Having rocked a “not preppy, not punk, but kinda goth-before-it-was-called goth” look in high school, the 90’s brought us the age of “alternative” and, all of the sudden, what I had been wearing for years started to look pretty cool.

I ran into an old high school classmate at the mall during that time and she commented, “Looks like fashion finally caught up with you, Jen.”

Unfortunately, as with any trend, eventually “alternative” fell out of fashion and, as quick as you can say, “hit me baby one more time,” my look was out.

(Although I’m still willing to argue that the color black is eternally cool.)

The birth of the “social strategist.”

I’ve been reminded of that time in my life lately as I’ve watched the rise of the words “social strategist” in bios and profiles across the interwebs. (Last I checked, there were more than 22,000 people with that term in their titles on LinkedIn).

You see, I’ve been a marketing strategist for more than a decade, and began incorporating social media into the mix of things for which I strategize, a few years ago.

In the past, I never found my job title to be particularly hot. In fact, “strategy” has been historically hard for me to sell clients. Over the years, most clients just wanted me to give them a new toy, rather than try to explain how to fix the one they already had.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that, once again, I was positioned to ride a wave of unplanned popularity.

But then I looked around and realized…this wave is really damn crowded.

• Who are all these people who are social strategists?
• Where did they come from?
• What makes them “strategists” and not just “people who use social media a whole lot?”
• What does being a “social strategist” even mean today?

Stop talking and…you know…go strategize something.

Oftentimes when I meet a fellow “social strategist” for coffee, I’ll notice one of two things (if not both) right off the bat: they can’t sit for more than 10 minutes without checking their phone and, they never stop talking.

And in my head, I often wonder, “How in the world do they manage to do this job?”

For me, strategic thought requires deep attention, empathy, understanding and oftentimes, silence.

Yes, I need to participate in conversations and chats in social channels, read feeds and posts on an ongoing basis and keep abreast of trends that change seemingly overnight. But I also need to hold all of that information in my head and let my neurons wrap around them until a strategic path forward emerges.

This is a process that includes…

• Reading industry articles, books and blog posts (um…the whole thing, not just the first paragraph so I can tweet a sound bite) and attending industry conferences, seminars and webinars.

• Researching, testing and reading case studies on new social tools to assess their strengths and weaknesses.

• Analyzing quantitative and qualitative data on my client and their customers, competition and brands, looking for trends, traffic and red flags.

• Listening carefully to my client’s story, both the parts they voice (“This may be a challenge for our department to launch.”) and the parts they show me through their nonverbal clues (This person behaves as if they were told to launch a social media strategy, but don’t really want to. I’m going to need to identify a back-up champion to include in the planning process.)

This part of my job is SO not sexy.

So I gotta think that some of the people who are trying on the sexy new “social strategist” hat for size might be inclined to gloss over some of these tasks.

What strategy means to me…

I don’t think of “strategy” as helping someone get from Point A to Point B – a simple task of learning where they are and making a map to get them where they want to go.

I think of strategy as helping someone find success.

It is the art of translating the macro seamlessly into the micro. And in that process you show people not only how to get what they want, but also remind them of why they wanted it in the first place.

But maybe my definition of “strategy” is wrong.

• In a medium that moves in time to a hummingbird’s wings, maybe a thought or sound bite that sounds strategic is strategic enough.
• Maybe our clients “houses” no longer need to be build with strong foundations since we’re all building our brands on sand.
• Maybe silence is overrated.

If those things are true, than yes…I am totally out of fashion. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

What do you think? What do the words “social strategy” mean to you?

I’ll be talking more about this topic, and helping people work on their own social media strategies, next week at the Social Media Optimization Summit in Dallas. If you’re attending the event, I hope you will drop by my session (held in two-parts, at the end of each day).

The word on the cyber-street about the campaign had been highly negative for weeks, but it seemed like D’Amico either wasn’t listening to the feedback or – more distressingly – didn’t care.

Well, my post seemed to have struck a nerve and I received a lot of feedback on it, from people who agreed with my assessment, those who thought I was an overacting blowhard, and even D’Amico themselves.

D’Amico heard us …

Recently D’Amico made some big changes to their social media strategy that I think are important to note and to applaud.

• They condensed accounts: As noted in the previous post, their initial strategy was to go wide and shallow, which some people interpreted as “spammy.” Going narrow and deep makes them seem more authentic.

• They acknowledged our frustration: One of the main D’Amico accounts now sports a wallpaper message from the Director of Operations, Lynn Ulrich, that basically says, “we tried something new…you didn’t like it…we’re trying something different.” This is a very transparent and classy way to handle the feedback.

• They’ve personalized their messaging: Accounts for D’Amico’s humans sound more, well…human. The gratuitous hash tags have been scaled back and replaced with more conversation content.

