Is it really the 10^th anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto? Actually, it isn’t. The book was written in 1999 by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. It was published in 2000. I suppose then that John Cass’s meme inspired by the upcoming 10^th anniversary of the book is meant to borrow the quality of being ahead of its time.

Nevertheless, Valeria Maltoni nominated me as someone who should participate in the meme and chime in on the five questions Cass poses about where we are today with respect to the 95 theses that begat social media. Before I respond to the specific questions, though, a raw perspective:

We’re nowhere. Social media and true consumer-centric brand behavior is prevalent in the technology bubble and few other places. While adoption has been steady and progress has been made, the premise of the book hasn’t exactly “gone viral.” Businesses in general still think bottom line and “what’s in it for me,” first. Advertising still sucks, is loud and intrusive. And consumers still have little reason to trust brands, companies and even folks like me – marketers trying to connect them with products and services that fit their needs.

I’m still a used car salesman to a lot of people. Companies are still monolithic, smoke and mirrors, money hoards with automated phone systems and customer service that has nothing to do with the customer and scantly qualifies as service.

For a market-changing, environmental-shift of a document The Cluetrain was, either it actually wasn’t or the majority of American businesses and consumers are just plain dumb.

To me, The Cluetrain is logical. Be nice. Expect it in return. Why can’t we get this, people?

That said, some people are getting it. More every day. It’s a fight worth fighting. We’re trying to teach business and industry that they should do right because it’s the right thing to do. And someday, we’ll win. When we do, we all will.

1. What does The Cluetrain Manifesto mean to you? How has the book and theses influenced or not influenced you?What The Cluetrain Manifesto did is put the core values of basic human decency back into business. Growing up in the shadow of small-business owning parents in a small town, I heard people talking about business ethics, particularly with respect to how to use Christian principles in one’s business approach. The corporate scandals of the 1990s seemed a sort of Sodom and Gomorra moment in business. The Cluetrain simplified the way brands – both large and small – should act. It put being human back in business. It whittled the mega-corporation down to its basic asset – its human characteristics, or more succinctly, it’s people.

   There’s more than an odd coincidence that the 95 theses were modeled after Martin Luther’s. In this case, consumers are protesting the smothering suffered at the hands of brands as opposed to similar behavior from the Catholic church. Through these, we can now visualize having a conversation with a company. This forces consumers to view them in a much different way. Those companies that participate in the conversation reap benefits. Those that don’t … or don’t very well … are earmarked for failure.

2. Which companies have best implemented The Cluetrain Manifesto in your opinion and how were they effective?While the smart ass in me can’t resist the temptation to think John Cass is somehow being rewarded by Dell for starting this meme – they are, after all, the tech crowd (i.e. meme participants) defacto answer here (and not undeservedly so) – I will offer Southwest Airlines as my example. I may not be the first and probably won’t be the last to do so. Southwest has continually engaged consumers, fostered employee education and outreach using social media tools, reaped the benefits of praises for their openness and suffered the setbacks of dissatisfied customers out in the open. But what they’ve really done is simply opened the lines of communications with their customers. They didn’t just start a blog, they read it. They read the comments. They responded, both on the site and through actions. And they keep doing it.

   Perhaps it’s a coincidence, perhaps not. But there’s a strange parallel between Southwest’s post-9/11 success and its willingness to listen and respond to consumers. Sure price is a differentiator, but take away money and there’s still lots of reasons to LUV Southwest.

3. In thesis 57, The Cluetrain Manifesto states, “smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable happen sooner.” In light of that thesis, is encouraging employees to use social media and blogging a good idea? Is it really effective, when an employee is encouraged but not directed?Encouraging employees to use social media and blogging can be a good idea, but it can also be a bad one. With everything, these determinations have to be made on a case-by-case basis. I don’t want the dipshit who forgot to put a burger patty on my wife’s hamburger last week blogging on behalf of anyone. But when you Tweet something about Nielsen, two or three people who work for them normally respond and offer to help find information if you’re looking.

   To answer the question, you have to assess your employees and whether or not you trust they can be good representatives of your company. Certain ones will, others won’t. If the majority of them concern you, I recommend one of two paths: 1. Don’t expressly encourage them (understanding they might on their own, regardless of your consent). 2. Reassess who and how you hire.

4. How can companies encourage employees to use social media, empower them to answer customer questions and learn from customers?

