Eric Schwartzman | New Media and Social Media Communications

As excited as you may be with cross-publishing Facebook apps, Seesmic, Ping.fm, Posterous, TweetDeck, TubeMogul, Blip.TV, FriendFeed and the latest, Google Buzz — which automatically move what we say from one social media network to another — until these tools become as good at listening as they are at talking, they also bring with them a degree of risk that warrants acknowledgment.

When I demo all these services in my Social Media Boot Camp, people get excited. Their first reaction is that they’ll be able to leverage these tools to syndicate their messages everywhere. After the eyes glaze over with just how many places there are to communicate on the social web, at first blush these tools appear to be a magic bullet for social media engagement.

The problem is, these tools are made for talking. And that’s just what they do. As just like that Nancy Sinatra song, if you’re not careful, one of these days these tools are going to walk all over you.

Some, like Seesmic and TweetDeck, are starting to include some degree of listening. But for the most part, these tools make it easy to talk, or perhaps I should say scream, for the highest mountain through as many canyons as possible.

Syndication tools will continue to improve, but as it stands, there’s no one tool that allows you to syndicate what you say and get everything you need to hear back, without significant blind spots. In fact, I’ve often thought they can may actually work against you by serving as social media ear plugs, or creating duplicate post feedback, as we FriendFeed and Twitter App our way into our very own echo chambers.

If you rely on these services to display your content on multiple social media networks automatically, it is much more likely you’ll forget to actually log into Linkedin or Facebook in a reasonable amount of time to see if you get questions that deserve a reply. If you have, and don’t respond, you’re using social media as a publishing platform, instead of building stronger relationships with people and organizations.

As long as you remember to listen, these tools do offer new efficiencies. But remember, you can’t have conversations if you don’t listen to what people have to say. And as it stands now, social media syndication tools need to learn to listen as well as they talk.

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Once you’ve come to an understanding that social media is a team sport, and begun to participate in conversations — always listening, chiming in only when you can genuinely advance the conversation constructively — it’s only natural to start to wonder why it is that some people are more popular than others. And the more popular someone is, the harder it generally is to get his or her attention.

In “Trust Agents” Chris Brogan and Julian Smith warn A-listers against creating the impression of “one-way intimacy” by engaging more people in conversations then you can keep up with, and then walking away without saying goodbye. But the truth is, they were addressing a high-class problem experienced mostly by the elite few with networks of thousands. The more common scenario is the one of the little guy, trying to get noticed by the power social networker.

Sooner or later, if your aim is to build your professional network, there’ll come a time when you’re going to have to figure out how to catch the attention of the digerati, also known as the ones who are constantly bombarded with incoming requests for something from someone they don’t know.

It reminds me of the days when press releases were the primary communications format businesses used to get the word out. In those days, press releases were written to appeal to journalist watching a veritable sea of announcements clearing a newswire. Not entirely unlike tweets or status updates fed over social media, is it?

But the difference is, in the press release newswire scenario, the only way you knew if a headline worked was by the number of inquiries that resulted, whereas in social media, it’s about the impact your updates have on the community, as measured by clicks, comments, favorites, embeds and thank yous.

But I digress. What I really want to do int his post is share a gem of knowledge I got from last week’s episode of On the Record…Online with Jeff Pulver.

I spoke with Jeff, the producer of the 140 Characters Conference and the father of the VoIP industry, who appears to have mastered the art of B2B social networking. In our conversation, which you can download in its entirety, he shared how he uses social media to cut through the clutter and catch the attention of the hardest reach online personalities, whether he knows them or not.

We also covered cross-pollinating social networks, where the VoIP industry is headed and whether or not government regulators should be looking beyond net neutrality to search neutrality.

But if you prefer to read Jeff’s power social networking tips alone, here they are:

Identify, Remember and Use Preferred Communication Channels
If you’re reading this, chances are you already tweet, Facebook, e-mail, make phone calls and have even started experimenting with Google Buzz for business communications. But we don’t all use the same channels for the same purposes. For example, I tend to send e-mail primarily to talk to people I know, or people who I think may already know of me. On Twitter, I share and engage mostly around professional or business oriented topics.

