Monthly Archives March 2009

Here’s a presentation I’m working on that will be the core of a longer work (say it!! a book!!) I’m noodling over…

Small Business Social Media Survival Tips Preso (*Updated*)
View more presentations from Marc Danziger.

There’s a documentary just out about the soldiers in Iraq called “Brothers At War“. I haven’t seen it and don’t know much about the film (my son is in the Army, so I’ll probably go watch it).

But the distributor – Samuel Goldwyn Films – is doing an interesting thing which directly connects with my image of “social media marketing” – they are offering the people interested in the film a process to get it shown in their area by preselling 1,000 tickets, and providing a kit (pdf) and support in putting together the group buy.

They are using Web based tools to build out a consumer-led marketing program.

Damn clever, if you ask me.

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We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That’s the preamble of the US Constitution, and it’s a great thing to think about when you’re talking about launching a community. It clearly sets out what the community is for, and creates a simple, concise vision of what it can be measured against…

…to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…

Communities need constitutions.

In a presentation I’m doing about social media and small business, I say that business owners should seek critics out and ‘Embrace the Negative’.

Find the people who say negative things, and reach out to them too. Why they are unhappy? If you can – make it right. If you can’t, explain what you learned and what you will do differently. Send a personal email, send them a coupon for $5 off the next time they come.
Just like the positive comment – it’s not the economic value that matters; it’s the fact that you’re paying attention.

Well, that’s a lesson the White House seems to be taking to heart:

When New York Times columnist David Brooks accused the White House last week of “shaking confidence with its hyperactivity,”

Most of the work I do is with organizations that want to ‘create’ social media tools to enable community. I think of myself as a community designer, sometimes. But as I’ve been thinking about social media and small business lately (for a project that’s in the germinal stage), I’ve come to an interesting thought: It may be more important to think about the active users of social media; the participants in communities than about the owners of the tools or founders of the communities.

I have a politics blog, where there are five or six relatively active authors. But there are fifteen or twenty very active and engaged commenters – and to an extent the community is as much about them as it is about me. Several of them comment across multiple blogs and have well-established online identities and reputations.