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One of the facts that gets quoted every now and then by people advising bloggers on how to write articles is that the top bloggers use the word “you” more often than “me” or “We/Our”. So I thought I’d take a look and see if this is true, or another Social Media Urban Myth.

As a starting point, I took the blogs of 8 of the top Social Media Bloggers and looked at their percentage use of “I”, “We”, “You” and “They”. In each case, I collected at least 5,000 words, which for most equates to between 6 and 8 articles.I know it’s not a very large sample of writers or words, but I wanted to see if any patterns emerged. And they did!

Louis Gray blogs more about developments in SM and emerging technologies, so I had thought that perhaps he would have used “me” more often, as he is often giving his opinion. But he still managed to use “you” more often than “I” and “We” combined

Chris Brogan uses the first person singular a lot in the sample tested but there’s a good reason for it – among the posts that I sampled were several explaining how he uses mind mapping, how he doesn’t use LinkedIn as he feels he should etc.. I’m going to go back and examine his more general articles to see the pattern there.

As can be seen from the table, all of the others use “you” almost twice as often as they use “I”, the exceptions being Seth Godin who uses “you” 3.5 times as often as he uses the word “I” and Karen Skidmore who uses it a whopping 8 times as much!. This is entirely consistent with SM articles being about engaging with other people and drawing them in. With the exception of self -disclosure articles of the type Chris Brogan has been writing recently, most of us would soon get bored with, and probably stop reading, writers who used “I” twice as much as they use “you”.

There’s a lot more I’m going to be analyzing, such as percentage of past, present and future orientated words, the percentage of nouns vs verbs etc

The conclusion? These people are some of the top in their field – anyone wanting to be up there with them needs to be looking at their writing style. The small words matter. You will find another article here that examines the subject in more detail, and announces a new service for writers.

After yesterday’s post about the neural web, I came upon the following from Chris Saad, which has much in common with the views I has expressed. The last 3 or 4 slides are particularly powerful.

My question, as per yesterday, is who is going to win the race to provide the tools that enable us to create the strong neural connections; whoever is first with a workable solution will get a headstart over their rivals.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the strength of connections, rather than the number of them.

I’ve also been interested for a long time in psychology and how the brain and mind work. One of the things that neurologists have told us is that as we learn skills and acquire knowledge, we form new connections between the neurons in the brain. The more we use those neural pathways, the stronger the connections become. Conversely, if we don’t sue them, they wither and die. So it is with what we might call the Neural web!

Social Media software is great for making connections; most network sites allow you to create huge networks but don’t give you the tools to then manage those networks proactively. This has got to happen if networking is to be taken to the next level and I believe it is something that will be developed in the next couple for years. Otherwise, we may lose the important conmnections and the link will wither away like the neural pathway.

Imagine a network of 10,000 connections. It’s difficult to identify within that list, the like-minded people with whom you want to stay in close contact. Then imagine if you could create several lists, by keywords and could then communicate with them around shared interests. Like the brain creating new neural networks as a new subject is learned, those connections will be nourished with reapeated contact and giving. It is important to have breadth of contacts – we also need to find ways to create depth and strength.

In that way, armed with the knowledge of the group’s skills, knowledge and strengths, you can keep their names close at mind. Then when someone mentions that they are looking for an individual with a particular skill- or knowledge set, you can make the appropriate referral.

This is what nourishing the ‘we’ in web means to me, is consistent with the concept of the neural web and is something for which I’m trying to find solutions. How do you do it, particlarly if you have one or more large networks you are managing?

Getting ideas for articles can be tricky – keeping them when you come across them, even more so! Having tried various alternatives over the years,I now use Google Documents as a Swipe File

I first came across the idea in a book by David Ogilvy; in it he wrote that he encouraged his staff to create swipe files; whenever they came across good or inspirational ideas, they copied them into swipe files. In those days, that meant cutting ideas out of magazines and newspapers, or photocpying ideas from books.

