Check out the latest video blog with tips and takeaways from my experience with Gary.

It’s Wednesday. What can you do before the end of the week to engage with others? Do a video conference instead of a call (iChat or Skype will do it)? Send a 2 minute video instead of a memo?

Audience challenges abound:  Apathy, disinterest, distractions. Bert wrote about distractions emerging in social media, specifically regarding the use of backchannels (here on Twitter, and here on Chris Brogan’s approach to Backnoise).  In both of these posts (as in all obstacles interfering with engaging your listeners) is a fundamental truth – the communicator is responsible for the communications experience.  When you present your message to an audience, you are the conductor.  You lead.  It’s your job to create the environment in which participants are most likely to listen, engage and absorb.  You provoke connection.  You motivate your audience to care.  Your job doesn’t change when an audience is unresponsive, distracted or uninterested.

Who cares about your message?  You do!  And it’s your responsibility to inspire your listeners to join you.  Don’t let disinterest or distraction deter you from your job, rather, take charge of your communications experience.  When you lead your listeners with confident communication skills, authentic enthusiasm and infectious energy, you can convert apathy into action.

Photo credit: AuntieMabel

Last week I wrote on various aspects of eye communication. A couple of experiences prompt me to write again – on how eye communication impacts word of mouth marketing.

And how important is word of mouth marketing?

• 80% of reviews are positive…because people want to share things they enjoy. Known as the “J-Curve”
• 90% of people who write reviews do so to help other people.
• In 2007, “Trust in someone like me” tripled, which trust in companies dropped. (Think of what it is today!)

(For more stats, check out Bazaarvoice – the leader in WOMM)

Last week, I became a disgruntled customer at my local market because an order I had placed a week before had yet to be filled, and I was having friends over that night. I went there and the manager looked me directly in the eye throughout our conversation. As a result, I found myself calming down, seeking to work towards resolution. In the end, I left the establishment satisfied and eager once again to recommend the place to others.

Then recently I walked in to a store as a potential new customer, prepared to spend some good money to update a few home furnishings. Rather than engage me while discussing options in the store, the salesperson completely avoided eye contact, looking at my watch, my clothes, and pretty much anywhere else he could other than my eyes.

Combined with a generally unpleasant demeanor, this lack of eye contact cost this business not only a sale but also any positive word of mouth marketing. Being a small, specialty store in my neighborhood my negative experience leads me to give less-than-positive reviews to my friends in the community – bad WOMM.

As communicators, we have a toolbox of behavioral skills we enlist to communicate effectively; of all the skills in our toolbox, eye communication is the most important. As I wrote in You’ve Got to be Believed to be Heard:

“Eye communication ranks first because it has the greatest impact in both one-on-one communications and large group communications. It literally connects mind to mind, since your eyes are the only part of your central nervous system that is in direct contact with another human being. When your eyes meet the eyes of another person, you make a First-Brain-to-First-Brain connection. When you fail to make that connection, it matters very little what you say.”

My point?

With the growth of the Web 2.0 generation – focusing on branding and marketing through social media et al – the significance of powerful, effective interpersonal communication often gets lost in the shuffle.

WOMM reflects the reputation of a brand – a reputation built on communication experiences. Interpersonal communication is still the basis of a reputation. And the primary communication skill that can make or break a positive communication experience (and thus, a reputation) is eye communication.

Remember your eye communication next time you’re trying to make a sale, or just sell yourself; your WOMM is on the line.

Paul hit the nail on the head. BackNoise is the hammer being thrown into the theater of public speaking.

In my blog post “Speakers – Be Aware, Twitter is Coming,” I affirmed that in any conference, event or speech setting where the speaker has a point-of-view and a message to deliver, the speaker is responsible for the experience. Twitter, BackNoise and other backchannel tools challenge speakers to step up their game in maintaining responsibility for their communications experience. Backchannel conversations compete for an audience’s attention. Presenters need to master the art of engaging their audiences more than ever if they’re going to be successful communicators of the future.

