Spend some time outside of social media communities and you’ll realize there are many people who either don’t agree, don’t understand or haven’t yet taken the time to learn about social media (what it is, what it isn’t and the ways it has changed how we communicate). I was reminded of that today when I came across an article criticizing the idea of letting company employees publicly respond to consumers via social media outlets. The author make it clear he sees no business value in social media efforts, and reiterates that all outbound company communications should continue to be handled via internal corporate communications teams. The article generated some great discussion in the comments, but the best response might have been from Scott Monty who reminded us that with any new game changing technology, there are companies that fear and wish to avoid it.

“A friend sent me a PDF of an article from a business journal in which a company expressed reservations about this new technology over which everyone seemed to be abuzz. They decided that they would restrict employees’ use of it, because of the fear of corporate secrets getting out, of insider information making its way to Wall Street, and of employees wasting their time on it. For that reason, they set up the hardware on a single station in the middle of everyone’s desks so that everyone could see how people were using it.

“That PDF was an article from a 1930s business journal and the technology was the telephone.”

If employee social media participation shouldn’t be allowed because it is too risky, then should you also take away their telephone and email access? Clearly not. Give social media a chance first.

FACTS:

Social media interest and participation continues to climb at an incredible rate. Don’t buy into that statement? Read on. The chart below demonstrates the interest (based on search activity) of social media, direct marketing, digital marketing and digital advertising in the United States. Remember, these are not opinions but rather actual google users telling us what they are interesting in via their searches. As the chart shows, direct marketing has been suffering a steady decline, while digital marketing and advertising have a slow and steady increase. Social media however, has a meteoric rise, with no signs of slowing down. Ignoring this fact because you personally believe it is wrong isn’t advisable. The rest of the world is moving ahead. Don’t get left behind due to ignorance.

Take the time to understand social media (the tools, culture and practices) and participate in it first before you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Who knows, just like Sam-I-Am, you may find that you like green eggs and ham!

We’re often so focused on the next big thing or mesmerized by the daily innovation of new services, tools and technologies that emerge on the web that something goes unnoticed. We slowly lose our stable footing and begin to get out of touch with reality. Some of us talk about it as “living inside the fishbowl”, and there is truth to the metaphor. While social computing, social media, and social business design may be the future for the web, we’re just not there yet. Change can be difficult. Things take time, no matter how much we want others to join us in the social web. Consider these facts a reminder about what’s happening in the Digital Marketing & Advertising world, TODAY.

• Search is still King of Digital - According to comScore, there were 13.6 billion searches last month by online Americans. Google maintains the lion share of that volume, at 65%. Google’s continued dominance in search is why they continue to rake in the cash, generating $5.52 billion in revenue for Q2 2009. Simple math says Google is averaging $20 billion in revenue annually, while social darlings such as Twitter have yet to demonstrate a sound business model let alone any revenue. At the end of the day, the biggest business in Digital remains paid search advertising and display advertising. Companies spend millions on them and will continue to do so until these channels stop performing. Even Facebook, which boasts 250 million active users worldwide, only generates an estimated $300-$350 million in revenue, a mere fraction of Google’s financial success.
• Email Marketing, strong and still growing – Email has been and continues to be one of the workhorses of Digital communications. Despite all the innovation in communications technologies we’ve seen with the emergence of social, email continues to grow in total spend, offers mature measurement and analytics, and can be deployed very cost effectively as a result of falling CPMs and a high ROI.
• Mobile finally emerges as a viable option – Mobile device penetration is sufficiently high enough that it has become a viable option for companies to pursue cost effectively, and on terms consumers prefer. Already we’re seeing mobile economies generate substantial revenues. The Apple app store sells $200 million worth of mobile software applications each month, putting the iPhone app economy at $2.4 billion. Additionally, the Android marketplace brings in $5 million per month in mobile app sales.
• Online brands declared dead still thrive – Facebook and Twitter seem to dominate headlines and consumer attention, or do they? Myspace is still drawing in ~60 million unique visitors per month. While this trails Facebook by a wide margin, that is TRIPLE than number of active monthly unique visitors Twitter brings in. Now, that isn’t to mean I expect Myspace to win the social network arms race, but rather to demonstrate that it is still a thriving destination where millions of consumers spend their time. Looking at the top 50 most visited Web Properties in July 2009 and you can see other online brands that have been written off, Yahoo, AOL, even Microsoft Expedia.

