Privacy is a Luxury You Don’t Have

This post originally appeared on the Harvard Business Review blog.

I remember my first taste of social networking — a 2004 invitation to join Friendster. I declined, traumatized at the thought that people I didn’t know would see information about me (the point of the site, which I deemed quite suspicious, was to help connect you with friends-of-friends).

Fast forward to the spring of 2006, when I was teaching a course at Emerson College. The previous year, Facebook had spread from Harvard to campuses across the country, and my students pestered me to join. And — proving the supremacy of word-of-mouth marketing — while I could resist my lone friend two years before, I couldn’t turn down a classroom of 25 pleading college students. I relented, and my “social networking platform” was launched.

Today — like everyone else — I’m on the site nearly daily, and keep tabs (as best I can) on 1600 friends. But, on a recent trip to speak at a university in Switzerland, I was reminded that Gen Y social media skeptics do exist. After my talk (about online personal branding), students in their teens and 20s kept coming up to me with questions, incredulous that Americans would so willingly share personal details about their lives with God-knows-who. (One 2010 study showed Americans spend dramatically more time than the Swiss — two extra hours per day — on social media sites). Wasn’t it crazy to let colleagues and bosses see so much about us, they wondered? Or — even worse — did we have to resort to self-censorship to craft a “perfect” image?

Privacy is a value that runs deep in Swiss culture — after all, it’s been the key to success for generations of Zurich bankers. But, as I counseled them (and would say to any American Luddites who asked), privacy is a luxury you no longer have. From a professional perspective, the opportunity cost is just too great.

Avoiding personal branding disasters and ensuring your contacts see a consistent, presentable image of you does require the hassle of “curation.” For some, this means a detailed social media strategy; for others, it translates to “just don’t post photos of the keg party”. But for most people, at least in the U.S., making the effort isn’t a choice anymore — we’ve reached a tipping point where eschewing social networking means severely limiting your connections and cultural literacy.

Participating in social media may still look like a choice to the Swiss students I spoke with — just as I felt it was a choice I could decline back in 2004. But in an ever-more connected era, it’s likely that illusion will rapidly give way to an unspoken mandate to engage. Hats off to the civil libertarians standing up for (aspects of) privacy — regulations about what information about us Mark Zuckerberg can hawk, appropriate default settings, and the like. But in a broader sense, we’ve already made the trade: if you’re hunting for a job, investors, connections, or simply trying to track the Zeitgeist, you just can’t compete if you’re obsessing about privacy.

So — do you agree that privacy is dead? Or is there a way to make it work in the era of social networking?

Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. She is the author of the forthcoming What’s Next?: The Art of Reinventing Your Personal Brand (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012).

Why Social Media Wastes Leaders’ Time

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

They called it the Snowpocalypse. When the East Coast was slammed by a massive storm this past winter, Newark Mayor Cory Booker hit the streets, coming to the aid of stranded residents and literally shoveling out a transit bus. But tales of his derring-do weren’t just transmitted by the media or word of mouth. The tech-savvy mayor also blasted out news of his exploits and engaged directly with constituents via Twitter, earning widespread plaudits.

Many respected observers argue that every executive should have a Booker-style “personal social media strategy.” Indeed, it’s almost malpractice not to use Google Alerts so you can monitor what’s being said about you online, and there’s no question that corporations need social media strategies in place to respond to customer complaints, build a brand identity, and perhaps capture some “viral” magic. But how much time should executives personally devote to feeding the gaping maw of social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and more), as compared to other pressing duties?

When Massachusetts sought to boost its economy in the 1990s, then-Governor Bill Weld led an Asian excursion that helped a small Bay State company land a deal with Samsung; a later trip to Israel (including a sit-down with the nation’s finance minister) helped push through a tax code change needed by a local venture capital firm. Why trek across the world for meeting? “If the governor’s there, along with some elected officials, it really impresses folks,” former Massachusetts State Senator Brian Lees told the Boston Globe.

In other words — whether in politics or business — leaders’ very presence is a powerful force that can generate real impact. So how should top execs spend their time? By using their interpersonal skills — and the power of their office — to focus their time and energy on the people who matter (a shifting array of customers, key employees, the media, or others, depending on the company’s needs). Even before becoming President, Bill Clinton was famed, as a New York Times Magazine profile reported, for “making eye contact so deep that recipients sometimes seem mesmerized.” That’s a powerful skill that simply can’t be replicated on a blog or with a status update. The higher an executive rises in the hierarchy, the more inaccessible they generally are. That’s what makes it so special when they take the time to reach out — whether it’s the CEO of Virgin America calling an angry passenger, top executives personally updating board members, or President Obama sending a handwritten note to a gay soldier promising the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Mayor Booker often tweets a dozen or more times per day — and he’s not alone in his obsession with new media. These days, social networking takes up twice as much time online as any other activity (nearly three times as much as email), and Facebook swallows an average of six hours per user each month. Booker’s direct communication with constituents was a hit during the snowstorm. But can the expectation reasonably be sustained that if you tweet the mayor, he’ll show up at your doorstep bearing diapers (as he did for one stranded mother)? Is it the best use of his time to personally field inquiries about potholes and malfunctioning streetlights? Other high-profile leaders like Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) — who boasts 1.7 million Twitter followers — have learned to slow the pace (he tweeted twice during the month of January) or outsource (Alltop CEO Guy Kawasaki uses two full-time staffers to handle the volume). (Update: Kawasaki clarifies his Twitter staffing.)