I syndicate my tweets to Facebook, where my contacts are business and personal, and where I share and engage on personal basis too. So a useful Mashable post gets shared on Twitter, and pictures of my kid get shared on Facebook. If you’re a business contact and you don’t want to see pictures of my kid, follow me on Twitter. If you’re friends and family on Facebook, you probably don’t mind seeing my work-related stuff, cause it helps you keep abreast of what’s up with me.

You may use these emerging channels differently. But if you take an old school communication channel like the phone which has had enough time to percolate culturally, you probably have similar feeling about cold calls. No one likes telemarketers or robocalls.

The lesson is that while communication channels are developing, people tend to use them differently. For most people, the phone is not an appropriate channel for interruption marketing. Phones are better for fast, one-on-one problem solving and logistics. Direct ssales on Facebook is kind of tacky, but lead generation on Slideshare is expected.

We all have our own personal communication matrix, a sort of map representing how we use different communication channel. As Jeff put it, the future of marketing rests in one’s ability to identify, remember and connect with prospects through their preferred communication channel.

Pay Attention to Personal Usage Patterns
But even if you do get the preferred communications channel right, that may not be enough. It’s going to be much easier to get someone to respond to you via social media while they’re live on the service. Jeff says if he wants to get someone’s attention, maybe someone with a lot of followers, he’ll visit their profile first to try and spot a pattern with respect to when they tweet. If there is, he’ll contact them then.

When is a big deal in social media. The “now” nature of Twitter means that tweets get less and less desirable the longer they live. Which again, is not unlike a press release, which dies on the vine if it fails to stir interest after the first day of release.

What about Google Buzz?

Given the rapid rise of Google’s new social networking service, which is tied to Gmail, if you want to be an effective online social networker, it’s obvious you’re going to need to stay up on your game. In just days, Google Buzz has taken the Internet by storm, attracting many of the early adopters who tend to lead the charge for the rest of us onto these new social networking services. And since Google Buzz wraps all your social networking activities into one service, it may soon become a preferred channel, which means you’ll have to learn and identify with whom as well.

It’s all about knowing you’re prospects preferred communication channel, contacting them while they’re live, respecting the rules of the road and never letting your understanding of their personal communication matrix get stale.

It will probably come as no surprise that the pre-dominant activity on SlideShare, according to the company’s CEO Rashmi Sinha, who I spoke with recently about the launch of their new branded channels, is B2B lead generation.

B2B sales cycles exceed those of B2C, because the former requires someone be walked through a process, learn best practices and see relevant case studies to arrive at a purchasing decision. And currently, PowerPoint presentations are the popular media used in business to get that done.

Google Adwords and online display ads may bring the horse to water, but before a B2B customer drinks, they need a more comprehensive understanding than ads can provide, and presentations solve that problem.

But just what kinds of presentations work best at actually generating leads on SlideShare?

That’s one of the questions I asked Rashmi, in a conversation that also touched on the shortcomings of user-ratings, making sharing beneficial to community members and encouraging high quality business conversations by discouraging anonymity, which is available as a special episode of my “On the Record…Online” podcast.

But if you’re looking to generate leads on the SlideShare, and you want to know how to do it, here’s a cheat sheet directly from SlideShare CEO Rashmi Sinha:

1. Get Personal — SlideShare may be a business-to-business social network, but the service’s real strength is its ability to promote business with personality. To see how this works in practice, check out SlideShare’s homepage on any given day and see what types of presentations rank high. You’ll find dryer, text-heavy presentations — though packed with useful information — are much less popular than those with a strong dose of personality and individual flair.

2. Visual Essays Work Best — In the real world, when you use PowerPoint as a visual aid, you are able to to narrate your presentation. But on SlideShare, your deck has to speak for itself. Using imagery to add visual punch works to communicate more information with fewer words. It’s more attractive to viewers because it requires less effort to look at pictures than it does to read.

3. Serve an Underserved Audience – Most of the content on SlideShare is tech-oriented. So if this is your addressable audience, you’re prospecting in the most competitive of SlideShare’s markets. If, on the other hand, you’re visual essay is about some type of subject-matter that’s less prevalent, you may be appealing to much a smaller audience, but there’s also much less competition, so the probability of converting members into leads is higher.

