Presence Engineering? Or Whatchamacallit?
Yesterday was an absolute blast– from the second I realized Chris Brogan had posted about presence engineering and last week’s 1,300-mile hail mary beer lob, to late last night while I was reading and re-reading all the great comments from really smart people.
Most people gave the term presence engineering a thumbs up, and others not so much. Really — it doesn’t matter.
What’s important is that everyone who’s participating in the conversation is thinking and talking about how we will redefine ourselves in a 2.0 and beyond world.
You can call it what you want: presence engineer, presence architect, presence designer, or heck, go with monkey jam. Whatever you choose, just have a really good reason.
The reason I’m particularly fond of presence engineer, specifically, is that:
1. The word engineer is not a term people readily associate with marketing, advertising, PR, or social media. So, by adopting this “outsider” word, the re-definition becomes much more intentional, thereby creating a disassociation with traditional terms and expectations.
2. The word engineer also points to the deliberateness of the orchestrated presence — after all, there is a sound strategy behind getting your clients on twitter, facebook, utterli, et al, isn’t there?
Love to hear what you think. Tell me. And have a great day.
As a software engineer who is trying to market my own Android apps I’m trying to be strategic about how I get my name (and my apps) out to my customer base. Blogs I leave comments on, tweets I publish and blog posts I write. Hopefully I’m having some effect, but I’m still not sure about all the ways I can see if what I’m dong is making any progress.
That’s one thing I do a lot as a software developer, try something out, test if it works, tweek the code if need be and try again. Feels like I’m doing the same thing with promoting myself. Not sure if that qualifies as Presence Engineering, but hopefully I’ll start to see some results some, esp when I can charge for apps on the Android Market ;).
you gotta keep plugging away. if you believe in what you’re doing, things will happen. based on what you’re saying in your first paragraph, you’re doing what you need to do. just keep at it. be happy to help — if you want to bounce some ideas, fire away.
I am not a structural engineer, but I know several. From my vantage point watching what they do, it seems that it’s about assessing which component elements to utilize and the proper configuration to put them in to meet the structural goal — be that raising a skyscraper or spanning a river with a suspension bridge. I have undertaken a similar effort to the one Michael M. describes above and I’ve found that the principles of engineering apply to the effort of building an online presence and reputation. I’ve seen some people try to build their reputation with Twitter alone and it hasn’t worked for them. I think of it this way: the online reputation/presence is the finished structure; Twitter, blogs, FB, LinkedIn, etc are the component elements of that structure. You wouldn’t build a suspension bridge out of just the suspension cables, you need the other things too and it takes an engineer to determine in what proportion you need those things. You can’t build an online presence out of just one component element and it takes a Presence Engineer to determine in what proportion you should be using each…I’ve gone on too long; thanks for getting me thinking again!
YESSSSS!!! awesome. more more more.
What I love about the 1,300-mile beer interaction is that it started w/ the most Twitter-like of posts — about what Chris Brogan was doing offline.
As you’ve mentioned, MC, presence is a lot more than physicality. Will T keep its core functionality of concentrated offline/online glue — or diffuse into an email system with a character limit — and is that good or bad?
Said another way, if T is used for everything (sharing links to content, spreading dumbass jokes, or even god forbid – work :)) will it count for nothing?
hey micah — thanks for coming on, commenting and subscribing. really appreciate that. T-ish platforms are currently being used internally. check out the kind of stuff @pistachio is doing http://www.pistachioconsulting.com. love her tag: “micro sharing. macro results.” seems like it’s going well for the people employing it. love to hear what you think when you get a chance to check her out. have a great friday and weekend, sir!