The capitalism of Social Media is hard labor.—
Phil Baumann (@PhilBaumann) May 22, 2012

The philosophers don’t paint pictures of watery lilies.
They trudge their way toward the snowcaps.

The philosophers don’t carve love poems into the bark.
They dig beneath the roots to where the core burns, or dies.

The philosophers don’t prescribe the antidote to ignorance.
They underwrite the persistence of curiosity.

@PhilBaumann

The medium is the message.

The Internet – as mother of all media – evolves and coalesces new media and inter-relationships among media.

Regardless of the content, the connections, the people, and the machines which it subsumes, the Internet  exerts its own selective pressures on the world and itself.

Unlike a medium, which is its own message, the Internet is its own force – and it is a force that is more powerful than any message.

The Internet is the force. Be careful.

When Descartes initially published those words, he was thinking about proof of existence – but he was also echoing the direction of civilization: from myth to reason.

500 years of thinking ourselves into being.

That has been the pump driving civilization: the linear, categorical, mechanical, reasonable world-view (including the derangement of the instruments of reason: holocausts, wars, national debts, mind-numbing factory jobs, libido-depleting consumer economies).

It’s a world that you can mostly conceive of a priori: scientific inquiries, democratic governments, railways, electric grids, computers.

It’s a world that helps us to overcome the ravages of nature and superstition. It’s also a world that misplaces creation with replication, and weakens our emotional immune system.

It’s a world where our being derives out of thinking.

Je part, donc je suis. Now.

I share, therefore I am. This is the world into which we are moving into everyday: I share with you, you share with me. All of us sharing tiny sumulacrum – tweets, status updates, hyperlinks. Maybe you share with me something I shared to someone else three days ago.

In fact, it’s sharing of sharing of sharing ad infinitum. Taken to its logical conclusion: a world of shells forms, like some strange cloud of simulacra.

It’s not curation – it’s just sharing.

And although these sharing acts can have value, what’s happening in the larger scheme of things is that we are becoming the sharing.

Not 500 years of thinking into being, but 5 years of sharing into being.

Ours is a world where our being derives out of our sharing.

It’s not a world that’s easily imagined. What does it look like? What do virtual nations look like? What do our brains do all day? What of democracy and reason and meditation?

We move from Pense to Part – from contemplators to particles.

But this second step in our societal evolution – it’s not where we aught to go, is it?

Just because we can, it doesn’t mean we aught.

So, what to do to avoid this opiate sleep of being that piles around us like alluring falling snow, tweet by tweet?

What wakes us into the fullness of being?

For that matter, what conveys us beyond mere being into presence?

Je crée, donc je suis.

Our being – if it is to have meaning – must derive from creation.

I create, therefore I am.

The more you share, and the less you create, the less you truly are.

This is the danger facing us if we do not bring forth the effort to create ourselves into being: We may vanish into electronic simulacra that give us the seductive illusion of social exchange.

You can think. You can share. You can create.

Do all three, and you might find yourself awake to a better world.

And if it’s not a better world – if it’s a destroyed world – the being you create becomes a presence onto itself. It’s yours and nobody else’s.

Nous créons, donc nous sommes!

- Phil Baumann

It will be hyped. Then the idiots will fade away to hype about something else^*. Finally it will used by people who know what they’re doing.

Here’s the visual:

^*Note: The duration of Silencing of the Idiots may take longer – a lot longer – than illustrated.

@PhilBaumann

Not to mention, who would replace him? His replacement is probably as – if not more – psychotic and powerful than him.

The damage here, in my opinion, is that the messages eventually arrive in two extremes: a) social media (SM) is utterly ineffective and b) SM activism can change the world. Neither is realistic, but my guess is that the first is closer to the sad truth.

Perhaps SM ultimately propagates and amplifies our ignorances and misunderstandings of complex social and geopolitical matters.

I hope I’m wrong. But as the younger generation masters these technologies – as more and more of their education and knowledge of the world comes to them via SM – will they also master the arts and sciences of knowing how to effect true change?

Ah – there’s a question.

@PhilBaumann

I wish there were a huge philanthropy organization focused on Domestic Violence.

