Since the emergence of social media and online communities in business, there has been a debate surrounding member contributions being the most important metric.   By that, I mean success is often tied to the frequency and number of posts, comments, or rating by a member.   

Within any community, including ours for environmental professionals, there are many member types.  Some that are very active are referred to as “super users” and there are members who just read but who do not participate who are often referred to as “lurkers” to social media professionals.    The reality is no matter how good the content of any community is the vast majority of people that visit a community, are the lurkers. 

Next month, I have been invited to participate at the SXSW Conference, the premier Digital and Interactive event in Austin, TX, to talk share insights from commonground and from my past.  I will defend the honor of lurkers on a panel titled Lurkers, Your Most Important Community Members.  Some of the panelists and social media experts do not feel that members categorized as lurkers add value.   I completely disagree.  

Why Social Media Lurkers are Valuable

The word lurker is harsh.  If you are in a group setting, there are always a few people that are more outgoing than others.  If you are in a learning setting, a small number of students typically ask the instructor the majority of the questions.  If you are in a large meeting, usually one or two people do most of the talking.   If you are working as a team on a project, one person generally presents the findings.  Do we call those people who don't talk lurkers? Why should we expect the dynamics of an online community or social network to be any different?

The vast majority of the members on commonground don’t participate nearly as often as we would like.  That is why we strive to improve user experience, add entertaining and relevant contests, and deliver value to members every day.   When we asked members, 75% indicated they visit commonground at least once every couple of weeks, and many of them visiting daily/weekly to keep an eye on what is happening.  The 21,000+ posts and comments have come from a smaller percentage of overall membership, and even though that percentage is well ahead of industry averages, it is still less than 10% of the overall membership.   Why?   In addition to the fact we are busy, our personalities are different.  Some of us are outgoing, some of us are not at all, and some of us are once we become comfortable with the environment.   In other words, we gain trust.   Many members come up to me in person and say they love the community, and one day they hope to be comfortable enough to post.   To me, that is perfectly fine and comes with time.

I could provide countless reasons why community members who have been members for years create value for the community at large.  However, I would prefer to showcase one example.  Commonground has been around since 4/08.   Just last week, a member who had never posted anything since joining in 2008 posted a question.  Six members who had collectively been members for an average of a year and a half, all jumped into the conversation to help the member out and it kicked off a great discussion that is still going strong.  In fact, it is tracking to have more participation than any other post on commonground. 

As members of any b2b community continue to get more and more comfortable with social media, I suspect many members who have been sitting on the sidelines are going to jump into the mix.  Their insights, contributions, and participation will help other members out.   And, if a member decides to never contribute online, there are plenty of other ways they will drive value such as refer their peers at work to join, forward content to help someone in their office, go to a meeting to discuss environmental standards and regulations with a better understanding of the issues, etc...  Plus, they push community administrators to make sure that every single day, they keep focused on delivering valuable content to increase the likelihood for engagement and participation.

What naysayers need to do is stop being so metrics driven on member contributions and map things back to overall goals and objectives of your initiative.  If a company is exceeding its goals and delivering something your members tell you they feel is very valuable, then you are on the right track.

What do you think?  If you were on this panel, what would your position be?  Are the so called “lurkers” not valuable, or do you agree with me, that they can be some of your most important community members?

Not a day seems to go by when you do not hear of family members, good friends, and talented people who have lost their jobs and are currently looking for employment.  Many of these people we care about have not been on the market for years and are not even sure where to get started today on the process of finding future employment. 

I wanted to share a story about someone I know very well who after 12 years at one company, went on the market. Prior to looking, he did not spend really any time creating his personal brand in the marketplace.   He had been in the social media space for a very long time, but he did not make a true commitment to spend time building his social networking presence.  He always put himself, and quite frankly a lot of other important things in his life second, and his company first. 

On the eve of his freedom, he talked with his wife about some of the things he wanted to accomplish in the short term and said "See you in the morning".  He went downstairs to his home office, nearly pulled an all nighter, and began what would turn into about a week long process. 

The first thing he did was update his LinkedIn account making his contact information accessible, adding a new picture, updating his profile, writing a summary of his background, and making sure his profile was 100% complete.  At the time, he did not have a blog or a personal website (mostly because he used to find it challenging to find time - sound familiar?).  However, if he had one or both, he would have added that too to his profile.