No executive can afford to be a Luddite and dismiss all new media. Sometimes it’s exactly the right way for you to spend your time (especially if you’re “on the way up” and need to build your profile). But too many leaders dive in without thinking through the costs of social media (what else could you be doing with your time?). After all, in this crowded media landscape, sometimes what matters most isn’t your use of 21st century technologies. Instead, it’s the forgotten 19th century arts (handwritten notes, personal phone calls, and high-quality personal meetings) that can have the greatest impact.

Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. Listen to her podcasts or follow her on Twitter.

Dorie’s Book Review: Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

I’m on a Clay Shirky binge after his excellent Cognitive Surplus, and loved Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008) even more. His major theme in both is that because the cost – in both time and money – has dropped for organizing groups, more people are taking collective action and that can produce  cool results not driven by a profit motive (social uprisings, Wikipedia, Linux, etc.). My favorite highlights:

• Why was the news media so slow to perceive the threat posed to them by the Internet? The fact that they’re “professionals” – i.e., inculcated into a particular guild mentality. Shirky notes, “When a profession has been created as a result of some scarcity, as with librarians or television programmers, the professionals are often the last ones to see it when that scarcity goes away.”
• Though it’s tempting for web Pollyannas to define TV as bad and passive and the Internet as good and interactive, that’s not always the case. In the early days, everyone could interact with each other – but when you get into Ashton Kutcher levels of Twitter followers, it’s just not happening. Shirky reminds us that you can’t forget the dynamics of fame – i.e., when there’s “an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention.” Specifically, he writes, “The mere technological possibility of reply isn’t enough to overcome the human limits on attention.”
• As many HTML-eschewing humanities types will agree, “Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring…It’s when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen.”
• Why did the priest sex abuse scandal revealed by the Boston Globe in 2002 (with a lot of the heavy lifting done, I should note, by my former Boston Phoenix colleague Kristen Lombardi) shake the church so dramatically, when the Father Porter scandal the decade prior didn’t create many lasting changes? Shirky argues convincingly that parishioners’ ability to self-organize had dramatically increased thanks to the web, allowing them to form powerful advocacy groups like Voice of the Faithful.
• Shirky points out that managing employees is an expensive venture – overhead kills. That’s why, he says, “organizations cannot afford to hire employees who only make one important contribution – they need to hire people who have good ideas day after day.” You have to ignore “casual participants.” But that means their potential contributions (to write code, or create marketing ideas, or whatever) is left on the table. Microsoft can’t afford to have them on their payroll – but there’s no reason for Linux not to take advantage of their occasional help. That’s the biggest difference, and advantage, in an open source, ‘collective action’ kind of world.
• Going back to an idea I talked about in reviewing Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, Shirky cites a paper by Ronald Burt of the University of Chicago called “The Social Origins of Good Ideas.” The best ideas, it turns out, are from “people whose contacts were outside their own department.” Too narrow of a worldview (i.e., all your friends work in the same department) and your ideas tend to be too “echo-chambery.” So start making lunch dates!

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Big Think about the Internet: Dorie’s Book Review of Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky – who teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program – is the official “Internet big picture guy.” His new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age is a sweeping look at the evolution of communication, how humans use their time, and potential uses of technology (starting with London’s 18^th century gin craze and moving on from there). This isn’t the place for hands-on tips about effective online techniques – nor is it meant to be. Shirky’s all about providing broad context and larger meaning.

The basic idea (the “cognitive surplus” we’re talking about) is that in the past, people were forced to be passive viewers (if you didn’t own a TV station, you couldn’t make TV shows). All that is changing with technology and the Internet, and it turns out (as Shirky claims) that passivity was a historical accident. Nowadays, people have gobs of extra time and if we harness even a tiny fraction of it for the public good (such as creating Wikipedia entries), then society can create some amazing new things.

Shirky’s a good writer, and tosses in copious examples from highbrow sources (electronic efforts to keep the authorities honest in Africa) to the pedestrian (hordes of hormone-addled Josh Groban fans raising money for charity).

