While this may sound like I’m a highly unpleasant person, I should clarify that there is a difference between judging and making a judgment.

I don’t go around barking out personality edicts like some director in front of an inept chorus line (“You? Awesome!” “You? Grumpy!” You? Desperately in need of therapy!”)

For me, “judging” is more of a process of collecting information about a person as quickly as possible and using it to decide how I should communicate with them in return.

Just like you, this is something I do with both my senses and my gut.

Your four relationship-building senses (well, five … if you’re a zombie).

When you think about it, most of the information we collect when we first meet someone is simply a series of sensory cues …

• SIGHT: Does what this person is saying match their body language? Do they look connected to the conversation or are their eyes wandering? Are their arms crossed, making them seem closed-off and unreceptive?

• SOUND: Does this person’s voice sound tight and constricted by stress or anger? Is their tone conveying openness and interest in what you’re saying? Are they being sarcastic or sardonic, and how does that make you feel?

• SMELL: Do they smell like a smoker, hard core coffee drinker or crazy cat lady? How do you feel about those things? Do they wear the same cologne as your high school boyfriend, making you instantly nostalgic and swoony?

• TOUCH: Is their handshake limp or powerful? Does their hand linger a little too long on your back when they are talking to you? Are they a hugger? Do they touch your hand to get your attention when they’re talking?

• TASTE: Um … you probably do not employ this sense in building relationships.

When we meet people, we use all of this sensory information to create our perception of a person and our mind subconsciously helps to fill in any gaps in the picture.

For example, let’s say you’re talking to someone who has their arms crossed, a tight voice and is nervously tapping the table. Your mind might summarize this information and send you a message that says, “This is a tightly-wound person who is either unhappy with me or their environment right now. Tread cautiously.”

The gut reaction we get from our “sensory summaries” informs how we should behave in return. (For instance, you may choose to slow your voice and modulate the tone or lean back to give the person space, etc.)

Even with all of our senses working overtime, this process can still be highly skewed or erroneous.

There have been many times where I’ve meet a person and decided instantly that I adore them. But then, down the road when a more complete portrait of that person is revealed, I’m left wondering, “What in the hell were you thinking?”

Matchmaking in the dark.

In our online relationships however, nearly all of this sensory information is removed from the equation.

All we have are words on a screen next to an unchanging avatar mask (people literally, putting their best face forward).

The gaps between what we see and what may be reality are huge and we have no cues to help us bridge the divide.

Where, in person, we might have had six or seven sensory clues to help us form our perception of a person, online we have one (at best).

And yet, most of us continue to make same definitive judgments about the people we befriend online and act according to them.

Have you ever stopped and really given thought to why you feel the way you do about the people in your online social circles? What are you basing your feelings on?

What do you, in fact, KNOW versus what you only SEE?

For example …

• Is a person with a smiling avatar who uses lots of emoticons and exclamation points, in fact, friendlier, or are you just conditioned by the photo to expect them to be and read all of their posts with that preexisting lens?

• If a person in your digital network talks a lot about themselves, do you interpret that as a sign of self-absorption? Cluelessness? Desperation? What cues have they given in all of that chatter to give you that indication?

• Does an active conversation stream and large follower base really indicate that someone is a “social” person or could they actually be really lonely and desperate for human connection? If you never meet them in person, would you ever know the difference?

The reality is that, when it comes to relationship-building online, we are all like Gollum in his cave, nearly blind and often lost, but still convinced that the people before us are precious.

Where will this take us?

Social media is not just a cultural phenomenon, but a psychological one as well. It presents us with a radically new way of shaping our sense of self and presenting that self to others.

While we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the effect this can have for our businesses, I’m even more curious to know what affect it will have on our psyches.

• What kind of fallout will result from constructing relationships with such flimsy materials? If this style of connecting with people becomes the norm, what then will this mean for our more intimate connections with our friends and family? Is a relationship that is less “real” necessarily one that is less satisfying?

• If social media is in fact our “second life,” where we have the option to build relationships that reflect an alternate version of our selves, what kind of schism could that create in our overall sense of identity and what will be the long term affects of having that schism?

• Is social media a trigger that can magnify existing psychological issues (narcissism, addiction, depression) and what might that mean for psychologists who are trying to work with clients on those issues, but who do not understand the role that social media may be playing in undermining their efforts?

There is much that we do not know — and even more that we assume to have already mastered. To find the answers, we’ll need our senses, our gut and perhaps, most importantly, our judgments.

