This post was originally published on the Dachis Group blog, Collaboratory.

Transforming your brand’s tone of voice, for the sake of achieving relevance in social, is a fool’s errand. You don’t have to find your brand voice in social, because you’ve already created it.

Brands commonly homogenize their voice when dealing in social – a common mistake. True, a conversational tone is best used when engaging fans and followers; but that universal rule can be equally destructive if it means soft-pedaling your brand’s personality.

Your brand guidelines probably look something like this...

Most companies have brand guidelines, or some kind of fluff piece that goes over tone of voice. One client of mine, in particular, comes to mind. Their tone was crisply defined in a slick-looking and thoroughly thought-out document that was given to us as a reference point when defining their social media content strategy. It’s probably only ever dug out when a new agency partner is hired, which was the case here. But when it comes to engaging in social, it should be your Bible.

In most cases, they’re filled with loquacious, and oftentimes unnatural, language. But it’s meant to be a starting point, not a set of rigid statutes. Your brand guidelines should act as a guiding post for your tone of voice in social; because, if nothing else, they embody what it is you stand for. And in social, you have to stand for something, because it’s that which defines you as a “person” in the space. It dictates how you talk, and what you talk about.

As individuals, we have different personalities — the same should be true of brands in social. Whether your brand’s voice is friendly and conversational, or confident and haughty, your tone should shine through. Anything less, and you’re simply faking who you are; and no one wants to be friends with a fake.

The earlier mentioned brand’s voice in social, as we determined, is a direct lift from its brand’s guidelines. It has an edgy, somewhat self-serving, “I’m who you want to be,” attitude. While speaking with such a voice goes against everything most social marketers tell you, it’s a tone that’s reflective of what the brand stands for; and it’s working. Even as a brand tip-toeing into social, it has already seen significant organic growth on Twitter — rocketing past 1,000 followers in a month and half, and gaining the respect of influential bloggers along the way.

But it’s not just working because of how the brand sounds. A large part has to do with what the brand is talking about. If you’re an authority on a subject, and want people to know, don’t hesitate to express it. It comes down to a delicate balance of talking the talk, and walking the walk. Too much of either, and you become a lot of talk and no action, or simply boring to talk to.

The guy who tells amazing stories, but has never done anything himself, is just as bad as the guy who’s lived the stories, but is a terrible narrator.

That said, talk about interesting things, interestingly. Stick to your values. And be yourself.

Your brand already has a voice. You’ve defined your personality in the form of brand guidelines. Use them to tell charming stories that touch and inspire people. For all of its over-the-top language, if you read between the lines, the key to your voice in social is there. So, dig it up from the bowels of your hard drive. Don’t abandon it. Adapt it. And if your brand doesn’t have a defined personality…well then, maybe you shouldn’t be in social. Because who wants to talk to that guy?

If it were up to the semantic web, I would have never discovered Coldplay.

I was having a conversation with a co-worker about what was going to be my next blog post, and something she said inspired me to switch gears and take a slight detour.

Not that I’m an expert on the subject, but I find the semantic web, and its theorized possibilities, absolutely fascinating. Imagine a world where everything is meticulously tailored to you. Not just the advertising. But search results; music and films; and even new friends. THAT is what I think social is here to do. It’s not just a breakthrough in communication. That’s far too limiting, and honestly, I think a bit shortsighted.

We’ve been seeing it for years in targeted ads, Amazon recommendations, and Netflix suggestions. The internet has made enormous strides in personalizing its recommendations based on our connections and experiences. But that’s exactly what scares my colleague about the semantic web. When is the internet no longer connecting us with the things it believes we will enjoy, but instead shielding us from wildly different experiences that we may in fact love?

My co-worker is a Groupon junkie, and prides herself on having no niche. The deals she buys vary far and wide, and if the semantic web were to try to tailor experiences to her it would brilliantly fail.

For most, the semantic web isn’t a problem. But for those who don’t want to be put in a box; for those who never want to do the same thing twice; the semantic web has an ugly side. For all the relevance it promises to bring, an argument can be made that it also threatens to bring an insular view of the world.

I pretty much exclusively listen to Hip-Hop and R&B. And if it weren’t for a conversation between two co-workers I overheard years ago, I would have never downloaded Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”. An album I love, and which led me to buy all of their previous works, as well as discover John Mayer, Jason Mraz, and Jack Johnson. Don’t judge me.

There’s a fine line between what’s junk, and what could be a new, and interesting experience. Where is that line drawn? The more you submit yourself to the wonders of this new way of the web, the more custom-fit your experience becomes. But at what cost?