Shirky – instead of gaping over new technology, like a lot of commentators – suggests that we not ask “Why is this new?” but instead,  “Why is this a surprise?” Napster, then, becomes a phenomenon not of evil millennials hell-bent on thievery, but instead, as he points out: “1) Digital data is infinitely and perfectly copyable at zero marginal cost; 2) people will share if sharing is simple enough, and we generally resist being spiteful under the same conditions; and 3) Shawn Fanning designed a system to link 1) to 2) via the right incentives.” That, I think, is exactly right. On Internet activism, Shirky also correctly points out that Facebook has simply “lower[ed] the cost of social coordination among its users.” Calling 200 people takes a lot of time; emailing 200 people takes almost no time. (And yes, with information overload, you may still have to call them to follow up – but things are definitely speeded along.)

Toward the end of the book, Shirky presents an interesting thought problem from the Gutenberg era. “…Observers of early print culture assumed that the abundance of books would mean more people reading the same few texts…As it turned out, the press undermined rather than strengthened the earlier intellectual culture. Because each reader had access to more books, intellectual diversity, not uniformity, was the result. This increase in diversity of sources corroded faith in older institutions…The changes today have something of that feeling.”

So what’s next for a world in which the Huffington Post has almost as much credibility (and sometimes more) as the Washington Post? What do you think?

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant for clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. Visit her website, listen to her podcasts or follow her on Twitter.

How to Avoid Social Media Overload

The advent of Web 2.0 has made keeping up with your industry a 24/7 pursuit. Reporters are constantly tweeting new stories, your colleagues and competitors are blogging and now, you’re expected to join the fray as a “content producer” — on top of your regular job. How do you make time for it all?

1) Don’t be an early adopter. You could spend your entire life test-driving new technologies. Unless you’re billing yourself as an online strategist or are dying to headline an O’Reilly tech conference, sit back and let others do the hard work for you. Remember Second Life? The fad-du-jour of the mid-aughts featured a “virtual world” in which people could create cartoon avatars that interacted with other participants in a variety of activities, from buying and selling virtual goods to conducting online love affairs. Second Life even played host to corporate recruiting events for prestigious companies such as Bain & Co. and Verizon Communications. At the Bain event, the Wall Street Journal reported, “a partner’s avatar slumped over by accident and looked as if it were asleep.” Save yourself the trouble: don’t bother adopting technologies before they’re ready for prime time — as evidenced by the fact that Second Life has now been eclipsed by trendier technologies.

2) Sample widely. Most executives don’t need to become social media mavens — but they do need to know what they’re talking about (you don’t want to be the only one in the room who doesn’t know what a hashtag is). In general, you’re fine if you’re comfortable using and talking about the social media technologies that have penetrated public consciousness — namely Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, podcasts, and blogs. If you’re not a regular user, open an account and block off an hour or two on your schedule to fiddle around. If needed, with the assistance of a tech-savvy minion who can show you the highlights. To keep up, make a point of picking up Wired magazine at the airport and visiting the SmartBlog on Social Media every week or so.

Read the rest at the Huffington Post.

How to Repair a Damaged Online Reputation

Several months ago, as a favor to a friend, I did an informational interview with a recent grad — a nice young woman with an Ivy League degree. At the end of our coffee, she leaned in and lowered her eyes. “There’s something else I should mention,” she said. “I’m not sure if you Googled me before we met, but… there are some negative things being said about me online.” Her distinctive name and a deranged ex-boyfriend conspired to create a reputation nightmare that’s taken years to resolve and crippled her job search efforts.

So what can you do if your online reputation has been damaged, whether by others or your own mistakes? Here are four strategies to hasten your comeback.

1. Be upfront. Let’s face it: any sane employer/customer/prospective date will Google you the minute they’re serious about doing business with you. It’s far better to control the terms of disclosure — like my young “informational interviewee” did — than wait for them to discover the negative information on their own. Let them know what’s out there, what the truth is, and what you’re doing to respond to it. (I advised the recent grad that she could even spin her experience as a positive: since she’s looking for a communications job, she knows personally the power of online branding and reputation management.)

2. Apologize if necessary. Sometimes — alas — you’re responsible for the mistake. A central tenet of crisis communications is to apologize as quickly as possible, so you don’t inflame the public or your bosses by appearing clueless or defiant. A good example is Washington Post columnist Mike Wise, who earlier this year bizarrely decided to tweet out misinformation about an NFL quarterback (see the Post ombudsman’s coverage). With a one month suspension in hand, he manned it up and took responsibility, tamping down the furor over his breach of journalistic standards: “I’m paying the price I should for careless, dumb behavior in the multi-platform media world,” he announced on his radio program.

Read the rest at the Huffington Post.

