But here was the most interesting part for me: Sure, they decided to respond to big name folks like Ellen Degeneres, Asthon Kutcher and The Huffington Post. But you know what? They also responded to those that the social media consultants WOULDN’T consider an “influencer” and wouldn’t give a second thought to.

There was the video for jordan_ferguson, who ONLY has 94 followers on Twitter. Or pancakehumpr (106 followers). And wheresweems with a whopping 140 followers on Twitter.  And while it was cool to see Old Spice “use” those with large social media circles like Guy Kawasaki, but I guarantee that it doesn’t mean as much to them as it does to the people who don’t aren’t celebrities on the internet (or in real life).

So the lesson here is don’t forget about the everyday Joes. Don’t forget that they are the ones that actually buy your stuff. People. Not celebrities. People are your customers – not celebrities. The everyday Joes that Old Spice took the time to respond to will more than likely talk a lot more and a lot longer about how they were recognized yesterday than Ashton and Ellen will. So remember that next time you’re engaging the public  – and your fans in particular.

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But I digress…

One of the questions we asked was, “Think about your beset friend in the world. What personality traits to do you like most about them?” As you might imagine, we got some typical answers like “good sense of humor” and “good listener.” But our fearless leader, Janice Murphy, surprised me with her response. She said. “Someone who knows about all my crap and loves me anyway.”

And not only do I love that phrase, but it’s a great lesson for brands who happen be looking for their evangelists somewhere out there. Because those are the true fans. Those that know you are a company of humans and that humans are fallible. In other words, they’ve watched you mess up. They know you aren’t perfect. And they love you anyway. Not only are they loyal. They consider to you a friend.

I know that might be a stretch. Because sometimes it’s hard to think about a company as a friend. But I really believe that’s how companies are going to have to start acting.

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Interesting, no?

I have the same feeling about that niche of the internet called, you guessed it, social media. Bite-sized glimpses of lives. Images. Links. 140-character blips. We try to take it all in while jumping from site to site. And it becomes the echo-chamber. We get caught up in the whirlwind and we don’t deeply about anything else except social media. When I think back over the past couple of years, I can easily remember that the biggest lessons I learned or things that influenced my thinking and executions came from things OUTSIDE of social media articles. A screenwriter talking about the elements of story. A lone dancer at a music festival doing his own thing like nobody’s watching.

Even trying hard to cull down my Twitter stream, it’s still littered with link after link to social media articles that all are trying desperately to prove the worth of the medium. Oh, it has many redeeming qualities. But when we all start talking (and listening) to only one another – and especially when we don’t question each other – we’re homogenizing the thinking. And nothing new comes out of that.

So I challenge to go draw inspiration from somewhere else. Get lost deep in thought. Learn from other disciplines that have nothing to do with marketing or PR or digital or social media. (And don’t give me that BS that “everything is social.”) Go on now.

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So last week, just for fun, I declared THIS week, social media case study week. I think my actual post was along the lines of “Next week is ‘National Prove It’ week. Everyone posts links to actual case studies they’ve worked on instead of just spewing stuff. You in?” And the more I think about it, the more I’m going to pursue this experiment beginning Tuesday (hey, it’s a holiday week and all). And I challenge EVERYONE. If you’re a Social Media or Word of Mouth practicioner, then post a link on Twitter this week to a case study that you’ve been involved in and use the hashtag #smproveit. If there is no formal write up, then post one on your blog or Posterous account. It’s time so separate the men from the boys…which consequently might help you thin out your “following” on Twitter.

All this to say that I’m tired of the social media philosophers. The only real way to learn the truth and what works and what doesn’t is by DOING. All the philosophers thought that the earth was flat. But one guy didn’t care and guess what? He didn’t fall off the edge. He proved them wrong. Just like you can tell BP how they should be handling everything right now, but you have no idea the internal red tape and lawyers and hoops that have to be jumped through to get something done. It’s SO easy to armchair marketing quarterback. And anyone can do that. But it takes smart people to DO. To ACT. To come out from behind a computer screen, put everything on the line and lead. Writing a blog post isn’t leading. Bullying people on Twitter isn’t leading. No matter if you have 25 followers or 25,000.

Oh, and one other thing. You can’t use yourself as a case study. You have to have a case study for a client.

So go. Use it (#smproveit). And we’ll see how far this little experiment can and will go. Oh, and we just might also have a kick-ass resource as well.