So, is it working?

The jury is still out on whether this change in strategy will be effective for D’Amico.

Since social media monitoring and measurement is one of our KaneCo capabilities (D’Amico is not a client) we have access to tools to get a quick snapshot of how their online community is reacting to their changes:

Since July 22, there has been a notable decrease in negative comments (shown in red) about this company, and I think that’s worth noting.

The challenge for them will be to increase the number of positive comments (shown in green) they are receiving from the community – a percentage that has remained unchanged.

(For those of you who are curious, the grey areas on this chart represents “neutral” sentiment – mainly consisting of news and information D’Amico has posted about themselves.)

While the negative comments they receive have been very specific to their social media efforts …

• “@DAmicoandSons who planned your strategy? The name/number thing is really off putting- all d’amico tweets seem impersonal and broadcasted”
• “Anyone else getting annoyed by D’Amico & Sons on Twitter???”
• “I was suddenly followed by a large number of D’Amico accounts. It’s a very creepy feeling. I blocked them all.”

The positive comments they’re receiving are still only in reference to the services the company provides …

• “with my kids + nephew + a yummy d’amico chicken salad croissant + a good book – at the Beach! Gorgeous day!!”
• “Haven’t had this in a while, but I’m craving D’Amico’s sunday brunch breakfast pizza!”
• “Having an amazing lunch at D’amico & Sons! The Hot Italian truely is hot”

Good luck, D’Amico.

Let me be clear, my previous post about D’Amico was not part of some personal vendetta. I wasn’t vying to get hired by D’Amico. No one paid me to write that post. (If anything, it put me in the middle of a D’Amico “drama firestorm” that distracted me from my day-to-day workload.)

My objective with the post was simply to give voice to and summarize the thoughts I was seeing surfacing in continuing waves from my feed and analyze them from my perspective as a social media strategist.

While I’m not seeing feedback on the new campaign in my feeds, I do think this company’s efforts to respond to the concerns of their social community should be recognized.

Too often we are more inclined to place blame rather than to reward the acknowledgement of it.

And that is a shame.

I think the D’Amico campaign offers a good lesson for any company entering the social space, and it is this…

If you decide to employ social media as a communications tool …

• You will not be able to fully control it.
• You will make mistakes.
• You will get called out and criticized for things you say and do (whether they are valid points or not).

That’s not just D’Amico’s reality. That’s the reality of social media, and one we will all have to face eventually.

I’ve got 36 business days between now and then to assemble a tribe of people to come see him.

How am I going to do that?

In order to spread the word about this event, I’ve created a challenge for myself based on a key concept in the book (and one of my personal soapbox issues): engaging through effective social media content.

(And yeah, the title of the challenge is a nod to the movie, “500 Days of Summer,” too. Um … cause it’s summer and this dance number makes me happy).

So, why a content challenge?

As social media has grown in popularity, it has contributed to a rise in the art of “short form communications.” We’ve got a lot to say, but now we have less space to say it in and readers who will devote less time to reading it.

Applications like Twitter are forcing us to find new ways to make an impression and engage with our audiences. As James Poniewozik said in this week’s TIME, “Twitter is pure voice, an exercise in implying character through detail and tone.”

It’s a style of writing that we’re still learning to master.

If I were to tweet: “@BrianSolis is coming to Minneapolis on July 27. Register Now: http://bit.ly/aigVPP” every day for the next 36 days, the repercussions would be troublesome. And yet, this is how many people approach their social media content:

• Facts included? Check.
• Link attached? Check.
• Optimized keywords seeded? Check.
• Shorten for “retweet-ability” Check.

This is Brian Solis. We are quite fond of him.

But those qualities are just scratching at the surface of what makes good content for social media engagement, (It’s akin to thinking that you’re going to get lucky at a party tonight simply because you know for sure that your breath doesn’t smell.)

You devalue and dehumanize your social audiences when you limit yourself to a checklist of content logistics.

Think of the doors that you could open, and the relationships that you could deepen, if you were to ask yourself bigger questions, like:

• Is this content interesting?
• Will anyone want to read this?
• Does this content offer a solution to anyone’s problems?
• Is this content about/relevant to “them” and not just “me?”

Professionally, I’m often tasked with teaching clients how to artfully marry the answers to the questions above with the practical logistics of short-form communications. And I’ll admit, it’s not always an easy process.

The reality is that it takes practice to write 140 characters of content that is both optimized and eloquent.

The “36 Days of Brian” Challenge

To that end, I’ve developed a “36 Days of Brian” challenge for myself, as both an exercise and an illustration of the power/practice of writing for the social web.

