I was honored last night to be invited to share some social media perspective on PBS’ NewsHour. You can watch my comments here.

Invisible Children’s #Kony2012 campaign has a lot of people talking. After three days on YouTube, the video had 40 million views.  Now, a few hours later, it has 52.5 and every time I refresh the page, the number grows. It has been a worldwide trending topic on Twitter for days. At the peak on Wednesday afternoon, there were 4,000 mentions a minute on Twitter related to the campaign. I don’t know of another video that has gone so big so quickly.

Now compare that to when the earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, stunning the world with devastating images and a rapidly increasing death toll, some of the world’s top celebrities gathered to re-make the We are the World video. After two days, that video had half a million views. Today, two years later, that video has 98 million views and is one of YouTube’s top 10 all-time viewed videos.

So now the big question: What’s the point?

We know that the biggest demographic sharing this video and talking about it is girls in the U.S. ages 13-17.

The call to action on the campaign is to “make Kony famous” so that the pressure and visibility to eventually capture him and bring him to justice this year. The campaign launched with the support of A-list celebrities like George Clooney and quickly gained new celebrity supporters like Justin Bieber when it became a trending topic worldwide on Twitter in a matter of hours. Invisible Children’s Facebook page went from ~400k fans to 2 million in 2-days’ time!

But while this campaign has already made Kony more famous than anyone ever expected it could, what can come out of it?

In Egypt and Tunisia, social media helped to bring down dictators. In Haiti, social media helped to raise millions. Can social media sweep through the jungles of Uganda to find Joseph Kony?

That is the question on everyone’s minds. And frankly the criticism of the campaign –how Invisible Children spends their money, whether capturing Kony will have any impact, whether this is the right issue to pour so much attention into–is only fanning the flames of this viral fire.

My big question in all this is: How much will Invisible Children raise through this campaign? I think that’s going to break another record. And I hope they put it to good – to healing those children whose childhood was stolen from them and from helping Uganda, the DRC and other countries torn apart by war to have a fresh start and a new beginning.

At the end of the day, isn’t there value in the simple fact that we are getting teenage girls in the U.S. to use their texting thumbs to spread awareness of an issue that couldn’t be farther from their backyard?

Watch the video and tell me what you think:

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It’s been a while since I posted to this blog. If you’ll allow me to make excuses, I do think I have a couple of good ones. I’ve been madly working to finish my master’s degree at Johns Hopkins in digital communication while working full time. On top of it all, I’m currently 35 weeks pregnant! I’m now in the final stages of two of these three all-consuming activities (being pregnant and completing my master’s) and I’m hoping I can get your help on the latter. (If you want to help me with my pregnancy, donations of caramel apples are warmly welcomed…that’s all I crave these days.)

Over the next several weeks I will be writing a thesis on social networking fundraising strategies. I’ll conduct several focus groups with people who are plugged into social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Yes, I’m looking at YOU.

I want to know what makes donors feel motivated to give to social causes of all sorts, and when, if ever, that motivation has started with a recommendation from a connection online.

For all you academics, my working research question is: What factors motivate people to donate to a charity through social media?

But before I even start recruiting for my focus groups, I’d love your help.

Do you think traditional best practices in fundraising apply to social media?

We know that organizations such as Charity:Water have been able to use networking on Facebook and YouTube to raise millions. The Red Cross credits their outreach on Twitter and other key social media networks to bring in $5 million in donations via text message following the earthquake in Haiti.

But what makes these effective appeals different from traditional fundraising? Anything?

Do you interact differently with charities because of social networking? If you see a friend’s recommendation for you to “like” a non-profit on Facebook, what makes you want to click?

In sum, does social media push you any closer to clicking that famous “DonateNow” button? And why?

Ok, now your turn. Let me have it…

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Look out folks, it's on the rise.

