The Wayward Celt

 Blue Galaxy is an IBM idea (as @kellypuffs says in her developerWorks article: a project, movement, community, initiative; or as I say just a cool thing) to connect the subject matter experts inside and outside the firewall with others who can benefit from those connections.

I was lucky enough and honoured to have been selected as one of the first Blue Galaxy stars (and have my very own poster as seen below) to help drive the idea and enable people on the ground to really being participating in solid social conversation. Mind you, I wasn’t selected to lead or drive from a formal project management perspective. Rather, like all of the other Blue Galaxy stars, we were chosen because we lead by example: not only can we talk about how to play in the social spaces and make the most out of the amazing capabilities to connect with some seriously cool and smart people, but we’re all walking the walk as well. Leading by example, showing everyone what can be accomplished in these spaces, really driving our own successes and IBM’s successes at the same time; that’s what makes everyone who’s part of Blue Galaxy a star.

Social business isn’t about marketing. It isn’t about driving sales. It isn’t even about improving efficiencies or bypassing convoluted process. It is about connecting people with other people to achieve mutually beneficial successes: that is social business, and that is what Blue Galaxy does.

Blue Galaxy brings together the right subject matter experts in the right channels to ensure widespread success across all clients, brands, and disciplines around the globe by simply sharing our expertise where it can be helpful and add value. I’m humbled and honoured to be involved in such an amazing initiative and to be able to attend IBM Innovate 2013 as a Blue Galaxy star and share my passion for social business.

But don’t let this fool you, this isn’t just an IBM thing… the ideas behind it are relevant to anyone who has expertise in their field and can share in the social spaces. While the Blue Galaxy moniker is IBM specific, the concepts and capabilities involve us all regardless of affiliation. If you’re a tech writer, you have expertise and knowledge to share. If you’re a long-haul trucker, you have expertise and knowledge to share. From a farmer to software developer, we all have knowledge in our realm of expertise which can be shared and help bolster successes across disciplines and in turn help us further our own successes as well.

Call it hippie2.0, but the successful businesses of the future will be the socially enabled, open, transparent businesses which share their expertise and knowledge with the world.

If you’ve been reading my posts here for any amount of time, you know I am passionate about social media and the transformative powers it imbues upon us personally and in the business worlds.

But social conversation also has a darker side; one which has an equally transformative power, but often goes unrecognized until the damage is done. That dark side is the undermining striation and polarizing effect of opinionated conversation.

While social media has given anyone with an internet connection an audience and a voice far greater than history has seen before, how we choose to wield that power to express opinion must be done so with thought and intent. Without it, we begin to see that dark-side rear its head and begin culture shifting us into opposing sides of issues that are either wholly irrelevant, or have far more facets than a simple two-sided opinion could accurately contain. As with most things in life, there are very few times when something is as simple as right and wrong.

How we discuss these issues, however, can either serve to help or hinder our cause… or in an even more Homeric manner, help or hinder our future. We are all embarked upon our own Odyssey, and the choices we make on a day-to-day basis relating to how we use our social voices, defines our collective end result. Understanding how our words impact not only ourselves, but our community and our culture is a critical insight we need to recapture.

Take, for example, current political discussions. I am certain that neither of the major parties are hell-bent on destroying the United States. More so I am also certain that both parties believe in their hearts that they are doing the right thing to ensure the success of the country and avoid failure. That is not, however, the indication anyone would get from social conversations which frame the issues into an us versus them mentality; that we are right and they are wrong. This deeply polarized view leaves no room for the plethora of grey areas that surround such complex issues involved with a government covering such a vast geographic region and the millions of people to whom it is beholden.

Social media, by virtue of the short sound-bite type postings, encourages over simplification of complex topics when the realities of life dictate the absolute opposite: that there are not simple solutions to the issues we face today. After all, if there were simple solutions, these diametrically opposed conversations would be short-lived and the simple truth of right versus wrong would prevail. Instead, we are faced with conversations laced with vitriolic and polarized speech, serving only to widen the gap between “us” and “them”.

The dark-side, dear friends, is the chasm of divergent opinion growing between us all. That chasm, as it grows, pulls us apart from community and drives us towards more insular engagement bordering on xenophobic, and the desire to remove ourselves entirely from open conversation.

The take-away and call to action here?
Pause for a moment and recognize that none of us want to destroy our country. Before using our social soap boxes to lambaste perceived opponents of opinion, step out for a moment and look at the larger picture to see all points of view knowing that anyone who holds a differing opinion feels just as correct as we do. So, when we return to our social channels and engage in conversation either in our own posts or as comments in others’ posts, we are sure to do so with respect, rationality, and an understanding that we are all in this together. If we can do that, we can begin fighting this chasm of simplistic and polarized ideologies and work not to build a bridge over it, but to fill it in so it no longer even exists. Realize that when we use our social pedestals to speak, people really do listen and with that audience comes responsibility to use your voice wisely, with an understanding of both the positive and negative effects it can have.

I’ve written on this topic before and in multiple spaces. I first touched on the idea back in January 2011 with this post over on the Notes from Rational Support blog: On Personal Digital Eminence. In that post I set for a simple call to action for “both IBMers and the public alike: Get out there and distinguish yourself in your space”. Many of you heeded that call, saw the value, and have begun sharing more in the social spaces and really building your own eminence, even taking the more specific actions of claiming your own name space to improve your digital eminence!

Today, rather than selling you on the value of creating your online eminence and thought leadership, I want to talk to you about a single small refinement that has the largest impact when sharing online.

One of the key items in the IBM Social Computing Guidelines is the idea of “adding value”. This means asking yourself before posting if this is going to add any value to the conversation, or if it will add value by creating a conversation worth having. Now, I think most of us can rationalize some sort of value into nearly everything we post today, so I’d like to touch on how to improve this notion of “value add”.

The single most effective and easiest way to add value is to provide some sort of context or commentary when sharing any link. Have you see people share only a link with no other text around it? How often have you clicked on those links? I’m willing to say rarely to never. You may also be thinking that most of what you reshare from others is self-explanatory; and in many cases it quite well could be. But, unless it is an eCard meme, I’m guessing there’s value you can add to anything you share or reshare… especially if you are sharing in a more professional context. Let’s take the following example which shows how I added value to a share that was already potentially self-explanatory:

In the example below, Susan shared Robert’s post on G+. Since I don’t follow Robert, Susan’s share gave me immediate value as the content was interesting to me… but when it comes to resharing, how could I add even more value to Robert’s post and Susan’s share? Simple: I added my own perspective as to why this post has value for me:

    .

Adding your own insights or context does a few things to add value here: One, it provides a reason for your audience to pay attention and click-through to the link or content you found interesting enough to share. Two, it begins to build up your own digital eminence as people begin to understand your views and insights on what interests you. And as a third tangential benefit, adding context and commentary like this surfaces you in Google search results lending even more weight to your personal digital eminence.

Don’t believe me? Need a real world example? Try Google searching on the phrase “digital eminence” and you’ll find that my content is not only one of the top 3 results, but two of the highlighted images are also from my own posts. Results which have come directly from adding value when sharing these posts from myself or by others.

If you want those same kind of results (or better) for yourself start adding your own commentary and context to the content you share. Soon, you’ll find your own name popping up in search results like this too! It really is the single easiest and best way to build your own digital eminence around the topics which interest you… you’ll thank me when a hiring manager does some quick searches and hires you into that new role because YOU show up in the results.