Don’t disregard these destinations as irrelevant until you’ve done due diligence to understand your target audience, and where they spend their time.

The point of all this is to remember that we live in a heavily diversified online landscape. Resist the allure of shiny objects, and don’t buy into a single channel silver bullet theory (especially social!). Work hard to understand your audience, and craft a strategy to engage that is spread across the relevant channels listed above. An integrated, diversified Digital asset allocation will provide the most effective results, and with the least amount of risk.

The cat was let out of the bag today regarding Jeremiah Owyang’s next career move. He’s reuniting with former Forrester colleague Charlene Li and joining her new venture, The Altimeter Group. I wouldn’t argue against what a formidable collection of talent, expertise and passion now exists at this young company. Several prominent folks like Todd Defren, Brian Solis, and Jeremy Pepper have already shared their opinions on what a powerhouse combination of talent this is. The blogosphere doesn’t need another breaking news post, so I’ll refrain from a redundant recap. That said, I wish Jeremiah the best and send him a sincere congratulations on this move.

What interests me much more about this news is that we’re FINALLY starting to see folks involved in the social media space put the focus where it ought to be, on harnessing new strategies and tools to provide more business value, PERIOD. Strip all the social media hype down to the bare minimum and that is all that really matters for business leaders. Social technologies have been a great thing for individuals, ushering in changes that we still haven’t seen the end of. However, what they haven’t done en mass yet is brought the financial and/or business value benefits that they need to, in order for companies to run like mad and adopt them.

Why not? Because new media and technology developments are moving at light speed, and most (not all, there are positive and credible examples out there) companies don’t have the capability to assess these changes, analyze their pros/cons, and then put together a roadmap for how to adopt and execute with them in a way that is 100% aligned with business objectives and goals. To date, most of the social media for business is about enagement and activity. Is this a good thing? Yes. No. Maybe, but that answer will be different for each company you ask. I think the real “magic” moment for social media is yet to come. People like Jeremiah, Charlene and others realize this, and see the true opportunities for new media & technologies. They want to legitimize the space to businesses. The way to do that is by speaking a language and vocabulary that the business world understands. Not by talking “tweets”, “plurks” and “likes”. Those are internal nuances of the social media black box. Business leaders don’t need, nor want, to get sucked into that conversation. They NEED to know how to integrate social into their business plans, strategies and cultures, in a way that will better their products or services to drive revenue and increase customer satisfaction (think Social Business Design like David Armano from Dachis Corp., not tactical social media).

If it feels like social media needs to grow up and mature, it’s because it does. The folks at Altimeter certainly are not the only ones doing it, but part of the vanguard attempting to change social media from a pimply, awkward teenager into a responsible, polished young adult.

A new trend is beginning to emerge among brand websites. Some brands, more established in social media uses, have taken the next step beyond maintaining a social presence on the platforms and begun integrating relevant online conversation into their brand websites, providing consumers with a real-time view into what others are saying about a brand’s products and/or services. This isn’t insignificant, nor the first time it has been done. Earlier this year, Skittles took the first step and threw out the typical brand web site only to replace it with a home base of Skittles content pulled directly from the social web (Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr pages).

However, social media integration within brand sites has evolved since Skittles took the leap. Recent examples by Nissan and Ford offer consumers a hybrid of traditional brand site content mashed up with social media content. Let’s look at a few examples in detail.

Nissan – http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/

Initial observations: Nissan is displaying questions and answers submitted via Twitter. Is it really a raw, unfiltered, feed though? My submission wasn’t displayed instantly, and appeared to get submitted for review. Which means this is more of a moderated approach to social media integration. This is understandble given the risks associated with blindly displaying content from the social web, yet one that has also caused problems for other brands in the past due to censorship concerns, and calls for more transparency. Regardless, I admire Nissan’s spirit in attempting to provide a real world view of what questions other consumers are asking, and the answers given. Is this a step towards car buyers research 2.0?