Foursquare is what some in social media circles are calling the Twitter of 2010. It is a social media game that rewards you for logging your location at any point in the day.  Eating a burrito? Tell the world where and when! The more you do, the more “badges” you earn. If you are the person who has logged the most visits to a specific place on Foursquare, you will win the additional honor of becoming the “mayor” of that location. Smart locales are playing along and giving out freebies to their “mayors.” Taste D-Lite lets customers accrue extra points on their TastiRewards cards for Foursquare check-ins and tweets.

From January 2010 to February, Foursquare passed the 1 million mark on Twitter (you can opt to have all your posts on Foursquare automatically post on your Twitter stream as well). In that month’s time, the number of check-ins doubled–showing remarkable promise. It list of seed-money investors include some of the most innovative minds in social media, including Digg Founder Kevin Rose, who endorsed the site to the tune of $1.35 million.

Some cite the brilliance of Foursquare in the fact that real-life social interactions become a virtual game. The person who wins the game is the person who is best able to show the world that he/she has the most interesting life.

So why do I think it’s such a bad idea?

Don't people realize the power they are giving to others when they reveal their whereabouts & spending decisions?

Because so far, the only benefit I can see in Foursquare for the common man–the Joe-the-Plumber, if you will–is that it’s entertaining.

Who really wins in Foursquare? Marketers, big businesses, anyone hoping to use your personal information to make  buck…oh yea, and the FBI. And trust me, there are bucks to be made in this. I hate to be a fear-monger here. I swear, I’m not one of these “all change is bad” people. I am a quick adapter. Half my family has me to thank for their Facebook pages. But I also believe that information is power. And by making public every location where we spend money, we are giving incredibly powerful information away for free.

Twitter, which some would argue does the same thing (see cartoon on left), you have the option to generate meaningful conversations (albeit short ones), show off expertise, track breaking news, donate to a cause, and much more. You can also remain anonymous if you need to (on Foursquare, you can’t be a “mayor” unless you’ve posted a profile photo). No one ever needs to know your location in order to tweet.

Time for the Twitter vs. Foursquare Face-Off

Looking at this from a different angle, let’s take John Bell‘s five key questions to determine the viability of a new technology as a “groundswell” threat.

• Does it enable people to connect in new ways? – Yes, both Twitter and Foursquare present creative connection tools for people around the world.
• Is it effortless for people to use and signup? Yep. and Yep.
• Does it generate enough content to sustain itself? You bet.
• Is it an open platform? Of course.
• Does it shift power from institutions to people? This is the key question. In Twitter, the answer is an unequivocal YES. During the Iran elections, voices resonated worldwide because Twitter gave them a mobile platform. With Foursquare, I would argue that the institutions are the ones who still hold the power. Users feed information that otherwise would have been painstakingly cataloged by expensive marketing research firms and sold to big businesses in order to improve their bottom line. At most, you could argue that it shifts power from big institutions to smaller institutions. Those mom-and-pops shops who can’t afford market research can log into Foursquare and see what kinds of people are coming regularly, and try to capitalize on them.

My question is: Do the benefits outweigh the negatives? With Foursquare, they do not.

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What do you think about the longtime debate of how society is impacted by the Internet? Are we all doomed to bowl alone?

Craigslist and outdoor markets both form communities, but in very different ways. Many would argue that a physical community will always be stronger than a virtual one, but even the biggest fear-mongers for the evils of technology admit to a certain cohesion that forms online.

Robert Putnam is famous for arguing that technology is eroding society. In a review of Craigslist, however, he opens up the definition of community to something that can be meaningful–even when when entirely virtual. The paper ends with a quote from Craig Newmark:

People started telling me that they felt connected in some kind of community

sense. I used to be doctrinaire about definitions and I didn’t feel it was

a community site, but I eventually said, if people feel connected, it must be

a community.

So how does your definition of community change when all the interaction is online?

I had a recent experience that made me think of community in a new way. I was eating breakfast with my sister, her family, my husband and my in-laws at a popular outdoor market in my neighborhood when my husband got a call on his cell phone. “Do you have a white dog with black spots?” Our stomachs flipped as we ran over to the place where we had tied our dog. She had snapped the metal clasp on her leash and attacked another dog in this very busy outdoor farmer’s market. One woman had broken up the fight and had blood on her hand. Completely oblivious, our dog was lying on her back, wagging her tail as two policemen and a crowd of people surrounded her.

