The event seems incredible – it runs over three days and will be bringing together a fantastic group of people who’ll be talking about media, community, change and people. I can’t wait. What’s even better is I’ll be meeting a few people who engage here and with Like Minds.

I’m also really excited about what I’m talking on. It’s not going to be three points with a few slides – it’s the lessons of my life told through my experiences and the experiences of others. And as is the spirit of this ongoing between this conversation between friends, I’m sharing my notes to form the talk and share the ideas with you.

Here’s a minimized version:

1. Seek to be interested, not interesting

- I wanted to be like the christian celebrities, who were just like media celebrities – another form of extremism – complete misrepresentation of life
- At 16 I did evening Bible school at the same time as school studies – I had the letter, but letter kills – it is the spirit that gives life. I wanted to be interesting, and did not seek to be interested. i didn’t seek to understand people. No tolerance.
- At 19 I started a youth charity called Feedback. Its purpose was to reach young people, so you’d expect to see coca cola and a disco, but we served coffee and listened to jazz – what I wanted, not what others wanted!
- When you seek to be interesting rather than interested you don’t see things from others points of view. You don’t appreciate the value that God has placed in others – in every living person.
- So I was reading about building rapport and I learnt that you should talk to people about their favourite subjects – themselves! And in talking to people about them, not me, I began to see this value.
- we talk about telling stories in media and branding – but the best stories are the stories of those who have used our services to enrich their own lives. This is social proof. Examples. Like Rosa Parks – the best story of oppression was the one from an average woman who did an exceptional thing.

2. Put all the kids in the show

- We had ran a hip hop event with just over 100 people and now turned to running a battle of the bands. Whereas before we had 1 or 2 bands play, we had 5 bands scheduled that night. We also  had designed some really cool flyers that told people how to get involved. Come the event, we had 300 people. The bands had brought all their fans, and whats more, the fyers had made their way all around the city and we had bands calling us to play.
- I learnt that night what all school teachers know: that if you put all the kids in the show, all the parents come to see them perform. And I learnt that if you create room for people to get involved around what they are passionate about – and give them the tools to spread that message to others – they will both get involved and they’ll spread the message to others.
- We soon had a team of 40 young volunteers and two paid staff, and every Friday we would train these kids in media, event planning, cooking, etc. The thing about longevity for community is you must provide a platform that enables others to realise their lives. Participation through enablement.
- It was at the same time that we started using a brand new service – myspace – to find bands and promote our events and scatter our message, and that we also built a forum on our website to allow people to talk and discuss amongst each other inbetween the events that also enabled us to listen in on conversations and crowd source more participation.

3. The idea virus

- Unfortunately Feedback died because I started a Christian television programme. I couldn’t focus on both. Whilst it is biggest regret of my life that it died, Feedback had taught me valuable lessons, and even in its death it taught me something else: the community you find around innovation and niches is far more powerful than the ‘community’ you get from 50,000 viewers. Don’t trade innovation for duplication. Focus on tight knit communities.
- The TV programme whilst well produced was an expensive mistake and the worst year of my life, with no fruit at the end of it. I went in search of employment as the recession came, which I didn’t get, and so then turned to consulting. The third book I read as I first embarked upon ‘business’ was the Idea Virus by Seth Godin.
- The idea virus is that sneezers (influencers) will sneeze our idea viruses onto others. Suddenly I understood why Feedback was successful – we had sneezers who sneezed our idea virus. And if you want word OF mouth, you have to give the sneezers the words FOR mouth, which is what our flyers did off-line and myspace did online. Vision, slogans, social proof.
- Sneezers are translators and they are filters. They translate your message into other people’s languages (motivations) and they also filter who it will and wont go to. It doesn’t matter if try to pass on the mumps if what you have is the measles – you’ll pass on the measles regardless.
- Sneezers also need paying. Not money, but respect, relationship, recognition, reward, resources, etc. There are levels to which I put the kids in the show – the influences get the main roles or their pick of the parts – and their parents get the best seats.
- There’s a number of things to consider too about the hives of people that sneezers will spread a message too – frequency, strength, vibrancy – but the main thing to nail with all of this is passion. Passion spreads by itself, but when you give passion a megaphone, it becomes epidemic.