The next thing he did was reach out to some of his current co-workers, customers, prospects, and colleagues to wish them well and give them a heads up.  Not only did they have great suggestions on who he should talk with, they freely volunteered to write recommendations for him in his LinkedIn profile.

Then, he put together his resume.  It very easily could have been a couple of pages.  However, he forced himself to fit it on one page.  Why?  He received some great advice from his mentor.  He wanted to be clear and concise in his messaging and presentation of accomplishments.  He was pursuing senior level roles and how you write your resume is a reflection of your communication and writing skills. 

Given his sales background, he made a top 25 list of companies that he wanted to target and outlined a plan to maximize the effectiveness of his outreach efforts.  At most of the firms on the list, he was looking to create a need vs. fill a need.  He decided the best approach would be to:

• send emails first requesting exploratory conversations vs. making phone calls
• personalize each and every email to appeal to the specific target company
• include a link to his LinkedIn profile page in the body of his original email correspondence, not a resume originally
• send his formal resume (again 1 page) and a summary of LinkedIn recommendations which he formatted, organized, and edited to ensure correct spelling and grammar once a suspect became a prospect.
• add each of the new he made to his professional network on LinkedIn with a personalize note (not the LinkedIn template) within 24 hrs. following each meeting.

Upon completion of the above, he began his search. I will not bore you with the details which included a lot of emails, phone calls, interviews, and travel across the US and Canada.  In tandem, he made an investment in himself by working with respected advisor to go through a self assessment and improvement process.   He highly recommends this exercise.   

Of the 25 companies that he targeted, 92% of them responded and expressed some level of interest, and by the end of the mutual interview process he was faced with a number of options.  He was thrilled with the activity and interest.  What was even more amazing was the majority of them indicated that they were interested initially because of his LinkedIn profile.    Having not been on the market in years, he was glad he did not follow the traditional approach, but integrated tried and true best practices with new methods. 

The end result was he, I mean I, landed a great new job as the VP, Social Media for the commonground community.  When our CMO Jay Gaines hired me, he stated that one of the things that truly differentiated me from any candidate he had ever considered was my LinkedIn recommendations summary that I included with my resume and how I leveraged my LinkedIn profile throughout the process.

Now, will this process work for everyone?  It may, but it may not.  Even though this was only nine months ago, times were different then than they are today.  However, there might be a few nuggets in this blog that might help you or someone you care about who is on the market see the true value LinkedIn has had on my ability to find a job that I truly look forward to every single day.

If anyone would like a copy of the document I mentioned, feel free to direct twitter me at @mwallcomm  or email me at mwallace@edrnet.com and I will be happy to send it to you.  As always, comments and other approaches are welcome.  It is a tough market and we all need to do what we can to help each other out.  Please feel free to share this.

This past weekend I tried my best to enjoy myself, but something happened that knocked me completely off my game.   It was something that for many people, would be a welcome change or no big deal, but not for me.  It derailed me.  It left me hung out to dry, killed my efficiency and effectiveness, and caused me to wake up a couple of times in panic mode. 

What was the issue?  My Apple iphone, which is use to run my life, stopped working.  After 18 months and an average of 3,500 minutes per month in phone calls alone, never mind data, the phone and battery waved the white flag and surrendered that it was tired, overused, and cooked.   At one point, I was driving along and almost threw it out the window of my truck to rid myself of the question marks and move on.  However, that would be bad for the environment, so I did not. 

Seriously, ask yourself when the last time was that you went to get a coffee and did not bring your cell phone or pda? How did you feel the last time you unexpectedly left your cell phone/pda at home or at the office for the day or maybe even lost it?  Now imagine, that you had the phone, and that something simple like getting phone calls, did not work.  It is just different.    The good news was that I could do 80% of what I needed to do and still leverage all the mobile applications and social networking sites I use daily enabling me to keep in touch with those who are in my network.