As I spoke with the policemen and the woman who had broken up the fight, different people from the market came up to me, incredibly upset at my dog and wishing horrible things on her. Other people put their arms around me and responded to the people who were yelling. All of these people were complete strangers. But they were also members of my neighborhood “community.”

In all, everything worked out ok. No dog or person was hurt, the policemen moved on and so did we.

But it left me with a tangible sense of this word “community” that we hear so much about. When people care so much about their neighborhood that they will yell at a stranger for violating the peace, that makes a community. When others strangers will comfort each other and speak for someone they think is getting the short end of the stick that does feel like community.

Does this type of community form online?

How do you define community? What communities do you feel most strongly connected to?

Much of what I have observed online is like-minded individuals forming online communities. The backlash for those who express alternate opinions is often biting. People can be very harsh online.

Additionally, it’s much easier to skip out of an online community, than a real one.

That said, Craigslist truly does form a community of diverse individuals after a common goal. Without Craigslist, my house would be sparsely furnished. And I would never have met as many people in my neighborhood without it.

So what do you think? Can the word community be used in the same way for the organization online and your physical neighborhood?

What does “community” mean to you?

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Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge have some great advice in PR 2.0: Putting the public back in public relations. I’ve taken it to heart by coming up with my top ten ways to utterly fail at public relations in today’s world of social media.

Read this list to find out how NOT to practice PR 2.0

10. Invest your entire budget on the latest technology so you have nothing left for staff time or training to put the tools to strategic use.

9. Automate as much of your content as possible so you never have to worry about visiting all those different social sites (what was that called again? Tweeter?) this way, all your sales pitches can reach as many people as possible with the click of a button.

8. Never respond to criticism or negative comments (this only stirs up trouble–plus, it’s hard.)

7. Don’t worry if the people following you on different networks are interested in your content. There is power in volume. Surely, someone somewhere will swallow your pitch.

6. Focus on producing as much content as possible at all times. With all your other systems completely automated, this should be no problem.

5. Send as many long press releases to as many recipients as you can. You want to make sure that these press releases include every detail about your products and services as possible. You should also be sure to repeat important points several times. Most people aren’t very smart.

4. Never link to a related company’s web site. That will just boost the competition.

3. Increase your follower count on social networks by setting up automated follow based on as many keywords as you can think of. Granted, you’ll soon be following millions of people, but you won’t be logging onto the actual sites ever anyway, so you don’t have to worry about the clutter. Plus, some of those people are bound to follow you back eventually

2. Measure your success by quantity, not quality. It is more important to get millions of people viewing your sales pitch than a few hundred passionate advocates posting their personal experience with your product/service to their own networks. You don’t want to lose control of your message or let them water down your perfect pitch.

1. Ignore all this social networking stuff online. It’s probably just a fad.

The straight and narrow path to successful public relations on the social web includes making sure everyone knows you are human, not a machine.

If you’re sensing a common theme in this list, you’re right. It seems that many professionals mistake the ease provided by social media as an excuse to mindlessly accumulate followers without putting much thought into it. This is not the case. If anything, social media requires an even more personal touch in order to be effective. People are incredibly adept at spotting mechanical responses. This is why the point is repeated over and over in Solis and Breakenridge’s book. It’s also the underlying theme in Groundswell, a book by Forrester Research execs Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

Small organizations like this one can put this to practice easily by finding a few key opinion leaders and learning what they want to hear from you. When you can get a sense of what type of information will be useful to your key contacts, you can start to build meaningful relationships and cultivate them.

Ironically, the key to succeeding in our increasingly wired world is making sure everyone knows you’re human.

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Thank you for participating. You are now an expert.

In the booming world of social media, words like “guru,” “expert,” and … ugh…”innovator” are handed out like participation trophies at a 3rd grade swim meet. But what–or who–determines the line of demarcation between average social media consumer and social media guru?

