Our creations sometimes aren't the easiest solutions.

Background: The cat successfully caught and killed a mouse early Friday morning. (This is the first year we’ve had any mice issues… cat only has back claws.) So my wife had me get mouse traps the next day – to set out this weekend to catch any other mice who come inside the house. We have a couple traps – but none set out when this morning’s events happen.

So I make a quick decision. We put the cat in room upstairs with the litter box and food, and my wife and I set the mousetraps downstairs. We run out to shovel snow and run a few errands. We return home. No mouse caught, and the cat seems pretty content in the comfy chair in the upstairs room.

This got me thinking: Can I and all of the gadgets I love do better than the cat? Can I build a better mousetrap? This reminded me of an essay I read in The Cluetrain Manifesto.

How Lego Caught the Cluetrain (links to a video presentation that covers the same topic as his essay) by Jake McKee tells the story of how the Lego Company entered the world of social networking as part of its communication outreach. Lego had been aware of AFOLs (adult fan of Legos) but only marketed to children. The company slowly began to embrace AFOLs who had built websites, message boards, forums, e-mail groups, photo sites, and virtual stores to buy and sell pieces. Lego joined the conversation on the existing websites and developed new programs that made it easier for AFOLs to create their own designs and purchase the needed blocks to build those creations.

One paragraph in particular stood out. It highlights something that Jake says Lego did not do – something Lego did well.

“The mistake many companies make when they first engage a community is to rush in and try to replace unofficial efforts with official efforts. Even if such a move is well intentioned, it’s as if the company is saying, ‘Your efforts are sub par. Let us professionals step in and show you how it’s done.’ Not a very good way to start off the relationship.”

Lego included and built off the work that the fan community had already established. Lego joined the community. Its customers welcomed it, and they didn’t try to replace the work that was already done. The lesson is important for any company that connects with customers online – whether through a simple website or on a series of online communities. Don’t work to create an “official” and “artificial” community; go to where the customers are. You can add a legitimate voice to the conversation, but don’t hijack what’s already been built. Look for ways to complement what your customers, users, and constituents are doing.

Sometimes you can’t build a better network, and you waste resources and annoy everyone involved. That’s what my cat taught me about mousetraps today.

Thanks for picture: Picture is Creative Commons licensed from Joming Lau through Flickr.

The entire point of the chapter reminded me of a lesson from journalism school: avoid jargon. Don’t use fancy phrases or industry language to make a point. It confuses the reader, and the reader’s eyeballs will glaze over as they lose focus on your writing.

I was amused and happy to read that point – and to see it quantified and graphed.

Expanding on their website launched in 1999 (actually, expanding on the book published that expanded on the website), the four authors add additional commentary to their original work(s) and review how the Internet has changed business.

There are some good nuggets aboard this train.

First, you have to get past the voices. Oh, the writers are very proud of their voices. They explain how humanity hid its voices for The Corporation. They explain how the Web will free voices – has freed voices – and how if you don’t find A Voice and talk in A Voice, then your business will fail.

Perhaps they’re making up for lost time for their many years of hiding their voices. The voices must be stretched to check for their limits – the same way a 42-year-old at his college reunion tries to tailgate the same way he did as a senior.

You must also get through the tone, which can rail against business the same way a jilted lover proclaims all the failures of his or her beloved.

At times, the authors strike a tone similar to teenagers who sneaked into the office, turned on the P.A. system, and barricaded the doors – determined to have as much fun as they can squeeze into their minutes in the Sun.

That said, I’m convinced that markets are conversations. I’m convinced that conversations sound humans, and that ignoring those conversations means missing opportunities. I’m convinced that hyperlinks mean that networks can be as powerful as hierarchies within organizations. That smart companies can connect conversations that occur inside and outside the corporate firewall. That one of the changes wrought by the Internet and the World Wide Web is the lack of scarcity. That this abundance and this connectedness offer unique possibilities and challenges for all of the “people of Earth” – business and market.

So don’t misread my warning about voice and tone. Set those aside as you read it. This book offers four viewpoints (eight, now, with the new chapters and forward) of how to use the power of the Web to listen and to speak with your customers.

That’s the question I’m looking at for my cumulative project for my graduate degree.

