This came to me the other night as I was thinking about the ways I’ve been interacting with social tools lately and confirming with other’s that they operate in much of the same way. The idea is that there is a “disparate community syndrome” taking place with the behaviors of people who use social web platforms.

I’ll characterize my use of the word “syndrome” from the following definition:

“the pattern of symptoms that characterize or indicate a particular social condition.”

The general idea here is that people are fractured or splintered in their social networking. Each tool or channel has a unique set of friends / followers / connections and each network means something different, and brings different comfort zones and specific behaviors for each individual when it comes to their participation.

Think about it, many of these platforms, and I will just focus on the big ones, can be baselined by the following assumptions (at least based on my real world / practical research):

Linked In ( It’s all business / professional life – trying to be more social)
Facebook (The “happy place” social utility, loaded with people from the past & the present)
Twitter (A wide and vast universe of the followed & followers -many shapes and sizes)
Foursquare (Lots of crossover connections with a wide degree of NEW/ unknown contacts)

You get the point. Though there are many similarities, they are all completely different. And yes, this is nothing new, but the launch of Facebook Places has me thinking more about it. After Places launched, I suddenly realized that as cool as I thought it was, I didn’t necessarily want my Facebook community to know where I was at any given moment. It reminded me of when I first started using foursquare and originally had it linked to my twitter profile. That didn’t last long. Why? because the relevance wasn’t there, not only for me, but my Twitter network. Hence the disparate community syndrome. Each tool / channel / network has its own place for many of us.

So, here is how my DCS (disparate community syndrome) works on me. Keeping in mind of course that I totally get the need to participate in order to truly understand a medium.

Foursquare:
I’m actually using foursquare to evaluate the location based marketing opportunities of the future, not to find out what bars my “friends” are drinking in (though I do get a little protective of my Mayorships, so I guess the gaming aspect of it has me reeled in ). The medium is so new to truly understand the major implications of it, but you can guarantee it will be integrated with mobile carriers, retailers, and businesses of all shapes and sizes if they so chose. This is a watcher for me.

Twitter:
I use Twitter as an open forum to share ideas, learn about new ideas, find new content, and most importantly to engage with others. I do daily searches in twitter on different terms that are relevant to me, I connect with new people on an almost daily basis, I engage with customers, prospects, brand ambassadors, etc. There is lots of personality with Twitter. Twitter is awesome. Period.

LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is a work in progress.Like many, I set up a profile many years ago, accepted lots of connections and vice versa but never really used it. As of late, I am co-managing the Social Email Marketers group that I founded along with DJ Waldow, using the network to spread news about the company, and also as a recruitment vehicle. And of course, I am linking up with people from everywhere. Again, all 100% professional. I think their MAJOR UI enhancements and feature updates are positioning them for more social activity thereby making the connections within LinkedIn more meaningful to its users.

Facebook:
Facebook is by far the most – to my knowledge – diverse network from my life. I have family, friends, colleagues, some close some far, some from waaaaaay back, some from present time, and I am sure some who I’ll be connected closer with in the future. It really is an interesting social utility. There you may occasionally see a glimpse of my personal life, a photo or two, but overall it is a personal branding and another network of information dissemination for me. Though, I am increasingly using the chat feature within Facebook.

So, What About You?

How are you using the social web? Do you have your own version of DCS? Maybe the tools were just designed to be completely different, but I know many folks who put it ALL out there regardless of the community they are engaging with, while others are a bit more reserved depending on which platform they are using. What kind of social user are you? I am curious to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.

This coming week I will again be heading to one of my favorite places on the planet, NYC. I will be attending Ad Tech on Wed and Thur, and will also be speaking on a panel at Graham Lawlor’s Ultra Light Startup’s on Thursday November 5th at 6:30 at Sun Microsystems. The event is dubbed “Email Marketing for Startups”.

I am looking forward to it and I will be joined by some incredible folks who I can’t wait to meet. The panel looks like:

Moderator:

* Maisha Walker, President of message medium and e-commerce columnist with Inc. magazine

Panelists (alphabetic order):

* Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Blue Sky Factory
* Neil Capel, Founder and CEO of SailThru
* Lisa Klieman, Vice President, Business Development at Innovyx, Inc.
* Adam Rich, Co-founder and Editor-in-chief of Thrillist

If you are coming let me know and lets be sure to link up. If you are going to be at Ad Tech and want to link up as well drop me a line. I will be roaming the exhibition floor most of the time. See you in NYC!

This coming Tuesday at 1pm EST, I will be doing a webinar with Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot. Below is the overview of the session. Hope you can join us!

Get leads to come to you, then turn them into customers.  Sound too good to be true?

It’s not, and it gets even better.  No more cold calling, telemarketing, or spending tons on print and radio ads.

Enter inbound marketing.  This (more recent) style of marketing allows you to get found by potential customers online.  The key is retaining these leads, building a relationship with them, and turning them into clients.  Enter email marketing.

Join us for “Inbound & Email Marketing: So Happy Together” on Tuesday, October 13 at 1 PM ET as Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, and I discuss the inbound marketing landscape and how email marketing complements this method of attracting customers.

Attendees will learn:

• Inbound vs. outbound marketing
• Strategies for using inbound marketing to attract new customers
• How to build a relationship and retain leads through email marketing
• Tips for making the most of inbound and email marketing as complementary channels

There’s only one week left to register, so sign up today!