   The only way a company and its employees can be open externally is if they’re open internally. By openly talking about the employee’s responsibility to represent the company’s interest on- and off-line, giving them the training and the tools to do so and clearly illustrating that mistakes don’t come with retribution but only thorough discussion, you empower them to speak on your behalf. Once your employees believe in you, they’ll make others believe, too.

5. Do all employees want to talk with customers? If not, what percentage want to internetwork and converse?Surely not. I can think of a couple Doe-Anderson employees who don’t want to talk with co-workers. What percentage want to internetwork and converse? To date, a relatively small percent, mostly in the marketing department, but unfortunately under the influence of stayed marketing techniques. What the social web is doing, however, is gradually moving both consumers to engage with brands, but also brands to understand engagement is a two-way street and someone needs to talk back. Say what you will about the echo chamber, but what it has done is forced the hand of corporations to move from a brand-centric perspective to a consumer-centric point-of-view. Add the flavor of scalability to the equation and companies have to use more than just the customer service team or PR department to engage.

   The percentage that want to internetwork and converse is probably still small (less than 30 percent) but is the exact percentage of employees who implicitly understand the individual customer is their most important asset.

Valeria asked who could enrich this conversation when she honored me with a tag. For me, enrichment comes from very smart people. So I hope that Cam Beck, Geoff Livingston, Eric Eggerston, Becky McCray and David Finch will participate.

Here are some others who have thus far:

Valeria Maltoni, Richard Binhammer, Michael Walsh, Phil Gomes, Mack Collier and of course, John Cass.

My daughter Katie was born late Saturday night. She was six pounds, two ounces and 17 inches long. Mother and baby are exceptionally well. My son Grant and I are good, too.

Katie came early – three weeks to be exact – and we didn’t know she was coming until late Friday afternoon when a 24-hour hospital stay for what the doctor’s termed, “precautionary monitoring.” The precaution turned out to be preventative and labor was induced Friday afternoon.

Spending most of the last three days by my wife’s side in the hospital, attentive but at times bored since she was sleeping, resting or being tended to by professionals, I read blogs, caught up on emails and Twittered. (Labor, for both the wife and husband, is essentially a game of hurry up and wait. Nancy was induced at 1 a.m. ET Saturday morning. The contraction pain was bad enough for the epidural order 12 hours later. Katie waited another 10 and a half hours to come.)

So Twitter became a distraction for both me and Nancy. When a funny Tweet came across, I’d read it aloud and she would laugh. She even told me to Twitter that she was doing okay at one point. While most of the folks who follow me on Twitter are digital colleagues, I do have a circle of personal friends there who were happy to get Friday afternoon updates from the hospital. And even though I always consider the source when considering criticism, one person insinuated I was failing in my duties as husband and father by Twittering during my wife’s hospital stay.

Now, any parent who has been through labor understands the downtime and the lack of necessity in being overly busy-body-ish, particularly when your wife doesn’t want you to be. But there is an element of openness and personal disclosure that warrants discussion.

We in the social media space offer our professional lives up as open books. We evangelize about transparency, disclosure and truthiness. There are even tools out there that catalog our every digital move for friends and colleagues to follow. Some of us disclose minimal personal information. Others put up boundaries and clearly separate what is social currency and what is not. So long as our level of comfort is supported by our family and friends, I see little concern.

Several years ago, I built a community blog for my wife and her close-knit group of high school friends as a group Christmas present. One of the women in question was a high school teacher who was uneasy about her name and image being anywhere on the Internet so she asked to be removed. And, as that was her right, I removed her and we refrain from using pictures of her or her family on the site. For the rest of us, it has been a fun place to share pictures, stories and the like, particularly for the three of the group who live far away.

I’m proud to be a father and a husband. I have built vanity blogs for both of my children for family and friends to follow their life stream. I’m proud that my wife is a rape crisis counselor and enjoy uplifting her and her cause to others. My family and friends color my life and personality and I don’t mind at all to share them with my colleagues, professional or otherwise. Tweeting the weekend’s ordeal not only kept a circle of friends and colleagues (and, yes, strangers who just happen to follow me) informed on what was happening in my personal life, which they were welcome to ignore, but gave me a fair bit of reassurance and support with the well-wishing and happy thoughts everyone sent my way. (Over 80 notes of encouragement upon hearing the gravity of the situation Thursday evening and Friday – very humbling and powerful. Thank you to all who sent.)

