I wanted to get this blog out a little while ago, but I lost the key component. I've found it now, but it's a little crumpled up, but at least I found it. So, without further ado, here it is and the blog post begins...

So you think your company needs to get more involved with social media, but they're not willing to? How do make them understand? The best answer I've seen from many other social media people is to show them what's going on online involving the company.

A few weeks ago I was speaking at something for the Ontario Government about social media and I met William Young, a senior issues analyst for the cabinet office. He showed me a little report that he makes up every week for his office he calls "Blog Watch."

Every week William puts together a report that highlights some things going on in the social media space that relates to his specific office. He splits it up into three sections:

• Featured Blog Topic of the Week: Here he writes about the most prevalent issue he found being talked about in the blogosphere or the one he thinks is most important. He gives a breakdown of what was being said and a couple quotes.
• Weekly Blog Report: In this section William takes other subjects being talked about in blogs and gives a brief description of each.
• Social Media Themes: In this last section he highlights issues from Twitter.

Your can always switch around the categories in these types of reports to focus on areas most relevant to your company.

I like the idea of doing this in a report for a couple reasons. It's much more professional looking than just telling your boss. It separates social media areas to show just how many places the talk could be going on. Most importantly, it shows specific examples.

I think if you can put something like this together your boss may just see what you're talking about.

What do you think of this idea? Do you have a better idea for getting your higher-ups to believe you that you need to be more involved in social media?

A few weeks ago my friend Melissa asked me to help her out with some videos she was making for her work. She was interviewing "experts" about different subjects that they specialize in.

She tapped me as a social media expert. Who knew? Someone thinks I'm an expert at something.

Doing the interview was fun. It was very casual and I had a little bit of fun with it. It didn't hurt that I also knew everyone in the room at the time and we're a bunch that likes to joke and fool around. I think the lightness of it though makes the whole thing work.

Anyways, after a few weeks of patiently waiting, they uploaded the video. Bellow you can find me being an expert on something.

After you watch, please do me a favour and leave a comment letting me know what you think. This was my first time being an expert on anything and I'd really appreciate some feedback.

No, Weird Al isn't really dead. Your geeky mind can rest at ease.

I was having a conversation the other day about Weird Al with a couple friends about how we used love him. He was a huge part of so many of my friends' childhoods. But, where is he now?

He's still putting out records (he had one last year. I looked it up on Amazon to be sure), but how many people are listening to them? I was surprised to even see that he's still doing music (No offense Al). How many kids these days know the genius that is Weird Al? Probably not a lot. Why do you think this is? I'll tell you why: the internet.

Back when Weird Al was a big deal, things like music sharing and YouTube didn't exist. Weird Al got a record deal for being the best parody artist around. He was signed to a real record label and had world-wide major distribution of actual physical products (remember when music came like that?). This is how music got to the masses not too long ago.

The internet changed all that. Now any yahoo with some kind of device that records can create a parody song and upload it to the interweb for the whole world to see. You don't even need musical talent anymore. People are making funny songs and putting them on the internet at an alarming rate. It's hard for anyone to really stand out amongst the crowd of "parody artists" on the net. Something that's hilarious one day is old news and forgotten the next. Remember this one:

Probably not. But that's my point.

Songs don't even need to parody other songs anymore. They can parody real life situations caught on tape now also. Look how popular the "bed intruder" guy is! This song is iTunes for gods sake:

The point is old channels of distribution are dying. Everyone talks about paper is dying because of the internet, but it's not the only thing. Everything that used to get distributed physically is completely changed due to the internet. And if they haven't, they better or they could get left behind.

The days of the international parody artist may behind be us, but I am enjoying all the little stars that pop up every day.

Also, I still love you Weird Al!

"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" from Aaron Paul

This weekend Mitch Joel posted a fantastic article entitled "The Real Time Web is a Big Problem for the Web". In it he talked about how when things spread in real-time, like say over Twitter, it's not always the easiest to keep up. He used the story of how a plane had crashed and someone in the vicinity tweeted about it right away. Mitch saw the tweet and immediately checked CNN's website, but there was nothing about it there.

In today's society where we're exposed to information at a constant and quick pace through things like social media, instant messaging and cell phones that we expect everything else to be keeping up with us. Is that really possible?

