The biggest search and social networking companies to date were born in America, so it’s easy to be seduced into thinking that the American way of doing things online is the best way of doing things online.  But most netizens today are not Americans.

The majority of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin users reside outside of the US. And in many of those places, commerce is not necessarily the primary objective of business. In some countries, the ambitious are suspecting of undermining the public interest.  Profits are like air.  You need it to live, but it is not the purpose for living. Surely, you can’t deny that in the US, there are corporations that profit at the expense of the greater public interest.

Maintaining sensitivity to cultural nuances outside the US is key to successful online communications.  SXSW, the annual mecca for the global tech community, draws an international audience.  But it happens in Austin, so the global perspetive is diluted through an American lens.

Le Web on the other hand, which happens every December in Paris, showcases the global tech scene through a distinctly European filter, which is extermely valuable to communicators residing inside the US.  Produced by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, it is the fastest-paced, most entertaining of the tech conferences — with the best food and the higest production values — and packed with hard newsbreaks.

Here’s some of the announcements at this year’s conference:

• Release of the new, new Twitter with a new algorithm “discovery feed”
• Live demo of Ice Cream Sandwich, the next Andriod OS, with desktop widgets and facial recognition
• Facebook’s committment to HTML5, even though the BRIC nations won’t have the infrastructure to support it for years
• Uber’s $32 million in funding for an app that makes cars services in most major cities available via mobile
• Evernote’s deal with Orange which will give customers access to the premium version for a year for free

But the bigger, more strategic lesson I got came from experiencing the emerging online tech sector in a mature market like France.  Consider the history.  The French government has long been regarded as overly bureaucratic, contempous of corporate greed and downright arrogant.  Here are a few examples:

• Just a few days ago the Autorite de la Concurrence slammed P&G and other soap companies with huge fines for price fixing
• Wirelss broadband is simply not available from any local provider in Paris without a one-year contract
• Last minute scheduling changes at Le Web happen daily. It’s just the way they do things. Shut up and wait.

It’s easy to dismiss the French as aloof.  But my take is, they just have different priorities. You may not be able to get online easily, but if you have a medical emergency, they’ll take care of you for free, with or without insurance. The French also have a much lower tolerance for anticompetitive practices and revile unchecked corporate power. They seem to legitimately want to put the public interest before commerce. It’s a noble goal. You don’t get ripped off on soap and you can get healthcare when you need it. But it doesn’t always work, especially when it stymies innovation.

In his keynote, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said the role of government is to equip citizens with reliable, fast and affordable wireless and stationary broadband, so they can innovate themselves out of the current economic funk.  Rome had roads. Then came highways. But today, if you want to spur innovation and commerce, you need high-speed broadband.

Easy, cheap access to the Net in Sweden lead to a number of breakthrough technologies including the peer to peer file sharing, which led to Skype, and more recently Spotify, a social network that lets user share privately, who’s founder also presented at Le Web. Silicon Valley needs a competitor, says Schmidt, and unless you want to live in Berlin or Stockholm, other European governments need to make it easier for people to innovate.

Some say unchecked corporate power in the US has led to an environment where corporations have grown at the expensive of individuals. Last week the Federal Reserve reported said household net worth declined 4% over the summer, while company holdings climbed for the fifth consecutive year.

The bigger lessons from this year’s Le Web is this:

• It’s less expensive that ever to access global markets
• The cost of doing business keeps coming down
• The size of the market keeps expanding
• Access spurs innovation
• Incentives spur commerce

But cultural differences really do matter. Different cultures have different expectations which anyone selling to a global audience needs to be mindful of.

I rented an apartment in Paris through AirBNB while attending Le Web and after getting locked out, l was challenged to overcome a difficult situation without anyone to advocate on my behalf in a timely manner.  I have since exchanged tweets with the company’s founder Brian Chesky inviting him to discuss my experience at On the Record…Online, and spoken to the company’s staff, but no one appears to be willing to talk to me on the record about my experience.