But how much is too much? Was I wrong to Tweet details of my wife’s hospital stay and daughter’s arrival? Is it inappropriate to plaster a website with pictures of my children if I choose not to password protect the site? Is being as open-booked as I am (ask me about my flaws … I’ll gladly tell you those, too) beneficial or a detriment to my work, my friendships or my future?

How open are you? What would you share that would make you uncomfortable? What could you share that would make your family so?

All of these questions beckon to be answered as we all grow into this still new dimension of the greater media mix. Personal publishing and the social web give us unprecedented opportunity but with equally as unprecedented exposure. Where will the line be drawn to determine what is and is not for the offing? And whose decision is it to make?

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. How Personal Should A Blog Be?
2. How Much Does Online Privacy Matter To You?
3. Everything Is Personal
4. Online Privacy Policies: Just Who Are They Designed For?
5. Does Privacy Matter To Most Facebook Users?

IMAGE: Kathryn Ann Falls, April 19, 2008 – by Jason Falls.

Technorati Tags: privacy, personal information, disclosure, transparency

Having spent the weekend at Blogger Social in New York with 80 of the top marketing bloggers from around the world, it would be hard for me not to write about it here. Yet, for some reason, I strongly considered not doing so. Yes, I had a wonderful time networking and socializing with some of the most brilliant people in my business. Yes, there are fun stories to tell and new connections to explore. Yes, I would do it all over again next week, next month AND next year.

What tempts me to steer clear of writing about Blogger Social, however, is that doing so only contributes to what I see as a growing echo chamber of marketing, social media, public relations blogs that rotate posts about how most people don’t get it, traditional marketing sucks/is dead and look at all the cool bloggers I know/can link to/are brilliant, etc. Granted, I’m part of the problem. As Shawn Morton jokingly (sort of) put it in a recent email to some Social Media Club Louisville folks, “Jason Falls, who will hump the leg of any A-List blogger within 10 feet.” Offline, it’s networking. Here, though, it’s just gratuitous ass-kissing.

Not that each of the 80 folks don’t bring something wonderful to the conversation about marketing, public relations, social media and more. It would do all of my readers well to browse each of the folks listed in Friday’s post to find out what expertise they bring to the table. Several are thought leaders in the marketing world, authors of books and top blogs. Others are innovators, designers and entrepreneurs. All of them are leaders in our field.

But this, Social Media Explorer, is for you, not just them. Yes, many of them read my blog. But nothing much I say here is going to be new to them. Certainly, there’s validation and conversation among those readers of SME who know a thing or two about social media, but I would think this blog is more of a service to people trying to understand it a bit more. And noshing on about whose elbows I rubbed Friday and Saturday isn’t going to help you produce any better social media outcomes for your business or clients.

So, feel free to browse the Flickr galleries below to see how much fun we had. Jump over to the Blogger-Social photo group to see others. Do a Tweetscan for bs08 or blogger social if you want to see all the fun and frolic. In the meantime, I’m still tinkering with a stronger editorial purpose for Social Media Explorer. Thank you for your patience whilst I ponder.

Saturday’s Fun:

And From Friday:

Welcome to the new look of Social Media Explorer. No, the layout hasn’t really changed, but we now have a logo and we no longer have our masthead in the clouds, even if there is a funky image cut-off I’m still trying to fix. The change comes on the heels of several months of changes for me and some I think you’ll either notice, or find refreshing if you’re a regular reader of this blog.

More on that in a moment, however. Allow me the opportunity to thank Kevin Price, an infinitely talented designer at Doe-Anderson, for his logo and work. All of it was done just to appease the fat guy downstairs and served as a disruption to his normal workload, which is always too much. Special thanks to his boss, Hoon Baik, as well, who offered up some options, too, and helped Kevin tweak a few things in the process. Every agency has talented people. I’m certainly proud to work with these two and am thankful for their help.

The logo represents a lot of different things for me and I hope for you as well. The people joined in a circle (community and conversation) but one that has a compass type feel, particularly when you add the arrow, which itself implies something computer-related. It was one of the first designs Kevin came up with and I like it a lot. Hopefully, it will become synonymous with SME … or at least bring some color to our day. (And no, I don’t think it’s too close to the Fast Company online logo.)

And now for more change.