For those of you who have missed it (and it’d be real hard to miss it if you live here), D’Amico entered the Twittersphere recently with a boom.

They set-up many, many, many Twitter accounts (often with such cozy names as D’Amico_12) for the brand, each of its restaurants, each of its employees and all of its catering arms.(There is a small handful of them listed here.)

Then, they populated these accounts with syndicated content (hashtagged within an inch of its life) that is neither gregarious nor graceful in tone or form.

There is no human voice to the Twitter presence – the feeds are just automated “menu-a-trons” brand blasts that march across people’s screens with the calculated regularity and precision of a North Korean army.

If you’ve made the mistake of following more than one of these accounts, the affect can be akin to watching that Faberge commercial from the 80’s with Heather Locklear, where she says “and so on and so on and so on…” while her photo replicates like a virus.

In this Twitter campaign, there appears to be little talking and, more importantly, little listening. And the general consensus among Twin Cities tweeters is that the whole endeavor is highly unappealing.

The larger question though is….

Is it ineffective?

Nope.

(Oh wait…you wanted me to say “yes” here, didn’t you?)

The reality is that broadcast messaging still works, since that’s what most of us are used to.

While the people YOU know might DVR shows to skip commercials, listen to commercial free satellite radio or engage in authentic, relationship-building conversations on social media, a whole lot of other people out there do not.

Now, I’m sure there are a ton of people who follow back these accounts and are befuddled by what they see. But there are probably just as many that think, “oh hey, a coupon for lemonade!” and click through without thinking twice.

I’m sure D’Amico is seeing payoff with these accounts, especially if their campaign metrics are not concerned with brand sentiment, only the number of hits, follows, retweets, etc. – data that, while mesmerizing in its magnitude, often fails to address the larger question of, “Does anyone really LIKE what we’re saying?”

Is it brand damaging?

In their pursuit of short-term gain, personally, I think that, yes, D’Amico is missing the opportunity for long-term growth.

Whenever I complain about them online, I nearly always receive public or private messages in response from people who say, “thank you for saying something about this.”

In short, I have never seen ANYONE publicly stand up in support on behalf of this brand – not even D’Amico itself.

This campaign has given D’Amico a bad reputation, but is it brand damaging? Probably not.

I have many connections in the meetings and events industry, and the vast majority of these people have no idea what D’Amico’s Twitter presence is like (many of them aren’t even on Twitter themselves).

These people will continue to use D’Amico as a vendor and will probably be tickled to be asked to “Follow them on Twitter” with no knowledge that their social media experience could be anything different.

Ironically, not only do I not think their actions will damage their brand, I think it will actually reinforce it.

I’ve had a number of contacts with D’Amico staff where the vibe was, “If you don’t like it — tough. We own all the event facilities in this town, so it doesn’t really matter what you think.”

And they’re right.

So, not being particularly chummy or concerned with people’s opinions on Twitter is actually a pretty “spot on” approach for this company. They are authentic … authentically disinterested in what you think.

Is it spam?

One might say that, if you opt-in to the D’Amico party, then you really can’t call it spam.

True. But I’m inclined to still label it as such simply due to their gratuitous following/unfollowing/refollowing approach.

One reason why many hard-core Twitter users don’t like this campaign is that it is fairly manipulative. It preys off of newbies’ tendency to just automatically follow back people who follow them.

For example, a person sees “New D’Amico follower” in their email and clicks “follow.” Maybe the next day they get another one and think, “I thought I followed them yesterday…oh well [click]. Maybe the next day they get followed from a D’Amico account for one of their restaurants – the name’s a little different, so they think, “okay,” [click].

These and other Twitter tactics are just part of a numbers game. I understand the game, so I just opt not to play.

But many of my clients, friends and followers don’t have that knowledge. What I hear from them is that these practices leave them feeling used, duped and confused.

That sounds pretty “spamy” in my books.

So, what’s next?

I probably am just preaching to the choir here. But, the whole point of a choir is that voices, when combined, amplify.

My own quiet message to D’Amico is this:  Because I do not support your approach to social media …

• I will not follow your accounts.
• I will not retweet your information.
• I will not click on your links.
• I will not dine in your restaurants.
• I will not use you as a caterer for my events.

If you feel strongly about this too, then I invite you to add your voice to the conversation.

While ultimately we may not be listened to, I can promise you that we will be heard.

This post however, isn’t about that event. It’s about Brian’s book, Engage!

