ARTICULATED

Facebook can help you get stuff done.  I know you may not believe me, and admittedly I was a Facebook zealot even before I made this important discovery. But it’s true! It’s no longer just for voyeurs and exhibitionists, Facebook is for things that you actually need to do!

• You can find a new client for your business.  Based on some interests I apparently had revealed over time through garden variety status updates, a former colleague who’s a friend on Facebook reached out to me about a potential new piece of business she’d heard about. That introduction led to a great new client, one that opened the door to even more.

• You can find a buyer for your house.  This week, my elderly mom’s rickety old house, which I’m charged with selling, went under contract before it was even listed on the market. From my posts on Facebook about transitioning my mom into my sister’s house, an old friend from high school reached out through Facebook wondering if we might soon be looking to sell. One thing led to another, and we’re set to go to settlement in mid-May.

So if you find me on Facebook, don’t automatically assume I’m killing time.  I just may be getting something done.

Successful communications, particularly at crisis time, is far less about what you say in response to the crisis than 1,000 decisions made long before the crisis occurs.

Case in point: amid this story of a desecrated mountain lion carcass found on a Santa Barbara freeway is one little sentence that does nothing good for the California Fish and Game Commission.  It reads, “Earlier this year, the president of the Fish and Game commission was criticized by state legislators for participating in a mountain lion hunt in Idaho.”

At some point, the president of the commission made a decision to hunt a “specially protected species” under a California law that he’s charged with upholding. He’s probably not a bad guy, but that decision looks questionable and undermines the commission’s credibility.  Who could’ve imagined that an unlikely encounter between a dead cat on the side of a highway and a twisted souvenir hunter would shine a light on that questionable decision many months later? Yet it did. I bet that’s one decision the president of the commission wishes he could take back.

If we are in the public eye in any way, it’s about running every single decision we make, whether or not we’re wearing our communications hat at the time, through the filter of “How might this decision look later if the unexpected happens?” If the answer is “probably not good,” then just don’t do it.

As if Facebook and Twitter weren’t enough, should you be dabbling in Foursquare? In this blog post on SocialMediaToday, Rachel Strella makes the best case I’ve read to date for why “normal” people should dabble in the location-based social media service.

Foursquare is something of a darling among social media junkies. So I tried it a couple of years ago but deleted it from my phone almost immediately. At the time, there weren’t many users. I subconsciously feared being a hypocrite because I had long argued that I should never have to tell a boss or client where I am — I should only have to demonstrate that I’m delivering. And I generally didn’t get it and didn’t have the energy to try that hard because I was already approaching social-media overload.

Strella explains why Foursquare is a good marketing tool for local businesses. Indeed, If I ran a little stand that sold burritos as big as your head to drunk people in the wee hours, I’d be marketing via Foursquare like it was my job. Strella also makes a great case for why using Foursquare can be really good for finding good deals and good eats. Her simple argument is so compelling, in fact, that I’m considering trying it again.

But she doesn’t address my perpetual BIG QUESTION, one that I find so rarely addressed, because there really is no good answer. It applies not only to Foursquare, of course, but to Facebook mobile, Twitter apps, texting, work email, and our general obsession with our smartphones. What do you say when your friend, your colleague, your other half, or even your kid, asks, “Why are you playing with that phone again? I’m right here in front of you.”

As anyone who’s paid attention to this blog will know, I have opinions on resumes. The most read post ever on this blog ever is “Hey, smart P.R. pro, your resume stinks. Here’s 3 tips to fix it.” It’s not like I have any sort of human resources or other substantive hiring experience. It’s just the communications guy in me. I know what putting one’s best foot forward looks like, and there’s no better place to do that well (or, unfortunately, poorly) than a resume.

So check out this great infographic from big social-media news site Mashable on crafting the “perfect modern resume.” It must really be striking a chord – it’s been retweeted more than 2,500 times.

Check out this great piece on NetWitsThinkTank from @Blackbaud.  Nonprofit software company Idealware surveyed more than 500 nonprofit staff about their Facebook usage. The results give some guidance to nonprofit leaders about the areas in which spending time engaging with Facebook fans actually reaps dividends (such as generating event turnout and building stronger relationships with existing constituents). And the areas in which it does not (such as donor acquisition). It’s worth a read.

I spent about a year and a half deeply engaged on Twitter. (See my Twitter profile here.) It was a test, called for in Kinkennon Communications’ (KC) marketing and new-business plan for 2009, to ascertain if investing significant time in Twitter might have some business-development upside for my shop.