I hate to admit that this year’s PSFK Conference was not as explosive and impacting for me as it was last year. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to come away from one and not feel even the slight bit inspired. This year was no different. Among the speakers and panels, my two favorites came down to Joe Gebbia (co-founder of Airbnb) and Justin Gignac (NYC artist). Although they talked about two different things, it was the same story to me.

Airbnb started in the pages of a Moleskine. Where's your next project going to spawn from?

Gebbia re-told the humble beginnings of Airbnb (From Moleskine to Marketplace); how it started with the need to pay their rent, and evolved into a viable alternative to hotel lodging. Gignac, on the other hand, discussed his NYC Garbage and Wants For Sale projects, with a particular emphasis on simply going out and doing things; hence the title of his piece: Doin’ It and Doin’ It and Doin’ It Good.

Years ago, an old mentor, who is probably the most qualified to say so, taught me the importance of personal projects. Sometimes they turn into lucrative businesses, sometimes they remain ventures of self-fulfillment. Either way, you should be doing something. Anything. By remaining static, only doing the assignments you’re given, you never really grow. At least not at the pace you could by taking matters into your own hands. In Gebbia’s case, the need to pay rent pushed him to discover how to run a profitable business in three short years.

Oftentimes, on the creative side of the advertising/marketing business, we talk about things like rapid prototyping and iterative agile development for our work. As Gareth Kay aptly put it: “Stop communicating products, and start making communication products.” But we only ever seem to apply that thinking to our work, never to ourselves. I think it’s about time we turn the gun around and hold ourselves to a higher standard as well. What are the things you love? Perhaps it’s photography, biking, or digital art.

Find out what you’re passionate about, figure out a way to express that creatively, and just do it. Don’t do it for a buck. Don’t do it to get seen. Do it for yourself. Do it because it fills a creative void in your life and makes you feel complete. I’m no shining example of what I’m preaching, as this blog is the only up-and-running side project I have, but I do have another in the oven that I’ve been working on for a few months.

Which brings me to my final point: Stop making excuses.

In all honesty, there’s no reason (well, I suppose money is a good reason) that I haven’t gotten further with my project. Like many others, I find excuse after excuse to avoid just getting it done. You’re either too tired, too broke, or you want to go to the gym. Whatever it is, stuff it. Like a relationship, if you really wanted to, you would find time to make it work. Even if it’s only small bits at a time. Gignac closed his presentation with a point I want to share with you: “Making excuses takes the same time as making progress.”

So stop bitching, and start doing.

The 4 archetypes that guide Dachis Group's social business design are Ecosystem, Hivemind, Dynamic Signal, and Metafilter.

Powered, the social media agency I worked for, was recently acquired by Dachis Group. Through this new venture of his, Razorfish co-founder, Jeffrey Dachis, is trying to validate a concept that has grown a pair of legs over the last few years: Social Business. It’s a relatively new concept to me, having spent all my time working on the consumer engagement side of social media. In a nutshell, however, it’s the process of internalizing social media ideals and applying many of those same consumer-facing archetypes to internal communications, policies, processes, and corporate culture, ultimately leading to a better company that makes better products.

My views and beliefs about social media have been called contrarian and I’ve frequently been labeled a devil’s advocate. But the truth is, I never saw myself falling into social in the first place. I didn’t touch social media, professionally, until my last internship in college, when I was doing blogger outreach for the launch of Dirt Candy. The reason for my skepticism stems from my belief that most social media programs are inherently digital campaigns cleverly dressed in Facebook fan pages and YouTube profiles. I think it’s naive to believe that the majority of the industry doesn’t lump social into digital, and for good reason. We, as marketers, fail to draw significant lines between the two.

Then again, should we be drawing lines at all?

I’ve written about the pervasiveness of social, and how the lines between media are becoming blurred. What I don’t hope for, however, is everything to be powered by Facebook Connect. If the future of social is to be determined by sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, then my skepticism about its future is well-founded, and it will fail to escape digital’s sphere of influence to become a ubiquitous force that knows no departmental bounds.

But I have hope; and it comes from social business design.