Ford – http://www.fordvehicles.com/the2010mustang/

Initial observations: Ford is taking a different approach but sticking with the same spirit of social integration. The 2010 Ford Mustang site provides the traditional brand site data but enhances that by pulling in relevant blog posts across the social web. Again, I applaud the brands efforts to be transparent and provide related social content for prospective buyers. The process for determining where to pull from and which social web content gets displayed is unknown, but one can assume some moderation, much like the Nissan example.

Verdict: I like it. Adding more consumer value beyond basic product info. In-market buyers can not only get product specs on the brand site but also other consumers perspectives and answers. We’re seeing the evolution of the corporate and product brand site. The impact social media is having on consumer perception and expectation is staggering. These examples show progressive brands that are rapidly experimenting with the most effective ways to integrate traditional and social content together. This is only the beginning and I look forward to watching the continued evolution because in the end both parties win. Brands and consumers. And that is an ending we don’t typically see enough.

More?

Have you seen other examples like these? Please share in the comments below.

Dominos, the pizza maker, became the latest victim of a viral video drive-by brand massacre. Yesterday, 2 employees from an individually owned franchise posted several disgusting videos on YouTube. To say the videos are inappropriate would be an understatement. One of the videos shows a staff member putting cheese up his nose before using it on the pizza he appears to be preparing for a customer. It gets worse from there. You can watch for yourself:

What did Dominos do?

Some good. Some missed opportunities.

Once they became aware (more on how long this took later), the company worked to get the videos removed from the original hosting provider (doesn’t matter, as they have since been uploaded to other sites). Dominos then responded with email communications from Tim McIntyre, Vice President of Communications. He indicated how repulsed he was, and described that their security team was going to look into the matter to identify which store and responsible individuals.

Email from Tim:
We just got off the phone with the franchise owner, who was absolutely dumbfounded by this. He has told us that he will be terminating their employment effective immediately. We suggested that he call them and get a written statement from them, asking them to “explain” (to the extent anyone can, really) their actions. We are also seeking legal counsel to see what kind of action we can take against them for damage to the brand.

You are welcome to use anything I’ve sent to you in the past 24 hours. I do want to thank you for bringing this to our attention…I just wish it hadn’t been posted so prominently on your web site…while it was certainly fair game, it does hurt the company and the thousands of people we employ in this country whether it’s intended or not.

Regards,

Tim McIntyre
Vice President, Communications
Domino’s Pizza, LLC

The company is in damage control mode, operating reactionary during a crisis. While they are taking some of the steps you would expect a brand to do under the circumstances (like terminating the employees and filing criminal complaints with local authorities), they are still missing the opportunity to repair some of the damage done with their customers.

Consumers expect a human response, not messaging

I’ve described before how the social era has changed consumers expectations about how brands interact with them. Consumers want to see and hear the company’s responses from trustworthy employees. Crises like this are no different. In fact, it matters even more. Of course the corporate communications group will be involved in responding (and they should be), but what about the affected store manager? the individual franchise owner? the other employees that work there? Dominos is missing the opportunity to make consumers BELIEVE their side of the story because it isn’t human enough. The work that Scott Monty did last last year during the Ford Ranger Station controversy is a prime example. If consumers were to hear the message from some of the others Dominos employees I mentioned above, it could can help make a real connection, reasonate, and build trust. So make it personal. Make it believable. Make it REAL.

Consumers expect brands to be paying attention

Digital Marketers and Social Media professionals often talk about the importance of listening aka online brand monitoring. Think of it as your brand radar or reputation protection. Had Dominos been engaged in doing so, they mostly likely would have learned about this event sooner, and been in a better position to deal with it. How do we know they weren’t monitoring? We cannot be certain, but ancedotal evidence suggests they have no online brand radar in place (they failed to respond to several attempts by consumers who notified them via email and their website). So it appears the company learned about the event from individuals online reporting it, not because they were listening.