I also keep a copy on a data pen; that way, I canwork on my laptop when I’m away from an internet connection, keep it updated and it’s always available for reading and getting inspiration. Why do I do it?

1. It gives me a centralised store of ideas.

2. I can organise those ideas into different folders.

3. It’s always with me – no need to try to remember which pc I bookmarked it on.

4. It makes research so easy. Just create a folder in your swipe file, download material on the subject you are researching and read at your leisure.

Over the years, I’ve tried creating a scrapbook, using a Firefox plugin, an external HD but have returned to this, the simplest and most flexible.

I know that there are apps out there that are better suited than Google Docs, but have not used them – anyone got any cool suggestions?

During the last month I’ve read several books on Social Media, which inevitably discuss communication issues. At least 2 of them refer to the following statistics about communication. They say that:

• 7% of meaning is in the words that are spoken.
• 38% of meaning is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).
• 55% of meaning is in the body language.

If the author knows the origin of these figures, they will attribute them to Albert Mehrabian. However, even a brief search via Google will quickly reveal that whilst this information is widespread, it is in fact a myth.

All Mehrabian’s research showed was that in situations where there is an incongruence between words and expression, and where the message has an emotional content and context, then in his study, people tended to believe the expression they saw, not the words spoken.

Their interpretation was as follows:
• 7% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes was in the words that are spoken.
• 38% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes was paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).
• 55% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes was in facial expression.

Interestingly, with regards to the 55% of the message, it was not even whole body language. The research subjects were shown a head shot photo of the speaker.

What is more, as Mehrabian points out when reviewing the study in his book (1), there are other more significant factors, such as the relationship between the communicator and the receiver that will affect how meaning is deduced, and that these factors can easily override the 7/38/55 split.

There are also problems with the study itself; it is based on the response of only 37 female, University of California, psychology undergraduates, hardly a representative sample in either number or background! And the 7/38/55 formula that people quote is not even derived from a single uniform study looking at the three types of responses; rather it is derived from combining the results of two studies – one that compared single words to vocal tone, the other that compared facial cues to vocal tone. No study was carried out to complete the triangle, comparing single words with facial expressions.

What I find surprising is that many writers (eg http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-1332.html, and http://resourcemagazine.co.uk/acatalog/lapakko.pdf) have tried to debunk this myth with little success – why is it so persistent? Much of our communication does not include emotion and, in an internet context, is not between people who are sitting face to face!

So the important issue, particularly for Social Media, is that the words do matter and deliver far more than 7% of the meaning.

Leaving the final word with Mehrabian himself: “My findings are often misquoted. Please remember that all my findings on inconsistent or redundant communication deal with communications of feelings and attitudes. This is the realm within which they are applicable. Clearly it is absurd to imply or suggest that the verbal portion of all communication constitutes only 7% of the message. Suppose I wanted to tell you that the eraser you are looking for is in the second right-hand drawer of the desk in my third floor office. How could anyone contend that the verbal part of this message is only 7% of the message? Instead and more accurately, the verbal part is nearly 100% of the message. Again, anytime we communicate abstract relationships, clearly 100% of the entire communication is verbal.”

(1) Mehrabian A, “Silent Messages” — A Primer of Nonverbal Communication (Body Language) for the General Audience, 1981, Wadsworth Publishing Co

I’ve spent some time reading through many articles written by the Social Media Superstars to find out what advice they give to newcomers preparing to build a Social Media presence. This distills a few of the basics. There’s nothing new here, yet it’s easy to overlook these basics in our enthusiasm to get connected!

Why Social Media (SM)?

Ok, you are overflowing with enthusiasm about it all and have pictured yourself as the next big thing in social media. So, you’ve set up a Twitter account and joined LinkedIn, ecademy and one or two other sites. Let me ask you some simple questions: why? What’s your plan? What do you want to achieve? How will you know when you’ve achieved it (once you’ve decided what “it” is!)

