Influence in the Context of Associations

"Influence" is a concept I know I'm reading, hearing and thinking about and I know I'm not the only one. I think it's interesting to sit where I sit--an online community & social media manager for an association--knowing my concept of "influencers" is a lot different than that of the people higher up in my organization, and I'm sure the same can be said for many other associations. That's to say, traditionally the people who are considered to be influential in the association world are board members and committee members. Whether an association has 500 or 5,000 or 500,000 members, in many associations staff are taught that only a handful of members deserve red-carpet treatment. If they call, it's unacceptable for them to be put on hold. If they email, you better respond right away. These people matter: 1)board members, 2) committee members, 3) possibly notorious trouble-makers or complainers. The rest of the members are members, sure, but they're not VIPs the way 1, 2, or 3 are.

Now there's a new reality where, in the larger world outside the walls of any given association, a different handful of people matter. Their peers respect them and value their perspective. They are considered to be thought leaders. They matter a lot to their peers. However, to the staff at the associations they belong to, they may very likely be invisible. In many, if not most, cases they are not board members or committee members. When they email the association with a concern, the email may be ignored. If they blog about something or tweet about it, nobody rushes to respond. To association leaders accustomed to thinking that only board members matter, this new handful of people they've never heard of may well not matter at all. Who reads their blogs anyway, those execs will assert? Nobody will care what they say on Twitter--because it's Twitter. These people don't really matter so it's not important to worry about concerns or opinions or ideas they express. Or so many association execs think.

Here's the thing that many association execs don't understand: to their peers, these "nobodies" DO matter. They may actually matter a lot more to members than board or committee members do. While we used to revere people because they were elected officials of an association, now we value those in our field whose ideas or work we respect. So there's a big disconnect between the handful of traditionally influential people sitting in the boardroom with the association's senior staff and the handful of members attending, say, a tweet-up at an annual meeting. Execs think the center of power and influence sits at their table but members may feel quite differently.

As more and more associations launch private online communities for their members, the dynamic is going to change and, generally speaking, more traditional volunteers like board members may not be as active as younger or more "early-adopter-ish" members are. Which will mean that, as time goes by and more of your members begin interacting in the online community, a new group of influencers will grow out of those interactions. Meanwhile, traditional influencers--board and committee members--will become less visible and, therefore, less influential and important, at least to members. Will you know when this change occurs, or will you be stuck in thinking the wrong people matter the most?

BlogWorld Expo New York Recap

It has been a whirlwind few days in my world, to say the least. Last Thursday I participated in BlogWorld's Twitter party in an attempt to win a pass to BlogWorld NYC. By some miracle--ok, actually because I can Google answers to trivia questions like nobody's business--I won a two-day pass to the conference. Which started Tuesday.

Quickly I had to figure out train schedules, frantically work ahead so I could take off two days from work, and find a last-minute hotel in NYC. As all the BlogWorld hotels were sold out, and I haven't been to NYC in 15 years, I had no idea how to find a cheap but not crappy and also close to the convention center hotel. Long story short: I didn't; I bit the bullet and went with the reputable but expensive Roger Smith Hotel. It did not disappoint (except for the sticker shock, but even hotels on Hotwire weren't much less).  It was fun, convenient, super nice and clean--and I felt very VIP with a personal note and bottle of wine waiting for me. Plus the sheets were delicious, the bed super comfortable, and a the tub perfect. Yes, I take baths in hotels--I am not a germaphobe and am obsessed with baths. I took 3 baths in less than 24 hours.


Things I liked about the conference:

• First off, huge thank you to BlogWorld for free pass! 
• Hiring for Community Management panel --I will write a separate post about this session but it rocked. The only part that didn't rock was the fact that neither the wifi nor 3G worked so I couldn't tweet or follow tweets, and even Evernote wouldn't work so I had to resort to taking notes in Notepad.
• Audible (my fave app--LOVE audiobooks. Audible has affiliate and podcaster programs now (link is not an affiliate link, though I will be checking that program out).
• Livefyre--very helpful; I am going to have to bite the bullet and migrate from Blogger to Wordpress so I can get off RIDICULOUS Echo comment platform I'm paying for each month and onto Livefyre.
• Wordpress rep helped me with embedding video issue.
• Network Solutions took my photo with Cloris Leachman (sort of) and I got to say hi to the Kevin Bacon of the social media world, Shashi Bellamkonda. I met Shashi on the plane to BlogWorld in Vegas and I'm telling you, almost every person I've subsequently met is somehow connected to him.
• Mycroburst, who wins for second best swag of raincoat in tiny pouch. Audible wins for 2 free book download card--did I mention I'm obsessed with audiobooks?
• Meeting lots of "Internet friends IRL, especially Jim Storer of the frequently-revered-by-me Community Roundtable. I won't be a name-dropper, but suffice it to say it was very fun hnging with the cool kids. Also great chance meeting with college friend who, along with his girlfriend who turned out to be a kindred community management/social media Koolaid drinking soul, took me out for dinner at awesome restaurant in a chichi part of NYC I never would have otherwise seen. Lobster and frites? Yes, please.

