User First Web

Jeremiah Owyang has published an exceptionally detailed article tracking the different ways to engage in social media during a product’s lifecycle.

The article has a raft of good ideas in it including this insightful quote:

1. Listening: The most important step
This is one of the biggest problems for communicators today, just like a real conversation, is learning to listen. Any savvy party goer knows to listen before jumping into a conversation at a cocktail party. Marketers, MarCom, Integrated Marketing, Advertising, PR, have forgotten (or never knew) that by listening to the needs of the market will help them to create more effective messages and then evolve into a conversation.

Listening is the most underdeveloped skill in business today. Whether it is listening to our customers or listening to our coworkers, finding people who can listen well is difficult.

Listening to a market is a different skill set (rss, bulletin boards) than listening in a meeting, but both rely on true listening—active listening.

Active listening requires you to not only have heard what is was said, but to listen intently enough that the people speaking know that you have heard and understood them. Only after someone knows that they’ve been heard will they be able to engage in a conversation.

In social media, it isn’t sufficient to simply monitor the conversations. You need to understand and internalize the values, concerns and fears of the people involved.

The first time that a marketer speaks in a social network, it will be readily apparent those involved in the network whether or not the marketer truly gets what they are about or not. Marketers need to take the time to listen and to make sure that when they engage in the conversation that their audience knows that they have been heard.

I was pleased that Jeremiah listed listening as the most very first thing on his list. The rest of the list is just as insightful so read the full article.

Rick Turoczy marks one month of covering the Portland technology community on his blog Silicon Florist. I’ve come to rely on his blog and tend to look at his posts as soon as he notes them on his twitter account.

Because of Silicon Florist, I’ve attended interesting local events like last night’s meeting on Implementing Rails concepts with PHP. Without the Silicon Florist, I never would have known the event was occurring.

After one short month, I can’t imagine not having Silicon Florist in my rss feeds. If you’re in Portland or interested in Portland’s technology scene, you should check it out.

Despite all of my reservations about OpenID, I finally found a compelling use for the technology today.

I signed up for Highrise by 37Signals today. I’m going to use it for personal contact management which I have a deeper interest in after reading Never Eat Alone.

The challenge is that I already have an account for Basecamp (another 37Signals product) and wasn’t looking forward to managing multiple accounts. OpenID to the rescue.

37Signals allows you to link multiple accounts—personal and business—to the same OpenID login. After a quick registration at MyOpenID.com, I was ready to sign up for Highrise and link my current Basecamp account. It was painless and has been a real boon.

The major benefit is the way that 37Signals has implemented their OpenID support. The OpenBar interface makes it worth the time to sign up with an OpenID provider. This is another example of where 37Signals should be an example for other developers.

At the end of the day, selecting the OpenID vendor turned out to be very simple. MyOpenID.com is a product of JanRain a Portland-based company whose founders were involved in the development of OpenID.

Local? Developed the technology? It was a no brainer.

“If you make meaning, you’ll probably make money. But if you set out to make money, you will probably not make meaning, and you won’t make money.” — Guy Kawasaki

• Watch the Video

I managed to have a lengthy conversation last evening with Kent Lewis of Anvil Media at PDX MindShare. Kent and I had met a few times before, but had never had an extended conversation until now.

I left the conversation inspired, energetic and feeling like Kent and I were kindred spirits with our views on business and the world.

Kent has tremendous integrity. He believes in a world of abundance and that being giving back to your community, you get your contribution back tenfold.

I couldn’t have been more impressed and am grateful that I got to know him better.