Each day, for the next 36 business days, I’m going to share one post, tweet or update about Brian Solis through one of our Kane Consulting social media channels. (Most likely, many of these will be tweets, primarily because I like Twitter best.)

My goal is to produce content that people will actually take a moment to read (and, ideally, share), to take advantage of all the hallmarks of short-form writing and (of course) to entice you to come hear him speak next month.

I’m human and hardly a master of the form, so I’m sure I will write some clunkers during the next 35 days (this blog post is fulfilling my requirements for day one), so I hope you will hang in there with me. But, I hope you will learn with me, too.

As Poniewozik also said in his article, “give people 140 characters and they’ll take a mile.”

I’m going to try to run mine in 36 days.

I look forward to your feedback, participation and questions along the way and hope you can join me for Brian’s talk on Tuesday, July 27.

For more information on An Evening With Brian Solis, visit our website or check out the press release.

I came away recharged by the event’s two outstanding keynotes, David Weinberger and Mitch Joel, and, as always, enjoyed networking with some fabulously smart people from around the country.

As a marketer who works most heavily in the social space, it was through that lens which I viewed the breakout sessions I attended at the conference.

What I saw often surprised me.

The Marketing Profs conferences attract some pretty traditional marketing types (lots of suits at this event).

While there seemed to be much more acceptance of social media among these attendees than in the past (last year, participants seemed far more wary), there wasn’t much indication that marketers were making fundamental changes in their business practices when it came to working in that space.

Social seemed to be just other marketing channel – the assumption being that you take the tried and true schema of push marketing, move it to this new environment and, “presto!” – “viral” magic will abound.

In this scenario, the marketer is still comfortably driving the bus – setting editorial calendars, directing traffic and counting clicks.

The marketing power of reality.

The most striking illustration of this “same practice; new channel” thinking was the continual reference in sessions to “marketing personas.”

Marketing personas are an integral part of the marketing process at most companies, born from in-depth client and customer research, but also including some insights from “the land of make believe.”

Understandably, marketing personas are enormously comforting to businesses:

• They give your customers/clients a face you can relate to.
• They help you get a fix on a moving demographic target.
• They don’t argue with your ideas when they’re still in their embryonic form.

But, the problem is that personas don’t exist in social media … people do.

Each one of these people offers the world a very public profile of who they are and what they want and need.

Hi! I'm Carol, a generically attractive stock photo selected to serve as the focus of your marketing daydreams.

With all that information at our fingertips, why put so much faith in fantasy debates about whether “Carol” likes television or is “fashion-forward?”

If you’ve strategically built and cultivated social networks for your company, you have access to a think tank of thousands of “Carols,” whom you can poll any time and use to crowdsource a host of new ideas.

What’s more, those interactions can give the real “Carols” an opportunity to develop a relationship with your company. As a result, not only will they be acting as sources of customer intelligence, they’re likely to double back and be your actual customers, too.

Real people are mean and scary.

One session at the conference provided a fascinating example of the enduring power (and pitfalls) of marketing personas.

The presenter was describing her B2B company and put up a slide with a picture of a young man in a snarky T-shirt (which incidentally, is the official dress code of SXSWi). Next to this photo was an equally snarky quote from this man’s blog.

The quote (and the blog) was written by a man named Todd.

Todd, the presenter explained, was their target client and one of their key marketing personas. His snarkiness and sarcasm represented all of the potential hurdles this company might have to overcome in their marketing efforts. “This guy HATED us,” the presenter confided.

So at the end of the session, I asked the $100,000 social media question … “Did you ever talk to Todd?”

The answer was … “no.”

Sadly, no one in the room seemed shocked by this answer. But, I certainly was.

Todd is not an archetype or a fictional persona. He is real person, accessible through social channels.

So what would be the harm in following Todd on Twitter? Posting a comment on his blog, thanking him for sharing his insights? Wooing him in some small social way?

Well, of course, the harm is that Todd is scary. He’s real and complex and could be a handful to control. Todd also may not welcome this company’s overtures with open arms. (Actually, he most definitely won’t if they start the conversation by sending some “push marketing” his way).

On the other hand, Todd could also be the linchpin brand advocate that could take this company’s marketing to the next level. Not only is he vocal, he’s a publisher, who, if won over, could share his testimonial with THOUSANDS of potential clients.

At the very least, he might ultimately decide that he’s still not wild about the presenter’s company, but will refrain from bad-mouthing them (a show of respect, in return for the respect the company had shown in reaching out to him).

Ultimately, this is a hypothetical scenario. (I don’t know Todd and I don’t know this company.)

But, I do know that this case study is not an anomaly.

Take the new road.

I am not suggesting that the practice of establishing marketing personas be abolished. They serve a purpose, and in most marketing practices, they make a lot of sense.