Prior to 15 years ago, I did not have any type of mobile device, so it was no big deal.   But since I owned my first pager, some level of real time access to my peers, friends, and family has been to a certain degree become the norm – even with a pager.  You remember how it worked – you would get a page, run to a pay phone (not sure if those still even exist anywhere other than hotels, bus terminals, and airports), scramble for change, make the call, hang up and thought I was pretty efficient.  Now, many of us don’t use our home phones unless absolutely necessary – we run our lives through our cell phones and pda’s and rely on mobile technology for efficiency.   Feels like a trip down memory lane now as I spend a minimum of 10 hours a week using my Bluetooth phone system in my truck as I travel to and from work and to meetings on conference calls.   And, the only reason I have my home phone is as a backup plan for when the technology I use daily breaks.   Yes, technology breaks – but seriously, what doesn't?

Having lived in the emerging technologies marketplaces for many years, I no longer discount any trend that exists.   At the early stages, the optimists tend to jump in with both feet while the skeptics tend to wait it out until they can quantify the actual ROI of their use.  Whether it is sales force automation software, mobile and wireless technology, collaboration tools -you name it – there were more naysayers than believers as those markets evolved.    Mobile, coupled with social media, will be here for a long time.  If you are not leveraging the mobile applications available, I strongly encourage you to make them an important part of our future strategy as they have become one of the main ways with which we communicate.

I am eager to get back to 120% productivity and experiment with the new mobile technologies Apple is introducing with its iphone 4g including video conferencing.  10 years ago, we were all talked about how that could save a company in travel expenses and time on the road.   Another one time “imagine that” trend that is now a reality for business.     

Have you ever decided just for kicks to search for yourself on Google to see what the results look like?  Try it.

When I type in Mark Wallace - commonground, I see my blog on commonground, my Linkedin Profile, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites right at the top of the search results.  Try a few people you know too.  I looked up a few other members of commonground too - Mike Kulka, Alan Agadoni, and Larry Schnapf.  After you try this, what is the first thing you notice that we all have in common? 

Perhaps you see that since each of us are members and bloggers on commonground, we benefit from great marketing exposure via Google.  Perhaps you quickly notice we are all members of LinkedIn.  Perhaps you see how all of our professional qualifications are easily found because each of us chooses to make that information public.  Perhaps it is all of the above. 

From conversations with many environmental professional members of commonground, I realize many of you are trying to digest the value of social media outside of just being a member of commonground.  One very easy to see way is your personal profile when someone searches for you.  There are 14 Billion web searches done each month according to Comscore.  Your future customers, partners, and potential employers are very likely going to search for you to find out what your credentials are.   Therefore, it is important that when someone searches for you, they find the right you. 

If you do not have a LinkedIn membership because you are skeptical, I encourage you to join the 43 million professionals who are members and who generally benefit from having their public LinkedIn profile come up in the top 5 results when someone searches for them.

To maximize your results and LinkedIn effectiveness after you have signed up, I thought I would share some LinkedIn Tips from a recent article on CBS moneywatch.com  by Elaine Pofeldt titled Facebook, Twitter, and More:  The New rules of Social Networking.  In particular, there is a section that addresses how to shape your personal brand on LinkedIn.  Here is a summary of her key points.

1)  Seek out recommendations from past bosses, key clients, colleagues, and direct reports to create a 360 degree picture of your strengths

2)  Instead of a generic job title at the top of your profile, use a short description of valuable credentials you can quantify

3)  Fill out the interests section with pursuits, such as charitable projects, that reinforce your value to potential employers and clients

4)  For consistency and branding, use a good head shot of yourself as your photo and try to keep the photo consistent with photos on other social networks

5)  Opt for a free vanity address for your profile that uses your full name, such as linkedin.com/in/jandoe (this is not always possible, and if it is not, use one that makes sense given how you are represented on other social networking sites).

Again, see the above referenced article for more.  It might sound pretty basic, and is, but the benefits are many.

I would also recommend you take your vanity address and drop in your autosignature.  Why?  It makes it easier for other folks to see your credentials, help you build your connections, and it is valuable in the event your email is forwarded to someone new.

Good luck and congratulations on letting your credentials tell the story you want to tell when someone searches for you.

Typically, I have a lot to say and try to provide insight to members about social media.  After viewing this, I am speechless!

I encourage you to watch this video from Glenn Beck:

Why Goldman Sachs is the Evil Empire.  

It is about seven minutes in length, but it is well worth your time.

Could this have really happened?  Really?  Look forward to your comments.