Hopefully they learn how important it is to have an ongoing social monitoring program in place. Consumers expect them to do so. And the benefits of doing so, could have prevented some of the damage, and allowed them to respond individually to consumers who were talking. Pay attention to online conversation. It matters more than you think. Don’t believe me? Go read what people are saying about Dominos now.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=dominos

This isn’t insignificant. Don’t allow your hard work building a brand get decimated overnight. Put the right steps in place to proactively listen and respond in a human voice that matters. If not, the negative perception and experience from consumers can translate to lost revenue. Dollars and cents.

When did we, marketers & brands, lose touch with humanity and thus reality?

When did we stop stop putting the needs and concerns of our customers first?

When did we throw common sense out the window?

Perhaps some never have put customers needs first, or maybe they did at one point but lost their way. A lot of the marketing that I see now is still centered around what the company wants consumers to think about, feel, or do/take action on. That worked for a long time (before social technologies leveled the playing field) but just doesn’t cut it anymore. This isn’t news to many marketers (in theory), and yet there are still so many brands and companies that haven’t yet begun to embrace helping customers and prospects instead of trying to get them to listen to the brand message. Your brand message should be:

I’m here to help make it easier for you to work with my brand

I recently presented on this topic at the Midwest Digital Conference because I believe there has never been a better time for brands to change their approach, and realign their efforts with customers expectations. The interuptive messaging of advertising continues to be less effective. Yet so many brands continue to sit on the sidelines, bury their head in the sand, and ignore the alternatives available to them. News Flash:

The problem isn’t going away because you are ignoring it

We’re in a new era. The social marketing era. An era of new expectations for brands, new rules for interacting, and new methods/techniques for reaching customers. One of the best things about this new era is that you don’t have to guess anymore about what your business should focus on. Why not? Listen to your customers and they will tell you what is wrong, what they need yet aren’t getting from you, and what direction to focus on moving forward. A well planned, ongoing listening program will unearth this info for you. No more guessing. No more well-planned focus group projects. The internet is your on-demand focus group, providing real time feedback every day. All you need to do is harness the tools available and be open to hearing what people are saying. Make no mistake about it, customers are talking!

Taking the next step

Once the needs are identified, deciding what to do next is easy. Solve customer problems! Build a product they are asking for. If you’re a service provider, then use common sense and be helpful! Social marketing offers a tremendous way to do this. With it, big companies can get smaller, by offering individualized, helpful interactions. Small companies can get bigger, enabling them to increase their reach beyond their physical and/or geographic limits.

If you’re planning a strategy to reach consumers online, consider these tips:

1. Offer value - Use common sense, provide customers and prospects with value, not messages.
2. Feelings matter – People remember how you made them feel, not what you said. Plan accordingly.
3. Think holistically - Focus on every touch point a consumer has with your brand. Consumers interact and form opinions of your brand on web sites, social networks like Facebook & Twitter, communities, support forums and video sharing sites. Every individual counts. Everyone is an influencer.
4. Be sincere – You need to genuinely care about helping your customers and prospects. Fake it, do it half heartedly, and they will notice. Don’t dilute your interaction by taking their loyalty for granted. Wake up each day assuming today is the day you will earn that customer’s loyalty. Difficult to gain, easy to lose. As @Garyvee would say, HUSTLE!
5. Ask questions – Once you have identified the problems, objectives and established relationships, ask questions. Lots of questions. Relentlessly inquire about what your customers think. And constantly remind them you want their input and involvement. You will be rewarded with ideas and suggestions the internal product development team can’t produce on their own.

Is any of this groundbreaking? No. In fact, it’s common sense (or should be). Common sense is often one of the trickiest things. My colleague Len Kendall reminded me today how difficult this all can be, with this quote  “We know our common sense is right, most of the time we just find it hard to prove it”

Hopefully the path to proving it got a little bit easier with this reminder.

Social Media continues to be the hottest topic in business, advertising, marketing and communications worlds. Why? Because it is a game changer for businesses. The future of business online (and offline for that matter) for brands will be based on the relationships they have with individual consumers and influencers. The tried and true method of top down brand marketing and advertising is already proving less effective each and every day. And it will continue to become so as social media continues to enable consumers and influencers to define brands, define what is important, set the terms for how to be engaged and where. 

Not Convinced?