4. Presentations as Media – On SlideShare, your presentation is media. And good media is different from a good presentation. While good presentations include all the ins and outs at the expense of requiring more time and attention, effective media typically promises quick gains for a small time investment. A SlideShare presentation that works as a lead generation tool, is less about driving actual purchasing decisions than it is about sparking someone’s curiosity. Lead generation is about opening doors, not than closing them.

Rashmi says SlideShare is fixing the broken “white paper download paradigm,” one of the more common ways B2B marketers generate sale leads online. The problem, she says, is that in the white paper download model you have to forfeit your contact information before you know whether or not the content is any good. By introducing a social layer of comments, embeds, favorites and downloads within an active B2B community, SlideShare lets members use a social filter to more efficiently identify what might be compelling content for them.

Are you using SlideShare to generate leads? is there anything I’ve missed that can add to this post?

A frequently asked question in my social media boot camps is whether or not organizations should tweet from a branded Twitter account with their logo as the profile picture, or just have employees use individual accounts.

Facebook pages and online newsrooms are inherently unique communications channels, but they can be used together effectively. Facebook is a great place to “socialize” your brand. But it’s the wrong place to steward your organization’s public record. Here’s why:

Credibility - Your website is the only corporate communications channel *more* credible than a press release on a paid wire service, according to a study [PDF] by PR Week and PR Newswire. If it lives on your website, people are confident that it really comes from you. On a third-party site, the source can be questionable. It could be an unofficial page established by the community, rather than the official company line.

Conversion Leaks – Effective online communications are not just about getting the message out. They’re about leveraging information to drive measurable transactions. And it’s far more difficult to convert awareness into a measurable transaction on a third-party site. On your site, you control the user experience.

Check out this screenshot of the online newsroom iPressroom built for the LA Opera.

The podcast lives on their *own* site, increasing the likelihood that a listener can be converted to ticket holder. On a third party site, best practices like this are impossible. Furthermore, with newspapers and magazines going belly up weekly, using podcasts to drive traffic reinvents the value of PR against clicks instead of clicks, a strategically wise move as the influence of the fourth estate wanes.

Measurable Transactions - As you wade through the waters of online communications, ask yourself, “If my online PR efforts are successful, what measurable transaction will occur?” In this scenario, just getting the word out or building buzz isn’t enough. You have to actually define what impact that buzz will have on your bottom line.

Which is what makes online communications so liberating for PR professionals. For the first time, you’re not dependent on the news media to achieve results.

There’s no way to draw a straight line between a print news placement and sales, but if someone clicks through your Facebook page to your website and converts, there is. Think about how you’re going to leverage social media to engage constituents, generate word of mouth and build awareness. If they discover your website through those channels and click through, what measurable transaction will occur? Here are some realistic objectives:

Think of social media as the bread crumbs that lead the right people to your organization. These are the stepping stones that let you make your web presence discoverable, and they can be a powerful alternative to shotgun, interruption tactics like email blasts or wire releases. Here’s my social media channel map, to give you a visual on the steeping stones to choose from:

Each channel has its own unique characteristics and benefits. Facebook is where people discover and connect. So use your Facebook page to solidify your existing relationships, make new friends and participate in conversations that matter to your constituents. Use your Facebook page to socialize your brand.

Your own website, in the other hand, is where conversion activities will most likely occur. If you’re in public relations, this is where you can drive conversions through original content, like press releases, feature stories, blog posts, images and video. And more likely than not, that information will be hosted in the online newsroom section of your corporate site.

If you are interested in leveraging social networks for organizational communications, Facebook recently changed their page offerings for brands and business with enhanced functionality that lets organization engage more socially online. If you’re looking to strategically leverage Facebook for organizational communications, C.C. Chapman’s Advance Guard new media consultancy has a free white paper you should definitely check out.

If you’re in PR, corporate communications or marketing, what do you think? For organizational communications, is social media a means to an end, or an end itself?

Stepping Stones Photo by Paul Stevenson