But with all the hustle and hard work that goes on behind the scenes, there are moments where you look for that extra push that keeps you motivated and focused on your goals. There are visual or emotional triggers that help keep us grounded – but sometimes we need a little bit more.

Affirmation

We have conversations with our colleagues and peers on a daily basis. We ask for advice, we brainstorm and we collaborate on ideas. But there are moments where it goes deeper than that. Moments where words from these same peers come less expected, where they catch you by surprise and provide you with an extra push. They observe, take stake in your work and  the positive moves you’re making and shed a few words that helps create this sense of affirmation.

Validation

Seth Godin had an interesting post in regards to validation and the fact that if you’re waiting for it, your focus is probably a bit off. Though I agree with his overall sentiment, there’s a fine line between validation & affirmation.

We may have our sights set on the proper goals but as we work down that long and tumultuous road to success, comes those pit stops (roadblocks?) where there’s a need for those few words. This does provide a sense of validity but it helps further us down that path.

Your Homework

As easy as it is to provide this to our peers and colleagues, it unfortunately doesn’t happen often enough. We get caught up in our daily routine and our own work to remember that little things like this account for much more.

So, I have a little homework assignment for you:

• Take some time today and dig into the work of someone within your own community

• Understand what they’re doing on the day to day

• Provide genuine, positive feedback to their work

It’ll go a long way.

The start of the new year is usually a time of joy; reflecting on the past year, looking forward to what’s to come in the next and setting goals & resolutions for ourselves. For my family, the start of 2009 became a time of prayer and hope. We learned my 17-year-old cousin, who’s always been an active spirit around family and friends, was diagnosed with medulloblastoma – a highly malignant brain cancer that’s most commonly found amongst children. We were devastated. It was a huge shock to us all and we didn’t really know how to cope.

I was living in Virginia Beach at the time, while my cousin & family were all in Ohio; rightfully, I felt disconnected from the situation. So I took refuge with the Livestrong Organization. I reached out to them on Twitter and spoke with Brooke, who was amazing in providing me helpful information and putting me in touch with Ella, a great oncology social worker from CancerCare. From an outside perspective, they’ve always done great things – but it wasn’t until that day that I truly understood their cause in helping fight cancer and supporting those diagnosed and surviving this disease.

It was at that time and while my cousin was going through numerous chemo and radiation treatments that I wanted to do as much as I could in helping him & others fight. I was able to come back home and give him support as his older cousin, but I wanted to do something even greater in scope. That’s when I got in touch with my awesome friend, Shannon Farrell. She had an amazing idea to create awareness for specific charities while bringing together a community of supporters through a single cohesive act – jumping. In came SkyAide.

SkyAide

The concept is as simple as it sounds. We wanted to demonstrate the power of the people – not just by giving them the ability to donate to a wonderful charity, but by allowing them to demonstrate their support by literally jumping for a cure through an online photo blog. SkyAide gives you that power by allowing you to upload a picture of yourself jumping – from your porch or into a pool – no matter where you’re located in the world. This cohesive act gives people a sense of commitment, but also a feeling that we’re all able to connect – for a common cause, for loved ones, for friends – without being limited by borders or bodies of water.

With that, we’re lucky to be partnering with a great organization to kickoff our launch: Solving Kids’ Cancer. They’re doing amazing things in supporting children who are battling cancer through support for therapeutic development and cancer research. We’re thankful to be in a situation to help out such a great organization and kids like my cousin who are fighting AND winning everyday.

Take a moment to learn more about us and then grab a camera & another person or tripod to capture & upload your moment in the sky, and support Solving Kids’ Cancer.

If you know me, you know I preach community in everything I do. I tell everyone who comes to my blog that I don’t talk to people – I talk with them. I bring up ideas, inspire thought, and facilitate discussion – learning as much as my readers (hopefully) do along the way.But it it’s one thing I’ve learned – it’s that the end result is not, nor does it have to be the same for everyone.

An interesting tweet passed through my stream recently from someone I respect – Chris Pearson – the creator of the widely used and much loved by yours truly Thesis Theme for WordPress. Chris states:

Kiss the comments goodbye on the next version of Pearsonified. External validation is one of the current scourages of humanity. YOU own it.

The idea of “closing comments” on posts is something I’ve seen more and more of recently around the blogging community. Typically – comments get turned off on more personal articles – something that may more or less be venting or opinion that warrants no real discussion. But what about an entire blog sans comments?

Chris and I went back and forth briefly and he brought up a great point. While I value and promote community, it’s not for everyone. In Chris’s case, he writes purely for himself – commenting and discussion is not necessary – Proving that there are clearly different strokes for different folks.

Another point worth discussing here is the “validation” comments bring. Admit it or not – the number of comments you get on your blog is what many people on the outside looking in will use as a primary measure of success. And who doesn’t get a little excited to see a new comment pop up on the blog?

My question is – do we measure ourselves too closely with the number of comments on each post? Are we seen as failures when comments are low? Does a lack of discussion discourage you from writing?