If you believe communications theorists’ definition of Diffusion Theory, Opinion Leaders (what you or I would call the gurus or experts) are defined by how many people fall in line behind them. So yes, folks: the number of Twitter followers you have does matter after all! Opinion Leaders also have to be well connected, good communicators and relatively innovative (that means that they are ahead of the masses following them, but not too far ahead).

Diffusion theory is all about how to measure social change: When it happens and how. And these opinion leaders are key in the formula.

So when diffusion theory is applied to our society’s massive movement to using digital media as a key communications tool, who are the Opinion Leaders?

Here’s my short list. Who am I missing?

• Steve Jobs — the creator of the iPhone has to place high on anyone’s list, right? Even major phone companies are copying Apple’s designs…and now to my amusement, their advertising strategy. (Side rant: Will someone please tell the “iDon’t” people and the “I’m a PC” people that they are just strengthening the already die-hard crowd of Apple believers???)

Just look at the picture and you can tell Pete Cashmore is a true Opinion Leader...or sumthin'.

• Pete Cashmore — he went from starting a blog in his basement at age 19 to the founder of social media’s mecca. Mashable.com is the source for everything from how-to tips to breaking trends.

• Evan Williams – The co-founder of Twitter has a remarkable record of reinvention and innovation. And if you watch the interview with him at the journalism industry’s best association event of the year, you’ll see he is widely worshipped in the crowds of information dissemination. The tool he helped created has vastly changed blogging and mass communication forever.

This top-three list is just for those related to the field of social media. It’s highly disputable–and I’m sure as soon as I hit “publish” I’ll think of someone huge who should knock Ev off…but no list is perfect. If we had to look at the U.S.’s biggest opinion leaders overall, we’d have to include Oprah and Barack Obama to the list. But thankfully, we won’t try to go that big.

But now I ask:

How is innovation diffusion changing with social media?

Get in line, folks the "guru" has spoken!

I do believe that these opinion leaders are becoming weaker as social networks strengthen. Oprah can still send a book to the bestseller list with a 15-second recommendation and a link on her Web site. But surely there’s less room for more Oprahs within mainstream media. Instead, we are grouping off into many stronger, but smaller, networks–each with its own opinion leader.

This gives more people the opportunity to be considered a “guru” but at the same time less weight to the crown. So maybe our swim coaches had it right all along. Maybe we all deserve participation trophies for being opinion leaders of our own niche. Or perhaps we should start rewarding those who are just following along. They are becoming the rare ones.

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Anderson makes a good case for how the explosion of online commerce equalizes opportunity and spreads the wealth

At least once a week I see protesters against universal health care holding huge posters warning of Obama’s socialist agenda (I work right by the White House). Conservative pundits like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck insult Obama by calling him a socialist…and we’re supposed to cringe in terror.

With this in mind, I ask:

How do you think our fair and balanced friends at Fox News would react to Chris Anderson’s view of the socialist state of our collective online futures?

First, let’s be clear. Socialism does not mean fascism or Stalinism. I’m not talking about big-brother State murdering journalists and political dissidents. And while there are many different political systems that adopt their policies as “socialist,” what I mean here is the strict definition of the principle.Wikipedia says it well: “a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended.”

The 80/20 distribution disappears when online commerce opens up the number of options available for the same cost.

Meanwhile, economist Vilfredo Pareto outlined wealth distribution at the turn of the 18th century with a ratio. He found that about 20 percent of the population owned 80 percent of the wealth. Since Pareto’s time, this ratio has been argued for all levels of modern economic systems. Merchants find that 20 percent of their products account for 80 percent of their sales.

If Anderson is to be believed, that model is dead with the Web.

That’s where socialism comes in. With the even-handed nature of the Web, you and I can decide to Digg an article or not, and that’s what rises to the top.

Digital technology eliminates the need for editorial decisions. All products can be treated equally and filtered for any number of different audiences.

