Seems like everyday I see new job listings for a social media specialist or hear about the creation of a new media team at some large corporation.  This seems kind of rediculous to me.

Social media is made of tools.  They’re just tools.  Hiring a social media specialist would be like a restaurant hiring a knife handling specialist.

Instead of thinking about the tools, think about what they’re used for.  They’re used for reaching new users and communicating with your existing ones.

Or… as Tara Hunt put’s it in her new book, it’s all about whuffie.  Not whoopee… whuffie.   It’s a term that’s used in a science fiction book to describe and measure someone’s reputation.  I think of it as social capital.

Do people trust you?  Do they respect you?  Are they a friend?  This is social capital.  Once you are those things… Once you have social capital, how do you maintain it?  How do you maintain those connections with your community and not fade into irrelevance?

You can manage your social capital using social media tools.

Your social capital… your repuation is SOOOOO important.  People spend so much time studying and practicing accounting.  Those people grow up to become the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) for companies and track financial capital of a company.  What about the social capital?  It’s just as imporant.

If you’re too big for your CEO to do this that’s when you hire a community manager.  Yes that’s me.  I’m a community manager and I manage the social capital for my company.  I spend most of my day making new friends and keeping the ones that we already have.

Making friends… that probably sounds super trivial but it’s actually pretty complicated and SUPER important.  If folks don’t trust you, they’ll tell their friends about it or the sheer act of no one talking about you at all will affect your bottom line.  You’ll lose financial capital because you were bad at managing your social capital.

Let’s assemble some examples of social capital situations.  What’s a comapny that you’ve lost respect for because of something they’ve done?  What’s a company that you’ve gained respect for because of something they’ve done?

At work this week, we had a few customers that were frustrated by/didn’t completely get how to setup our products. They expressed that frustration over the Web. I was able to respond to their concerns in a quick manner, solve their problems, and show them how much we appreciate them as customers.

The whole experience reminded me of a talk that I had heard many many years ago.  I was at a Promise Keepers event and the group’s founder Bill McCartney was speaking about his experiences when he was head football coach at the then national champion University of Colorado Buffalos.

He talked about how when he was head coach that he would take each player aside and show the player that he loved him.   I can’t imagine that he went up to each of them and was like “I love you man!”  People experience love in different ways, whether it’s taking someone out for a beer or writing them a quick e-mail telling them how much you appreciate them.

I think if you’re running a company and responsible for managing your employees or you’re a community manager like me and responsible for managing/growing your customer base, the number one thing that you have to do is learn to show love to every single member of your community.

By showing your community your appreciation… by doing what my friend Mike McDerment says “execute on extraordinary experiences everyday”, you’ll not only win yourself customers & users.  You’ll win yourself people that are passionate about your cause and who’ll help you get where you want to go.

Over Easter break, I was in Indianapolis to visit my sister and brother-in-law.  During my few days there, we went and hung out with a friend of theirs that runs a welding company where he makes these really rad custom handmade belt buckles.  Now I had heard about him before but  it didn’t make a big impression with me.  By him taking time to hang out and show us more about what he does, it allowed me to make more of personal connection with him and thus more willing/excited to talk about him with others.

Another prime example of this happened to me in February when I was at the after party for the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami’s South Beach.  Internet celebrity and host of Wine Library TV Gary Vaynerchuk was there.  Now him and I had met on numerous occasions but he meets hundreds of people a day so I didn’t expect him to remember me at all.

Well, I was talking with some others around a table and all of a sudden I feel someone rubbing my shoulders.  I turn around and it was Gary Vaynerchuk.    Now the interaction was maybe all of 30 seconds but it was meaningful.  He could have spent the entire time at the party with the throngs of folks that would have happily kissed his ass all night but he went out of his way to come over and say hi.    It meant a lot.

Wanna have a strong community of people that stand behind you,  your company or your product?  I firmly believe that to do that you have to do exactly what Bill McCartney said.  You have to tell each and every person in their own little way, “I love you man.”