If the answer is yes to any of the above questions – maybe comments are doing more harm than good.

What do you think? Have you closed comments on a post before? Why did you do it? Would you consider disabling comments on your blog?

Share some thoughts in the comments below (pun intended).

Affirmation

I say this from more of a development standpoint. From hearing numerous panels to having 1-on-1 sit-downs with industry leaders. I’ve seen the growth from both ends of the spectrum, as talks are far past the tools and the newness of social media and deeper into what we’re actually doing right now to help businesses achieve their goals with the help of the social web.

What has this affirmed for me exactly? That the work that I and the rest of the community have put in this past year, since my last smart-people meeting, is helping move needles and shift our thinking forward with ideas and case studies on what’s working for companies today.

Testing

This second takeaway directly relates to that next level of thinking and how organizations are approaching social media today. They’re continually testing & optimizing their strategies and aren’t afraid of failing during this process.

Jay Baer summed up this thought well with this quote:

Instead of swinging for the fences all the time in marketing, try to string together base hits and ultimately you’ll win

Better yet, watch our interview for yourself and hear what Jay thought about the event, it’s well worth the 2 and 1/2 minutes:

So, a big thank-you goes out to the MarketingProfs team for inviting me out to this great event. Thank you for giving me ideas to take back to the desk, for reconnecting me with good friends, and introducing me to some new faces that I once only knew online.

Were you at the event or watching the livestream? What were your biggest takeaways? And if we haven’t gotten the chance to connect face-to-face yet, let’s change that!

As a strong advocate for communities, as well as being a co-founder of #CmtyChat, I was definitely intrigued by Thursday’s interactive session on building and nurturing your online community. The panel was led by Beth Harte and included Rachel Happe, Gretchen Harding and Mildred Center.

The super smart panel had a lot of great thoughts & ideas, but here are some of the main points taken from the session:

• Communities are smaller entities within networks (Twitter/Facebook) that have a more concerted effort towards engagement and communication

• Numerous communities can exist within a single organization. Different audiences create needs on different levels. Focus your content and engagement for your individual communities respectively

• Posting content only equates to being just a website. Build an interaction and response portal for your community

• Measure growth bi-annually vs. monthly – communities require nurturing and time to build & grow. Communicate to your company so expectations are the same across the board

• Give your community superpowers – allow them to grow and get smarter. Equip them to grow their community voice

• Understand your business’ community goals & strategy and cater your content around that, as well as your community’s expectations

• Leverage existing customers and advocates of your brand to help start and build your community. Small group of passionate and engaged people help get the energy going for the community and allows the community manager to build a strong base before rolling it out to a larger base of people

There was a great discussion around these points, though the biggest takeaway for me was that your organization doesn’t always have just one focused community and can create segmented content & engagement strategies for multiple audiences within.

Whether you took part in this interactive discussion or not, what else would you add to this list that can help build your business’ community?

Maybe it’s in our name; I know it is for me. Not many people know this but Sonny isn’t my real name. I know, the horror! Well, my birth name is Sandeep (sun-deep), an Indian name from the Punjabi dialect. You’re probably wondering why I don’t use it much? Well, I actually did in grade school and into high school. Even though it was much harder to pronounce than Sonny, which was the nickname given to me at a young age, I stuck with it. But it wasn’t until college that I decided to solely go by Sonny, unless it was on legal papers. Though I haven’t forgotten my roots with my real name, Sonny slowly became a part of my character, defining me and my personality.

What got me thinking about this idea is the social space that we live in and the communities we’re building. We divulge much of our personal and professional lives online – for the sake of authenticity and to build relationships with people we come across on Twitter, Facebook, our blogs, etc.

Even with that ‘transparency’, there are some things that not everyone knows about us. OK, maybe not those hidden secrets that no one should really know – but the things that make us unique and different, the things that have shaped us or have defined our character (such as the story of my name), or the little details that we sometimes don’t mention but are so important to who we are and where we’ve come from.

Enough about the revelation in my name though, I want to hear your story. What’s one (or more) things that the community may not know about you? Big or small, let’s hear it.

They’ve been talking about the company’s history, the bread, and the passion that has gone into this business for over 20 years. What stuck out to me, as I overheard/eavesdropped/call-it-what-you-want on their training, was what the class ‘leader’ said:

We build trust through our relationships with our customers and our community.

I found it inspiring to hear a brick & mortar business, let alone a restaurant/bakery, put such precedence on this statement. Why did I find such surprise in it? One – we unfortunately don’t see such a passionate offline business with equally as passionate employees, as we do with Panera. Two – we seemingly correlate trust, relationships and community specifically with the online space.

Is the offline space that much more different than online when building trust and a passionate community? Trusting relationships are around us in our everyday lives with our family and friends, but why does it seem that when it comes to business, it’s more easily conceived online than when face-to-face with your customers?

