I was recently followed by a CMO of a huge corporation. Let's call him @CMOJOE. On Friday, out of the blue -- without any past contact, he DM'd me on Friday, actively promoting what I feared was a course in SEO magic...but turned out to be his book.

CMOJOE: LivePath Wow! @booktitle made TheDailyBeast-This Week's Hot Reads list, is #261 today on Amazon & #9 on "Mover &Shaker" List! http://bitlylinktobookthaticouldnotrecognize

Now, maybe it's just me, but his approach felt invasive to me.  I didn't know the guy. He'd never talked to me before. I didn't know he wrote a book.  It was a bit like the Twitter equivalent of accepting a first date and being groped on the spot. Irritated, I DM'd him back:

Livepath: Did someone hack your account, or are you actually DM Spamming me?

He didn't respond. I checked his Twitter stream and noted that I was not the only person who was irritated by the DM approach.  It doesn't seem he responded to everyone - but there was a lot of action in his tweet stream.  The responses he did send seemed a little brusque to me. Here were a few tweet "leftovers" I found:

CMOJOE: @personsname (It's) called communication - how else (to) reach you?


CMOJOE: @personsname You may call it that. I call it a DM. I sent it.


CMOJOE: @personsname on the issue... one thing i can tell u, DM's do work, big time. Some "rules" are not fully worked out, hence the comments.

In all fairness, i didn't have time to cross references his responses to the original responses. What I saw on the surface seemed, however, brusque and unapologetic. I was past really caring, and posted a single tweet on the topic without naming my offender:

Livepath:  CMO of major corporation is auto DM Spamming me about his new book. Had never engaged with me before now. UNFOLLOW!

This didn't elicit a response from CMOJOE.  However, I did hear from some other Twitter folks who put some virtual pieces together and responded to me via @ and DM.


One tweeter questioned the "ethics" of CMOJOE's action (I don't think this is an ethics issue, incidentally). Others sent me thoughts and links to articles. All were equally turned off by CMOJOE's approach.


One individual pointed me to the "I hate Auto DMs on Twitter" Facebook Fan page, pointing out that CMOJOE was, curiously, a member. While, as of this writing, he seems to have discontinued "liking" this page, he did leave a post on the Page's Wall, which clearly states

"I put the auto DM people on my definition of a twanker! Despise auto DM's!"

Another user pointed out to me a post CMOJOE authored on the blog for his (former) large corporation --railing against "twankers" whom he defines as:

"Twanker (noun) a person, organization, or company who uses bad form on or exhibits bad behavior on Twitter."

 
Another tweeter pointed me to an early release article stating that CMOJOE had resigned his position with major corporation to pursue full-time promotion of his book, "which was becoming a full time job."


Still another tweeter sent me a link to an article in a major publication, announcing CMOJOE's intent to launch into a television career:

"The gregarious executive, 49, tells me he has been approached 'by a lot of people to do TV' and he is now hashing out the details of a show, which could be on the air by fall, if not sooner."

Another sent another major media article to me about his resignation, which reads:

"(Huge Corporation CEO) knew he planned to leave the company this year. He decided recently to accelerate his departure. He plans to leave the company May 28.... (CMOJOE) says he will keep promoting himself and his projects through social media channels."

The press helped me fit some pieces together:  His book was doing well and he's moving on quicker than expected. All the more reason to aggressively push the book. Throw in a television deal... Okay - got it.
 
Later on, I saw that CMOJOE had become a last minute speaker at a conference that evening, and had spent 40 minutes on the topic with a passionate audience. I didn't have time to do anything other than retroactively scan some of the tweets from that session, and I don't like to formulate opinions when I'm not present for discussion. So, to avoid relying on hearsay, potential misquotes or information presented with a lack of context, I waited for some indication of personal concern from CMOJOE.

Maybe the message was sent in poor judgment... or maybe CMOJOE is a "twanker," to use his own term. The jury was still out for me.What do you think?

I admit, that when I have wanted some input, I've pinged a few friends via DM for attention... but it's always been a selective few... and I do it in a manner I hope doesn't feel like spam...typically these are people who are trusted sounding boards, and folks I do the same for on occasion. 

What would you do if, never hearing from before, you were sent CMO Joe's tweet?  Is it right or wrong to DM self-promotional messages to your follower list?  Where do you draw the line?  Do you use "Auto Bots?"  Thoughts?  