In my next post I’ll write about my AirBNB experience.  I’d like to acknowledge AirBNB’s point of view of in my post, so I hope Brian, or someone at AirBNB, will agree to a constructive, civil dialogue about my Paris apartment rental experience.

Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (@Karl_Lagerfeld) will offer a new couture brand “Karl” direct to consumers via the web, and has put up a sign-up page with details here.

The new line will be available through Net-a-Porter as soon as Jan. 25th, it was annouced today at Le Web 2011 in Paris, says Lagerfeld, a self-professed “paper freak” and an early adopter of technology who sketches on the iPad, his 4 iPhones  and hundreds of iPods.

Despite his decision to announce his new brand at Le Web, Lagerfeld says he hates promotion. “It’s what people do with my name,” says Lagerfeld, who learns by doing and says in a world where we have access to information, it’s very easy to inform yourself.

Why promote, when you can do? If you do something interesting, people will find it and share it on their own.  I love that point of view. I think it’s the future of social media.

Why use social media just to market products, when you can use it for all public communications and leave behind shareable moments?  But Lagerfeld doesn’t have time to share on social networks himself. “Just because you’re over connected, does not mean you’re well connect,” says Lagerfeld.

The Fifth Annual PRSA Digital Impact Conference will be held April 2-3, 2012 in New York City.

We’re looking for online influencers, experts and leaders on the client and agency sides to present strategies, theories, ideas, research and results.

Caryn Marooney, director of product communications at Facebook is confirmed to keynote, and we’re now accepting speaker proposals until Dec. 9, 2011.

The Digital Impact is dedicated to profiling the impact of digital technology on the business of communications. We are looking to spotlight projects, programs, organizations and individuals who are effectively leveraging the power of digital to get their message across, increase productivity and manage reputations.

So if you’re ready share detailed, thoughtful information and concepts (no creme puffs, please) that attendees can put into action immediately, check out the official Call for Presentations here and submit to present on one of the following three conference tracks:

• Strategies and Innovations
• Trends, Tactics and Tools for Industry Marketing and Communications
• New Communications Research

Conference co-chairs Elizabeth Albrycht, Kevin Sangsland and I, with the support of the PRSA Technology Section and the Society for New Communications Research are all actively seeking online influencers to share their knowledge and experience at our upcoming conference, presented by the Public Relations Society of America.

Thanks for considering this speaking opportunity. Looking forward to your submissions, particularly if you can show us how to find influencers online.

Photo By: Kaysha

How to share social media is becoming a prominent part of our personal and business lives. It’s important to know the correct way to share and how to engage other people in the process.  Businesses and people alike are asking questions about social media, like why use Google+ when I already have Facebook and Twitter accounts? People are confused by social media but it doesn’t have to be hard to use.

Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan), best-selling author of Trust Agents and renowned blogger is immersed in social media daily. He juggles work and home life while being involved in every aspect of social media. We can all learn a few things from Chris with his insights into the complicated realm of how to share social media.

Keys to the Best Facebook Wall Posts

1)     Joe Ciarallo (@joeciarallo) of Buddy Media found in a study that the best Facebook wall post does not use promotional language; it could be the kiss of death.

2)     Use the 12 to 1 rule, says Brogan, where you promote other people’s or companies things 12 times more than your own. This is the best way to earn and build relationships.

3)     Sometimes, the best Facebook wall posts or twitter posts are those where you recommend your competitor because your product isn’t the right product. This may seem odd to some, however it’s a huge opportunity to win the trust of the community as well as become an influencer.

Benefits of Google+

1)     One of the key benefits of Google+ is that it allows a better opportunity to build more relationships than other forms of social media.

2)     Engagement level is far deeper, which Brogan says is an advantage of Google + because he has seen more traffic through Google+ than he has on Twitter.

3)     Opportunity to keep the conversation going, unlike Twitter and Facebook.

4)     A benefit of Google+ for first adopters? An opportunity to teach businesses and people what to do next.

The Three A’s

One of the keys on how to share social media content correctly is using the Three A’s: Acknowledge, Apologize and Act.