Engage is a great book. I read every last stinkin word in it … I underlined stuff (with a straight edge!), made notes in the margins, emailed passages to clients and tweeted my favorite quotes.

Problem is, I am totally not normal.

I am a reader. Hard core. I don’t watch TV. I don’t play video games. I have no hobbies or social life.

(Wow … that sounds really pathetic, doesn’t it?)

All I do is read … books, blogs, magazines, newspapers, backs of cereal boxes, you name it.

What’s more, I also read business books. (I run a business book club – thanks to all who’ve dropped by – and I know that this is an even more rare breed of people.)

So, when I see people tweeting that they’re anxious to tackle Brian’s book before or after the event, I get a little nervous.

You see, Brian’s book is really good, but it’s also really … well, epic. (At our book salon, some people said there were sections that “made their brains want to explode.”)

It’s summer in Minnesota, and I’m worried that even you serious readers out there might not be in the mood to have your brain exploding. Your brain probably wants more to lie in the sunshine with a gin and tonic.

Never fear though, I figured out a way that you can get your “Engage” fix and that gin and tonic too …

The “Engage” Cliff Notes.

Let me start by saying this:  I really think you should read Brain’s book in its entirety.

You should try to drink eight glasses of water a day, floss and “live your best life,” too.

The reality is that many of you won’t.

However, I’m willing to bet that you’ll read parts of this book, and some is better than none. If your time and attention is limited, hopefully these Cliff Notes can help you determine which parts those should be.

So, (with many, many, apologies to Brian) pick your profile and let’s get started …

1. “I’m clueless about social media, but I want to find out how to get started.”

• I’d suggest you start at the beginning of the book with Part I: The New Reality of Marketing and Customer Service.

• In Part II: Forever Students of New Media, read the Social Media 101 section and all the 201’s (201, 202, 203).

• You may be in over your head with some of the 301 information and totally floundering in the 401’s and the “MBA” sections, so I’d suggest you instead skip ahead and read Part III: Brand Representative Versus the Brand You and Part IV: We are the Champions.

• You might just want to stop after Chapter 19 and revisit the book later after you’ve had some time to go use what you’ve learned in the social space and get more comfortable with the tools/technology/tactics.

2. “I use social media, and kinda know what I’m doing, but I still have a lot to learn.”

• Start at the beginning of the book with Part I: The New Reality of Marketing and Customer Service.

• In Part II: Forever Students of New Media, read the Social Media 101 section, as well as all the Social Media 201’s (201, 202, 203) and Social Media 301’s (301, 302, 303.) If that information isn’t freaking you out, go ahead and tackle the Social Media 401’s (401, 402, 403). Your brain will likely be hurting after you’re done, so if you decide not to read the MBA information right now, that’s totally okay. I’m sure Brian will still love you.

• Read all of Part III: Brand Representative Versus the Brand You and Part IV: We are the Champions.

• If you’re up to it, tackle Part V: The Social Architect: Developing a Blueprint for New Marketing and maybe stop after Chapter 22 and revisit the book later after you’ve had a chance to process and apply what you’ve learned.

3. “Social media is part of my job at my company/agency/consultancy and people are looking to me to show them how it’s done. I need to make sure I know my stuff.”

• You should really read this whole book, you know that right?

• Obviously, read Part I: The New Reality of Marketing and Customer Service.

• Then, since you’re working with these tools on a daily basis, you may want to skip ahead to Part III: Brand Representative Versus the Brand You, Part IV: We are the Champions and Part V: The Social Architect: Developing a Blueprint for New Marketing. There is good information in these sections and you don’t want to be fried from reading all the New Media University stuff when you tackle it.

• You should read Part VI: A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action: Rising Above the Noise, but I’ll admit that the Social CRM/VRM info can be a little overwhelming. You may want to just skim Chapters 23 and 24 for now. Chapter 25 though (Measuring Investment Returns) is an essential read, though. Do not skip this.

• After you’ve had a chance to digest what you’ve learned, don’t forget to revisit the book later and read the New Media University section. I guarantee you there will be some tools and tactics in there that you haven’t used or thought of yet.

4. “As a business person, I get that we need to get on board with social media, but I just want to know what I’ll be hiring people to do and to how to fit this into our operations.”

• Start with Part I: The New Reality of Marketing and Customer Service.

