But we tend to forget that following isn’t touch.

And in this case, “touch” means a connection of our presence to theirs such that the other person knows that you’re still paying attention, that they matter, and that there’s still a tie there. It’s the equivalent of stopping by for a quick cup of coffee, or even just sending a hand-written note (but that’s a matter for another post).

I see you, but if I don’t reach out and touch you such that we have a brief interaction of some kind, then I might be in jeopardy of becoming a ghost in your world.

The problem, as is the curse threaded into the opportunity of this new world, is scale. It’s reasonably easy to maintain digital touch with a hundred or so people. It is not easy to do so with thousands and thousands. The solution? Not entirely sure. My own personal method is to do as much as I can daily to reach out to a few dozen people each day and make sure they know I’m still paying attention.

How are you handling it? Do you find yourself losing some threads here and there? Which of your online tools are helping or hindering the experience?

This guest post comes from John Meadows, an original thinker and podcaster from Canada. I first met John at PodCamp Toronto, I believe, so it’s fitting that his guest post comes a week before the third installation of that event. John asks why we can’t be friends.

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

It is sadly ironic that for so many social media projects, where the focus is supposed to be on communication and conversation, start off with poor communication between business, consultants and IT. Instead of listening to what the other is saying, we tend to listen to our own stereotypes, no matter what role we are playing in a project.

The folks from I.T. look across the table at the Social Media consultants. They see people who not only don’t understand technology, but don’t see the need to understand technology at a nuts and bolts perspective, and look at it with disdain. They see people who consider hands-on work with servers, networks and application code to have a somewhat menial tinge, as compared to the highly strategic, value-add services provided by the consultants.

For their part, the social media consultants, looking back across the table at the I.T. folks, see people who seem to feel their sacred duty in life is to rain on parades. They are the “Knights who say No” and are never happier then when they can point out flaws and dangers in proposals being presented to them. They are lost in the details, with no appreciation for the grand vision, the big picture.

And in the middle of all this is the business customer; watching I.T. and Social Media go at it, each side lobbing acronyms or buzzwords at each other like mortar shells. He or she feels like a witness to trench warfare, standing forgotten between two implacable foes wondering “Why isn’t anyone listening to me?”

It is hard to see a successful project as an outcome of so much bitter contention. While these role-based generalizations are born of experience (and yes there are I.T. folks who delight in saying no, from sheer laziness or fear of change, just as there are consultants who dismissively see I.T. as cyber-janitors to be threatened with off-shoring if they get “uppity”), these negative experiences only become stereotypes when you apply them to everyone.

How can we get past this? Only by stepping out of our respective comfort zones, and learning about each others concerns and accountabilities as stakeholders. I myself come from the I.T. camp, and can fully appreciate its concerns – long after the designers of a program have moved on, it will be up to an I.T. support organization to keep an application running, make sure it can handle whatever load is thrown at it, and make sure it doesn’t pose a threat to the security and stability of the organization’s infrastructure. The I.T. representatives in a project know full that is a project results in disruption of the infrastructure, or a security breach, they will be the ones on the carpet in front on the CEO; not the social media consultant. The knowledge and expertise of the I.T. professional needs to be leveraged, not dismissed, or avoided as inconvenient.

To address these concerns and needs, a successful social media consultant will either develop some enterprise IT skills on their own, or bring along someone who does have those skills, who can speak and understand the language of Information Technology. Someone who can respond to security questions, discuss the choice of platforms and programming languages. Someone who can be an implementation partner instead of just someone who throws an install disk at I.T. and tells the customer if anything goes wrong it must be a problem caused by the I.T. group.

Now of course, this needs to work both ways. Those of us in I.T. must truly internalize the concept that I.T. assets only have value when they serve the needs goals and strategies of the organization. We need to lift our heads above our keyboards and telnet session windows to take a hard look at how what we do can serve our organizations not just today, but in the future. Being conservative with the I.T. family jewels isn’t a bad thing, but we also need to be receptive to new ideas and new business needs, and find a way to help realize them. Just saying NO reflexively does nothing except reinforce the stereotype. If we have a concern with a proposal or project being pitched by a third party consultant, we need to raise the concern using language the business can understand, and frame what we say in a manner that drives a solution-based discussion. “How can we make this work” rather than “This will never work.” We cannot afford to let our own imaginations atrophy, and we should welcome challenge.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with archeology will be familiar with the Rosetta Stone — an ancient stone artifact with a proclamation in three different languages/writing systems, including a hieroglyphic system that scholars had been struggling to translate. The stone brought the three languages together, and thus allowed the scholars to make great strides in unlocking the hieroglyphic system. If we, both as social media experts and I.T. experts work as hard to understand each other’s languages, concerns and needs, together we can similarly unlock a third language, one of customer success, and sustainable innovation.

And oh, what a lovely language that would be.

