Earlier this month, David Mullen had a great idea to create a Twitter starter pack on his blog (click here to go read the orignal post), that listed 50 people to start following in the areas of marketing, advertising, PR, and social media. Whether you’re new to Twitter or have been there awhile, you will benefit by following the people in his starter pack.

Afterwards, Dave Murray, David Mullen and I were chatting (via Twitter of course!) about how even the best list, leaves off so many interesting and unique personalities on Twitter. So without further explanation, we have put together a Twitter Hidden Gems list. This list is unique because it is full of incredible people from the Twitter commnity that are off the beaten path. Some of the best individuals one can hope to find.  We hope you find following them as valuable as we do.

Don’t forget to visit the blogs of the other 2 contributors to this post. You can find them at:

David Mullen – Communications Catalyst – http://davidwmullen.com

Dave Murray – The Way of TheMurr - http://www.themurr.com/

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.

Subscribe: Ken Burbary’s Web Business blog / Steve Woodruff’s StickyFigure blog
Follow on Twitter: Ken Burbary / Steve Woodruff

During the past 6 months, I’ve talked and written a lot about how engaging in Social Media can help your brand. There can be numerous benefits. In fact, Social Media Maven Chris Brogan has already written what Social Media does best. And expert Mack Collier wrote a thoughtful article some time ago, describing how Dell has successfully integrated social media into its marketing communications and culture. Both are worth your time to read.

We’re delirious with Social Media mania right now. For good reason, in most cases. However, there is one important question that a brand needs to ask before jumping into Social Media. Is it right for my brand? How and where can it be useful for us? Translation: Does it make sense to engage in Social Media.

Sure, for many brands the answers may come easily. A strategy will emerge, tactics will follow. The excitement and energy that comes with entering a new channel will also.

However, what if you’re a toxic brand? What is your current brand perception is in the dumps? What if your current customers are your most bitter and harshest critics? What if your product is far inferior to the competition? How can Social Media help you under these circumstances (and I believe it can)?

What brand could I possibly be describing? Sadly, I’m using my favorite, and home town, NFL Franchise as my test subject. The Detroit Lions brand is at an all time low. They set an NFL record for the 2008-2009 season by losing every regular season game, finishing 0-16. Ticket sales are down. Home games are blacked out on local television because of it. The Lions franchise is the laughing stock of the league. And I, like many other thousands of fans, DO NOT LIKE IT. I’m a life long fan (I know, I know, spare the glutton for punishment jokes) and want to see them succeed, so much so that I’m devoting this time & energy to blogging about it.

I have my own ideas but am looking for your perspectives. I’m hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of the Social Media crowd, and answer these 3 questions:

1. How can the Detroit Lions effectively engage in Social Media to help improve their brand image?
2. How can the Detroit Lions effectively engage in Social Media to increase sales of tickets and merchandise?
3. How can the Detroit Lions effectively engage in Social Media to improve the relationship with their customers and fans?

Couldn’t this become the perfect case study? If Social Media can help save a brand like the Lions, lifting them out of the brand perception toilet, then one could argue the right Social Media strategy, integrated into an overall marketing strategy, could be a difference maker for any brand? And collectively, we have an opportunity to help make that happen.

I am VERY interested in hearing your input. Please share your ideas and opinions in the comments. With any luck, maybe…..just maybe…the Lions will be listening. And if they aren’t, I’ll do what is necessary to take the answers to their doorstep. Viva La Lions!

As 2008 draws to a close, I took some time to reflect and analyze how I tweet, what I tweet about and who I tweet with. I used a neat little tool called Wordle to create a visual topic cloud.

This topic cloud, which can also be made with Tweetcloud, makes it pretty clear that I spend a lot of time talking about Twitter, the people on Twitter, and saying Thanks. That’s no surprise to me. Every day I’m thanking another member of the community for the advice, knowledge and help that they so generously give. This year wouldn’t have been the same without every single one of you.

Thank you.

I look forward to an even more properous 2009 for each and every one of you.

Happy New Year!

I’m a big believer in DIY – Doing it Yourself. Call me old fashioned but it’s something I learned at an early age from my late father. If you don’t know something, learn it. Need a piece of info? Find it. Need specialized expertise? Seek it out. No one else is going to do it for you (usually), so you better take the initiative and get it done yourself. Like life, business is littered with challenges and obstacles that you will encounter along the way. How you handle these obstacles, what you do next, usually determines whether or not the outcome is successful.