Have you had this experience?  What’s the last time someone went out of their way in a way that you didn’t expect to show you how much they appreciate and love you?  When’s the last time that you did it for someone else?

Also… about making real-life friends, have you guys seen the Dentyne Ice commercial “Make Face Time” ?!? I know it’s about selling gum but I think it has a really rad message.

Social media is great but use that social media to try and create some “face time”. Get together at a coffee shop, bar, or someone’s house. Get to know each other that way. It’ll help take your relationships to a new level.

Looks like Craig Newmark gave a killer talk at the User Generated Content Expo. He spoke on “Unlocking the Secrets to Building Community.” ReadWriteWeb has a great write up of his talk. Definitely worth a read.

This morning I went to the Social Media Breakfast here in Washington DC hosted by the VOIP Pioneer Jeff Pulver.  I had a great time.  Of all the breakfasts he’s hosted in the world, this is his second time hosting in Washington, DC.

At these events, he passes out the “Personal Social Networking Toolkit.”  It’s a pen, two name tags, and a bunch of little stickers.  One of the name tags is for your name and your personal tag line.  With the personal tag line, you try to say something about yourself that will help you more easily connect with others.  The other name tag and little stickers are for you to tag other people with your perceptions about them.  You contribute to others’ personal tag clouds.

I’ll admit that when I went to Jeff’s first breakfast in the DC area.  I didn’t get the personal tag line and the tagging.  I just thought it was kind of weird and didn’t do it.  This time he talked about it more and I got it.

Much like the notion of object centered sociality, Jeff was trying to show that, when two people can more easily identify a shared area of interest, circumstance, or experience (aka social object),  it’ll be easier for them to connect and make friends.  The personal tagline and tags are there to help facilitate the back and forth.

This got me thinking more… a while ago I had heard a story that a guy had worn a t-shirt that said, “Hi, my name is Bob.”  His name was Bob. Throughout the day, people were far more friendly with them then they’d normally be because they knew what his name was.  It was easier to connect.

It’s one of the reason why I love wearing Threadless t-shirts. The t-shirts make people laugh, they make people think, they make people stop and look.  The t-shirts start a conversation.  They allow me to more easily connect with others.  The t-shirts are social objects.

It’s the reason why I write this blog.  The more I’m transparent with you here about what’s going on with me and what I’m thinking about the more opportunities you’ll have to connect with me.  There will be more opportunities for us to have a conversation.    These blog posts are social objects.

All of this activity fascinates me.  The more that we use all these different tools whether its offline with t-shirt or online with blogging, Twitter, and Facebook,  we’re seeing how sharing is helping more people connect in ways that would have never happened before.   More and better relationships are being built.

Last night at church, our associate pastor announced that he’s leaving for Boston to start another church.  This announcement is bittersweet.   It’s great that he’s got this awesome opportunity but it sucks that he’s leaving.

This got me thinking.  In today’s day and age, long distance friendships don’t have to suck as much any more.   We have the tools to build what my friend Shel Israel would call a “global neighborhood.”  Despite someone being in a different part of the country, it really can be like someone is next door and you’re having a conversation with them over the back fence.

I travel all across the country  and make friends everywhere I go.

Twitter has been AMAZING.  It gives me that “ambient intimacy” with my whole community. With a glance at Tweet Deck, I can know everything that’s going on in my community, what they’re thinking, and how they’re feeling.

In my Google Reader,  I have a whole section for photos.  I subscribe to the Flickr Photostreams from my friends from all over the country.  With the click of my keyboard, I can see all the photos from my friends adventures.

I have a good chunk of friends who blog too.  Those are such a blast to read too.  When you read a friend’s blog, you feel like you’re having the same conversations you would if you were all sitting around the kitchen table together.

Granted these tools don’t replace face to face communications but they allow for you to build these global neighborhoods… these global communities.