4. Raising action

- The first Like Minds conference was designed to show off what I could do to the local businesses because they wouldn’t bring me on as a consultant. Of course, it became far, far bigger.
- People were passionate about social media, so the first Like Minds conference wasn’t just about social media, social media was the life blood of our conference. I put all the kids in the show, I worked the idea virus, but what made it all work was the passion. 200 ppl in 6 weeks, no advertising. You have to get the passion right.
- It took off on Twitter because Twitter likes to talk about Twitter. Facebook is for reaching family. Platforms and tech will auto filter – find the right platforms for the right hives.
- What I also learnt was, that in the same way we used myspace to push our message and then our forum to pull those together who responded, we need to scatter and gather. Most people think of social media as a way to spread your message, but it must also pull people together. Scatter and gather.
- Scattering is about awareness but gathering is about action. The negative of social proof is told in the story of Kitty Genovese – if everyone is doing it, no one is doing it. And again, it is through platform that we help people take action.
- The future is not in massive communities. It is in using platforms where people are, and working with smaller communities, and the groups of people within those communities, through a process of scatter, gather, matter.
- And to do this, we must be interested.

Your Leading Thoughts

• What can you add / take away from this? Please bring your valuable feedback so I can ensure we impart the most value to the people listening.
• Can you think of a good title for this presentation?

I did say to Barry at first that I didn’t think I was a good fit, but as he reminded me, I’ve worked in small non-profits for 10 years! My work at The River Church, as well as our offshoots, like Touch Conference, He Saved The Day, others that no longer have websites, and our upcoming project To-Get-Her, which aims to double the number of rooms available for those rescued from Human Trafficking.

In the true spirit of Scott Gould and Friends, I’d like to hear from you what you would share and what you think would add value to this summit.

Humanising Campaigns

Barry has asked me to speak on two things, the first of which is about making humanistic campaigns. For me this goes down to Social Authority. Anything campaign we do at church (and with Like Minds) always profiles people of various demographics, as the number one question people ask when it comes to community is “who here is like me?”

Converting Followers to Advocates

The second topic is one that we speak about a lot here through our conversations on participation. By inviting people to be involved, and putting the kids in the show, you increase people’s emotional investment and thus they become advocates with you. Of course, this only works if you genuinely believe in them. You can’t cheat your way to this.

Leadership expert John Maxwell always says that the strongest leadership is needed in church, where people are not paid to work and cannot be threatened to work. I agree – the non-profit realm is where really leadership is needed, so I’m sure there’s some debate to be had here.

Let’s Meet

If you’re in London on Monday 15th November, then I’d love to see you there. All directions and details are on their website. If you’re wondering if it’s for you, the type of things being look at are:

What about Charities and Not for Profits?
What about those with small or no budget to capitalise on the digital and social landscape?
What about those who struggle to achieve advocacy for their cause and look to Social for a source of inspiration?
How can Social Media turn supporters into advocates?
How do you bring together your community online?

Your Leading Thoughts

As I said, I’d like to take your insights and present them.

• How would you suggest people humanize their campaigns?
• How do you convert followers to advocates? How much is influence and leadership a part of this?
• Also, what are the links between both?

Photo credit

On Tuesday 19th October, I’m speaking at London Blog Club on the subject of “How to consistently receive over a dozen comments with each post.”

The event is FREE, with drinks and venue sponsored by Talk Talk, so sign yourself up for a great evening of meeting new people, as well as you and I getting some quality time to hang out. You can sign up for free here.

How Do You Receive More Than A Dozen Comments Per Post?

Given that this is our blog that I’ll be talking about, I want to go with your feedback and suggestions on how to consistently receive over a dozen comments with each post.

For most of us, 12 comments a post seems a small number, but this was the title that I was asked to talk on and thus I deduce that most people don’t even have that many. Nurturing community is something a lot of bloggers can write about, but few seem to actually do.