South by Southwest gave me a new perspective on my career, expertise and purpose. It seemed with every person I met, every business card I exchanged, ever conversation about the latest tool or topic of the day, I felt more and more like I belonged. Keep in mind I spent 11 years doing something besides this until a couple years ago. I’m also a self-taught closet computer geek from a po-dunk town in the middle of them thar hills, y’all. Even though I consider myself to be fairly smart, there are days I wonder if someone will find me out and make me work in the coal mines. SXSW reassured me that, in fact, I’m doing what I was meant to do.

My focus at work has come into a finer clarity and, though I could use about five more people to help me get through the day’s tasks, the projects I’m tackling are being handled with a great deal of pride and thoughtfulness. And (fingers crossed) Doe may even be entering a period where the possibility of bringing in more social media expertise is feasible. It’s an exciting time to work there.

I’ve also been working on a side project for the last month or so that bolsters my confidence. I’ll be able to talk about it more in the coming weeks, but rest assured it’s an important project that I’m playing a minor part in, but one that reaffirms the notion that social media is what I should be doing. That project has made me reassess my activities outside of work and streamline several of them inside to ensure I can commit the energy needed. Changing my time commitments has been hard, but will prove worthwhile.

And speaking of priorities, my wife and I are six weeks away from welcoming our second child and first daughter to the world. I’m genuinely overwhelmed with excitement, scared that my son won’t adjust well and clueless as to how I’m going to balance all that I have with now two children and a wife who needs my attention, too.

The reassessment of where I am and where I am going has led me to focus on some changes here as well. Over the next few months you’ll likely notice fewer posts, but hopefully better ones. I want to focus on quality rather than quantity and make the time you spend here more worth your while. I am honored you read Social Media Explorer and owe you continual improvement. You’ll also probably see fewer videos, though they won’t completely disappear. When we have a chance to interview someone good, we will. But, frankly, video posts attract a lot fewer of you than written ones. As always, if you have ideas on how I can improve them, I’m all ears.

We’ve also stripped out the advertisements. After doing some research on Doc Searls’ Because Effect and thinking more about Chris Anderson’s Economy of Free philosophy, not to mention the whopping $1.45 I’ve made in something like nine months from AdSense, it’s easy to see that neither you nor I need them here.

So as Social Media Explorer and I enter a period of redefined focus, please tell me what you would like to see here. Case studies? Interviews? Guest bloggers? What do you think of the new look?

As always, the comments are yours.

There’s a little diner on the block down from my office called Boomers. It’s a quaint little place run by a couple older than me (as opposed to older couple), John and Carole Taylor. The restaurant has decent food, decent prices and a good location but so do a dozen or so places within walking distance. Yet Boomers is distinctive for two primary reasons, both of which have everything to do with social media despite the fact the only time the word Internet has been used there is probably to describe the place where the cook’s hair is.

The staff is overly helpful and attentive to every customer and each gets a York Peppermint Patty upon payment.

So what does this have to do with social media? In a word: Everything.

Too many marketers are making the mistake of approaching social media from a selfish perspective. What can social media strategy do for me or my brand? How can we increase market share, conversion or awareness using social media tools? What’s in it for us?

Social media, though, is less about what you get and more about what you give. This is why marketers struggle to adapt. By turning the cost-benefit equation around and approaching social media by asking the questions, “What can we give to our consumers through social media? How can we enhance their experience? What can we put in it for them?” you set yourself up to accomplish all the selfish goals in the first place.

The customer, not the brand or the product, comes first at Boomer’s. I order a Diet Pepsi, which they serve in a can. Since the can is refrigerated, I decline the cup of ice. During the course of my meal every staff member from waitresses to bus boys to cooks ask if I need some ice for my drink. And then, at the end of the meal, when it’s my turn to pay for the services, I actually GET something for free.

No, I wouldn’t go to Boomers to get a free Peppermint Patty. But I go there because of the free Peppermint Patty.

Rob Key calls it Karmic Communication. Tara Hunt says by giving you get more. I say for marketers it’s just being human in what, until recently, has been a non-human world.

So ask yourself, “Are we concerned primarily with customers or costs, with people or profits?” If your answers are brand-centric, maybe you’re not ready for social media. If you’re all about the customer, try to find your Peppermint Patty and dive in.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. Free! Why $0.00 Is The Future Of Business
2. Chris Anderson Is Wrong. FreeDOM, Not Free, Is The Future Of Business
3. Disrupting The VC Business And Exploring The Because Effect
4. Better Than Free
5. Why Are You Giving Away Content For Free?

IMAGE: “Big Rewards” by trekkyandy on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: social media, marketing, advertising, free, economy of free, because effect, karma, giving