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Without rehashing the Twitter events of last night, Leah Jones (no relation, although I do consider her a sista) and I were chatting about resetting our Twitter accounts and starting over. It happened to me about a month ago and Leah took the leap this week. Well, one thing led to another and some of the Twitter elite got pulled into the conversation (yeah, sorry about that). There was arguing, there was defensiveness and there was even some name calling.

After the smoke cleared and we had some time to think about it, Leah and I wanted to gather our thoughts. So here we go:

-I’m not saying everyone should delete their Twitter accounts. But you have to admit, if you did you’d really see who cares about you and who you care about. Like who you will be able to remember to follow, because I’m pretty sure you won’t remember all 20,000 people…or even an nth of that.

-What if you deleted your account and started over every time you reached, oh, I dunno, 2500? You’d cultivate your list again and again making those connections you have the most meaningful and worthwhile. They would not just be numbers anymore, but people you know and care about.

-Look, I don’t hate those folks with high follower counts. In fact, I appreciate their constant evangelism of all things social media. They are bringing attention to the space. And for that, I’m thankful.

-Different people use Twitter for different purposes. One of my main ones is to be entertained.

-If you’re following so many people that you need to use third-party tools to filter that stream, then what’s the point? You’re flitering out the noise. Why not turn the noise off completely?

-It’s just Twitter, people. Don’t get so uptight. It’s a freakin’ tool. Granted those with tens of thousands of followers have the “most” to lose if they hit the reset button, but maybe that’s the reason to do it. Finding your self-worth in an online world is a trap. We only “like” politically correct things on Facebook. We only post flattering pictures of ourselves. I know and see how this tool is beneficial for companies. But for individuals…as you can see, I struggle with it sometimes.

-Again, it’s just Twitter. There are about 75 million Twitter accounts and only 10 to 15 million of those are active (according to a study by RJMetrics in January of 2010). And new user sign-ups are on the decline. I’m sure something will come along and replace Twitter some day. But let’s keep things in perspective, okay?

And here are Leah’s thoughts:

- Any Gleeks out there? This is like quitting the Cheerios or the football team and finding out what you’re really made of and what relationships were strong. Know what? It was kind of scary. I talked it over with a couple people. What if, gasp, 7500 people never follow me again? I’ve lost my platform! Will that book publisher ever talk to me again? Will that guy with 10K followers date me?

- Neither of us kicked puppies, we quit our original Twitter accounts. We didn’t broker peace in the Middle East, we quit our original accounts.

- Twitter is great, I love it. This doesn’t erase my love or my anecdotes OR the relationships I built here. It just means I have to work harder to find some people.

- Finally, I hate when people make rules to follow for social media and I hate when people don’t follow my rules.

So if any feelings were hurt last night, I apologize. There were parts I could have handled better. But if we can’t use this medium to have discussions and (gasp) even disagree sometimes, then what use is it really?

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After several conversations with a lot of great companies over the past few months, the chance to work with the digital group led by none other than Matt Dickman was just too sweet a deal to pass up. Besides, I get to be in the Austin office. And as a Texas (Dallas) native, it’s not only good to be back in the country, er, state of my origin, but it’s Austin. AUSTIN. And the world is outside my downtown front door.

At FH, I’ll be playing with the digital group and specializing in word of mouth strategy and execution. Man, these guys and gals already have a great line-up of clients, including AT&T, USAA and GM, just to name a tiny few. And the digital group is already making waves with things like their efforts for Chevy at the recent SXSW.

So after that short two week hiatus from the blog, I’m cranking it back up. And now that I have my brand new header (it’s SO SWEET – yes, I said “sweet”), I’ve got no excuses.

I don’t have to tell you that this space is changing daily. And it’s great to be with a group of DOERS. Hey, it’s where I come from.

So much more to come. Stay tuned.

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Basically this means that clocks are orderly and neat and the parts of it interact in a predictable way. But clouds are unpredictable in that they are “highly irregular” and their motions are beyond “even the theoretical possibility of prediction.”

I love this concept. And taking it further and applying it to the digital and word of mouth world that we live in as marketers, I’m adopting this as a philosophy when building solutions for clients. Not one or the other, but finding the right balance of both.