Maybe you’re sitting on the sidelines watching with a skeptical eye. Or perhaps you’re somewhat involved personally in social media, but haven’t actively moved forward with your business because you’re waiting to see how this plays out. Forget all the talk about monetizing social media, ROI debates, and chasing shiny objects (social media tool du jour). Social media has morphed into a global phenomenon, and consumers are demanding that brands, companies they do business with (YOU), join them in the social media landscape.

Let’s look at just how big this movement really is. Twitter is the most talked about social network right now, and rightfully so.  Great things can happen there for brands. To date, there have been over 1.4 billion messages sent on Twitter. However, the real story on Twitter isn’t about what is happening here in the US. In fact, over 60% of all web traffic to Twitter comes from outside the US. The rest of the world has a bigger footprint on Twitter. See the graph below for a breakdown by country. 

Let’s turn our eye to Facebook. As of this moment, Facebook is truly international social platform. There are more than 35 translations of Facebook.com available, and an additional 60 others in development. Every month,  approximately 70% of Facebook’s 200 million active users come from outside the United States.

Consider how Facebook users are spending their time. Take a moment to let these numbers sink in:

• More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 7 million videos uploaded each month
• More than 28 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each month
• More than 2 million events created each month
• More than 25 million active user groups exist on the site

Finally, let’s combine the sheer volume of individual participation and interaction online, with consumer expectations. According to a  2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, online consumers have some lofty expectations for brands & social media.

“93% of Americans believe that a company should have a presence on social media sites and 85 percent believe that these companies should use these services to interact with consumers”

 

Get into the Game

Companies spend a lot of time, money and energy trying to understand what consumers want. They talk about keenly understanding their audience all the time. Social media has gift wrapped a golden opportunity for brands to get the answers these questions and more, by developing real relationships with consumers, on their terms, in the spaces that are relevant to them. Sure it can be scary. You lose control. You open yourself up for criticism and attack. Guess what Mr. Brand, you already did and you’ll be worse off the longer you wait. 

Listen. Understand. Engage. It is time to leave the sidelines and get into the game. Your customers and the marketplace are giving you all the signs you need. 

We often talk about the benefits of social media participation. Done well, it can help you create new relationships with your customers, peers, and partners. Develop new products and ideas. Improve existing ones. And provide thought leadership in your area of expertise, like these folks here, here, and here. For companies, it has the power to transform your business. For individuals, it has the power to help establish your reputation and professional network(s).

No doubt about it, the social media era has changed how people search for a job. Social Networks like LinkedIn give job seekers direct access to hiring managers within companies, and employers can more easily engage with passive candidates. It is becoming commonplace for individuals to pay greater attention to managing & promoting their various social profiles (a practice called known as personal branding and/or reputation management).

The Social Media Resume arrives

Some individuals, like Chris Penn, have taken it even further by creating a social media resume. On his social media resume site, Chris summarizes his skills and expertise, makes his traditional resume available for download in multiple formats, and links to his social network profiles and the web sites he publishes and maintains. This is a great place to start learning more about him, (he’s well ahead of 99% of individuals who do NOT have a social media resume) but it doesn’t provide a complete picture of his background and experiences. Precisely the kind of depth that a recruiter or hiring manager is looking for to help make a hiring decision.

To get a deeper understanding, companies are relying on search engines to provide a more in-depth view of a candidates online footprint. According to a a recent survey of human resources professionals by About.com, a full 50% of them are using Google and other search engines to find both professional and personal information about candidates. Regardless of how you feel about this, the trend is here to stay. Hiring managers want to know as much as possible about a candidate, and avoid making a bad hiring decision.

Resume 2.0 is here

There is now a new resume. The traditional static document that is carefully crafted to summarize your specific experience and expertise is being replaced. Instead, we have Resume 2.0.  It is the combination of your public profiles, life streaming your social activity, and what the search engines say about you. Much like Google is now your new corporate home page, your social activity and search engine results are your new resume. Resume 2.0

More social activity information available

The combination of these trends creates new challenges for companies and job seekers n the social era. For companies, they face an ever increasing volume of information and content to sift through. As individuals participate in social media, they create new messages, new content, share opinions and media with their network. A significant number of these social media activities are discovered and indexed by search engines.