My antithetical attitudes towards social are born out of a desperate belief that it’s so much more powerful than what we’re currently doing with it. We talk about how disruptive a force social media is, and how it’s changing the landscape forever, but what are we really doing to drive that grandiose change? Surely it isn’t Twitter races.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the notion that people don’t develop affinities for brands just because they have a fan page, or tweet 3-5 times a day. People ultimately grow closer to brands because of the benefits they render in our lives. I used to be a hardcore Microsoft and Windows user. That is, until the iPhone came out, which led me to a MacBook, which led me to an iMac, and soon enough an iPad (com’on 2nd generation). I got caught in Apple’s famous halo effect; but I’m not ashamed.

I was introduced to many of Apple's other great products following my original iPhone purchase.

That transition didn’t happen because Apple had a YouTube contest or an elaborate fan acquisition strategy. It’s because they create wonderful products. It’s as simple as that. You’ll be hard pressed to find a direct connection between a company’s social media marketing and long-lasting effects on their bottom line. What you will find is a direct connection between the creation of better, more innovative, products and increased sales and demand.

It’s believed that social business design has the power to transform a company into an environment where free-thinking and innovation can thrive, theoretically leading to better ideas and better products. Corporate process change may not sound as sexy, but I believe that what we’re currently doing with social media, as an industry, is only skin deep. We have merely scratched the surface of what I think is possible through the democratization of these tools; at least I hope so. Because if this is it, then I might as well go back to my digital roots.

I don’t think this is it, however. I believe there’s a long road ahead for social; and thankfully it doesn’t lead to marketing more effectively on Facebook. We should aspire to more. We should challenge ourselves to find greater purpose for an idea that can potentially change the way business is conducted forever. We simply have to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and believe that we’re on the cusp of something much larger and much more powerful than what we initially set out to achieve.

Note: The views expressed on this blog are those of mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer, past or present.

Something I have noticed, both through observation and firsthand experience, is the obsession brand marketers, as well as agencies, have with turning to Facebook to resolve their social media challenges.

Jim Carroll (Chairman, BBH London) recently weighed in on a subject he calls Wind Tunnel Marketing. The idea is that we’ve become so committed to becoming “relevant” to our customers that we’ve forgotten the importance of being different.

Oftentimes, we look to Facebook as the solution to our problems because we have all come to believe that’s where our customers are. Where I find myself at odds with marketing in Facebook isn’t so much the idea that we all think our customers might be there. That very well may be true. It’s our “drive to identify best demonstrated practice, to codify it and coach it.”

An excerpt from the Labs post really stood out to me:

Few noticed, as we learned to lean more heavily on our norms and pre-tests, that expertise and judgement were a devaluing currency.

And few noticed, at least at first, that the measures designed to raise the floor of communication output were at the same time lowering the ceiling.

I believe there’s a place for research and best practices; but there’s also a place for gut instinct and dissension. The problem with everyone measuring themselves by the same yardstick is that we end up looking and acting the same as well. I hate to break it to some, but following the common best practices aren’t the key to solving your social media woes. Having the best Facebook page within your competitive set is not the answer.

You’re preaching to the converted on your Facebook page. And I can tell you now, they aren’t fans of your page because you update it 3-5 times a week, consistently reply to users, or follow any number of other Facebook best practices. They’re fans because they have always liked your brand, and only represent a fraction of the people who do.

Turning those few fans into advocates for your brand will not come as a function of following the best practices. It will happen because you decide to do something different. Or, more appropriately, it will happen because you decide to do something worth talking about.

Everyone these days likes to point to Old Spice as a good case study. The campaign’s success online had absolutely nothing to do with its Facebook page, which happens to follow all the best practices, or its blog, which most definitely does not. Instead it had everything to do with providing content so interesting, so creative, so different, that people felt compelled to spread it through their social graph, whether they were a fan of the brand or not.

There are two ways to build advocacy. You can preach to the converted and hope they evangelize the message out; or, you can focus on new acquisition and attempt to bring people into the fold. Either way, you won’t get there by reading from the same book as everyone else. Dr. Gregory House isn’t entertaining to watch because he follows the rules. Likewise, people aren’t going to talk about your brand to their friends if you aren’t doing anything noteworthy, regardless of how much they like you.

Carrol holds that, “Wind Tunnel Marketing is turning communication into a numbers game, a game where scale of resource wins every time – whether that be media budget, distribution network or sales team. The cost efficiencies of brand differentiation are notable largely by their absence.”

If we all march to the beat of the same drum, the ones to finish line first will be those with the most money to spend. But recent history has shown that by innovating in your communications whenever possible, the necessity to buy attention becomes needless.

Oftentimes we’re told not to use the “focus group of one”, namely ourselves, when we’re brainstorming creative ideas. But to be blunt, I ask: Why not?