The answer turned out to be emphatically “no.” Except for using it to conduct bits of research, I haven’t participated on Twitter in months. I gained a deep understanding of the role that Twitter can play as an arrow in a communications quiver. Depending on the objective, Twitter can have tremendous utility.

But ultimately, spending 1-2 hours every workday on Twitter simply didn’t fulfill my idea of “very important work.” I decided there are ways I can spend that 1-2 hours daily that are far higher value, both professionally and personally.

For two years, I’ve been considering giving Kinkennon Communications (KC) a presence on Facebook but have resisted. I have very precise ideas about how to (and how not to) market a public relations consultancy via social media. And I have very precise ideas about how I do (and do not) want to annoy my 850+ Facebook friends. A KC presence hasn’t seemed to fit either.

But I think I’m about to reverse course. I may create a presence, but it won’t be a page for KC specifically, though KC will be the sponsor of it. It will be a page for a premise that is very much me and my view of the P.R. field: “If you’re gonna do public relations, do it for something important.”

The tagline of my business is “a quirky little communications consultancy that does very important work.” So the Facebook page would be strategically aligned, so to speak (err, write). I want to create something that might reach and appeal to all manner of P.R. people. Through blogging and discussion threads, it’ll be a place to create energy around a premise that happens to be very central to my business. It’ll be a branding opportunity. It’ll be fun.

If you’re fascinated by brand marketing, you might find this little viral video to be sheer genius, like I do. Viral video is not new, obviously.  But this particular example reveals everything about the way marketing is changing. The unspoken messaging is simple and brilliant. According to the Jason Keath of Social Fresh, the video had no online advertising or any other “spending” support. Coca-Cola simply posted it on the company’s Facebook page. Because the content was so “right,” it took off.  I love it.

I’m at a Colorado Association of Funders daylong seminar on social media strategy. Hundreds of people from the state’s nonprofit community are here listening to author and consultant Beth Kanter, who is quite charming.

I’ve been tweeting live from the event with the hashtag #ztrain, one of about 20 people in the room doing so. Right now, I’m the guy I’ve made fun of before, the one with my eyes down pecking away rather than making eye contact with the live humans around me. Luckily, I’m charming, so I’m interacting with my table enough that they still seem to like having me around … even though they’re making fun of me for “twittering.”

The upside is that, because of the hashtag I’m using, I’m more or less identifying myself to other people in the room who also are tweeting from the conference. I couldn’t point them out, of course. But the whole dynamic is intriguing.  And maybe I’ll make a new friend or business contact out of it.

On a break, I just tried to explain all of this to a funny and fun copywriter sitting beside me. She was dying to know what the hell I’m doing. Her reaction to my explanation was quite entertaining.

If you’re considering the purchase of a new vacuum cleaner, do you go to the Hoover website? Or do you Google the model you’re considering and look at whatever reviews pop up? What about the local auto-repair shop? Would you visit their website for any reason other than to learn their hours of operation? Would you call them and ask them what they think about themselves? Or would you ask others what experience they’ve had there? On the social web, Yelp, Google Reviews, and other services do the work of uncovering customer perspectives for us. That’s because these days, we don’t care as much about what a company has to say about itself. Intentionally or not, we increasingly root around the social mediasphere to validate (or nudge us away from) our purchase inclinations.

It begs the question: do websites still matter? Check out this fascinating exploration of that topic by Pete Blackshaw, the editor of Advertising Age Mobile. Blackshaw asks, “Didn’t things seem a tad curious during the World Cup when brands like Adidas and Nike actively promoted their Facebook page – not their primary website – at the end of their TV spots?”

The smart marketers at major consumer brands are at the front of the curve on this.   It might suggest that among the savviest consumer marketers, websites are becoming obsolete.  But Blackshaw argues that the role of the brand website is just changing to serve an evolved purpose in our new, social context. His great analogy:

“Brands today live a decentralized if not fragmented existence. The brand ‘home’ has line-extended itself into a network of smaller residences and rented apartments – or what we might call ‘brand stands’ – all primed for meeting and interacting with the consumer at various stages in the purchase, loyalty or advocacy cycle. A Facebook fan page is a classic brand stand.”

Note the mention of “advocacy” cycle, which applies more to the kinds of folks in my professional circles and who read this blog. His counsel is equally applicable to nonprofits serving community needs, trade associations serving corporate members, and issue campaigns attempting to capture the imagination of grassroots stakeholders.

When rethinking the organization’s website, “Think wholesale, less retail. Think distribution, less destination. Think serving, less selling,” Blackshaw writes.