As part of my research, I’ve been reading Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg. Most of today was filled with typing and transcribing handwritten notes as I’ve made my way through the chapters throughout September. The great thing for my research – and for you, if you’re interested in blogging on behalf of an organization? Say Everything is a great resource, and it’s led me to a few other articles, books, and blog posts as part of my research.

Earlier today, I tracked down information about the cluetrain manifesto, Robert Scoble’s advice on bizblogging, and Clay Shirky’s essay Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality. Take a few minutes to review them.

One of the women in our group finally decided to go ask their age. (15 – nope would not feel comfortable with a set of parents around.) The part of the story that became more entertaining quickly was how she got around to asking their age.

She began by asking how the two teens knew each other. That brought stares from the two who didn’t know how to respond to the question. The girl tried again: You two look so cute together. How long have you known each other? The couple responded to the second approach (a year) and answer the other quick questions my friend asked.

I kept thinking about this on the drive home from the pool. I’m not sure what they thought of the first question, or whether it was the surprise of someone intruding into what they thought was solitude, but they simply didn’t answer. The second question – which began with a compliment – drew them in. The couple responded when my friend framed the question in a friendly way.

It isn’t that “how do you know her” isn’t friendly. It’s neutral. But “you look so cute” is friendly. It reminds me of the old positive-negative-positive lesson of feedback that I was taught in high school.

Framing your remarks – even in an offhand and incidental conversation – is the best way to get a response.

The idea of Who Is Listening is that the way the message is framed is important. It isn’t enough to say it – you have to say it in a way that connects with the audience. This is no less true in video as it is in audio.

New GM appears to want to be more responsive and transparent to the consumer. (Comments about the American consumer/taxpayer being a de facto owner and entitled to transparency are fine. Go ahead and add comments below.) The company is launching an online suggestion box. It has a website dedicated as the home of its blog collection. And it launched a spiffy new commercial detailing how new the New GM is going to be.

The commercial has attracted commentary from the blogosphere (who believe it is cliche), journalists (who pen how the mighty have fallen), and wrestling fans (who don’t like the final line). Nevermind the spoof ad that has more views than the actual ad on YouTube.

The problem with the commercial? Watch it and take a look at some of the images. Tattered American flag. Hockey player pinned to the ice. Lots of unsold vehicles. Some of the images invoke thoughts of worn, old, outdated, and defeated. That’s not the message GM should want to convey.

It’s important to think about more than who is listening – or in this case, watching. You have to think about what they hear and see as well. Make sure that is in line with your message.

This focuses on the second point. I’ll follow up on the loose ties in a later post.

Hashtags bring some order to the large number of posts in the Twitterverse. Remember, my simplified view of Twitter is a giant chatroom where you are trying to get your message through the din. Your task is to figure out who you want to get and receive direct messages from. Hashtags help you sort through that noise if you’re interested in a specific topic. It lets you see a sign in the chatroom that your topic is being discussed in a certain corner, and you can go to that corner to hear everyone else espouse their thoughts on your topic.

Say that you’re interested in the annual Comic-Con show. #comiccon lets you track what other folks are saying about the show. You see where other people are spending their time at the show. It makes it easier to meet more people in real life who share your interests – which spreads your network and influence. And your more powerful network is much better than a few new followers.

That means the real world component of hashtags is important. If #you write sentences just to #include #metadata, you help #computers – not #people. Tags should be rare and should be unobtrusive. Take a look at Dave Coustan’s post. I’m not sure that I’d unfollow, but I like his comparisson to the NPR piece. They shouldn’t interfere with your ability to read the post.

Help sort – but don’t go overboard. Take a look at the directory on hashtags.org to see how out-of-control it can get. Hashtags remain an advantage for Twitter only as long as they don’t get in the way of the conversation AND they build loose ties.

Quick disclaimer. My six months of numbers are a little dated – the last quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009.

The e-newsletter, web page, and a blog received the majority of views during each month so I just looked at those sources. I left the e-newsletter numbers out as well because I wanted to understand whether the e-newsletter really increased the number of web page and blog views. So I focused on those two numbers. And I looked at the six-day period from when the e-newsletter was sent. Over the course of the typical 30-day month, those six days are 20 percent.

