Yesterday evening, I had dinner at Sun Dried Tomato with Jim and Lorraine Marks and their friend Brad (a lawyer). We had just started discussing the impact social media is having on businesses when a man named Bill walked up and introduced himself to Jim, saying “Hi, I’m here because you recommended Sun Dried on Twitter” (here’s the actual Tweet). Bill’s waitress had asked him how he heard about Sun Dried and he mentioned that Jim Marks recommended the place. The waitress replied “Oh that’s funny, Jim is sitting over at table 5″. Talk about timing…

The people engaging with social media are not just “internet people” who never venture out of their homes (some of my friends give me a hard time about my “internet friends”); they are real people and they are making real purchasing decisions based on their social media interactions.

Due to Brad Coy’s tweet, I just read the following article on ProBlogger – I Fight Authority and Authority Always Wins. (And What IS Online Authority Anyway?). It’s an interesting read including many perspectives and I urge you all go spend a few minutes reading it. As to the question “what is online authority?” — here is what I would say:

Online authority is showing up at the top of Google’s search results for your targeted niche. Whether we like it or not, people will take the people who show up at the top of search results as the authority on a given subject. But that doesn’t mean they trust those people, it means they deem them knowledgeable and worth listening to. Authority is not the same as trust, but the two terms are certainly related. If you are trusted by your audience AND produce content relevant to your niche, then I have no doubt the backlinks necessary to show up at the top of search results will follow over time, and hence you’ll have online authority (some niches being more difficult to crack than others). The only way I will trust someone is if I’ve met them in person a few times, followed and learned from them for awhile online, or if someone I completely trust trusts them — but I won’t trust someone just because they show up on top of the search results.

What’s your definition of online authority?

I had to pleasure to attending Jeff Turner’s (Zeek Interactive and Real Estate Shows) session “Discovering the lost art of listening” today at Virtual RE Bar Camp. As usual when I listen to Jeff speak, I picked up a few great tidbits of information. Here are two tools I wanted to bookmark for myself for future use — Twazzup and Tweetgrid/IRC.

I’m making it a 2010 resolution of mine to become more efficient and strategic in the way I approach building relationships via social media.

I really, really, really hate SPAM. Here are my last five @ replies on Twitter:

Now, I’m a big fan of Steve Jagger and just discovered Philanthropedia yesterday (and tweeted about it), but the other three? Pure and blatant SPAM.

I wonder if Dr Roger Smith (I no-followed that link) even realizes he’s damaging his reputation by engaging in social media in this fashion?

As a result of Brad Coy’s tweet tonight, I just read How to Get Any Work Done (When Connecting Is Your Job). Here’s an an excerpt I particularly agree with:

Pick one or two platforms (one of which you should own, like a blog or a great email newsletter). Do your best work for them.

If you create remarkable work in just one or two places, others will share your message far and wide. Mediocre work spread out over a dozen sites is mostly wasted effort.

Head over and read the whole article, and the comments. But note that I still think leaving breadcrumbs is a good idea; you just need to pick and choose wisely.

Social media is an extremely powerful tool if utilized right. Here’s a video to help demonstrate that fact:

[via Ubertor]

Short answer = NO.

[via Kris Berg at San Diego Home Blog]

Alex Payne has a fantastic post worth reading (which I actually found via my friend who shared it on Facebook) — “Two Unfinished Ideas About The Future”

I wanted to highlight one of the ideas in particular:

Radical Transparency

What passes for transparency today is, in practice, mere translucency. Organizations reveal just enough information to avoid appearing closed and monolithic. They may attempt to communicate in a more human way, or provide open access to some of their data, but most remain fundamentally closed. Today’s “transparency” is little more than marketing.

That which is not open is secret. Secrets are vulnerabilities waiting to be exposed. Secrets are the illusion of competitiveness. Secrets are the bondage of serendipity. Secrets are lies of omission that eat away at our social and economic relationships. Their time is over.