In my opinion, business cultures have gone off base to a point where connecting with their customers as more than just a $ sign is out of the realm of possibility – and that’s where it has to start, culture. Panera has been in business since 1987 and from what I’ve seen in my dozens of visits and now with this new-employee class, they’ve instilled such a culture and passion within the business itself that it’s what every employee seemingly lives & breathes.

Kudos to Panera, but what can other brick & mortar businesses do to instill this sort of culture and to gain their customers’ trust? Do you have an experience like mine that you’d like to add?

Sound off – the floor is yours.

But before we go on, take a quick look at this video of Seth Godin:

That 1-minute video sums up a lot on what people have mistaken in this hyper-connected online world. The need to increase the number of friends, followers, and fans you have. Even #FollowFriday, which started off as a great community-driven meme that allowed us to recommend and follow new and interesting folks on Twitter, has declined as there seems to be less and less relevance to the recommendations and has become a free-for-all to nominate/follow people, without the explanation as to why.

I know we’ve had similar talks before but what struck a chord with me was when Mashable reported that Facebook Fan Page URLs would be available to those with at least 100 fans. Since many pages hadn’t hit that number yet, Mashable decided to help out by letting the community post their Fan Pages so people can check them out and become ‘fans’ to help those pages get to that 100 fan mark. What I found disconcerting about this was the way people were building their communities, just to reach a superficial goal – a vanity URL. Are we helping people out? Perhaps. But not to their goal of building a thriving community page, instead, to reach a goal on the number of fans they have. I understand that people have a choice with which Fan Pages they join but 480+ links later, it’s become a link-whoring post more than anything.

Personally, I see nothing genuine in building your community by participating in a link-a-thon, which unfortunately furthers the assumption, that social media is about the numbers and is what drives success. Sorry, but it is and will always be about the relationships and subsequent conversations that go on with yourself and those community members. And what determines the success of your community is not the number of fans or followers you have, but the specific measurables you can pull from your communities, showing that it has made a difference for your customer service, business development, etc.

You’re not doing it for the punch line, you’re doing it cause the act of doing it is so beneficial.

Seth goes on to say that the superficial side of social networking is a waste of time – and he is completely right. Vanity URLs aren’t going to benefit you and neither are those fans that you obtained without putting in the hard work and dedication towards your community.

So, tell me this. What are you doing to activate and build your community? Are you focused on the tiny details of vanity URLs and increasing the number of people in your community at the snap of your finger? Or are you more intrigued to move that needle, shift communication upwards, where people not only benefit from the platform you’ve built, but find value with other members who are there to help you reach your goals?

We were lucky enough to have Jim Storer as our guest for the inaugural #CmtyChat and had a great conversation centered around questions from the community:

Q1 – What are the biggest day-to-day challenges for community managers?

Q2 – Finding “allies” is a key issue for community managers. How can CMs find that support?

Q3 – Driving culture change is crucial to gaining internal support for communities. Best tips for bringing about that change?

Q4 – @RHappe just mentioned the importance of the “aha! moment” for evangelizing. What has been your aha! moment as a CM?

Q5 – @JamiePappas suggests profiling members as a way to build support/momentum for the community. Any others finding success with that?

Even better was the subsequent conversation to these questions, so I’m sure you want to get the meat of it.  Lucky for us, the cool people over at WTHashtag have a great statistical overview of our chat – but more importantly, a transcript.

#CmtyChat runs every Friday from 1-2pm ET, and can follow the coversation from the hashtag and @CmtyChat, but that doesn’t mean the conversation has to stop there. I still want to hear from you. Share your thoughts and ideas to the above questions and add to the conversation.

As discussed a lot already tonight (check the #FIXIT and #fixreplies hashtags), many of us found new conversations through this option, as we were able to connect with people that were talking about us who we weren’t already following. Now, they’ve taken that ‘undesirable’ option away and hindered a big part of how we were able to build connections.

My Thoughts

Twitter scaled back this ‘small’ option to help benefit their lack of scalability. We’re all aware of Twitter’s past server issues and concerns about scaling the platform as popularity continues to grow, but they seemingly turned away from the voice of the community and saw a change that would be great for them and only them.

My Advice

Unplug your ears, Twitter (no matter how mainstream you’ve gotten), and take a listen to what your community is saying. Just because you grew up in the 2.0 world doesn’t mean we don’t want to be heard by our own people.

You would expect that a platform that allows for listening and monitoring of your brand/community, would be used as such by the actual platform…

Update – Twitter has updated their post, which is still confusing and still with a lack of options.

Update 2 – Follow-up post indicates @reply functionality will be brought back and seen by users, as long as the actual reply button is not clicked. Secondly, they’re already working on a new feature that’ll give us control on what we see from the people that we follow.

Kudos to Twitter. Though it took a huge uproar from the community they’ve seemingly listened and, for the time being, brought back a bit of the functionality back while working on a new feature to better suit our needs. I don’t know where these promises will lead but even with their lack of communication from the get go, I’m hopeful they’ll be able to right their wrong.