• If you’re not going to be doing any of this, just managing it, you might want to just jump to all the business stuff in the back of the book and revisit all of the details about what social media is and why it works at a later time. This, (for obvious reasons) is not the best way to read the book, but it might be the most realistic way to tackle it for your situation.

• If you are particularly strapped for time and just want to get down to business, you should definitely read Chapter 17 on establishing policies, Chapter 22 on building teams, and all of Part VI: A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action: Rising Above the Noise.

• For a more informed approach though, instead of reading chapters out of context, start at Part III: Brand Representative Versus the Brand You and read from there until the end of the book.

• It would be good for you to know that stuff in Part II: Forever Students of New Media, so don’t forget to revisit the book down the road and review when you’ve had some time to process or before you start sending our RFP’s for people to help you with your social media plans.

5. “I got this under control, already. I’m a social media rock star/guru.”

One of my favorite quotes from Brian Solis is that he considers himself to be “forever a student of social media.”

… and he is one smart dude.

Point here is we all have stuff to learn.

If you consider yourself to be a guru, then I guess my recommendations for you are …

• Read the book.
• Then, go write one of your own.

Who knows? Maybe if you play your cards right, someday you’ll get your very own Cliff Notes too.

Like the giant Venus Fly Trap in Little Shop of Horrors, it’s grown into a Hydra-like beast that requires constant feeding and attention.

Feed me, Jennifer...Feed me!

I have no one to blame for this but myself.

I’ve created oodles of social profiles for myself and my company and syndicate content among them.

This has created an elaborate conversational web that makes it appear that I am in many places at one time, when, in fact, I am not.

As a consequence, any one post of mine can initiate a domino fall of comments that funnel in from multiple social sources: Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, LinkedIn, Ning, Buzz.

Add to this a host of parallel conversations via text messages, emails and chat programs, and I’ve got a serious traffic control problem on my hands.

So, how do you tame the social beast when it starts to exponentially grow like this?

Start by trying these five things:

1. Get yourself a dashboard.

You’re a busy person and you probably don’t have time to log into each of your social media accounts throughout the day. (Nor should you have to.) Focus instead on aggregating that information into one central portal.

If you have multiple social channels to manage, set up some sort of central dashboard where you can monitor your conversational traffic. There are a number of free ones out there to choose from, such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic, PeopleBrowsr, etc.

I use Tweetdeck as the “command central” for my personal communications and populate it with feeds from not just my Twitter account, but also Facebook and Google Buzz (You can add LinkedIn too, I just choose not to). Additionally, I use this tool to monitor search terms and accounts for our KaneCo clients.

No matter what dashboard you pick, just try to get all your stuff in one place. You’ll miss less and be able to engage more.

2. Hang up some of your social “phone lines.”

You don’t need to be everywhere on the social web. (In fact, you’ll probably be more effective if you start in just a few places).

The important thing is to be transparent about where you do and don’t “hang out” online, so if people can’t find you, they’ll know why.

Go ahead and set up accounts on secondary channels that you intend to check less frequently. Just make sure to manage people’s expectations in those spaces by doing things like including a message says, “Hey…I’m not on [Name of App] much. The best place to reach me is [Twitter/Facebook/etc.]”

Or, for instance, if someone is continually trying to chat with you via Facebook, let them know that you only check that account once a day. Then, make sure you’re not leaving a browser window with that account open in the background throughout the day so it appears that you’re available to chat when you’re really not.

3. Get over yourself.

Not everything you say in social media will get a response. That’s the nature of the beast, and it’s a hard thing to get used to. If you say, “Wow, today is a beautiful day,” and it’s met with the sound of crickets, that’s perfectly appropriate.

Let go of the notion that every conversation has to have both a sender and a receiver to be viable. And, don’t assume that, if you say something to a person and they don’t reply, that they didn’t read it or didn’t care.

Each person’s experience with social media is unique to their communication style, workplace, logistics, technical set-up, availability, and a host of other factors.

In other words, you’re not always driving the conversation bus in social media … so, focus instead on making the most of your ride.

If you find it imperative that all of your social media conversations get wrapped up nice and tidy (and good luck to you with that), employ the backchannel. Send direct messages, emails, or (gasp!) call people on the phone to thank them for reading your post, schedule a date for your coffee meeting or hash out your differences.

4. Keep an eye on your peeps.

While not responding to every social media comment is a new reality, not responding to multiple comment attempts is still just plain rude.

The social web is fundamentally a giant game of  “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine.” If you’ve been the beneficiary of many scratches lately, you might want to stop and take a look around to see if your community of supporters are starting to get a little itchy.