Below, is an excerpt from the Maryland Chamber of Commerce Digital Marketing event that took place on Thursday May 14th. In this video, taken by Will Burns, I talk about how to jump start your social media community with your email database, and how to build email subscribers through social media.

I rarely do this, but somehow the stars aligned where I actually spoke to 3 entirely different groups of people, 3 days in a row about social marketing and macro level trends that are happening in the marketing communications space. The audiences were as follows:

1. Technology Council leaders of North America
2. A global provider of testing & certification centers.
3. A large law firm.

This proved to be very interesting for me, because 99.9% of the time I speak to marketers. So, taking essentially the same message and applying it to the non-profit, testing & education, and legal professions proved to be interesting, and it worked.

The one nugget that I found to be the most interesting of all was that EVERYONE GETS IT (for the most part). I started every presentation with 4 key MACRO trends, the first one being that marketers finally understand, and get the fact that we are now in a two way media landscape. The batch and blast mentality of one way media is so old school, and so foreign to the modern marketer. I feel people are starting to get this on a broader level, and they are embracing it.

Why do I feel this way? There wasn’t anyone in the room at ANY of the three talks I gave that challenged or countered some of the statements and trends that clearly outline a shifting landscape of communication for organizations and businesses. In the past someone always didn’t agree, or there was big push back on some level, once we got into the details. I actually always look forward to it, because a healthy debate / friction is always good. The closest we got on a debate was the whole personal vs. company profile, mixing the two together, or not, etc. Good one for sure.

Maybe it was just that the folks I spoke with were primed and ready to hear more. Either way, as a person who goes to a ton of events and speaks to a variety of audiences, in my mind companies are beginning to adapt. More and more marketers and organizations are applying more social marketing tactics and mediums to their outreach programs. Its not just marketers that get it either, the “organization” as a whole is starting to get it. This is good, because as many of you well know, it is happening. We are in a world of dialog marketing, so embrace it.

Would love to hear your thoughts below.

Steve Kruskamp came to Blue Sky Factory’s HQ today to interview me for his MBA class in entrepreneurship. We sat down and did a hour long interview. If you are interested in hearing about some of my experiences and thoughts around entrepreneurship check out the recording below:

Last fall at the Marketing Profs Digital Mixer, I had the opportunity to sit down with David Alston, VP of Marketing for Radian6, to discuss social media for business. Here are a few excerpts from our conversation:

Email as the Digital Glue

Click here to view the embedded video.

Email & Social Media

Click here to view the embedded video.

This Thursday, I am flying out to the live music capital of the world, a.k.a. city of Austin, TX, to attend SXSW for the first time in over a decade. The last time I attended was for the music conference back when I was in the biz. Those were good times, but wow have times changed. The interactive conference didn’t even exist back then. So, this year I am going to scope out the event that everyone seems to go to, and raves about. I promise though I will do my best not to pollute my twitter stream too much

The first stop in Austin for me is participating in New Marketing Lab’s Bootcamp. I will be joining Justin Levy & Chris Brogan along with representatives from Hubspot and Radian6, at AMD’s headquarters for a one day, hands on, keyboard level training bootcamp on social marketing. I will be covering “Email Marketing in the New Web.” If you are interested in attending there are still a few slots left, and as a presenter if you register and use the code “camper” it will drop the price from $395 to $99. You can sign up here.

Thursday night we will also be holding an event, taking advantage of the calm before the storm. For those of you who will be coming in town, make sure you stay tuned into my twitter stream for announcements on details. We will be holding an open bar, with appetizers courteousy of Blue Sky Factory, but details will be coming out shortly, and through twitter exclusively. I am www.twitter.com/gregcangialosi.

After Thursday, it’s non-stop action, sessions, events, parties, etc. I look forward to taking it all in. If you are going to be at SXSW, drop me a comment or shoot me an email at gcangialosi [at] gmail [dot] com. Lets link up. I look forward to it.

Next Wednesday March, 11 at 1pm EST, I will be presenting a webinar titled “The Intersection of Email, Mobile & Social Media.” This is a topic I have been thinking quite a bit about over the recent months, and one that I will be exploring in more depth throughout 2009 as these three mediums are being tied closer and closer together for marketers.

My basic premise is that email has been – and continues to be – the backbone of all online marketing, while social media and the mobile landscape continue to emerge as key tools for today’s marketers. Each one of these mediums are cost effective, informative, and have the potential to reach millions of people, making them a very powerful combination when they are used in unison.

So, join me as I navigate through the convergence of email, mobile, and social media – 3 core mediums that are currently on the hearts and minds of marketers everywhere. I’ll be discussing how marketers can leverage these tools to drive new sales and increase brand awareness.

You can register for this webinar here. If you can’t make it, I will be posting the recorded session here on my blog.

I wanted to put out a quick post to remind folks about SocialDevCampEast 2, which is taking place this coming Saturday, Nov 1, at the University of Baltimore in the heart of Baltimore City. For those of you who are in the region and are involved in technology, social media, marketing, development, etc this is a must attend event. For those of you hearing about it for the first time:

“SocialDevCamp East Fall 2008 once again invites east coast developers and technology business leaders to come together for a thoughtful discussion of the ideas and technologies that will drive the future of the social web.”

SocialDevCampEast is organized by Dave Troy, with help of a bunch of volunteers and sponsors. The first event was in May of this year, and was a super success. You can read about my recap of last May’s event here. Blue Sky Factory was a proud sponsor back in May and will be sponsoring once again this weekends event. I hope to see you there!