Web Business Woman

Archive for May, 2009

Twitter, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, communities, forums, wikis, social marketing, social meetups, social blah, blah, blah. *Warning: my rant on the state of the Internet, and a mention of a new book by one of our authors.*

Are you totally overwhelmed with social media tools and activities? Seriously. How many communities do you (can you) belong to, before you start gritting your teeth every time you get an email updating you on your latest friends’ activities?

I think I’m tapped out. I think I have to pull back. I think my communication level has reached its limits. So, knowing this, I wonder: leadership communication – has the Internet improved it, or not? As the “leader” of your company, be it a solopreneurship or a small business of 50; be it a small business of 100 or a mid-sized business of 500, do you feel your communication style and level of reaching out, has been improved by these interactive tools, or not?

I say – yes. I feel more connected and I’ve truly met some outstanding men and women, in and not in the marketing world. I enjoy even the acquaintances that have come my way. But, is it necessary to sign up for yet another community, in order to be a leader in my industry? Does opting out make me a bad communicator?

Dr. Lee Thayer, in his book Communication: A Radical Philosophy for Life’s #1 Problem, just published by yours truly, btw, says in his “forewarnings” – which take place of the usual foreword, “Changing a deeply ingrained understanding to a new and sometimes contradictory understanding may be the most difficult thing that people ever do – no matter what the advantages.” So, from that, are we to take away the knowledge that new and different is  difficult, but has its advantages? Change is necessary, if you want to be a real leader?

Thayer, as aleadership author and coach, has had many a chance to experience the ups and downs of  communication. Going back to his Forewarnings, he says,

• It is in communication that we create each other as sentient human beings;
• It is in communication that we create, maintain, or alter our minding of the world;
• It is in communication that we create and modify our minds – and the minds of all others with whom we have the intercourse we call “communication”…and
• It is in communication that we become who we are, and the world comes into the existence it has for us in the ways we talk about it.

“Communication is the creator and the infrastructure of every human mind, and thus of the worlds we create inour images and our other ways of representing them. In trivializing the process, we miss seeing the fundamental – nay, the inescapable – role we play in making ourselves, and in making the only world we can ever know.”

As you can see, Dr. Thayer speaks in theory, and offers a philosophy, with insistence that communication is at the very core of everything we, as humans, do, with and for each other. There is no other way to interact but communication. There is no way to build or improve society, culture, knowledge, but through communication. Humans MUST communicate – we construct the very chairs we sit in and windows we look out of, not to mention the descriptions of what is beyond those windowpanes - in the language we use to describe them. Can you disagree? Dare you disagree?

If this is true (you must read the book to be exposed to Thayer’s full philosopy), if we lead each other by our conversations – what does that mean when those conversations are happening on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and the like? When conversations have become the thing of preschool – occuring in 140 characters, or in opinionated blog posts, or even in books about our conversations online?

How did leaders communicate BEFORE social media? Before phones? Before the tools of 20th century thinking?

I propose this: they told stories. They talked out loud in small groups, before a fire or around a fire or at a kitchen table, with food as a stimulant, not the chime of another email hitting your inbox. They gestured as they spoke. They paused for effect and leaned forward and acted out the story they were telling. They did not mince words.

We must ask ourselves this: Are our stories improved by our presences on Twitter, Facebook, and the like…even in the communities we visit? Or, are our stories improved, shared, understood, listened to and passed along, by storytelling the ability to look our audience in the eye?

Where is leadership communication today? Is it on Twitter- connecting to customers and clients to provide better customer service? Or is it on the company blog, the better to tell a real story? Or, is it at an unconference, where the structure is no structure and people act like people – human beings who care about one another? Can the story begin on these tools and be picked up…elsewhere?

Is technology taking us to a better place? Or, are our grandchildren going to wonder what all the summertime, outdoor, camping fuss is all about because they can’t be without their iPod?