But social media (although it is a marketing channel like any other) has its own unique needs.

Marketing personas are not one of them.

Assigning imaginary qualities to real people to better understand them makes about as much sense as anthropomorphizing a grizzly bear and determining that he’s lonely and needs a hug.

(You may be right … but more often than not, you’re going to get eaten alive.)

To be successful in the social space, marketers need to evolve and modify their approach:

• Listen first; market second.
• Crowdsource editorial ideas and THEN publish.
• Direct traffic intuitively, without manufacturing social corrals.
• Measure clicks, but also the value of your human connections.

As Robert Frost so eloquently put it:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

If you want to market using social media, you need to take that new road.

This less traveled one may be bumpier, but the journey will be no less productive. And, if you can loosen up on your reins, indeed, it will make all the difference.

It was a pretty slick process that involved pouring a bunch of ingredients into a plastic bag, shaking it for about five minutes and, voila – instant dessert.

I was reminded of this experiment last week when I was doing a webinar for Vocus on integrated communications.

During the Q&A portion of the webinar, a few people asked specific questions about content for social media …

• How do you come up with it?
• How do you establish a consistent tone?
• Should it be different in each channel?

Social media content, for me, is like the list of ingredients we placed into that bag when we made ice cream.

Each one was strategically selected for its scientific properties and pleasantness to the palette. But none of them were, in and of themselves, “ice cream.”

Strategic Groceries.

I think a lot of companies approach their social content as they would any other web content. They menu out a list of “dishes” that they hope people will consume, cook them up and then parcel them out to audiences in snackable bites.

The fatal flaw of this approach is that it overlooks the first step in engaging in any successful social interaction – listening to your audience.

You can serve me the most beautiful, bamboo-plated array of sushi the world has ever seen, but if you neglected to ask me if I like the stuff first, (I don’t), then you just wasted an enormous amount of your time and annoyed me in the process, (particularly if I had clearly indicated to you multiple times that I was craving something else.)

Like any good cook, before you make your content “menu,” you should think about the people to whom you’ll be serving that content.

• Who is going to eat it?
• What are they hungry for?
• Do they have any special requests or requirements?
• What’s appropriate for the “occasion?”

From this intelligence, you can prepare a “grocery list” of content “ingredients.”

Just as you would with real ingredients, it’s O.K. to make some judgment calls when it comes to actually selecting your ingredients off the shelf. For instance, you can narrow your selection to words that are brand-appropriate, search-friendly and conversation engaging.

Catering, Social-Media Style.

Again, our natural inclination is to then take our ingredients and start cooking.

Try to resist that urge.

Remember, you are a creative content caterer, not a short-order cook.

Like the ice cream experiment; your goal should be to divide the ingredients into collections that will enable your audience to create their own unique dishes.

Whether they ultimately combine their eggs, flour and milk to make a cake or a soufflé is beside the point. Your primary concern is that they, ultimately, end up satiated and happy.

Order Up!

I believe that each social media channel has its own distinct vibe, which necessitates some customization when it comes to content “ingredients.”

By choosing and parceling your ingredients to play to each channel’s strengths, you’ll ensure that your content performs effectively. For instance:

• Twitter: To me, Twitter content seems like the “assemble your own” fast food you’d pick up at a convenience store. (Like a container with yogurt and a pouch of granola to sprinkle on top, if you’re so inclined.) The choices for customization are limited and the whole thing is designed so it can be both prepared and eaten in a few gulps in your car.

• Facebook: Content for Facebook feels more like a picnic basket of morsels that you can leisurely combine when the mood strikes. It’s content that has the potential to be traded, savored and enjoyed with good company. It can’t sit there in the basket all day, but it has a longer shelf life than your Twitter ingredients.

• LinkedIn: To me, LinkedIn content feels like the kind of ingredients you’d find in a corporate cafeteria. Nothing risky or unexpected here … just solid choices you can customize into palatable, made-to-order dishes that stand the test of time and appeal to a wide common-denominator. (In my imagination, there is lots of “chicken” content in LinkedIn-land.)

• Blogs: Blog content feels like the ingredients you’d find in a restaurant kitchen – each one hand-selected, at the peak of freshness and prepared to-order to please the discerning tastes of a diner who intends to linger and savor each bite.

I could go on (and officially beat this metaphor to death), but I think you get the gist here – one “ingredient” can be served in all of these environments, but how you prepare, serve and combine that ingredient with others can (and should) change based on the context and conversation.

Next time you’re producing content for social media, I challenge you to put on your chef’s hat and see how creative you can be with your content catering.

Just don’t forget the second part of that ice cream experiment: no matter what you decide to toss into your Ziploc bag, it’s not going to do you much good unless you hang around and shake things up.