"You don't think she'll actually come to our door now, do you?"  still knowing better.  "Naaaw!" said my husband, sarcastically.   "I'm not answering it!!" I said, knowing I would, anyway.  We heard her feet on the stoop, and the knocking began. Our lab began barking hysterically, and the interruption was complete. I threw down my napkin and said "I'll handle it."

I opened the door to her smiling face.  "Hi! I'm KAYLA with TRU GREEN Lawncare and I..."  I interrupted politely, "I'm sorry, Kayla. As you can see, we are in the middle of our dinner."  Kayla frowned, hopeful "I'm sorry, I just wanted to..."  I interrupted again  "I'm sorry Kayla. We're in the middle of dinner. This is not a good time for us.  Have a good night."  Kayla rebounded, fervent in her approach "But, can I just give you a flyer?"  she said, desperately.  I sighed, "Sure, give me a flyer." She handed me a very large door hanger signed with her name and said to call her if we needed anything. I didn't thank her. I just said, "Goodbye Kayla." She went on, undeterred, to knock insistantly at more doors, at dinner time on a Thursday evening.

Staring briefly at the oversized door hanger in my hands, I ripped it into four pieces.  I sat down at the table, bristling. This wasn't really about Kalya. She was sort of cute and endearing.  It wasn't that it hasn't happened before.  My anger stemmed over the fact that this was simply stupid marketing.  It is simply astonishing how many companies do equivocably, the same thing: Irritate people, interrupt family or personal time, spoil dinner and then ask for our money!

"This is not even good marketing" I remarked to my husband, It's ME keting!"  Together, we worked up a definition of the MEketer: 

• MEketers love interruptive, pushy tactics
• MEketers are ego-driven, believing people should want to listen, just because they are a brand
• MEketers are more concerned with delivering messages than building relationships
• MEketers fail to demonstrate care or regard for people because they view them as a means to an end
• MEketers often believe success is driven by working "more"  - not working "smarter"
• MEketers favor tenacity over common sense
• MEketers love the cookie cutters - They are formulaic marketers - doing everything the same way, every time.

Kayla chose to rudely interrupt us, and TruGreen lost a potential customer. If she'd gently left a door hanger with a personalized note, and returned at a later time, we would have talked with her.  Imagine this greetingL

Hi!  I didn't want to interrupt your nice family dinner!  I'll come back at another time!  Best, Kayla 

Unfortunately, Kayla had been schooled well in MEketeering.  Sadly, as more doors are slammed in her face, I can see her young optimism and perkiness eroding quickly.  Looking ahead, poor Kayla just may become casualty of lazy, old school training, resigning her green jacket for a fast food uniform.

As I've repeatedly mentioned in my blog posts, the old tactics don't work in the new economy. Marketing has fundamentally shifted:


The companies that really understand this shift will change their tactics to demonstrate genuine care and regard for people, devise out of the box methods for reaching people and building affinity, leverage new channels and tools to bolster service, and close deals by demonstrating respect, value and trustworthiness.

Companies of all shapes and sizes - especially those with a local presence:  Use your noggins!  Be people-centric. Celebrate your customers as they celebrate your products and service.  Get yourself on local, review driven sites like Angie's List and encourage customers to review your service or products!  Use Facebook to create a solid local network, bound by relationship.  Do something to improve a neighborhood, shout about it online and through traditional media.  Be authentically good!  And, if you go door-to-door, do it with respect and politeness, and in a sensible referral driven manner.  Demonstrate care for people, tell a compelling story and don't push too hard.  It's good business, and it's about time.  You can't afford NOT to make the shift in this tough economy!

This is true even when we deal with bad apples:  These are the copy cats and snake oil salesmen who skirt licensing and permissions and make unethical use of IP and content. We've all seen them at work and many of us have seen our work replicated and re-branded by others in a way that has been disconcerting - and even maddening.

In response to the snakes..n. I have always tried to maintain an optimistic perspective.  I generally believe what goes around, comes around... and that MOST people aren't jerks. I have held out hope that smart people will be able to recognize the copy cats and snake-oil salesmen.