Everyone has an equal opportunity to define the agenda for the day.

It’s a philosophical difference. When all information is treated equally, society is collectively held responsible for sifting through the nonsense. Anderson reflects, “Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than one that simply accepts what it’s told from a narrow range of experts and institutions.” When all information is treated fairly equally, we are required to think for ourselves. We are no longer media consumers, but media critics, analysts, and producers.

Anderson calls this, “The Paradise of Choice.” With the nearly unlimited boundaries of online commerce, choices become close to infinite. And the alternative to this paradise? Having those on top of society (the editors, business owners, political forces) choose for us. I doubt even the staunchest anti-socialism advocates would surrender their freedom of choice.

But the variety isn’t enough. In order to make smart choices, we also need more information about the choices.

And that’s where the power of filters comes in.

Search engines started the filtering process. Google analyzes keywords to bring meaning to a Web page. So that when you search for a term, you are likely to find a page all about that term.

Now social networks pick up where searches left off and filter topics and sources through your own network’s recommendations. Facebook’s new “Live Feed” even filters information using information on the friends with whom you interact the most.

Real-time-web promises to be even smarter–using information about our past actions to define what we are truly looking for in a search and recommending pages we never would have found otherwise.

But as online information grows and is filtered over time, one overriding quality stands out: We are quickly breaking off into many niche markets.

Could this be an element of human nature? To make ourselves feel more significant, we constantly form into small ponds? Anderson argues it is something deeper than that. In clusters, we are more creative and productive. Cities are energetic hubs. In these niches, society seems to group itself naturally.

Perhaps this natural filtering process is our natural way to seek and define our individual identity…not a very socialistic tendency. Whatever the answer, I find strength in the thought that we are moving in the direction of greater collective autonomy and power. Editors can overlook a big story, but millions of users on the Web are less likely to be so neglectful. One must hope that the “collective wisdom” we hear so much about is truly wise and not just a lot of fluff.

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President Obama's virtual town hall gave organizers, including office on new media director Macon Phillips, "an ulcer" because the highest-ranked question was on legalizing marijuana.

This week I was fortunate enough to ask Macon Phillips, the director of the office of new media at the White House, how he is able to hurdle government bureaucracy and create some of the Web’s most innovative uses of social media for President Obama. We all know that the Obama campaign and now administration has set the standard for political engagement on social networks. I’m sure books will be written about just that.

Phillips talked unassumingly about how the White House is using new technology to reach larger audiences, get their feedback, and sort the feedback into manageable bites that then reach the ears of the most powerful man on earth. Phillips also talked about one of the toughest moments for his office, when President Obama responded to questions submitted and voted on by online communities for an Online Town Hall. The conference made headlines when the top-rated question had to do with legalization of marijuana. The President made light of the question asking what that said about online communities. Phillips said the experience gave him a very rough few days in the White House, not to mention an ulcer.

I was glad Macon Phillips took my question (and follow-up) and even happier with his great answer. "Never start a sentence with Twitter" when proposing a new social media strategy to your boss, he said.

What I most wanted to hear, though, was how Phillips sells these cutting-edge ideas internally. Social media is all about trial and error. And when you fail in social media, you do so very publicly (case in point: The question about weed).

Philips said the key was not to frame the conversation in terms of the tools. “Never start the sentence with ‘Twitter,’” he said. He said he convinces the President’s office of the importance of engaging in social media by emphasizing the potential impact. “Wouldn’t it be cool to get thousands of people to watch the President talk about health care and then give him a way to answer their questions in real time?” Is more effective than confusing social media skeptics with lots of technical jargon about the tools that will be used.

He couldn’t have given better advise to the audience. Phillips was speaking to 125 non-profit professionals who work in Washington, DC at the Oct. 22 White House Networking Reception. While non-profits are often touted as the industry most on the edge of social networking, we are far from immune from the knee-jerk responses to innovation. Especially in a year that has cut back so many non-profit budgets, it can be hard to justify spending valuable staff resources on tweets. Social media can feel intangible, abstract and unimportant.