Sound like a lot? It certainly can be. No one I know has the time, nor aptitude to be proficient in every topic and/or skill, let alone acquire deep expertise. Fortunately, the rules of the game have evolved and changed to point there where they favor YOU.

For example, until recently, if you were a web developer and needed to build a new application on a emerging platform (let’s say RoR – Ruby on Rails), what options would you have to solve the problem?

You could:

• Learn how to write RoR code yourself
• Hope someone within your network already possesses the skill/knowledge
• Pass on an opportunity because you didn’t have the answers, right partner, etc..

That’s hard if you aren’t a technologist who can quickly adapt to a new technology platform (I know some rock-star developers out there, like David Hinson, can do this without skipping a beat).

But I’m not a techie you say. This doesn’t apply to me. Ok, what if you’re the brand manager in the marketing dept. for a successful consumer products company. You’ve been asked to develop the social media component of an integrated go-to-market plan for your brand. Social Media? Doesn’t that mean Myspace or Facebook? You don’t have experience with social media and aren’t sure where to start, so what options would you have to solve the problem?

You could:

• Learn as much as you can in a short time and write the strategy yourself, hoping for the best (not advisable!)
• Hope you can find an expert in your network who has the knowledge/expertise in Social Media
• Recommend a plan that has no social media component, and miss a golden opportunity to engage with your customers

Do any of these sound good to you? Hardly. There is a better way forward, and it’s available to you because the world has changed and unleashed a new power for individuals. The network allows you to crowd source a problem. The network allows you to community source a problem. The network exponentially increases your capabilities, through the reach of others.

In the networked DIY age, the problems above get solved quickly because you have the necessary relationships and resources available to you. Don’t believe me? Try this example here, here or here. Answers come in minutes. The network allows you to move fast enough to meet business challenges thrown at you every day. However, it’s not something you get without first putting in the work yourself. How? By becoming active in the network. Establishing relationships, initiating dialogue w/others, helping others grow, so you can be in a position to benefit when you really need it.

This is available to anyone willing to take advantage of it. How? I suppose I could elaborate in extensive detail, but many others, far more knowledgable than I, have already provided the roadmap. You should read these blog posts on how to get started:

• Jason Falls – How to be the social media champion in your office
• Marshall Kirkpatrick – Social Media Starter Kit
• Chris Brogan – Social Media Starter Pack
• Rohit Bhargava – How I use Social Media

And then reach out to them.

The most important takeaway in all of this is: PARTICIPATION. Remember, it’s the age of DIY, and success can’t happen unless YOU are the one doing. The revolutionary difference about this is that you’re now able to contact these subject matter experts, build relationships with them. In some cases form partnerships with them. Ultimately, you’ll be in a better position because of it, and make better decisions about you business. Help yourself by helping others grow. The more you give, the more you get.

Let’s reexamine the hypothetical problems I described earlier, but in the DIY age. New options are available through crowd sourcing, or directly engaging subject matter experts who are part of the community. You’re able to go directly to the source for expertise. Establish a dialgoue, here (RoR Expert) and here (Social Media Expert), and work together to solve the problem. Experts can be instantly referred to you by colleagues in the network, or by contacts they have. The irony is, despite what the DYI term implies, you’re anything but alone in the DIY age.

Individuals over the world are adapting to the network so they can solve business problems, build new (and otherwise out of reach) relationships, build new businesses, even change countries.

How are you adapting to the DIY age? Do you believe in its ability to transform the way you work? The way you live? You should. It’s changing your world whether you like it or not. As Charles Darwin famously said:

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

* Big thanks to my good friends Blagica Bottigliero & Alan Wolk for helping shape some of these thoughts

Lately, more and more people I know on Twitter are discussing the idea that it seems to have crossed, or is approaching, a threshold and has gone mainstream. What signs point to that? Celebrities, politicians and other well known non-marketing/PR types are joining in greater numbers.

For starters, a Twitter user doesn’t get any bigger than the President. President elect Obama joined the microblogging service back in March 2007, and rose up the charts to become the most followed user on Twitter with well over 100k followers. He used Twitter regularly during the campaign to communicate the campaign message of Hope and Change.

Other well known celebrities are diving into the microblogging pool.  Britney Spears joined Twitter. And then Gary Vaynerchuk criticized her for using it as another broadcast channel, not a platform to engage fans. NBA stars Deron Williams and Shaquille O’neal both joined Twitter.

In addition to people from all walks of life and business giving Twitter a try, there were 2 important book announcements this week. Twitter power users, Laura Fitton and Shel Israel announced recent deals to write Twitter books, details here and here.