Money, Fame, and Blogging

The great blogger Chris Brogan had an interesting post recently about thinking of your audience as “currency” – but not as “money.” It’s a particularly ripe topic because these days, with 1) the advent of social media;  2) the ease of content creation; and 3) the expectation that thought leaders will create such content, many professionals are producing more and more for free. That’s terrific news for readers, fans, and anyone who wants to learn more about your topic – but it can be a deadly path for “content creators” who spend all their time perfecting blog posts and not enough calling clients and making sales.

My grand theory?

1. You can make plenty of money without being famous (most of probably can’t name too many hedge fund managers, yet they control the universe).
2. Being famous helps you make even more money. Once you’re a “name,” for whatever reason (ignominious or otherwise), you can leverage that to get more contracts, speaking engagements, book deals, etc. People want to surround themselves with “the famous.” YET…
3. You can also be famous and quite poor, if you don’t have a plan to leverage it.

 

1876 Greenback, from Cornell University collection.

 

 

In the post that served as Brogan’s jumping-off point, Julien Smith (his co-author for Trust Agents) wrote about how his blog “has no business model.” He acknowledges that the increased credibility helps him sell more books and get better speaking fees, but that he resists “hard sell” tactics and trashy products. Smith is absolutely right that pushing subpar products on readers would quickly turn them off and tarnish his reputation. But I’ll argue that his blog does indeed have a business model. For serious professionals who want to establish themselves as thought leaders, the model is “give to get.”

A blog doesn’t need to make money on its own, via affiliate marketing or Google Ad placement or whatever. (Disclosure! When I mention books I like, I use Amazon affiliate links.) But it does need to make the author money, somehow. In my case, it allows clients to “try before they buy” and get a glimpse of my thought process before they hire me for a speech or a consulting gig. It’s a good way for both of us to 1) find business soulmates or 2) weed out bad fits. After all, if you don’t like my writing style, you probably won’t like my consulting approach, and it’s far better to know that now so we don’t waste each other’s time.

As Samuel Johnson put it, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” That may be a bit of a stretch – but he’s got a point. Blogging can be enriching for the soul, but if you’re spending a significant amount of time doing it for your business, it better also be enriching for your bank account.

How do you leverage your time blogging or using other social media to win business and get clients?

Tips for Content Creation

For many businesses, there’s a constant pressure to create: blog posts, podcasts, tweets, and more. How do you maximize efficiency while regularly pumping out content that’s valuable to your readers? Here are a few of my favorite tips:

 

"Batching" - doing many similar tasks at once - is key to maximizing your efficiency.

 

 

• Twitter: Schedule at least some of your posts in advance using a service like HootSuite (my choice) or TweetDeck.
• Podcasts: If you’re giving a talk, record it and use free software like Garage Band or Audacity to turn it into podcasts. I’ve now got over 60 podcasts online, covering subjects from personal branding to media relations to social media.
• Video: Batch ‘em. If you want to go (semi) fancy, you can hire a videographer (I tapped a local film grad student) to come film you for a half-day. It took preparation–creating talking points and coming up with topics in advance–but we banged out a dozen videocast episodes in one day, which I’ve been steadily uploading at the rate of about one a month.

What are your best time-saving tips for creating great content?

Unstoppable Online Branding

Tomorrow, I’m giving a talk on “Unstoppable Online Branding” for Somerville Local First, a group that works to help local businesses thrive. A few tools and sites I’ll be talking about:

• Chartbeat. For some businesses, Google Alerts are enough to keep you informed about what’s being said about you online. But if you’re the subject of a lot of chatter – or important breaking news – you may want to kick it up a notch with real-time info, Chartbeat’s specialty.
• Flowtown. What social networks do your customers use? Where do they congregate? No need to guess anymore: if you’ve got an email list, Flowtown can comb the data, enabling you to make rational, analytical decisions.
• Location-based services. Hard to predict whether Foursquare, Gowalla, or Facebook Places will emerge victorious from the cage match, but it’s clear that with increasing numbers of smartphones, the rise of GPS, and the ability to reach customers with offers and coupons when they want them most–i.e., when they’re proximate–this will be a big deal in the future.
• Groupon. Some businesses love it, and praise its ability to draw in thousands of new customers. Others condemn it for virtually bankrupting them with hordes of one-time shoppers grabbing the bargain, never to return again. However you look at it, Groupon is a major phenomenon. Frankly, my sympathy is with Groupon here (businesses: if you couldn’t afford the offer, why on earth would you have green-lighted it?).  A phenomenally powerful tool if you harness it correctly.

What are your favorite new online marketing and branding tools?

Personal Branding for Journalists–and the Rest of Us

These days, everyone–even journalists–needs personal branding to ensure they’re properly valued by their bosses and in the marketplace. Check out the podcast of my recent talk to the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association annual convention in San Francisco.

 

Personal branding for journalists? Yeah, we've got that. Photo of Dorie Clark by Joel Veak.