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Moms Rising now has 1 million members. BlogHer is having it’s biggest convention, ever. Green Mom Groups are growing like spring grass and Womego is launching it’s online version of 500 women owned magazines (36,million subscribers). That’s a lot of online women performing a lot of online work. Many of us work out of our home offices without IT departments. If you’re reading this and are ready for an office makeover, get yourself a Mac with the Apple service plan and their incredible staff. Here’s why. I’ve been a die hard PC user since before 28.8 dial up days. I…
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My thanks to Mark Klein, a life-long friend and Senior Business Analyst who also has time to read during his commute into NY City each day. Today, he found this tidbit. I’ll have to forward it to Judy Rosener the visionary who wrote "America’s Competitive Secret – Women Managers back in 1995! The more women on a company’s senior management team, the less its share price fell in 2008, according to an analysis of companies from the French CAC 40 stock exchange index. The stock prices of companies led by executive teams with 38% or more women declined less than…
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What’s it take to get mass media’s attention? Apparently 5.5 million viewers. That’s where Story of Stuff ranks now according to their front page. Last weekend the NY Times took notice. Thank you (again) Annie Leonard for such inspirational work. I first reviewed this remarkable 20 minute video a month after it came out. On the high heels of my last post on the Mother of Capitalism, it’s time to tie both of these thoughts together – the buying moms of the world making GOOD capitalist decisions. It’s our duty and our responsibility. Those decisions include buying LESS STUFF and…
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Maryanne Milker’s Mom’s Blogger Club told her, she emailed the Green Mom Carnivaland then she called me about the Nielsen Buzz Metrics report showing blogging moms influence as "The Determinators" of market share. That’s what this post is celebrating – a shift in social thinking that just happens to hit on Mother’s Day weekend. Go Moms! (A big thank you Maryanne for the heads up and a congrats to Clean and Green Mom Sommer and Organic Mania Lynn for making the top 50 list.) Register for Full presentation coming up on May 28th. I received stats this morning from the…
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Womego is bringing offline readers into the social media world from a target group of 500 women owned publications which currently serve over 36 million subscribers. The publications reach every state, but Alaska and over 100 markets. Terry Gamer (above), is the CEO of Womego and President of Gamer Publishing Group (which was acquired by Capital Cities/ABC). She brought Women’s Group, APCO Worldwide and Neighborhood America together to build this Adult Women Social Media Community. She is the spokesperson who greets you when you first come into the site. Just like the NY Times and other publications had to move…
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Madame X is a friend. We’ve met only once face-to-face, but that was enough to start the email chain. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in about 5 months ago and wants to share with other women how she raised her white blood cell count by just changing what she ate. She also wants to keep her identity a secret as the the scar of "health-liability" with any future employer is bigger than the bodily scars of a breast cancer survivor bears. Disclaimer: Seek a physician’s advice before starting any nutritional program. The information presented here is based on the…
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Can you feel it? Everything is changing for the sake of a better planet – politics, manufacturing, food production, construction,education, media… Everything is getting better, people are talking and nations are looking for ways to put down the guns and work together. That’s something to celebrate and turn into your own personal battle cry. Earth Day is more than green; to me it represents a coming together of thoughts and ideas and passions; mending nations, blending capitalism and recreating a safer and saner world. Each day I take little guilt trips thanks for my gal pals who are my peers…
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What if we cut our home energy bills in half? How much "work" energy could we save by working a few less hours to pay those bills? We all know we need to do it, but could someone just make it a bit easier? Check out http://www.energycircle.com/store where they put all the things we need on one site. Plus a way to measure how much is being used. Lisa tells us how she’s making it easier to dial down the bills while creating a lower consumption planet. Thanks for the service!
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It’s Easter weekend, time to relax with a book, smell a few daffodils and celebrate talent that doesn’t know when to stop. Meet my gal pal, Wendy Vaughan, a prolific painter of all animals not just bunnies. Wendy worked her magic for my clients at Hunt Advertising in the 80s and has been a good friend ever since. She and her husband Greg shelter a mixture of models which include rabbits, cats, mice, ferrets, chinchillas and even pigmy goats. It’s such a gift to sit on their deck with a glass of wine watching birds on their fly bys. Her…
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