Here’s a few things that I’ve done and I think work:

1. I’ve never been good at titles, not even first paragraphs, but I do write with a style that is with you, not down to you. I under bake the issue and leave room for discussion.
2. Foster ownership. Let people own the blog – mention contributors, invite feedback, post great comments as posts, call it “Scott Gould and Friends”, love on people. After all, it is their blog!
3. Make the value-based play by investing in relationships with people off of the blog, like Skype calls, Twitter discussion, tweetups, etc. Be on their sales team.
4. Don’t just ask “What do you think?”, provide conversation starters. Be specific. Then when people comment, ask them further questions. Facilitate discussion. Link people and ideas together.
5. Know what your top metrics are and stick to them, and refuse to be discouraged by others. Mine are comments and subscribers. Page views and retweets don’t concern me one bit (and I don’t get many of them.) Rankings mean nothing but vanity, and not even that unless you’re top 10 Power150.

Your Leading Thoughts

Your inputs as leaders and facilitators who generate meaningful discussion on a regular basis.

• How do you consistently get over a dozen comments per post? Your top 3 tips please.
• What is the underlying mindset required, without which you can do the above but not get those comments?

So in case you missed it, I am speaking on Tuesday 19th at the TalkTalk Centre in London at 7pm. You can sign up for FREE here (as well as get address details.)

Also, thanks to Filip Matous for inviting me after we briefly met last month.

How does Social Media extend offline experiences? Sure, you can get a long list of resources that will make your event what is called a ‘hybrid’ (a virtual and physical event), but how do you know which ones are the priority for you, and what is the strategy behind those tactics anyway?

In 2004 I was running a youth organisation that I started called Feedback. We’d already discovered that by putting bands in the show they’d bring their fans along, and that would increase our numbers, but it was when we latched onto MySpace that we discovered the ability to increase participation virtually, aside from the physical limitations of our monthly events. (You can see some old footage on our old MySpace profile still today!)

This really is the benefit of Social Media as an extension of an offline offering. An offline event or experience is typically a single point in space, time and matter, but through Social Media, it can be extended in all three of these areas.

We then need to know how to extend those three in a way that is meaningful and relevant to ‘the why‘ of the offline event in the first place. Perhaps the most helpful element in this is Joe Pine’s model on The Multiverse (For a fuller discussion of this, you read our discussion on ‘virtually present‘)

There are 8 possible configurations of merging time, space, matter with non-time, non-space, non-matter. Joe presents a video on it here, which I would recommend you watch should you have a spare 50 minutes to get acquainted with the future.

• Space: virtual / physical. This is the mix between being physically there, and being virtually there. Being virtually there means that you don’t have to be restricted by:
• Time: linear / non-linear. This means that I be at the event before the event, during the event, after the event. You get the idea. This also means that I lift the restriction of:
• Matter: real / bits. This is about what things are made from. You can be in the same physical space but then still still experience bits – digital data – with which you can then contact those who are virtually present.

It can get very complex, which is what my talk certainly won’t be. I’ll be keeping things simple by getting back to the three core Social strategies that we’ve talked about recently, namely Socialising Channels, Socialising Content, and Socialising Culture. (I think things are easier to remember in threes, don’t you?)

I don’t want to share much more, but there’s a good taster for you here, and I’ll be sharing more of the content over the months, as we’ve got quite a bit of time until May!

Your Leading Thoughts

1. What’s the best example that you know of, of Social Media extending an event?
2. What would be you dream usage of Social Media as an enhancing of an offline experience?

Legendary photo courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

I’m of course honoured to be asked to deliver a keynote, and whilst I’m not yet sure on the exact subject that I will be requested to speak on, there is no doubt in my mind that I’d like it to be an example of community by crowd sourcing parts of the content, much like I did when I spoke at Dicole Oz in Helsinki in June.

So let me turn this blog post completely over to you. Shout out your thoughts – whether them seem obvious or not, deep or not, useful or not – and let’s crowd source this content so I can share you insights with the a crowd of very smart NHS people who are hungry for your expertise.

(I’ll post more info as I get it regarding dates of the event, and I’ll summarise our thoughts in the comments in further blog posts.)

Your Leading Thoughts

To get you started, here are some questions that you could launch from:

1. What is the first thing that you think when you hear “the internet and mental health”?
2. What are the benefits of the internet for good mental health? What are the negatives?
3. How has the internet changed your mental state and wellbeing, and even helped you through hard times like depress?