Get more from John Meadows at meadowsonline.com

Learning more about this and understanding how this impacts communication and other social interactions might give you some useful insight, and perhaps some next steps in how you approach online people and communities. I’d love your thoughts from any part of this equation.

The Plastic Human Problem: Visitors to The Community at Large

There are actually a few problems that relate to this. One is that newcomers to any online setting somehow often fall into the mistake of thinking everyone is exactly like them, and has also just arrived on scene. Not being digital natives, or at least not natives of a certain setting, they immediately make social errors that jar the existing community.

An example: in the old days of IRC (chat rooms), there would be a core of people who knew each other, who hung out, who talked about this or that. Someone new would come in and immediately blurt out an advertisement, or start hitting on the female chatters, or some other obvious social gaffe. The thing was, some of these people were nice, and they genuinely wanted to interact. They just didn’t yet accept that the chat room was full of real people.

It seemed — and I’m curious as to your take — that people who weren’t very attuned to the online world seemed to treat humans they encountered online as videogame non-player-characters. Not everyone acted this way, but it’s as if there was a lack of sensitivity to the fact that real people were on the other side of these communication chains. And that worked two ways.

The Plastic Human Problem: Let It All Hang Out

Social interactivity freed up a lot of “cellar dwellers,” many of whom hadn’t had as many chances to explore their socializing chops. In other cases, these people had physical disabilities that were overcome by the new technology (lots of deaf folks came online and felt more connected than ever). In other cases, they were just socially underskilled.

These folks experimented. They explored personae. They worked with personalities. They tried on new names and identities in the old aliased web, and thus, they made it easier for those non-natives to treat as less than real.

Trolls, Stone-Throwers, and Faux Celebrities

From this, I believe stems a lot of the behaviors we wish didn’t exist on many fronts. On one side, it’s really easy to be judgmental of others. We operate at a remove where we feel we can judge what we see versus thinking about the larger picture. I believe this is where trolls come from, or rather, it’s this plastic human at a remove that adds to the troll issue.

Stone throwers, people who want to accuse and condemn and feel righteous, come into this. Boy, there’s something about this medium that has everyone thinking that they have the “one true way” ™ & (c) to do things. I believe, again, that this comes from the feeling that the people on the other side of the keyboard are somehow less real, or less affected by one’s thoughts.

Faux celebrities. That’s me. That’s Gary Vaynerchuk. That’s a lot of names you know from the blogs you read or the videos you watch. By “faux,” we’re real people set into a situation where in a limited niche, we’re known for something, and people check in to see what we say.

Sometimes, people jump all over faux celebrities. We do it to real celebrities, so why not the Internet version. Lots of times, the criticism is useful, real, and spurs meaningful change. Other times, it’s just people being mean. Why? Again, I think it’s because there’s something that happens sometimes in the online world where we forget that people on the other side of the screen are real, have feelings, and all the rest of that stuff.

How This Can Impact You

• Consider the Communities You Visit – If you’re an Internet marketer, you might start at the early part of the post and think about the various online social communities and their social norms. Barbara K. Baker often points out that I’m not engaging enough in the communities behind tools like StumbleUpon or Digg. She’s right. So even I, who count myself a digital native since the 1980s, have lessons to learn when encountering various online cultures. Ditto my lack of experience and ability in Second Life.
• It’s a Bit More Real Now – The same social disparities exist. There are people with varying levels of social skill, and/or people with varying levels of transparency to who they really are, and if you’re looking to interact in this space, bear that all in mind. (You’re probably the one with the somewhat better social skills, so you have to carry the weight of being more tolerant of others.) If you’re thinking of being an alias, be aware that many people are playing the role of themselves online these days.

• Be Kind. Please Rewind – Somehow, a generation of media celebrities has turned the acceptable tone of disagreement to a harsh negativity. How did we let the Simon Cowell / Howard Stern / *.angry person tone become the default? This isn’t a matter of being sensitive. It’s a matter of not offering much value alongside a criticism. It’s okay to disagree with people, but why the cranky flavor? Why not just go after the issues at hand and offer a different take? Strikes me that the same end result still happens. No?

What’s Your Take?

This was a long one. There’s lots on my mind about it, obviously. I’m curious as to your experiences on the web with any of this, and how you think of the other people occupying these bits and pixels. What’s your idea?

Photo credit Gaetan Lee and Pathfinder Linden

I make mistakes. You probably do, too. Or maybe you don’t, but I sure do.

If nothing else, apologize. Then try to learn. Then try not to repeat the mistakes.

Isn’t it strange? As humans, we know this. Don’t we? But as a business, are you ready to apologize? Can you just admit what you’ve done and try to move things to the next part?

I say sorry for something every single day. Sometimes, it’s something small. Other times, it’s something bigger. What about you?

Photo credit Eneas