The significance of these annoucements isn’t the topic, although it is an interesting one, but rather the way in which the content, stories and topics covered will be written and selected. The authors are community sourcing the writing. This gives everyone on Twitter the opportunity to submit ideas, content, tips, tools, etc… for the book.

Laura has taken it a step further, launching a Twitter for Dummies community to make this process even easier. The site allows members to:

• submit ideas
• vote on ideas
• set up your profile
• search ideas
• read tips by category
• invite friends

This is another great example of community sourcing at its finest, and one I believe we will more and more of in the future. If you’re on Twitter and have something to share, what are you waiting for? Click on over to the community and start contributing!

I’ve lived through many movements on the “web” since I began my career. Along the way there have been a countless number of trends, both successful and not, that have impacted how individuals and companies operate online. Two trends that emerged and have been adopted across the globe are outsourcing and crowd sourcing. I’ve separated them into the two major web eras to easily look at both trends.

Web 1.0 = Outsourcing                   Web 2.0 = Crowd sourcing

Outsourcing was/is mostly about saving cash.  Why try doing something in-house that isn’t a core competency? Instead go buy that product/service from the outside (Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency).

Crowd sourcing is different. The basic premise of crowd sourcing can be best described as the trend of leveraging mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. Smart professionals have been crowd sourcing problems to the communities they participate in for awhile. Like Chris Brogan. When asked, he was unable to pinpoint his first use of crowd sourcing, but responded that he has been successfully practicing it for over 2 years.

Recently Warren Sukernek, creator of the Twittermaven blog, wrote about the the growing interest in crowd sourcing on Twitter. His post provided several examples of individuals using crowd sourcing to solve both personal and professional problems. Example:

As Laura Fitton said in Clive Thompson’s great Ambient Awareness article, “I outsource my entire life,” she said. “I can solve any problem on Twitter in six minutes.”

The benefits are many. Increased innovation, productivity, new & stronger relationships, etc.. One could argue that some businesses are being built by effectively leveraging crowd sourcing. Whether you agree with that or not, there is a large body of evidence that demonstrates its value.

Interestingly enough, Crowd sourcing has evolved into a higher level of sophistication, called Community sourcing (coined by Zena Weist). Community sourcing differs from traditional crowd sourcing in one key aspect. Its purpose is to direct the efforts and collective intelligence of the community, for the benefit of the community. Now this may be true in some cases of crowd sourcing (both parties benefit), but not always. In the case of community sourcing, it is the primary focus.

Individuals tapping into crowd or community sourcing is one thing, but how are progressive brands using community sourcing? The most widely known use is the Dell Ideastorm. However, it is far from the only example. Brands big and small are jumping into the community sourcing pool hoping to do with the help of the community, what they cannot on their own. Two examples I’ve seen recently are the NBC4 news team in central Ohio, and the Detroit Red Wings.

Ryan Squire, Managing Editor of the NBC4 news team, wants to connect with his viewers throughout central Ohio. He asked them, “What Would NBC4 2.0 look like?” on the corporate blog? His viewers have an unprecedented opportunity to establish a personal relationship with Ryan, and provide  feedback that will influence, and in some cases direct shape what the future of NBC4. How many times have you watched your local news and thought, I wish they did (fill in the blank), or I wish they would stop doing it that way? Here’s your chance to let them know.

The Detroit Red Wings are a dominant brand among NHL teams. They have loyal fans in every city, who are passionate supporters of their team. Last week, Shannon Paul (the Red Wings new media guru), led the NHL franchise into community sourcing territory by tapping into the fan base with this question: “How should the Red Wings use social media to strengthen relationships with fans?”. Have ideas on how you would like to see your favorite team engage with fans online? Exactly, we all do. What sports fan hasn’t said to themselves, it would be great if my team did this new thing, or why aren’t they doing that online? This opens the door for the Red Wings to go in a direction they aren’t capable of doing without the fans. Because in community sourcing, ideas come from everywhere. And each idea exchange, discussion, and interaction strengthens the relationship one has with the brand.

Why aren’t more companies/brands doing this? Why not tap into the customers you know for collective widsom? It’s not always going to give you the answer, but it will always show your customers/fans that you’re doing one VERY important thing, LISTENING.

What brands do you see engaging in community sourcing? What tools are they using to engage? What social networks are they leveraging? Please share your findings in the comments, and I’ll update the post to include new examples.

Most importantly, are these brands backing up the listening with changes in behavior? Are they adopting the suggestions and implementing them?