In the not to distant past, I encountered a situation where one of my course attendees from a major university announced her intention to take my ideas and course materials and repackage them into a workshop, for which she was charging a premium.  Prior to taking my class, this individual couldn't recognize an ear from an elbow with regard to social media - yet the person's desire to reincarnate into a social media "guru"seemed focused and intentional.

I made the discovery two days before the class. While at first I was amused, I then considered the hefty, password protected companion website I'd created for the course.  It featured my own laboriously assembled class presentations as well as an array of fully accredited and referenced articles, how-to's, videos, research, case studies , etc. from a variety of sources (some of which I paid to license and others from respected sources and peers in the field).

Needless to say, the site took weeks to assemble - not including the months of collecting I'd done or the pre-course survey I did to make sure I had content tailored to specific types of business.  To be honest, if I'd counted those hours in my prep time, I didn't break even teaching that course.  However, in truth, I didn't put the site together for money.  I wanted to be open about sharing - promote the outstanding work of folks in my social media network -- and enable course participants (mostly SMB's) to help themselves succeed long after I was gone.  

What happened next is something people have called "Divine Intervention."  My "copy cat" was stricken by a "freak illness" the day before class and ended up hospitalized during the days of the course. As a no-show, the person never gained access to the course materials - and I was relieved.

Crisis averted...but BOY did it all make me think ...

• Has this made me more reticent to trust? Yes Peter!  Absolutely.
• Has it made me think more carefully about what and how I share? Yes - and I think I'm afraid I'm still too open for my own good ...
• Is Plagiarism changing how I will proceed with monitoring and Creative Commons attribution? Yes.
• Will the tools and monitoring and licensing be enough? No, Peter!  I don't think so - and here's why:

In my opinion -- beyond the lack of proper awareness and education in this area, I believe the plague of plagiarism is a reflection of a larger crisis of ethics.  

As we both know: You can't legislate morality.  

Consider the fact that most people do not think twice about ripping CDs and sharing music and images in a manner that is an active violation of Federal Law. The sad truth is that the illegal use of material and especially digital assets is pervasive in our cultures...often "accepted" and practiced -- in households, businesses and even churches across our nation and around globe. While there are some who won't do this because of their own moral convictions -- It is likely that a large number of our readers do this without thinking!

So, why should people view our digital content and IP any differently?

I submit that they do not.  We'll see the results outside of business service offerings, white papers and blog posts in the term papers of the future.  And with the proliferation of media, it may be more and more difficult to figure out where people are getting their material in the future.

Moving forward, what can we do?  Lots of good comments on Peter's post aboout this.  My thoughts:


1. Each one of us must take initiative to protect our investments with the resources and tools we have at our disposal.  My tool kit includes many of the ones Peter mentioned... Many of these will mature over time - and get better and helping us monitor the "snakeosphere."

2. We can leverage the law where it matters most.  Existing laws should help protect us, but I'll go out
on a limb to assert that the law may be most useful for those with a great deal of time and money to spare. For a large number of us, using the law and the courts to resolve issues is likely to be "resource prohibitive." 

3. We can find ways to empower the "Social Media Sphere" to police itself.   Community and peer pressure can often go far to change the behavior of the masses.  Many of us have asked questions about what we can do about plagiarism. The big question is how we can police ourselves without giving seedy people attention they may actually benefit from?  Stuff like mentions, site traffic, inbound links, etc.  Google doesn't penalize people for "negative" attention. ;-)

To his credit, Peter "ousted" a few offenders in the comments field of yesterday's post.  It needed to be done. However, this is slightly problematic from the standpoint that publicly ousting a snake oil salesman from a high profile, thought leader's blog immediately creates traffic and links in to the web properties of the offender that can boost things like the "T-rating" "G-rating" and site traffic and comments. On the up-side, a least we know who to look out for! The problem is, this can result in greater visibility that might work in the individual's favor...


Also to his credit, Armano didn't link to the guy who was ripping off his feed (at least I didn't see a link).  Incidentally, guy was ripping off feeds from other thought leaders, making up quotes and facts about himself,.  This guy even had the audacity to rip off his entire site design from Google, and swipe a commercial social media video created by Sprint, removing the brand name and inserting his own!   I'll admit that when I saw this guy at work, I wanted to "out" him to everyone I knew  -- "sicking the social media community" on his butt, so to speak... Perhaps we all did -- but we seemed to apply restraint so as not to give this guy any attention that might be used to his advantage. The problem with this is, we can't warn others about the snake oil peddlers this way.