But it’s not.

More and more, we’re seeing that the organizations that embrace social media, are the ones that survive–and flourish. Phillips is at the cutting edge, and we would all do well to follow his example.

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This week I had the distinct honor to interview longtime investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. His office was a love story to journalism of days past. It was filled with piles of boxes, papers, files, notebooks, awards, and books written by him. He even had an old typewriter on top of a filing cabinet. He takes all his notes by hand and only types on the computer when the story is final. No database of contacts, just scribbles on the backs of yellow legal pads.

Newspapers are closing. Does this mean an end to quality information? Not if you believe Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody"

Unsurprisingly, he had a very negative view on the future of the profession to which he has dedicated more than 30 years.

But I’m not so sure I agree with Hersh’s pessimism.

I truly value quality journalism (and in the interest of full disclosure, I am paid to say that). But I’m not so sure that professional journalists are the only ones that can give us quality news. And with dropping circulations, shuttered newspapers, and a widely-held business model going up in flames, we may all be stuck relying on online collaboration to do journalists’ dirty work of keeping politicians honest, businessmen ethical, and communities connected.

Clay Shirky spends 344 pages illustrating what will happen when the masses organize without formal corporations in Here Comes Everybody. Shirky points out that social media is based on very different principles than large organizations.

For one, in social media, collaboration is king.

The most successful social tools are the ones that started small and relied on a community. Through trial and error, and by incredible collaboration, they grew incrementally bigger. Take Linux, which now runs on some 40 percent of the world’s servers. The brainchild of Linus Torvalds, Linux began with an unassuming note on a discussion group. All along the way, Torvalds sought help from a community of developers and promised to implement the best ideas. This collaboration proved to be one of his keys to success.

Steven Colbert teases Craig Newmark for destroying the American newspaper then asks him how he comes up with the idea. Craig's answer is true to Shirky's definition of success for social organization: He put collaboration front and center.

Now, apply that to journalism.

Many analysts blame the rise of Craigslist.org with the decline of the newspaper industry. Craig Newmark started Craigslist with much of the same humble community awareness that went into Linux. He saw people using the Internet as a way to help eachother out, and decided to do the same. Newspapers missed the boat. They put brand and tradition ahead of the community’s needs, and as a result they missed an opportunity to provide a useful tool that could have, in turn, raised their popularity–and their profits.

New Ways to Produce the News

In the new era of social collaboration, Shirky says, quality content can be produced by hundreds of tiny contributions.

Take Wikipedia, a community-created and maintained encyclopedia. Since 2001, this collaborative Web site has been a growing source of information on every topic from asphalt to astrophysics.

And it has the news.

Minutes after the 2005 London bombings, there was a Wikipedia page with a few sentences of what had happened. In the first five hours of the page’s existence, Shirky says, more than a thousand edits were made. Members of the Wikipedia community linked to traditional news outlets, and to phone numbers for people trying to track down loved ones. The page that was never touched by a professional journalist was a hub for vital information. Oh: And it didn’t cost a penny to produce that information or share it with the public.

Powerful Forces

The forces of social media have proven to bring real results. In May of 1992, the Boston Globe published more than 50 cases detailing abusive behavior by Catholic priests, specifically Reverend James R. Porter, who was accused of sexually abusing children in three different Boston parishes. The stories produced outrage, and the church criticized the media coverage as unfair. Despite the scandal, no priests resigned and no legal action resulted.

This online community formed in response to newspaper articles regarding scandal in the Catholic church. Their organized outrage brought real results.

Compare that with a similar scandal in 2002.

Same city. Same newspaper. Same appalling behavior by religious leaders (this time it was Father John Geoghan, a Catholic priest who had abused children at parishes over a 35-year period). The difference? Technology enabled outraged readers to organize and demand action.

When the story broke in the Boston Globe, blogs, e-mail and discussion forums allowed readers to forward the information on to their own networks of friends, parents, and colleagues. An organization of concerned Catholics formed to demand change. And they brought results: about one year after the formation of the group, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, then archbishop of the Boston Diocese, resigned.