Brand Consistency

Try to use the same name all over the net; if you comment on the sites of other bloggers in your niche, it will help you to create a following if you always post under the same name. I got this wrong in my early social media days and am having to try to recover the situation – I am “Nic” at some sites, “Nico” at others where Nic had been taken (or where the site insisted on a user name with a minimum of 4 letters), Nicoliver at yet others and so on. At least there are services out that that attach an avatar pic to your e-mail address so people will recognise you from your photo, if not your name.

I am currently investigating a site called Knowem (http://knowem.com/) where, for $99 you can register your name on 150 Social Media sites. (At that price, they do the Signup initiations. You answer all of the confirmation emails and complete profile details. For $249, They do the Full Signup on 100 Social Media Sites and they confirm emails, upload photos, bio, and all details. This saves time if you don’t fancy completing that many profiles! There are further, more expensive options if you want to register on more sites.)

This is a registration service to ensure nobody else uses your name, which then leads to confusion. I am not suggesting that it should be used as an ego-trip so that you can brag that you are registered on 150 sites!

Define What Success Means for You

There are various ways success can be defined – which one(s) apply to you?

* Building up awareness and interest in a specific product or service?

* Building up awareness and interest in a brand?

* Getting more visitors to your site and getting them to come back regularly?

* Turning more visitors into subscribers and/or customers?

* Getting customer feedback about your blog/ offering or brand?

Who Are You?

What’s Your Story? Don’t lie, or copy someone else as you will be found out, but what’s your identity? What do you believe in? What are you known for? Often, how you communicate is as, or more, important than what you communicate. What’s your style? What runs through your veins, what is a natural extension of you? Are you like Gary V, excellent in front of a camera? Or do you have a face like a bulldog eating a wasp but have a silk voice, ideal for podcasts? Or do you look bad in front of a camera and have a voice like nails scraping a chalkboard but can write very well, or make mash-up movies? Don’t try to be what you are not, or use a medium that you are uncomfortable with.

Focus on building on your strengths, not on overcoming your weaknesses, you’ll enjoy it more and be morefluent. Unless of course, you have a glaring weakness that is really holding you back.

Your Customers

Identify them, think of them as real people, not a Google stat! Who are they? What do they like/dislike? Where do they hang out on-line?  How computer and networking literate are they? Do they just view networking as a social thing, or are they comfortable using it for business

Don’t panic if most of your customers aren’t online yet. You can use this as an opportunity to help them to get on-line, holding their hand if necessary, pointing them to a Facebook or LinkedIn group you’ve created just for them and people like them. If you think laterally, there may also be the opportunity to create new customer groups from those who arealready on-line but who you’ve not yet tapped into.

Their Communities

Ok, so you have found the communities! Before you rush in, take a few days to study them. Examine how they communicate, how welcoming they are, whether there are any “untouchables”, people who are perceived as being beyond criticism. Often that perception is supported not by the individual, but by their supporters, who leap to their defence at the slightest hint of criticism. All of this is important if you don’t want to inadvertently create a bad initial impression. Every has a different culture and it pays to know the specifics in each case.

Research

Search on-line for your brand name, keywords, competitors. You software to decide if there’s enough interest around your keywords to justify investing your time and effort. Go to Yahoo or LinkedIn Answers and see if people are asking or answering questions around your subject and keywords. And remember one of the golden rules: community-related software may be free, but using it isn’t. There is always an opportunity cost for the time you spend

If your community is Internet-literate, they’re meeting somewhere on-line. You just have to find out where, and how to join them.

Simple

Six Simple things, yet so often overlooked – I wish I’d known about them when I first started on-line! And yet the irony is, that I did, we all do – I just didn’t apply it to the brave new world of SM.

In a recent Blog article, Mitch Joel argued that the new range of smart phones are less about being a phone and more about “A computer that is in every person’s hand that connects them to information and everyone else in the world.” This corroborates what Deni Kasrel said to me about a conversation she had had with an Apple Support employee about the iPhone was told “It’s really 10 percent a phone and 90 percent a computer.”