Moving forward, perhaps using a hash tag on Twitter like #snakeoil  - just  as a way to index this discussion. I'n not sure that would be highly effective as a policing method, though. A few people have suggested creating a "Snake Oil Wiki"  - and I'd say it would have to require people to submit screen-grabs of an accused person's offenses AND (in the interest of fairness) offer a forum for accused individuals to defend themselves.  This way - it's fair and the evidence remains when sites are changed (as they often are post-discovery). Not sure who wants to take that on, from a legal perspective...but it'd certainly require counsel and legal backup!

In the mean time, I'll continue on...trying hard to provide value and trying to be an optimist.  I'll rely on the tools that are available -- in addition to applying prayer as needed when the jerks try to ruin my day. After all, as my story tells, it has proven to be my most effective tool, to date!   ;-)

As context, Li was talking how, beyond the contact lists, implicit data helps fill in gaps about the level of closeness or intimacy individuals have with each other. She went on to talk about how this will change in the future based on usage patterns detected by Google and other social networks... painting a picture of a future "social algorithm."

I don't disagree with Li's assertions at all - in fact I think she's spot on. It's the slide above that kept coming to mind. Taking that graphic at a literal level, I don't agree that the implicit data represented above really does help fill in gaps regarding people's relationships in any way other than a subjective one - nor do I think it reflects any kind of accurate indicator of an individual's level of "closeness" or "intimacy" with others (trust). Incidentally, I'm not sure Charlene actually asserted this... I believe the slide was used in a figurative manner.

But it still got me thinking about both sides of the trust equasion. How do individuals (specifically with regard to social media) think about trust with regard to other people?   How do marketers look at Trust in the networked economy?

For individuals, here's my take on what the trust spectrum might look like:



Playing off the concept of "circles of trust", we see an outward radiation of trust and intimacy.  At the "inner circle" there is high trust.  In the outer circle there is "no trust"  In further examining trust dynamics, it's fair to assert that people tend to transition back and forth between spheres, depending on events, mood, conversation, disposition and other factors.   

If you buy this concept, trust, or intimacy is therefore somewhat fluid. It's also device and technology independent (although the actions at the right of that diagram show how I might interact with individuals using social media terms).  We'll come back to this in at the end.


1. VOICE:  Understanding where an individual is trusted is an essential component of targeting. Voice examines an individual's level of engagement (posts, tweets, discussions, comments) across various topics (e.g. Frugal Living) and the overall sentiment of that engagement (positive, negative, neutral) over time.  In other words:  
For example, I might trust Beth Kanter as an authority on non-profits and social media.  However, I might not trust her as a good referral source on which flat screen TV I should buy.  As such, voice is a critical area of examination related to targeting high-trust individuals.


2. REACH: Examining the network of the individual is also an essential component of targeting. This includes an understanding of the person's online and offline influence, across traditional media channels (e.g. television, print, etc.).  In the online channels, reach examines the size and scope of the individual's active network within various sites and networks, as well as the frequency of communication that occurs. 


Furthermore, examining how the communication and dialog flows across online and offline channels may be germane to gauging the efficacy of an individual's reach. 

INFLUENCE:  There's been a lot of talk about influence today - and I don't want to rehash all that dialog. At a high level, and in simple terms, I see it as an outcome of a number of other considerations.  Primarily, I believe it is a measure of an individual's reach divided by the number of high trust relationships (see circle diagram above) times voice...something like this:


If influence directly impacted by the ebb and flow of trust within an individual's network, it it's important to note that influence is also somewhat fluid and relative. And all of this is already measured as a factor of time.

The sticky challenge is measuring the level of trust individuals have within their network. The truth is this: As outsiders, we can only gauge an individuals relationship on a trust spectrum based on a myriad of attributes, including length of relationship, messaging frequency, physical relationship, public/private discourse, "lists", discussion topic(s), sentiment, recent events, real-world connection and other complex and sometimes esoteric factors.  In the end, some of this data will be available and some will not.  As such, the outcome is somewhat likely to be somewhat subjective...depending on the time frame reviewed, quantity and amount of information analyzed (etc.).