DV is as much a killer as is cancer or diabetes or sepsis. What’s worse: it’s a primary root in violence at large – it breeds dictators, influences foreign policies, and mutilates childhood development.

I would argue that Domestic Violence is one of the largest Public Relations opportunity of all time.

If you don’t understand what I mean, I’ve proven my point.

@PhilBaumann

Since I’ve been running two of them (RNchat being one of the first chats – and the first chat for clinicians), I thought I’d share my experiences and offer tips and recommendations.

HISTORY

I started RNchat as a way to get nurses to A) get up-to-speed with social media (nursing an medicine is/was really behind here, and I thought Twitter was a good gateway drug) B) I wanted to give nurses an easy and open forum to network, express themselves, trade war stories, etc.

Then I started MDchat, which was the first chat for physicians, for pretty much the same reasons as RNchat but for docs. Each had their similar and different trajectories since the general cultures have their difference.

Co-branding. Then I wanted to get the two communities to cross-pollinate. That worked well, and I wanted it to work especially for docs and nurses since there’s often a disconnect between the two professions.

Running two chats can be tough due to limitations of time and resources, but I’ve learned how to be efficient. So here’s what I’ve done, offering the value propositions, insights and business uses and purposes:

VALUE PROPOSITIONS

Some of you may have specific business/enterprise goals in mind. With these chats, that wasn’t my intent. BUT, there have been surprising incidental benefits which I’ve since learned to fold into my businesses and personal life.

(Update: I’m adding this post by Dennis Howlett (@dahowlett) since he articulates a reasoned acknowledgment of Twitter nay-saying while expressing the important (but perhaps hidden) value-role Twitter can play for accountants. …As a side note: having started my career in accounting, I know a ton of ways the profession could value-extract – from education to promulgation interpretation to professional development. I shall profess those in a future post.)

^ Surprising Journeys: I’ve gotten a decent amount of business as a direct result of leading the chats. Attribution management has verified that.

^ Speaking/workshop opportunities – I’ve gotten some really cool (and paid) gigs at off-the-beaten path. Not the typical social media conferences, but universities, health systems, retreats with physician practices and other leaders. I really don’t think I’d ever get those without these chats.

^ It’s been a really cool experience. For example, I’ve had IBM Watson’s team participate in two chats to discuss Waton’s role in medicine – I don’t think I’d ever have that opportunity w/out the chats. What’s more: the community at large benefits from these exchanges – think of the enormous impact Watson could have on Healthcare, Finance, Manufacturing, etc. To have physicians, nurses, HIT specialists and others involved in this unique ecosystem is truly amazing.

^ Respect. These chats have allowed me to gain respect. They’ve also honed my insights into and responsibilities to my communities.

^ Personal/professional connections – I’d say my network has grown by a large factor as a result. I’ve developed a whole CRM from people I’ve met and who’ve approached me.

^ There are others – you can set your goals and/or take advantage of serendipity. It’s all good.

INSIGHTS, PROCESSES

^ Early on, I set up landing pages/blogs for the chats. I also set up newsletters that I’ve used for “special” chats and other updates, giving readers easy sharing options to spread the butter. (I’ve slacked, but at this point it’s fine for me.)

^ Thanking participants via email. It’s easy to get lazy and to depend on Twitter, but I took the time early on to add participants into my CRM, ask for emails if I couldn’t find them and send over a brief thank you. I’d also include content I thought they’d be interested – e.g. sending doctors lists of other docs they might want to network or other stuffs. Immense value there.

^ Transcripts. These can be kinda “Meh”, but there are people who read them. More importantly – especially for docs and nurses who wanted to get their facilities/colleagues involved, having a document to share helped spread the *offline* awareness of the brands. (I know of at least 5 cases where those hand-outs lead to in-bound prospects.) For Healthcare chats, there’s the Healthcare Hashtag Project but it’s only for healthcare-related chats. There really does need to be a solid transcript service beyond healthcare (I have ideas, so if you know any developers I’d be happy to share them). I’ve slacked on doing them every time, but they’re worth it if you’ve got nothing better to do.

^ Slideshare/Scribd/Storify – Building on transcripts, these are where their value can be enhanced. Storify is a great concept, but it’s still difficult to work with. I used it a few times to build some privately for a few clients and they loved it. Offers more context – especially to “non-savvy” C-Suiters.