Follow me down this path: The clocks are the tools. The Facebook page. The CRM Twitter account. The Gowalla pin that leads to a payoff. They are the inner-workings that can be put into place and set in motion. Yes, we are all still figuring out how to best use them, but we know the fundamentals of working with these tools.

The clouds? That’s the people. The personal interaction. That’s where emotions and personal experience and memories and word of mouth come into play. That’s where users could see a completely different use for what you’ve created. People are unpredictable. And most of the time they know your product or service better than you do. So sure, they will take your clock parts, but what they do with them isn’t always predictable and doesn’t fit into a flow chart.

So now our job is to find the balance. What percentage is clocks and what percentage is clouds? Because once you find it, you’ll have something big on your hands.

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So I say quit it with the influence thing. It’s a debate that’s been raging on for years now. And you know on which side of the line I stand – I’ll take passion over influence any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Because passion is one of the things that fuels word of mouth. (The other is experience.) Influence is not sustainable. Influence is not long-lasting. Probably because the influencers that marketers are going after these days are having to make it their job to be influential. And people retire from jobs. But they don’t retire from experiences. And they don’t retire from being passionate about something. Passion has sticking power. You don’t have to work at it or maintain it like you do with being influential.

The only thing that can trump a passionate fan of your brand is someone who is MORE passionate. Not more influencial or who has more followers on Twitter. Remember, influence can be fabricated. But passion can’t. Social media influence can be built by almost anyone if they learn how to use the tools and dedicate time to growing and feeding their followers. But there are no tools to create passion. There are no tricks of the trade. There are no magic bullets. You either are passionate about something, or you’re not.

The other thing about passion is that it can’t be measured the same way “influence” can. As David Wilcox sings, “You can’t keep it in a camera. It’s not a trophy on a shelf. It’s not a tale to tell the children. Not a way to prove yourself. It’s much bigger than we are.”

So remember to look for the passionate ones. They might not be the loudest or the most opinionated or even the savviest. But rooted deep down within them is something special – a love for your brand and how it fits into their lives. And that is the acorn you need to grow that oak.

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The one and only Bob Schneider

One of my favorite things in life is to go to a live show, stand in the middle of the room and listen to the voices around me sing every lyric to every song. And from the musicians perspective, I would think that hearing and watching the audience sing – loudly, even – the lyrics that you wrote, that started as just a collection of words floating around in your head – has got to be incredibly rewarding and validating.

So my question to you as a company is, are your customers singing along with you? Do they know you so well that they WANT to learn all the lyrics? Do they know where the key changes are and the origin of your songs? And are they just humming along, tapping their toes? Or are they leaning forward, arms raised, pounding the air and screaming out each and every word?

I know there’s a lot of talk out there about “fans.” But I think we have to go deeper and begin to dissect the anatomy of what a true fan really is. Without a doubt, they are the people that know you. That know your words and ways and what song is coming up next. But the other thing is that everyone has their own favorite song. And that’s why – to continue the metaphor – you need to have that killer set instead of that one-hit-wonder.

So listen to the audience. Are they singing along at the top of their lungs? Can you step back from the mic long enough to listen to them?

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The phrase “toe the line” is equivalent to “toe the mark,” both of which mean to conform to a rule or a standard. The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002; ed. by Glynnis Chantrell) says, “The idiom toe the line from an athletics analogy originated in the early 19th century” (514).The specific sport referred to is foot-racing, where the competitors must keep their feet behind a “line” or on a “mark” at the start of the race–as in “On your mark, get set, go!” So one who “toes the line” is one who does not allow his foot to stray over the line.   In other words, one who does not stray beyond a rigidly defined boundary.

Many of you probably thought that the phrase was “tow the line” as in “towing the company line.” But either way, my point is this: in all of your digital efforts, you should be toeing and towing the HUMAN line first – and the company line second. Stay with me here. Who do humans want to connect with? That’s right, other humans. And when you put the human element first, you have a better chance of leaving an impression. You’re not a voice on the other end of the line or a set of fingers typing on a keyboard somewhere representing a faceless company. You’re a person. With hopes and dreams and good days and bad days and a life away from your job. You’re a person. Just like whomever is on the other end of that connection.

It’s the first rule of representing a company in a community: Be human. And not only will you make your connections stronger, but you will “humanize the brand,” as the Scott Monty‘s of the world put it.

So repeat after me: Human first. Company second. And just watch how things start to change for the better.

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