For example:

• Twitter messages (tweets)
• Friendfeed updates
• Message board posts
• Blog posts/comments

are all found by search engines and stored in their massive web site indexes.

As companies continue to increase their reliance on this form of background checking, it will only become more difficult. I expect to see more services and tools become available to help companies deal with this problem. Imagine a social activity background checking service that allows companies to get a snapshot view of your social participation, categorized by topic, by type, by date/timeframe, with positive/negative sentiment ratings. A holistic view of your social footprint. This is the future of online background checking. It may even become similar to how companies do standard background checks for a criminal history, credit scores, or education verification. It’s already happening now, albeit informally. The trend will only increase in frequency and then evolve to greater efficiency.

The potential dark side of social media

As you particpate in social media, you leave a significant trail of evidence behind you. Forever. You’re creating your own personal long tail (follow this link for a more background on long tail effect). The social era has  created a personal content factory about your participation, and your long tail is being fed by it. This factory specializes in providing the search engines a steady stream of content about where you participate, who you interact with and what you say.

The search engines gladly pick up content you produce and index it. And the engines don’t forget. Ever. They act as a storyteller for companies researching prospective candidates. Social media participation comes at a price. The transparency that we ASK companies for also extends to us as individuals.

It is important to be cognizant of this as you participate in social media. Be authentic, be real, but use common sense. Don’t put yourself in a position that you will later regret. No one wants to follow up a terrific job interview with a phone call from human resources in which they inform you that they are passing because they discovered inappropriate behavior about you online.

Don’t fool yourself into believing that this is far fetched. Recently, the twitter user @theconnor lost a job because of his social media participation. He tweeted:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

Cisco saw the tweet and responded with:

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

No one has confirmed yet if Cisco rescinded the job offer, but immediately set his Twitter account to private and removed his profile information. Other people online have heckled him to no end for his lack of “common sense” when tweeting.

Another famous example of social media participation causing trouble is that of a young professional named Kevin Colvin, who was fired from his job for calling into work with a family emergency, only to be discovered attending a halloween costume party. He uploaded the photo above to his Facebook profile, which his coworkers discovered soon after.

The point is, failure to utilize common sense in your social media participation, can have severe consequences. You can LOSE your job. These are 2 extreme examples, but seemingly innocuous behavior at the time can have devastating consequences down the road because of the personal long tail you create. It will get indexed and saved, waiting for someone to enter the right combination of keywords into Google and discover you.

Less obvious circumstances will still influence the perception that people have of you long after the moment has come and gone. Perhaps a message board post from your college days where you made comments that were considered professionally inappropriate. Or maybe some not so innocent tweets, juvenile Facebook wall posts, or disparaging blog comments. Any one of them can be discovered by a prospective employer researching you online.

Simple steps to let your best shine through, for the record

All of this doesn’t mean you have to be a robot, always on, reading from a predefined script of “approved” social activity. It’s social media, so be SOCIAL! Just be you, and use common sense. You can participate responsibly by:

• Assume a Search Engine knows - Google isn’t perfect, and doesn’t pickup every social activity you do, but it picks up enough to paint a picture of you for anyone willing to put in the time to search. Assume there will be enough information available about you
• Do your homework – Perform ego searches on yourself. Setup Google Alerts to notify you when new content is available. If any of it is unflattering, be prepared to explain yourself or try and have it removed (This is difficult to do, although there are services like Reputation Defender that attempt to do this for you)
• Bury the Bad with a Mountain of Good – Provide the search engines with plenty of “positive” content about your social participation. Share some insights by commenting on a blog, share interesting links or articles via Twitter, complete and make your LinkedIn profile public, make sure your blog posts are getting indexed. There are many ways, just make sure the good content is getting picked up by periodically ego searching
• Keep the Unflattering Stuff Private – Face it, most of us have moments and joke, forward funny emails, things we find amusement in but wouldn’t necessarily share with a prospective employer. You don’t have to stop doing this, just do it responsibly. Email may be boring but it sure beats a public tweet, blog comment or message board reply. Keep the private stuff PRIVATE!