And, since this is my blog you're reading, of course this post would not be complete without a list of things I didn't like:

• NYC is about my least favorite city for a conference like this. Expensive, not convenient like Vegas where everything was pretty much in one hotel--room, sessions, parties. Even when you have to take a cab it's quick and easy. Cabs in NYC are hard to get, hotel bellmen helping you are nowhere to be found,and for the bus you need change and not bills--which, if you're from out of town, you don't know till you're on the bus trying to jam dollar bills into the payment thing. It's dirty and gross and I heard horror story after horror story of dirty fleabag hotels. Vegas BlogWorld was paradise to me; NYC, pretty meh.
• Sessions super confusing--I totally don't get the Social Media Business Summit (SMBS) thing vs regular sessions. And after fretting about not being able to attend any sessions I wanted because they were SMBS sessions, in the end I was able to walk right in but felt like a cheater because I had a two-day pass and technically wasn't supposed to be in those sessions. I like rules and follow them, but would have been PISSED if it turned out all the sessions I wanted were unavailable to me after I spent a fortune on hotel/travel to the event. My suggestion is eliminate SMBS track because they totally let you in even if you didn't pay for it anyway.
• I think twice a year for this event is overkill. And while Vegas rocked and I would totally go back there, I don't feel compelled to go to LA.
• It's not BlogWorld's fault, of course, but as happened in Vegas, wifi either didn't work at all or was crazy slow and of course AT&T was as reliable as ever---meaning I had no connectivity from iPhone or iPad 99% of the time I was in the convention center. At a conference where half the learning/fun comes from sharing thoughts and reading comments from concurrent sessions on Twitter, not being able to do either just sucks and diminishes the value. Not to mention makes it incredibly hard to coordinate via phone or device to meet the people you come all that way to meet.

 So, there you have it....today was back to reality. NYC, I can't say I'll miss you.

Facebook PR Flap: Thank You Forbes & Jeremy Pepper for Proving I'm Not Crazy

When the whole thing with Facebook and Burston-Marsteller went down, I confess I was a bit confused. As a social media/communications professional I have worked "in and around" PR but not at an agency and I make no claims whatsoever of being a PR pro. I could have sworn, though, from my capacity as both PR-esque professional and an avid watcher of Mad Men and other fictional accounts of the PR and advertising industries, that smear campaigns were just something PR agencies did. I mean, maybe they don't advertise it, per se, but seriously--political campaigns? What are they other than smear campaigns? Or full-page ads in the Washington Post or other news papers that somberly report how awful the other guy or industry is...tastefully brought to you by the X corporation or industry. Isn't that PR? Or is that advertising and totally separate from PR?

To PR pros, undoubtedly there is a huge difference and a professional ethics code and the line between advertising and PR is crystal clear. To me, though, and the rest of the world who are not PR pros, it's all one and the same and the indignant claims on behalf of the PR industry as a whole that they would NEVER do ANYTHING like Burston-Marstellar did had me wondering to myself "really?" But not wanting to push it because I didn't want to sound like a moron.

So I was thrilled to read first Jeremy Pepper's post then the Forbes post both saying that I'm not crazy and that smear campaigns do indeed exist. And also for pointing out my main thought about this whole thing--Facebook is dripping in money. What firm in their right mind would turn Facebook away as a client?

I'm not saying that every PR pro has been or ever would be involved in such campaigns--and good on them. But for those pros to indignantly proclaim that stuff like the Facebook/Google whisper campaign never happens? And people are ignorant for even thinking it? Well apparently, I and others like me who wondered about this are indeed not ignorant or crazy--stuff like this DOES happen in the PR industry, PRSA ethics code or not.

And--sidebar--I also didn't know that John Mercurio was part of this whole thing. I went to high school with him and he rocks. How small world is that? I had no idea I actually knew a person involved with this whole drama.

Offlining it

Apparently I'm not the only one with social media manager fatigue--the post I wrote a few weeks ago ran on Social Media Today also and got WAY more comments than any posts on this blog ever get. It makes me wonder what the future of social media staffing will look like--will people who transitioned from something else to social media whatever look to transition back to whatever it was they moved away from in the first place? Or to something totally different?

While I'm not ready to scrap my current job and become a mortician yet (my backup plan; either that or hair stylist...) I am becoming sort of obsessed with the concept of what possible toll spending so much time online can take on a person. I bought two books recently that explore this idea: Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other and Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. (Neither of those are affiliate links, btw.) I think the theme of the more connected we become online, the less connected we become "in real life" is a valid one, and something that can definitely take a toll on not only a person, but their relationships, their ability to parent and just generally be present offline. Oh, and to ward off a call from my mom fretting that I'm implying my marriage is in the toilet or my kids are playing in traffic or something, it's not and they're not...I'm just talking about an overall theme here, not my personal life.

So anyway, if you're wondering where I am, I'm hopefully off reading one of these books and figuring out the secrets of the universe or something fun like that.