Unlike Twitter, BackNoise is an isolated conversation backchannel tool, centered around a single topic (or rather a single conversation name). Created by Keith McGreggor of Atlanta, BackNoise lets anyone establish these topical conversations quickly and easily, allowing those who know the name of the conversation to join in. These virtual conversations can occur during meetings, lectures, presentations and speeches – anywhere YOU may be presenting your message to your audience – whether you like it or not.

There have been many recent blog posts on BackNoise, (several listed at the end of this post) – most of which reference what transpired at the New Media Atlanta conference on September 25, 2009. My daughter attended that conference and had this to say about her experience:

I’ve read about the BackNoise chatter at the conference changing the tone of the conference from excitement and enthusiasm in the morning to a negative, disheartened mood in the afternoon. I didn’t experience that because I wasn’t online to view it. (The BackNoise conversation wasn’t displayed publicly, but taking place on laptops throughout the auditorium – much like kids talking in class, uninterested in learning.)

Oblivious to the negativity spreading throughout the day on BackNoise, I first experienced BackNoise when the main speaker, Chris Brogan, took the stage and put BackNoise up on the screen behind him. Curious (because it was on the screen), I read some of the comments and found what I read to be mostly silly, boring, off-topic, uninteresting and frankly stupid. When Chris took the stage and began rapping, my eyes immediately shifted from reading comments of no interest to me on BackNoise to checking out what the heck this guy was doing. What I witnessed as Chris’ presentation continued was a personable, down-to-earth and confident presenter connecting with his audience, sharing a valuable message in a way that engaged his listeners. While I continued to see BackNoise comments scrolling on the screen behind him, I paid no attention to them because they couldn’t compete with him. I was so interested in what he was saying that BackNoise was just that – noise in the back that I tuned out because I wanted to participate in his communications experience.

I’ve watched the video of Chris’ presentation (and you can too on Chris Brogan’s blog). My daughter is right. Chris is an excellent communicator. He masterfully created, facilitated and led an effective communications experience for his audience. Realizing the effect of BackNoise in the shadows of laptop screens, Chris yanked the furtive chatter out of the laptops and threw it on the screen for all to see and for him to confront and control – which he did, artfully. Chris has demonstrated in Atlanta how communicators can tame the lion of backchannel distractions. (A more in depth review of how Chris Brogan tamed the lion is the material of a forthcoming blog post.)

What we can learn from the New Media Atlanta experience with BackNoise is this:

1. You (as speaker) are responsible for your communications experience.
2. Backchannel conversations are here to stay; embrace them as your competition.
3. Now, more than ever, you need to sharpen your skills to connect with and engage your audience — you need to be BETTER than your competition (distractions in general, but particularly backchannel chatter).
4. BackNoise (unlike Twitter) is a unique backchannel tool that you can establish, encourage and control as you use it to create a more interactive communications experience between you and your audience.

You’ll be hearing a lot more about BackNoise in the world of mainstream speeches and presentations. Don’t fear it, face it.

Some of the recent blog posts about BackNoise:

Unexpected Learnings: Backnoise Can Be Toxic

Backnoise Is The New Listening Channel

How To Present While People are Twittering

Backnoise: You’re Not Ready for This, or Are You?

Don’t Blame Backnoise

Last weekend we had our great annual conference of Speakers Roundtable, (my Master Mind group,  among other things), and I urged everyone to use Twitter well – which means giving value and ‘grouping.’ There was lots of interest and questions, so rather than just an email to my small group I thought I’d give my suggestions here on my blog – with links – on how to start, how to give value, and then how to use Twitter powerfully by grouping.

