If you follow social media, you’re familiar with the phrase “lead the conversation.” Brands use when discussing a thought leader strategy online. For example, HubSpot helps small to medium size businesses with tools to manage inbound marketing. They’ve created twitter.grader.com and other tools, to lead the conversation about online tools. Zappos, in addition to being a major online retailer, is leading the conversation about customer service. They use twitter, company blogs and executive keynotes to evangelize about customer service. Nokia’s recent Facebook application, Talking Points, is another example of a powerhouse brand leading a conversation onlinw..

The Talking Points application asks Facebook users to write the rules on conversational etiquette on Facebook, text, mobile and in person. The community votes on the best responses, and users can send responses to their Facebook friends to earn even more votes. Nokia’s tagline is “connecting people,” and this promotion does just that. In fact, it’s a group conversation on the etiquette of how we connect.

( by corresponding shapes on Flickr)

When I tweet, cool stuff happens. I call it Twitter serendipity.

I’ll discuss a band on twitter, a few minutes later friends on twitter reply with links to songs I’ve never heard from that band. A few months ago, I helped a new twitter friend find a good deal on a hotel room in NYC. Turns out he’s the VP of a company I’d like to work with. Today, a prominent blogger discovered a tweet I wrote a few months back about wanting to represent bloggers — not just their media but their full offering as brands — to companies. That blogger who emailed me had perfect timing. I am in the process of building that model right now.

When I tweet, cool stuff happens.

I discover articles and events. And most importantly, I discover people.
Businesses often ask about the ROI of twitter. And while there are many ways to answer that question, that most elusive and compelling benefit of twitter is the relationships you create.  So, what’s the ROI of a relationship?

Eight year old Sandra Cantu has been missing for days. Her search committee has opened up a twitter account, @searchforsandra, to share updates and spread the word about their emergency. The twittersphere has retweeted this many times-and if you have a moment, visit their website to see what you can do to help.  While not making light of this emergency, I am interested that the search committee is using twitter in this way.

Cheeks

Originally uploaded by Yogi

I blog both to explore what interests me and to share it with people who interest me. Sometimes, that interest is in business insights, leaders and thinkers and other times it’s culture, humor and inspiration. Re-reading a few things I wrote last year made me realize my writing was a lil too stuffy. I’d like to have a bit more fun here. Maybe a few more typos and tangents? I need to unbutton my top button so to speak.

And I’d also like to hear from you, too. Either in the comments or email. Lets turn this into a dialogue. Sound good?

I read a passage last night that that had a wow factor. It’s from “Good Poems for Hard Times” by Garrison Kellor.

“The common life is precarious. I fear a future in which America becomes a loose aggregate of marauding tribes—no binding traditions, no songs that we all know, not even the “Star-Spangled Banner,” or “Silent Night,” no common heroes, no American literature—only the promotional lit of race and ethnicity, our people unable to name their senators, their only political experience via television, their only public life at Wal-Mart.”

Do you fear this future? I am more concerned with a future in which we are all chanting the same songs, in which our eagerness to create and defend a unified national culture creates a community of zealots. It’s not that I like individual tribes, rather It’s I like what happens when the cultures from all those tribes interact to create something larger and more meaningful. That’s the type of national experience I am interested in having & sharing.

How about you?