The successful organizations of the future, be they states, corporations, communities, or collectives, will be radically open. Radically, unlike anything we’ve seen today. True transparency isn’t about a friendly company blog, or governments being slowly pried open with freedom-of-information initiatives. It’s about structuring society around openness, because openness is the only thing that’s sustainable.

You will see, in time, organizations that put everything on the table. Organizations for which there is no concept of non-public communication from day one; no internal email, nothing that isn’t a matter of public record, by design. Organizations for which every employee’s salary is public knowledge. Organizations that compete solely on the merits of their work, not on surprise, deceit, and manipulation.

People will think these organizations are crazy. And then, over time, radical transparency will become the norm.

Perfectly said. I agree. Amen.

Time Warner is divorcing AOL — about time. I’ll be interested to watch whether AOL can turn themselves around as a stand alone company. One thing’s for certain — they stood very little chance of turning their business around in their current situation, so it’s a very smart decision in my mind.

There’s no question that Twitter is transforming our lives before our very eyes — or, at least for me, it is. Their growth is through the roof and social media marketing as we know it is certainly changing. Although VERY SLOWLY, it’s starting to replace e-mail in some cases (I DM my boss every now and then), my feedreader, time spent on facebook, and time spent blogging. I’m definitely noticing the difference in the real estate industry; it seems the conversation about Zillow (and everything else) has moved away from blogs and onto Twitter for the most part. I used to scan blogs for Zillow mentions (now it’s a lot of Zillow Advice threads that pop up in google blog search) and now I find myself scanning twitter instead.

Anyway, I don’t really have any grand conclusions right now — just thinking out loud about the latest in social networking…

I’m going to disagree that the following point in the Debunking Six Social Media Myths Business Week article is a “myth”:

4. You can do it all in-house. Wrong! You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience—a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.

It is rare indeed to find an in-house team that can not only conceive and execute a social media campaign but also drive traffic to it with effective e-mail segmentation, search optimization, blogger outreach, blog advertising, Google ads, and more.

Social media can and has been successfully tackled in-house by numerous companies. Make no mistake, it takes resources in the way of headcount, but it can be done. From my point of view, social media done in-house will always be more effective than outsourcing it. It’s pretty simple; social media is all about genuine conversations and relationships. An external social media firm may be able to generate some quick traffic and create a little bit of viral buzz, but they cannot speak for a brand and build long term, valuable relationships with influencers on behalf of a company. Actually working for and representing a brand is important when it comes to social media marketing. If whoever you are talking to knows that you don’t work for the company, they know you have virtually no say with the management team or clout with developers to get things fixed (relevant to web companies) — which means there’s not much you can offer them other than marketing speak.

The picture below shows what awaited me in my mailbox today:

Those papers were immediately discarded into my “spam box” in my kitchen.

Why don’t snail nail spammers get with the program? This crap doesn’t work. Though I’m obviously biased, if I was a marketer trying to reach a local audience, I’d choose to use showcase ads to buy share of voice in a ZIP code over snail mail anyday of the week.

I think this article in the New York Times is a very good sign that mainstream media is starting to “get” this whole linking thing.

There is some fantastic advice for startups looking to get PR over at Alley Insider that was written by Jason Calacanis and distributed via his e-mail list. It’s LONG, but I read every work of it and it’s well worth it.

If you are curious about the battle for the “local” audience, LostRemote has a good writeup worth reading.

[via Web-Stategist]

The media landscape is sure changing, isn’t it? It should be interesting to see what type of adoption the NPR API gets with the web 2.0 community.

[via TechCrunch]

I think the traditional phone book is all but dead. Pictures say a thousand words — in this case, I think the pictures below say the answer to whether or not anyone uses phonebooks anymore is a resounding “NO“.

This is underneath the mailboxes in my building

This is outside the apartment building next door

There’s a great article at ReadWriteWeb worth reading — How to Use Social Media for Social Change.

It’ll be interesting to see how much content the New York Times makes available in their new API currently in the works.