Really cool photo courtesy of Felipe Morin

I am, of course, thrilled. I’m going to be meeting some exceptional people over this coming week, as well as taking with me a contingent of exceptional people to Helsinki to engage in a very exciting learning experience.

This has also been a learning experience for me. I can tell you right away I’ve made mistakes and learned some valuable lessons for the future, mainly about community and how to organise an event over email and phone, without being there. Whilst I’ve spoken at events and planned events around the world, this is the first time I have planned an event from afar. I’ll be sharing these lessons over the coming weeks – probably in video form – which will be good to get your input on too.

Want to know one of them now? Ok, you’ve pulled my leg.

We received a lot of  praise and feedback for how well Like Minds Conference 2010 was organised, which I have to agree with. Without being arrogant, it was the most well organised event that I have designed, and it was the best event that I have ever been to with regards to being minute perfect (which is mainly down to my wonderful wife Faye.)

We were pretty prepared for that, but I never knew how easy it was until planning Like Minds Conversation Helsinki. The level of preparation that you need for an international event that you are organised virtually, as opposed to physically, is ten-fold, and likewise communication is ten-fold and the amount of lead time you require, and advance booking of all the elements is also ten-fold. I’ve already outlined how to improve this, and am already drawing up the partnership documents and the event run sheet for Washington DC in September and then Exeter in October now.

My Itinerary This Week

My itinerary is arrive in Helsinki on Tuesday, and then meet with the local press and media as well as locals in general during the day. If you are in Helsinki, let me know. I want to meet you!

Wednesday night I am speaking, as you know, at Dicole Oz on People-to-People (which will be streamed live), and then Thursday 17th June is the big day – Like Minds Conversation Helsinki.

You’ll be able to follow the event live online at http://www.twitterface.com/likeminds, thanks to the wonderful team at Fresh ID, lead by my friends Lisa Qualls and the inestimable Kristi Colvin. Please do support me on the day by tuning in and also engaging on the #likeminds hashtag.

Then Friday I am privileged enough to take our team of speakers and guests and spend a day with Visit Finland, the tourist board of the country, discussing and developing a Social Media plan for the country. I can’t begin to tell you how humbled I am that I find myself in this position – it doesn’t seem real to be honest to think I’ll be consulting a country – and I certainly feel the weight of the responsibility. Of course, the team of people we have is exceptional and I have every confidence that we will deliver a very high degree of value for Visit Finland.

Probably the biggest thing in all of this (and as much as it seems a big deal, I know it’s still a small thing in the grand scheme and all), is that this is all happened quite unexpectedly. This is a theme I want to discuss later – I can categorically tell you that 6 months ago (with Like Minds already underway), I didn’t think I’d be here. And a year ago, I certainly didn’t think I’d ever be here.

And where is here, exactly?

I’m not here for profit. I’m here for a cause. I believe that the connections I am making, and the community I am fostering, will be a force for change, and ultimately, for the spiritual and physical benefit of many.

Photo from Like Minds Conference 2010, courtesy of Benjamin Ellis.

Dicole Oz is hoted by Teemu Arina, one of our panelists at Like Minds, who Joe Pine referred me to – so it’s like minds allround.

I’m guessing most of you won’t be there in person (in fact, it’s full already) – but you can watch the live stream here at 18:45 on Wednesday 16th June, Helsinki Time.

I’m going to talk about People-to-People: The Future of Everything, something that any regular reader here will understand. People-to-People is the new way that we are operating in a knowledge economy, where people are more valuable than parts, and success is built not by the speed of a machine, but by the strength of your team. (Yes, there will lots of rhyming.)

Here’s the Test

I want to go to Helsinki and talk about this community. I want to talk about Exeter and bringing £100,000 into a city’s economy through social media. I want to talk about the stories of like minded individuals across the world – most of whom haven’t met yet. I want to talk about the depth of discussion that we generate here.

What I need are your stories and examples – from the boardroom, to the big deals, to the unique engagement, to the personal touches, to the new friendships – so that I go to Helsinki equipped with the examples to show what a people-to-people community looks like.