The iPhone, the Palm Pre, the latest HTC, the Nexus One are all, to a greater or lesser extent, powerful micro pcs. And people are racing to adopt, and then vociferously defend, their chosen device. But at what cost? Firstly, you are pretty much buying into a platform for life. For example, spend a few hundred (or more) pounds on Google apps and even if you fancy a change of phone 3 or 4 years later, you are unlikely to want to wave goodbye to all of that money and start again on a new platform. Is it really a great idea to tie yourself into one manufacturer like that?

The race seems to be on to include features on these smart phones that were cutting edge on PCs of only a few years ago:  the ability to multi-task; Google Maps (or something similar); fast processors; lean, stable and fast operating systems etc.. My question is: Do we really need all of this on a mobile phone? I’ve read all of the arguments about mobile communications being so important, and I agree, but don’t netbooks and small format laptops fulfill that function?

I can understand the benefits of push technology and being able to access your emails on a smart phone but once it comes to browsing websites and looking at images, the small screen on a smartphone is really limiting. Add in the problems for anyone who is long-sighted and it can be a recipe for frustration!

I am seriosuly considering going back to a phone that’s a phone, that is based on high quality sound and using my 13″ laptop for mobile computing – I almost always have it with me so why duplicate the technology? It will  avoid all of the synching across 3 machines that I hear people complaining about. It may also prove to be the most efficient way of managing my on-line social networks.

Go on, convince me I’m wrong!

A short post today as I’ve come upon this great site that puts the fun into important issues – check out the video below!

Box of Crayons have several similar videos, including “Find your great work, the movie” and “The 5.75 Questions You’ve Been Avoiding”

In the 1940s, Thomas Watson as head of IBM said that he thought that there might be a worldwide need for two, perhaps three, computers.
In the early 1990s, Bill Gates did not believe that the internet would take off, so Microsoft didn’t produce a browser for a while. This allowed Netscape to be the number one browser for a few years.
Many people today do not understand the power and role of social media and networking.

The point of all of this? I have been amused to read predictions on several blogs, both inside ecademy and on the internet, about what the next 10 years are going to bring in the IT and networking worlds.

I don’t know how anybody can be confident in making these predictions; the rate of change in technology, the reate of development of software, the different ways in which people are using netwroking software to
build their on-line presence, the consequences of people waking up and realising that the internet is not an easy, get-rich-quick scheme and that they have been duped into spending a lot of money on courses
etc., all mean that it is extremely difficult to predict accurately what is going to happen.

That’s not to say that it isn’t fun trying!

Howard Mann, author of Your Business Brickyard wrote the following in Seth Godin’s free e-book ‘what-matters-now’ available here

“There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits that still haven’t ever heard of twitter, blogs or facebook. Are they all wrong? Have they missed out or is the joke really on us? They do business through personal relationships, by delivering great customer service and it’s working for them. They’re more successful than most of those businesses who spend hours pontificating about how others lose out by missing social media and the latest wave. And yet they’re doing business. Great business. Not writing about it. Doing it.

I’m continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people (and brands) on facebook. But I’m also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.

More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue. We’ve become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow.

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before. Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why.

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more. In between tweets, blog posts and facebook updates.”

I believe that too many people on the love it/loathe it side of the social media issue think it’s either or. We need both – face-to-face and ‘virtual’, on-line communication.

Social Media is another communication method, another marketing opportunity, another revenue stream. Some will be highly successful using only on-line or only bricks and mortar; others will take a blended approach. However, I believe that two things are true whatever the business model. You have to:

1. Love what you do

2. Love your cusomers

When the social media dust settles, I believe that people will realise that the technology speeds things up but that the values, communication skills and customer-focus requirements are the same as they are when dealing with people in the physical world. What the internet does do is level the playing field in many industries so that the small business can compete effectively with, and sometimes be better than, their larger counterparts.

And the other thing that many people will have to accept, and sometimes learn the hard way, is that whatever they right, on any forum/blog/website, will be there in black and white forever!