Twitter 101: Some aren’t yet engaged, so…

• Here’s how to start communicating on Twitter
• Some additional tips from my early experiences: The How and Why of Twitter
• From @MichaelHyatt on Beginning on Twitter – and he’s a great person to follow
• When you’ve read/done some of these things, be sure you are using Tweetdeck or Seesmic. (more later on those.)
• You can be good and active on Twitter for 10-15 minutes a day, or a lot more. The more you put in, the more you get out. (Unless you get addicted, when the ROI will fall but still be very healthy. And a new fun hobby…)

Twitter 201:

• Twitter can’t be explained very well (here’s one effort) – it needs to be experienced. But once you’ve given a few dozen updates and are following a few dozen people or more and have been at it a couple of weeks, you’ll begin to see the value in building: relationships, community, influence, information, traffic… and more (that’s just my list.)
• Twitter is NOT about “What are you doing?” but ‘what is of interest and value to your communities’
• Here are several great ideas from @ChrisBrogan on how to give value on Twitter. (Chris is also great to follow, but realize his ‘giving value’ post is set up ‘tongue in cheek.’) As you’ll see, giving value is the only effective way to really build followers, and community. And influence. Happily, on Twitter there are many different ways go about it.

Twitter 301:

• To manage your growing stream of followers, you need to segment them into groups. To follow news events or conferences or topics you need to be able to segment them. To make sure you follow  certain people you need to have a way to aggregate. That’s why you need to use Tweetdeck or Seesmic.
• I prefer Seesmic right now, but these two User Interfaces, and several others, both work similarly in easily putting people into groups. You can have any number of groups (I have an A Group; family, company, must read. B Group – friends, good info, try to read. C and D groups – get to if I can. Many Tweets – here I put good people, but they just tweet so much they clutter my other streams. etc.)
• I’m starting a purely Speakers Roundtable Group (the motivation for all this) and urging them all to do the same, and I’ll encourage them in the process as I’ll be following all of them.

Twitter 401:

• This could go on forever, but by now you have the idea. Take one step at a time. Go slow or fast. Have fun with it.
• There are 1,001 blogs and posts on how to use twitter, and tools for twitter. Follow your preferences – there are no rules for Twitter.
• Here is one of many good places to go for Twitter (and tech) info – from @Mashable

And if you didn’t see this elsewhere on my blog, follow me at @BertDecker – tweet me as I’d love to help you get going in groups.

The Iran protests and Twitter's hand in dramatically showing that an oppressive regime can no longer censor dissent may have changed communications forever.

Ahmadinejad's regime thought they had shut down all social media sites and Iranian ISP's even before the election. But they couldn't do it. With Twitter leading the charge, onsite observers sent hundreds of thousands of instant messages, videos and pictures through Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The world perhaps watched even more intently because of this dramatic, historic and new communications experience – the perfect storm.

The Open Medium

Could a simple little message distribution system like Twitter have such profound change. I think so, and others like The Nation agree.

Twitter is the first truly open social media that I know of. Count the ways:

• In the news. Iran is not the first example of people flocking to Twitter to get their news immediately and unfiltered. The Miracle on the Hudson was just one of countless breaking news examples. And it was pressure from Twitter on the first day of the protests (last Saturday) that forced CNN to increase their coverage of the riots and discontent.
• Open relationships. It's no coincidence that Twitter cannot be suppressed, technically as well as behaviorally. The culture of Twitter insists on open, not closed; free not censored; share not take. I personally am amazed at the real relationships I have built through Twitter with people from all walks and seasons of life: @speli (a new friend from the last week, several common interests including Iran), @ChrisSpagnuolo (acquaintance who became close friend), @Ed (an inspiring story, but for another time), @MichaelHyatt (top CEO who has become a friend with great insights/info), and the list goes on… Only because of vulnerability on both sides. Unique. Culturally driven.
• Those who succeed at Twitter are NOT those who Block their Updates. Twitter, and all Social Media, are for those who engage
  and share with others – insights, information, ideas, links, and actually, their lives. Blocked updates are an antithesis to Twitter – why take the time to join? There are other means of communicating privately – it's not on Twitter.
• Thus many corporations are going to have to change. As I've been advocating social media to high level clients and executives (often white, male and boomers) I've been talking to those experienced in control and hierarchy. I'll never forget the lesson learned several years ago, talking to a potential client (Fortune 100) who wanted us to help his direct reports be trained to write speeches and read them – so he personally could edit them in advance. We disagreed then. We didn't get that job. And it was in a different era, but many are still living in it.
• Philosophy in social media. Both Twitter and Facebook have made some decisions that backfired – and the immediate response from their millions of members changed their policies. Instantly. This is new – it used to take days and weeks to build pressure on media or institutions to change, if they even would change. Now it's instant, and responsive – open listening.