A copy of the e-newsletter was kept on the website and many articles were posted on the site as well. While each open and click could be listed as a page view, I only measured hits on the index page. The newsletter offered the chance to go to my organization’s “home page” a link to the index page – and a number of people did so. In the six days after an e-mail (20 percent of a month) we always had more than 20 percent of our monthly hits – as high as 34 percent in the final month that I tracked. The main web page generated 29.5 percent of its hits in the 20 percent of the month after an e-newsletter.

This trend was even more obvious in the blog hits. We launched the blog on WordPress.com in September, added a link to our web page late in that month, and began to promote the blog in the e-newsletter in October. The concept of visiting the blog was new to stakeholders throughout this period, and the monthly e-mail provided a great reminder and driver to the blog.

During half of the months studied, the blog received more than half of its page views in the 6 days immediately after the e-mail. While this isn’t an 80/20 split, overall the blog received 49.7 percent of its traffic in the 20 percent of the time following an monthly e-mail.

Content was likely one of the main reasons the blog fared better than the web page in the days after the e-mail. But the takeaway is the same. When planning communications, include something regular to provide your audience with a gentle reminder that you’re there. E-mail is deleted too easily and too regularly – especially when you lean too heavily on it. But e-mail is low-cost and unobtrusive enough that it can give your readers a push to get more information about you.

It has to do with knowing your audience. There’s a big difference between the audiences of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You wouldn’t write a press release when you want a billboard. And you wouldn’t produce a short video if you want the local newspaper at your press conference.

Share the book that you’re reading on goodreads and the news you’re reading on Digg. It’s the basics: Pick the right medium to send your message to the target audience – so identify your target audience.

That means that your profile – or your profiles on different networks – each talk to a different tribe. You might meet people on Twitter but reconnect with old friends on Facebook while networking on LinkedIn. Build a separate audience on each profile or at least understand what your connections want when they connect with you on different networks. Don’t send direct mail when a phone call will do. And don’t treat each network as a chamber for your same words to echo around in. Find a way to make each profile useful and unique or save your time and just use one spot.

One of my friends posted advice handed out on The Today Show during the weekend: “Build something meaningful and choose friends wisely.” It’s a good thing to keep in mind – focus on your audience. Do it online and offline. That way you’ll encourage your tribe to listen to its chief – you.

Twitter is getting a lot of buzz, but there are also recent reports indicating that it isn’t getting return users. That’s led some to suggest that Twitter’s future is limited.

I smile when I see people who believe Twitter will magically generate a community – a real community with meaningful conversation, stave off newspapers dying of attrition, or let a politician to show his or her real side to his or her constituents. Twitter: the magic pill that solves all of your problems.

Here’s the problem: People are looking at Twitter as a tool unto itself. Twitter’s usefulness is being driven by a number of extensions, widgets, websites, and other programs that make the system easier to use. Twitter The Website simply won’t be useful to tens of millions of people. Even augmented by all of these utilities, Twitter will struggle to be useful once its fad phase is over.

It’s simply a chat room without walls. You select who you want to private message. You sort through the noise to hear them back. Following is just how you select who you’re exchanging private messages with. Except that you don’t private message. You write an endless stream of thoughts that are posted to the world to see and hope that people find you interesting enough to subscribe to your brain’s witty thoughts or to the articles that you promote. (If not, you’re talking to yourself.)

Sure, I use Twitter. You can see the recent updates in the Lifestream on the side of the front page. If you peruse my whole history of tweets, you’ll see a lot of junk in there. Some of it is idle chatter and noise simply because I hadn’t posted in a few hours. (How sad is that?) The truth is I’m continuing to play with Twitter the same way I’m playing with accounts on Flickr, Goodreads, and Digg. Each network specializes in something – they each have their own niche. And none will be the single solution. You’ve got to learn to drive each one.

These sites work best when you break down the illusion that you do everything on one network. In my job, I’ve seen our success where we’ve broken down the imaginary walls that divide social networks into individual rooms. Otherwise you’re trapped in a room where there may be nobody to listen.

It’s frustrating to build a room – or a profile – that you spend a lot of time developing, but that can’t a solution. Don’t look for a lasting audience on a site with so many people who don’t come back.