Let’s talk:

There are a lot of fears for SMEs regarding Social Media – mainly that it is a fad, that they will fail at it, and that they will waste finance in doing so – but as with most fears, these really stem from a lack of understanding. We fear what we don’t know. What doesn’t help is the incredible amount of talk and buzz word heavy jargon, the supposed heavy reliance of technology to achieve success (thereby creating gatekeepers), the shoddy way in which most agencies provide Social Media services, and the tragic tales of brands who screwed up with Facebook like Nestlé.

What I’ll be doing is going through the Social / Broadcast Matrix and presenting a clear, framed explanation of what broadcast is, how social is an opposite of that, and how the two work together, rather than cancelling each other out. If people can understand what the mindset is, I’m confident they’ll quickly understand the media.

We’ll then look at the three ways in which Broadcast Businesses can move into Social Business.

Creative Brkfst is all about about Good Ideas (love the slogan), and as a primarily creative meetup, what I’m going to be doing with the 40 minutes I have is actually demonstrate all four modes of the Social / Broadcast Matrix by having discussion, keynoting, feedback, etc – so get yourself ready for a really engaging morning.

Best of all, it’s free. Meaning you get a morning of my time for free, as well as coffee and breakfast.

If you want to come, then you can get details here: http://creativebrkfst.eventbrite.com/

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7FyBeto2HY

The question is – understanding that knowing what Spreadability is is one thing, and doing it is another – how do we create conversations around brands?

On Thursday 22nd April I’m at Like Minds Immersive in London talking about this very subject with Gemma Went.

Like Minds Immersive (LMi) is our learning platform, and it’s going really well. Last month I had great news from James Poulter of Euro RSCG that the session gave him and his team knowledge to take on new projects, which for me epitomises one of our core Like Minds values: action. What use is it if you come and learn something you can’t use?

A Few Pointers

As a little teaser, and for those of you who can’t make it, here’s where Creating Conversation Around Brands begins:

1. Conversation Around is not Conversation With. See the difference here. Once you understand this, a good place to start is to ask: what is the conversation people are having with you? This gives you a picture of the conversation people are having and will have around you.
2. How easy is it for people to have conversation around you? How easy is it for people to consume, connect, comment and curate your content?
3. Where are your existing conversations? Who are the conversation agents? Who is starting new conversations around you?
4. How can be provide a new level of usefulness? New and usefulness are two powerful things in Social Media. Combine then, and you have major conversation on your hands.
5. What ways are you providing for people to have conversation around you? How are you catering to different participation levels to provide different levels of conversation?

Begin asking yourself these questions and you’ll start finding where you don’t have answers and where you do have answers. Build from there.

At LMi we’ll also be sharing lots of case studies (I have a Delicious account full of them), so get ready to get the info and examples that will make all the theory come alive.

I hope to see you there (spaces are limited, by the way – we only have 10 spaces available, so book now if you are coming) because most of the content I’ll be sharing with Gemma is not available on this blog and will not be made available on this blog. So if you’re waiting for it to come here, you’ll be waiting for a while! (Sorry guys – but I do believe there must be a point where we separate what is free and what is paid.)

In The Mean Time

How have you successfully created conversation around a brand? What do you think it takes? And what do you think doesn’t contribute to conversation but just pours water on the fire?

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Scott

1. How spreadability is beating reach. How did the music industry get punk’d by a hacked up Facebook gathering? How did a conference get international attention without any marketing spend? We’ll look at how neither had direct reach, but both had spreadability.

2. How teams of people are beating factories of employees. How are we changing in the way that we work to move from mutual benefit to shared benefit? How do businesses begin to think socially about their staff and their customers?

WOM UK (Word of Mouth UK Association) is the elite squad of forward thinkers who are basically spearheading the Social Communications movement in the UK. They are partnered with WOMMA in the US (whose president is John Bell, one of our Like Minds alumni and MD of Ogilvy’s PR wing), and their UK council is headed by another Like Minds alumni in the form of Molly Flatt from 1000heads.

It’s on Thursday 25th March, from 8:30am to 10:30am. We’ll be at Peter Novelli, 31 St Petersburgh Place, London, W2 4LA. More details from WOM UK’s site is available here.

Best of all: It’s FREE, breakfast is included, and it will be attended by people you want to meet. Make sure you come and say hi to me before or after.