Perhaps communication has changed forever. It will be fascinating, and valuable for reasons beyond politics, to see how the Iran crisis plays out. My guess is that Twitter will go down as integral to the end result.

And more importantly, it may now be impossible for a repressive, censoring regime to succeed in any country. Or any company for that matter. How can you censor when people can connect openly with each other.

I think Twitter has changed the communications game. What do you think?

Exploding

There's a lot of misunderstanding about Twitter, and particularly about getting started, so this post is JUST about that – and will be a little texty. Timely though, since I'm about to speak to a major Association's Management Team on finding "The Melody In Noise," and have found most do not know the Twitter basics – I want to point them here. (If you know the basics, go to this post on the Why and How of Twitter.)

Twitter is useful and a good ROI on your time if you don’t overdo it.
(I do but you don’t have to…, you could spend a half hour a day and get
a lot of value for yourself and your business.)

So I encourage it, and here are the beginning steps I’d recommend:

1. Sign up at www.Twitter.com. Use your real name, or as close as you can get.

2. Begin with a post (affectionately called Tweets), as simple as “I’m starting at Twitter.”

3. Fill out your profile in the upper right. Use a good close-up
picture of yourself, and put in a url (ideally your blog, or your
company blog or website), and be interesting and somewhat open in your
profile. Twitter is about transparency. People want to quickly ‘get’ who you are if they are going to
follow you. I strongly recommend you do NOT check the "Protect my updates" box. Not transparent – and actually, why be on Twitter if you don't want to communicate rapidly, spontaneously and personally. I don't follow blocked updates. Fill in your location – your city is best – I'm not sure why some people put in 'everywhere' or a cell phone location – doesn't tell much.

4. Follow me @BertDecker and I’ll help you get followers, and be glad to help you along. Give me an @ or DM message (which is a Reply or Direct Message) or email me (see below.)

5. Write another post, and another. You can start with what you are
doing but that’s pretty useless (who cares), so maybe reply to a
follower, or ReTweet. Move to give value as soon as you can. But get
some posts up.

6. Then get followers (see below), and from that most will follow you. There are
many ways to get followers, but just start by clicking on the ID’s and
follow anybody to start. After you get 10 or 20 you’ll get the gist of
it and begin to use the apps like www.twannabe.com and others.

7. Here are some people to start following from Decker Communications and other good people who will probably follow you back:

@KellyDecker @DeckerBen @KhoriWhitaker @Allisoncds @DeckerComm @MatthewNault @Guy_Baker @DruScottDecker @SamDecker @ChrisSpagnuolo @Jeff_Bailey @OliviaMitchell @GuyKawasaki

8. As soon as you can, get the great application www.TweetDeck.com so you can begin grouping your
followers (friends or associates is a better name actually) and really use
Twitter for both giving value, gaining value, and expanding your
horizons as well as your friendships.

9. Caution! There is a learning curve. Expect it to take a week or so… if you have given value, you will see the value.

10. For further justification and next steps and good tips, now go to: The Why and How of Twitter

And Twitter me @BertDecker , or email me with any questions at Bert@decker.com

"The effectiveness of your communication determines the effectiveness of your life.”