In Mitch's case, a big news outlet like CNN has to hear about a story, do some research on the topic (even if that's just checking if said story is even really happening), write something up, edit it, get approval, send it to their guy that puts stories up on the site and then publish it before any of us common folk get to see it.

Mitch isn't alone with this problem. Tons of people, myself included, think of something and then expect instant gratification. Unfortunately the world doesn't always work like that.

I remember when I was young and I had a question, I had to wait to got home and then hope I still remembered the question. Then I could try and look it up in an encyclopedia and even then it wouldn't always hold my answer. A few years later the internet came around and if I could remember a question by the time I got home I could then google it. Now, I carry around an iPhone and when I have a question I can pull my phone out of my pocket and look up an answer instantly. Everything should be like that, right?

I work and talk a lot about brands monitoring social media for people talking about them. I wholeheartedly believe that they should be doing this and respond to a comment or join a conversation when they can. The problem is when we're the one waiting and expecting for that company to answer, we expect it to come almost instantly.

If I'm having a problem with a piece of software and I tweet at their twitter account, I would want them to answer me right away. But what if I was having my problem at 3am in the morning? Would I still expect them to respond right away? Probably, but that isn't a very realistic expectation.

You have to remember that whoever is on the other end is just a person (sometimes more than one, but still people). We say that we want brands to show us the real people working for them, but then we sometimes expect those people to be super people.

At work I handle our companies Twitter account from Toronto, but we deal with people all around the world. If someone in Australia tweets at me at my 4am, I'm not going to be able to answer them until I'm awake and moving in the morning. I'm a person too and I need my time to sleep, eat and do other things that take me away from the computer for more than five minutes at a time. I will answer them, but it probably won't be at 4:05am.

The problem with coming to this realization is that it's not going to really change anything. You're still going to expect people and brands to answer you instantly when you have a problem, or else you're going to say that they're not doing a good job with social media. Even worse is that writing this isn't going to change my perception on how the world should work either. Despite me being on the side that is supposed to be "watching all the time" and knowing the limitations to that statement, I'm still probably going to want another brand to be on the ready at my beck and call.

I suppose that's just the way our society has evolved... for now.

I figure as long as we can try to remember some of this every now and again, it's better than nothing.

What do you think?

Now that I'm working in the world of social media monitoring I hear and read a lot of stuff about sentiment. Mainly the talk is about negative sentiment. "We don't want people to say bad things about us", "What should I do if people are saying bad things about us?", "Here's how to deal with negative people", etc.

Now that everyone can have a voice on the internet they can also say whatever they want about whatever they want. Companies seem to have two main problems with this; a) they don't want people to say bad things in places where the entire world can see, and b) they're not sure what to do when people say something negative about them.

There's nothing you or anyone can do about the first one. People are going to speak bad about things all the time whether you're there or not, so you might as well be there. Get over that fear.

The second problem is going to have millions of answers for millions of different scenarios. The one thing that I will recommend you always do though is listen to what they're saying. Even if you're not going to respond, listen. The people who speak bad about you are your best critics in terms of constructive criticism.

Sometimes these people are just venting frustration about things, but sometimes these people are complaining because they think you're doing something wrong. Chances are if one person thinks it others do as well. If you listen to what these people are saying you're doing wrong, you have a basis to work off of on how to fix what you're doing.

When people tell you that you're doing something wrong it means that while they have something negative to say now, they're still paying attention to you. These people are part of your public, and social media in a corporate sense is about bringing together your public with your company. These people are paying attention to you but telling you they think you're doing something wrong. That means there's a good chance they want to pay attention to you and like what you're doing. By listening to these people you're getting insight into how to best reach your public in a positive way.

Some companies go for the quick fix. A quick response online apologizing and trying to make amends with a single person at a time. But, not everyone is always going to speak up. Like I said earlier, if one person has criticism of your company, chances are others are feeling the same way. Rather than respond to the ones that speak up one by one, listen to what they're saying and take it in to account when doing your next phase of planning. Don't buy people off, make them really like you by listening to what they say and take it into account.

Haters are always going to hate. People are always going to complain about something. You're not going to be able to change in response to every piece of criticism, but you are getting free input from the people that should matter to you.

Haters are gonna hate, but you should learn to embrace their hatred.