^ CRM – As I said I basically converted the community into a crm. I did so both manually and by using online tools. It’s been a while, but there are tools that allow you to download the search results for a hashtag and convert it to a .csv file. Then you can create a ghetto crm from there.

^ Promotion: I didn’t promote these chats so much – a few tweets from my own account, but I wanted organic growth and I got it. But as the Twitter accounts associated with the chats grew, promotion took on its own life. RT and # can be powerful in this context.

^ Topic Suggestions Form – I developed forms for the chats where the community can not only offer topics they’d like to see discussed but also provide feedback/suggestions. Again, this helped in widening my network and enhancing relationships.

^ Time – this can be a bit hard to figure out. A lot depends on your audience – in my case , docs and nurses come from all walks of life and have weird schedules. I run mine on Tue and Thur nights. But lately I’ve thought about moving to another day/time. It’s OK to play around with times – the community will follow if the changes work for them.

^ Outsourcing: Get other moderators to lead. People love to be hit up, and they offer different styles so they can mix things up. Again, they have other followers who may be interested. This has helped me immensely. Also, cultivate those relationships. Not to mention: they have so much experience to offer – why not let them shine and add value to what you’re building for them?

^ Personality and Leadership: These are crucial. Curiously, I’d be as bold to say that personality is even more important than leadership (they’re both key). I’ve go my own personality – actually I have several online personas – @HealthIsSocial – @RNchat – @MD_chat – @PhilBaumann), and they all are on the edgy side in their own way. I can afford to be a bit…shall we say…risky. You’ll have to decide yourself how to act, but being humorous, kind and being able to manage trolls adroitly are all important ingredients in baking a great chat.

BUSINESS CONTEXTS

^ Purposes: I can’t say Twitter chats “work” for most for-profit or non-profit going concerns. But they can be a great way for brands to have a regular living presence in an intimately ambient setting. It builds their responsiveness, especially if they’re relatively new to this craziness. (More about the *process* than direct results necessarily.)

^ Branded Hashtags: I think hashtags are way abused – it’s a shame, because they *do* have a lot of value. Still, it’s probably not a bad idea for a brand to have its own hashtag. This can be a two-edge blade, since it could be hijacked during a PR crisis, and triage could be a disaster. Still: if the people behind the brands have built trust over time and have the skills, they’re better off than sweating it out last-minute and ultimately reducing shareholder value.

^ Participation in other chats. Again, I do think there’s value in brands participating in chats (you all know, not in a spammy way of course). A) It’s a good way to keep a pulse on things. B) It humanizes things much easier. Rather than all that “RT others, and be human in your regular tweets” advice from social media “gurus”, the chats make it inherently human and useful.

^ Cohesion – a hashtag and its related chats/tweets can be a functional way to “tie-together” the entire online stream – and *offline* efforts too. Attribution management might be tough, but I’ve found bit.ly, geolocation, conferences, etc. to be revealing info.

^ Attribution Management – I’ve found this to be difficult. Obviously bit.ly helps – not just clicks from Twitter, but from your blog/site (but in my experience hasn’t been very revealing without a good amount of elbow grease). Geolocation and other metadata are often overlooked, but they can be useful depending on the business. I take issue with QR codes and MS tags (whole other post), but if a client has a heavy paper presence with a decently savvy demographic, it can’t hurt to slap one linking to the landing page for the hashtag/chat. (Think customer service, etc.)

WRAP-UP

So there’s how I’ve been doing this stuff. It’s worked for me. Not sure if it’ll work for you. If you haven’t started a chat, give it a try if you think there’s value to your audience.

Remember: Twitter *isn’t* community – but it can spur community in the true homes of community. That alone is valuable.

On one hand, this all could be totally useless. But if you’re creative and gutsy, there’s definitely a lot of value to be extracted – and, more importantly, to be provided.

Phil

@PhilBaumann

484-362-0451

Democracy depends on Reason. Social Media propagates Emotion faster than Reason. This will be the 21st Century problem.—
Phil Baumann (@PhilBaumann) December 29, 2011

[Original tweet.]