If you can’t reply to someone in the moment, look for another point of engagement down the road. This might take the form of promoting something they’ve written, doubling back and asking for their advice on a topic or just giving them a compliment out of the blue.

Another way to reconnect with your community is to pick someone out of your feed each day that you don’t really know and respond to something they say. A lot of times when I do this, I get no response. And that’s okay. This exercise is more about planting conversation seeds for the future than harvesting relationships.

5. Find moments of silence.

I’m an introvert, and although the people on social media aren’t actually physically surrounding me, steeping myself in a never-ending stream of their chatter can make it feel as if they are.

When this happens, I just need to close the dashboard, step away from the desk and go listen to something that demands no attention … like the hum of the air conditioner, or rainfall or childrens’ voices down the street.

By doing this, I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to feed the beast is to let it go hungry for awhile.

Go back and audit your stream. If you were following yourself, would YOU need a break from you?

• Are you chattering incessantly?
• Are you badgering people with your attentiveness?
• Are you bludgeoning people with information they haven’t asked for?

As in our offline lives, what can seem like devotion and engagement on your part can come off as sucking all of the air out of the room to someone else.

Set aside a moment of silence and look at the world through your community’s eyes. The view might surprise you.

Open up and say “Ahhhh …”

At the end of the day, it’s not about the number of people who talk to me or listen to me on the social web.

Actually it’s not really about ME at all.

It’s about having the ability to hear what’s in people’s heads and the opportunity to choose how I’m going to respond to that information. (Comment? File it away for a rainy day? Pass it along to my network?)

This is a valuable, revenue-generating, soul-supporting activity when it’s done right.

Ultimately my social media beast is one that I’m never going to be able to fully tame. But that’s okay. Its wildness is what makes it work.

It’s monster, but it’s MY monster.

Now excuse me … I gotta get back to it. It’s feeding time again.

As a child, this meant many boat-bound hours, watching my Dad perfect his technique in his quest for “a lunker Walleye.”

From my vantage point, this task always seemed pretty straightforward. I could clearly see fish darting just under the surface in schools. Surely all a person had to do was drop a line and you’d be good to go.

Yours truly, back in the day ...

But, as with most things in life, I learned that there is both an art and a science to landing “the big one.”

Sure, you can catch a fish by just plopping in a line. But to catch a GREAT fish, you have to learn to think like a fish.

Here, Fishy Fishy …

These days, I spend my time watching far different streams – waves of social web conversations and connections that mingle, re-circulate and flow in nearly endless configurations. In some ways though, it’s just like being back on the boat as a kid.

During the course of the day, conversations bubble up from these streams, offering organic and effective points of engagement for a host of business purposes (marketing, sales, customer service, etc.).

Smart “social anglers” have learned to watch for these bubbles. They study the conversations and the needs that drive them. They note patterns of behavior, nuance and tone. They observe how people respond to the various lures dangled in front of them.

In some circles, this is referred to as “Digital Ethnography.”

Don’t let the fancy terminology here scare you. Most of us are, instinctively, digital ethnographers – often learning as a child that sometimes the best way to talk to people is to shut up and listen, first.

(I guess, by extension, fishermen* are “Aquatic Ethnographers,” and have been for centuries – watching their depth finders, sniffing for the scent of rain on the breeze and studying hundreds of carefully baited lines.)

Seriously, Fishy. Get Into the Damn Boat Already.

But, just as there are people who subscribe to this thoughtful approach to fishing the socialized web, there are just as many that resemble a squirming kid on a boat whose only wish is for solid land and a working toliet.

Becoming invested in people – really listening to what they need, and then finding the least intrusive way to deliver it to them – can be an awful lot of work.

It’s far easier to just dive for those fish with a big hunk of bait in your fists and a cloud of chum in your wake.

Chances are, after the waves have subsided, there will always be some little guy hungry enough to swim by and have a look.

Truth is, lazy marketers make money. They always have.

But in the end, they can only ever catch the short sale, never the long tail.

I don’t believe in quick fixes, so I’m sticking with the fishing philosophy that I learned from my Dad – where it was always more about the day, the water and the time together, than anything we actually caught in a net.

You can learn a lot by watching schools of little fish pass by. But, if you’re patient, you’ll wait to drop your line and go for the lunker Walleye that’s following right behind them.

*I’m all for inclusive language, but I just couldn’t bring myself to use the word “fisherpersons.”