Social media marketing, unlike mass media, is based on the pillars of relationship building and a few-to-many model. That said, if you fall within the target audience, it shouldn’t be hard to understand that if you find something interesting, at least a good portion of the target audience will as well. I bring this up because not long ago, I contributed some thoughts to Griffin Farley’s Propagation Planning Brief (basically, the creative brief for the social age). One of the questions we listed was: “Why would someone want to pass something like this to others?”

I think in the case of social media, and propagation planning, using the “focus group of one” is vital, and recommended, in determining the viability of an activation program. It’s no secret that when you come up with an idea, it sounds great. It’s your idea; so, of course it’s great. But I think “Is this a good idea?” and “Would I pass this along to my friends?” are two very different questions, and are the necessary stress tests that an idea should go through. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. But not all good ideas are ones you would necessarily rush to tell your friends and family about; and ultimately that’s the goal.

If social marketing is about humanizing a brand and developing relationships on a micro-level, then we should be including ideas that individuals, marketers or otherwise, stress tested themselves. Ultimately, we’re all still just people. And we all equally find cool stuff to be…well, cool, regardless of what hats we wear from 9-5pm.

So, the next time you’re brainstorming, champion the idea that you think your group of friends would be interested in seeing; because odds are, you aren’t the only one who would rush to show them.

At the PSFK Conference 2010, Erik Proulx, creator, executive producer, and writer of the short film Lemonade, as well as the founder of Please Feed the Animals, spoke in front of the large crowd at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. It goes without saying that all of the speakers were inspiring, forcing ideas to spark off in my mind. But after hearing Proulx speak, and watching Lemonade during the lunch break (also available on DVD and through Hulu), a swirl of emotions stirred inside me.

He didn’t speak about a new technological advancement; or acknowledge some growing trend that marketers should heed. He spoke about something so basic in nature, that I think its simplicity has been lost: doing what you love. The film Lemonade is a nice accompaniment to Proulx’s Please Feed the Animals website; a blog for members of the advertising community who have lost their job to vent and look for a new one at the on-site job board.

The film highlights a number of former advertising executives who lost their jobs over the last year or so, and the moment of clarity they had afterwards that convinced them to uncover and take up the things they forgot they loved.

The title of this post is a quote that Proulx shared during his presentation and was something that really stuck with me. I look at my friends and family members’ lives and I wonder if they’re really doing what it is they love. My father wanted to be a marine biologist when he was younger. He affirms to me that he enjoys his job enough, but is “enough” adequate? I think of one of my best friends, who went from dreams about being a music producer to pulling all-nighters at a local Trader Joe’s. I’ve been fortunate enough to land a job, doing more or less exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I couldn’t be happier to be honest.

I wanted to promote Lemonade because it reminded me of something that I think people tend to forget, or think of lightly: do what you love. It wasn’t long ago that Greg (Verdino) told me that he actually wanted to work in the music business. There’s nothing wrong with doing what you’re good at (he happens to be good at marketing), but I challenge him to pick music back up again. Even if it’s something he only does on the weekend. In fact, I challenge you all to do the same.

Dig deep down inside yourself. Write down all the things that make you happy. All the things you’re passionate about. And find a way to fit it into your life. One of the women in the film, Michelle Pfennighaus, made the apt point that you don’t have to quit your job to make a profound change in your life. Whether it’s home-brewing coffee, practicing yoga, or painting, take a step back and do something for yourself. Find out whatever it is that makes you smile, and hold on to it; because it’s easy to lose yourself.

This post is more so a raw and unrefined observation/opinion of mine, rather than a picking apart of the two services. For some time I’ve wanted to write a blog post about how Facebook has become the new mass media, or how Twitter has seemingly morphed to a medium, but I think it’s probably even smarter to discuss the ubiquity of these two services as it encompasses both topics.

I think it goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter are huge. Taking a quick glance at their usage statistics, you’ll see they’ve grown into behemoths in the social space.

As a disclaimer, I’m well aware that Twitter’s advertised user base of 75 million is grossly inflated, being as only 21% of its users are actually active, according to a brand new study by Barracuda Networks. But that’s neither here nor there, and doesn’t change the point of my argument.

When you get a new client and they want to go social, what’s the first thing you think of? Odds are, most of you raised your hand for Facebook. I’ll give it to you that Twitter isn’t for everyone, but let’s focus on Facebook for right now, a name that has basically become everyday diction for us. Do you realize that we all seem to immediately snap to Facebook? As if you’re retarded if you’re not on it.