I hope this post highlights how easily social media participation can hurt you, if done carelessly. For individuals, it means being in the internet spotlight, constantly. For companies, it means taking a new view of candidates, and realizing that they are human beings, with flaws and imperfections. Have some understanding and be sure to take context into consideration when/if you find something in a candidates background that pops up on your radar as a warning. In the end, we’ve all made a mistake or two. Just don’t let your social media usage make the BIG one for you.

Is Social Media redefining how we exchange contact information? Will it push traditional business cards out of the picture? Contxts hopes so. Contxts is a new service that uses text messages to share your contact information with others. I learned about this service while chatting with fellow speaker Shannon Paul at Automation Alley’s Social Media Boot Camp.  Shannon recently began using the Contxts service and suggested I give it a try (word of mouth marketing at work!). While not perfect (Contxts is still an alpha service), it is a useful and very convenient way to share info via your mobile device if you are away from your computer.

Basically, Contxts works two ways. You can PUSH info directly to someone, or they can PULL your info through an SMS request.

The PUSH method works like so:

You send a text message to Contxt service in this format:

send *recipient_phone_number* 50500

So, if I want to send my contact info to friend Adam Cohen, assuming his phone number is 555-555-1234, the text message to Contxts would look like:

send 5555551234 50500

This would trigger Contxts to send the info, which I provided during the account setup earlier, and Adam would receive a text message that contains:

The PULL method works similarly.  Anyone can send a request to 50500 and retrieve your contact info, as long as they supply the correct username. The format for a PULL text message is:

username 50500

So, if I wanted to pull down the contact info of someone I met at a conference, Tweetup, etc.. but didn’t get to exchange business cards with, and I knew his/her username on Contxt, I would send:

johndoe 50500

This type of Digital exchange could be extremely handy if you’ve run out of business cards, at an event where you meet a large number of people, or simply prefer to manage your contacts info digitally like I do.

The recipient ONLY gets the info that you want them to. You can control this using the edit info screen after you register.

There is a potential down side that I see already. Like many popular social media services out there,  someone can request your info without prior approval. There is an option that you can check to alert you when someone does pull your info, but there isn’t anything you can do to filter who can/can’t or protect it. For many people this won’t be a concern, but for others, it may make them uncomfortable. I suggest being careful what information you make available via Contxts if you’re in the latter category. Remember, it is a free, public public service, so treat it as such when it comes to privacy.

That said, it’s fast, convienent, eco-friendly (no paper) and could ultimately be the beginning of another change in our Digital behavior.  Goodbye business cards. Hello Contxts!

If you need my info, feel free to retrieve it by sending this SMS message: kenburbary 50500

For those who aren’t regular readers of StickyFigure (if you’re not, you should be. Check it out), Steve Woodruff has been consistently churning out great discoveies with his Five in the Morning series. Five in the Morning is basically a blog post that highlights 5 of the most interesting and well written posts throughout the blogosphere.

Lately Steve has been inviting guests to add some new perspective and fresh content to the mix. When he approached me about being a guest author, I immediately said yes! So without any further ado, here is your daily dose of Five in the Morning:

Digital media continues to blur our online and offline lives. Spruce up your presentations and educate your colleagues with this fantastic list of 49 Amazing Social Media, Web 2.0 and Internet Stats, compiled by Adam Singer on the FutureBuzz blog.

Learn how to use a often overlooked feature of Twitter, “favorites”. Darren Rowse and Ari Herzog put together an excellent post on the Twitip blog that reveals how to use favorites, why you should use favorites, and illustrates how other people are using them.

It’s early, but one of the themes of 2009 seems to be “stop talking. start doing”. Shiv Singh, of Avenue A Razorfish, reminds brands of this and says Brands Must Do! Start doing by listening to consumers. It’s not done enough.

The ultimate do-it-yourselfer Marshall Kirkpatrick has outlined how to Build the Ultimate Social Media Cheat Sheet. Use it to get you up to speed on the social media activity in your market.

And finally, take these tips from The Difficult Art of Cold Pitching by Jon Burg, and apply them to avoid any mistakes when reaching out with a request to a community of people you have a weak relationship with. Chris Brogan even chimes in with his take.

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