In ten years, the technology was developed for communities of like-minded individuals to unite forces. So instead of a newspaper article creating a wave that eventually died away, it created a tidal wave of action around the world. And it brought a powerful institution to its knees.

If online organizations can produce those kinds of results, I wonder:

Could it be that creative collaboration online could produce collective wisdom surpassing that of the professional news industry?

Time will tell.

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Perhaps one of the reasons I like social media so much is because it seems to go against the very foundation of traditional marketing practices. Reading Forrester Research’s “Groundswell” you almost feel like you’re reading a self-help book for how to be a good friend rather than a book on how to launch a successful social media strategy. Succeeding at social media is all about being authentic, patient, flexible, a good listener, humble, and collaborative (I’m not making this up–that list is lifted straight from the conclusion of the book).

An illustration of my Mad Men avatar making a presentation on how to adapt traditional marketing to social media.

Contrast this with AMC’s portrayal of traditional advertising through their hit series Mad Men and you’ll understand why social media has old-school marketers in a tizzy. Don Draper is the king of advertising at the New York marketing powerhouse at the “Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency.” He knows best and confidently convinces clients of the right strategy, dazzles execs with daring designs, and woos women with his debonaire style and poise.

Don Draper wouldn’t last a minute in today’s social media market. For one, his credibility would be shot as soon as a blogger revealed his dirty little secret that he is able to hide from his clients, colleagues, friends, and even his wife. In the world of social media, often your efforts to hide something make a story blow up as a bigger scandal than if you had let the information go public yourself. Take Digg Founder Kevin Rose’s decision to remove a link to a blog detailing the copyrighted processing key code to HD-DVDs. The community fought back. In a matter of days the code was posted on more than 3,000 sites. The fact that Kevin had removed the link became the news. Kevin gave up, and blogged about his decision. The next day, there were 605 news stories about the incident.

Don would also have to learn that before you can be successful in the world of social technology (what Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff call “the groundswell”), you have to be willing to fail big and keep your plan flexible. It’s important to focus on the relationships and the conversation you are provoking in your community more than on the shiny new tools you are using. You can’t get enamored with new technology without first finding a way that it fits into your overall strategy and meets a specific need of your community.

Why do I get the feeling that Joan would have understood the groundswell better than her male colleagues?

Li and Bernoff recommend working to understand your audience before doing anything to engage them. It is is essential to understand how your targeted audience participate in the groundswell – are they creating content, commenting on existing content, reading content only, or disconnected completely (and note that according to Forrester’s latest research, 18 percent of U.S. internet users want nothing to do with social media). They recommend starting with a POST Method — considering the people you hope to reach, your objectives and how you will measure them, your end-game strategy and then finally, when all other factors have been well determined: the technology.

Also unlike the self-absorbed branding practices of Mad Men’s heyday, the groundswell will see through bullhorn brand broadcasting in an instant. Social marketing has to be more subtle and integrated into a product the people find value in. This explains an increase in product placement on sites, TV shows, movies etc. The groundswell is savvy to the in-your-face marketing that brings Don Draper his glory. If the people sense you are out to sell something, they will go elsewhere. Sites like beinggirl.com do this seamlessly–they sell Tampax and Always in a non-obtrusive manner while providing American pre-teens a space to have real conversations and just be themselves.

Finally, Don would need to understand that part of being successful in the groundswell is not just asking for people’s opinions because you want them to see yours. You have to put the community’s contributions to good use. Bell Canada does this well with their community tool ID-ah! The community allows employees to suggest improvements, then vote for their favorites. The top-voted ideas are then implemented–showing employees that the online community is more than just a place to vent.

So Don, if you or any of your contemporaries are out there, remember that social media marketing is nothing like advertising forty years ago. Today it’s all about provoking great conversation, showing the community you are what you say you are, and truly listening to what others have to say. If you do that, the groundswell will reward you.

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