I’m not saying that it’s not without good reason. It’s a stellar social network. It’s got everything from profiles, to photos and videos, to status updates, to corporate fan pages and groups. And it’s only getting better. The mobile site is brilliantly designed, and has grown to become the most visited mobile social network . So, I’m not here to say shame on you for looking to Facebook, but I do want to challenge you with the question: Why? Is it because all your other clients ended up with a Facebook Fan Page? Do you have a genuine argument as to why it’s the first thing that comes to mind, or is it because that’s just “what we do” nowadays?

Twitter, on the other hand, has reached a status that to me is quite different from Facebook. Because of the nature of the two services, I feel that Twitter took a different path, one towards channelization. Facebook is a social networking site. Twitter is a medium. I could be getting ahead of myself here, but the fashion in which Twitter has grown and is used, has led me to believe that we could be thinking about it all wrong. I don’t think Twitter is a social networking platform anymore; it’s transformed (not transcended) into something instrumental.

I think on some level it’s become as ordinary and unremarkable as the telephone, or email. We talk about not focusing on the tools, and I wholeheartedly agree. But isn’t that argument used to make the point of putting strategy ahead of tactics. What if Twitter really is just a tool. A tool like my iPhone, or my Samsung/TiVo combo. What is Twitter used for? Communication. It’s only a communication, and sometimes entertainment, tool; no different from the telephone or television. And the way we’ve instructed clients to use it, reflects that.

We measure our clients’ customer relationships in Facebook fans. We measure their “address book” in Twitter followers.

Sure it’s because of their mammoth size, but does anyone else realize that we’ve turned these two sites into the “Break Glass In Case of Emergency” social media services. They’ve become ubiquitous with the term Social Media. When you explain your job to your relatives, what do you say? I’d be surprised if neither Facebook nor Twitter came out of your mouth. When did “social media” become synonymous with these two sites/services/tools?

It’s a hackneyed term, and the vast majority of us don’t deserve the title, but why aren’t we called Digital Anthropologist or Ethnographers? Regardless of how many people may hate the usage of that title (and rightfully so), those same people (I’d hope) also understand that at the end of the day our job is about human beings connecting with human beings. Aren’t we all just digital social workers, hopefully making some kind of difference in peoples’ lives through smiles, laughter, or tears?

When did Facebook and Twitter become the masters of the universe, which have come to define our professional existences? And when did we become tools ourselves?

I was going to write a post about an important tip if you’re building an iPhone application, but I think I’ll hold that off for a later date. Instead, let me share something that has certainly come to bother me: becoming a standardized marketer. And it’s not for all of the reasons you may think.

If you’ve read my About Me page, you can see that I’m not a fan of the self-righteous, and am afraid of it happening to myself. But that’s not where it ends. Some time ago, I came across a website many of you may be familiar with: Things Marketing People Love. I thought the site was so funny, I emailed the creator, Heron Preston, thanking him for it.

The reason why it’s so amusing is because just about everything in it is true, and that’s because (I’d imagine) all of the submissions are from marketing people themselves. Marketers do love “the elephant in the room,” “taking a stab at it,” saying “divide and conquer,” “fleshing out ideas,” “brain dumps,” “ending emails with ‘thoughts?’,” and “getting your ducks in a row.” So much, in fact, that it annoys me that I have to call myself one. Are we really so predictable? How can we guide others’ behavior when it’s so easy to anticipate our own?

I stand by the notion that no idea’s original. But I do believe you can be different; and that’s what I want for myself.

Over the past 2+ years I must have heard just about every phrase and seen every behavior that TMPL lists off. That we can be read like a book so easily makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel like we’re not being ourselves; like we’ve just become a collection of plaid shirts and catchphrases. Many of us have been trained to speak the lingo. Are there any of us out there who refuse to assimilate in an attempt hold onto that shred of their individuality that made them unique; that person who existed before they got into this business?

That’s one thing that terrifies me: losing myself. If you have to ask the question “why do you think that?”, then it’s probably too late for you. You’ve already been borgified.

TMPL is a testament to the fact that as much as we like to believe we’re masters of the universe, anticipating consumer behavior, and packaging “individuality” as a false purchasing pretense, we ourselves have lost our own individuality. We’re no better than the markets we segment in our strategic plans; perhaps even more predictable.

We like to believe that the way we dress and act in the office is so different from past business generations. But if we’re all doing it, how different are we from each other? If you’ve already lost yourself, was it really worth it, and what are you going to do to take your life back?