1)     Acknowledge:  If there is a problem you have to acknowledge it. Previously, PR professionals could get away with spinning even the worst news around to make themselves look better. With all of the online social networks like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ you can’t do that anymore.

2)     Apologize: Find out from your legal department what you can and can’t say and apologize without sounding like a bad person.

3)     Act: Act upon your apology to solve the problem.

How to share social media is an important part of businesses today. But using it correctly and in the most engaging way is difficult. Use these Chris Brogan tips and you should be well on your way to sharing, engaging and building relationships!

About the Guest Blogger

Jenna Andre (@jentopthat) is a public relations professional at Orange Communications in Minneapolis where she works with manufacturing, professional service and wellness clients.  She is newer to the industry, having only graduated from Purdue University in 2008. She is a member of PRSA and volunteers within the Minnesota Chapter.

I spoke with Neville Hobson about the specifics of my upcoming Hands-On Social Media Training in London on Sept. 8-9, 2011 presented by Social Media Today. You can have a listen at:

If you’re interested in attending, you can sign up here. Reduced pricing ends Tuesday, August 9, 2011. Hope to meet you there!

You should follow me on Twitter and send a question if you’ve got one by clicking here.

But if blogs and podcasts are so ineffective, why is it that some use them successfully, while other fail? What is it that bloggers like Chris Brogan and Brian Solis, and podcasters like Mitch Joel and Shel Holtz do differently to make these channels work?

The answer is, they’re digitally literate. They’ve invested to time and energy and learned how to communicate effectively through conversational, inclusive media.  They’re learned by doing, trail blazing a path. The war against digital illiteracy will not be won by attending social media conferences. What’s required is hands-on training. Not keynotes and panel sessions, but actual training in a wired classroom with broadband access, step-by-step exercises and expert instruction.

In my book Social Marketing to the Business Customer with Paul Gillin, we cover every aspect of what marketers who get social media right do differently. They listen, create interesting, useful content in a variety of formats and ask meaningful questions.  They leverage the latest online tools and services to do more with less. They understand that the message, independent of the media, must have merit. They appreciate the difference between marketing and editorial content.  But most importantly, they have a high-level of applied social media literacy.

The fact is, most companies think social media marketing is launching a Twitter feed and a Facebook Page and spamming the community with links.  They lack the skill and stamina to locate buyer-oriented conversations or steer purchasing decisions.  And they regard social media as mass media, so they broadcast promotional messages and wonder why it’s not working.

There’s a real lack of practical, applied social media training opportunities out there, and not enough employers are investing in developing social media literacy in the workplace.  I’m not talking about the dozens of social media conferences where speakers cover, at a high-level, case studies and success stories.  I’m talking about a training environment where you bring your laptop, participate in exercises and gets hands-on training.

Thanks to PRSA and my clients, I’ve had the opportunity to lead over 100, two-day social media training courses over the last five years. I’ve trained Fortune 500s, government agencies, the military and nonprofits.  If you’re interested in developing your digital literacy level, I have a Social Media Marketing Workshop in Los Angeles June 30 – July 1, 2011.

When I first started, we called it new media training. Then it became new media and social media training. Now, with social becoming a component of destination site, search and database marketing as well, we just call it social media training.

I’ve had a chance to spend a lot of time thinking about how to advance social media literacy rates.  So if you’re considering conducting a social media training class, or even starting your own social media training business, here are my top tips for what it takes to lead an outstanding web 2.0 training:

• Live Demos – Teaching people how to use social media via PowerPoint borders on criminal. Make sure you have high-speed web access and do live demos.  And don’t do canned demos. Conduct actual keyword research for someone in the course so everyone can see how it’s done. Before I lead a social media workshop, I look over the list of registered attendees and make sure I’m prepared to focus all my demos around their particularly areas of interest. And I also make sure my case studies are applicable to them.
• Lead Exercises – Most conferences have woken up to the fact that wireless connectivity is like air conditioning. But in a social media training course, broadband access for everyone is mandatory.  Live demos may engage your audience, but the knowledge transfer process gets cemented through experience.  Have your attendees bring their laptops and lead them through a series of exercises.  These are some of my favorites:
  • Keyword Research – Show attendees how to use Google Wonder Wheel to discover relevant keyword phrases, Google Insights to get a handle on search volume, Google Keyword Tool to analyze your competitor’s website for keyword recommendations, how to check a site for meta keywords and how to use a density analyzer to check for keywords when no meta keyword data exists.
  • Competitive Analysis – Once they have an understanding of the keywords that are relevant to their business, show then how to see who else is out there already, competing for the attention of their audience. Have them search the keywords and analyze the top results in Yahoo! SiteExplorer for inbound links from external domains, and Compete.com for uniue visits.  Then have them do the same for their own site.  If their competitors have established an overwhelming lead, ask them to reconsider their keywords. Show them how to add keyword modifiers to compete in the long tail of search. They may reach fewer prospects, but those who do find them will have a higher probability of conversion.
  • Social Media Monitoring – Once they got a better handle of what they should be listening to, show them how to pull Google News and Google Blog Search RSS feeds into Google Reader.  Then show how to monitor Twitter, forums, Wikipedia, YouTube and Linkedin by keyword via RSS as well. There’s a chapter that walks you step-by-step through these first three bullets in my book.
  • Social Media Mapping - Once people start to see how difficult it is to drink from a firehouse and retain intelligence, show them how to use a social bookmarking service to build influencer lists.  Demo Delicious or Diigo for tagging useful content and thought leaders, and show them how they can collaborate with colleagues to divide and conquer broad swaths of information. By monitoring and mapping, you find those hot pockets of activity I mentioned earlier.  Then, you can strike where the iron is hot.
  • Launch a Blog - Instead of just talking about the benefits of blogging, show them how to launch a blog for the purposes of education only.  It doesn’t need to be a blog they are going to maintain. Use Blogger as a digital sandbox to show people how easy it is publish and mash-up content from other sources on the web.  Have them all write an innocuous blog post, embed a Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo, blog a YouTube clip, install a Facebook “Like” button, add a Tweet Button, a Linkedin Share Button and install Google Analytics.
  • Record a Podcast – Record a short, one-minute interview with a session attendee, edit it in Audacity, ad an intro with royalty free music, compress it to an MP3 and ID3 tag it in iTunes, right in front of everyone.  Then show them how to get a podcast listed in the iTunes directory.  Pull a streaming audio widget and show attendees how to embed a podcast episode in a blog.  The show them how to record and upload audio from a smart phone with Cinch.
  • Distribute a Live Stream – Use a consumer video camcorder and an MacBook Pro with firewire ports to live stream to Ustream. Have the attendees embed the stream in their blogs. Then show them how to live stream from a smart phone with Qik.
  • Launch a Facebook Page – Show them how to establish a Company or Brand page on Facebook, install a few apps and show how to check a page’s usage statistics in Insights.  Head on over to the “Marketing” tab in the Facebook Page admin console and Create an Alias, Add a Like Box to your Blog and Get a Badge to install as well.
  • Set Up an Engagement Dashboard – Show them how to use the “Send To” function in their Google Reader to curate content for posting to their blog, their Facebook Page and their Twitter account.  If there’s time, use TweetDeck or HootSuite, and show everyone how to pull their Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts in so they can spend more time engaging, and less time going from site to site.
  • B2B Options - If your audience is interested in B2B social media, show them Linkedin and SlideShare as well.  On Linkedin, demo Groups, Answers, Signal and Linkedin Today.  On SlideShare, show them how to upload a deck and embed it in their blog.
• How to Format the Take Away Info - In the old days, people used to print out their PowerPoint decks and hand out hard copies. But if you’re workshop is all about online tools and services, that’s a whole lot of URLs for people to have to write down and remember.  What I do is link any JPEG I show in a slide back to the URL where I got it from.  And I number each slide in the upper right-hand corner.  I upload the deck to SlideShare so everyone has a copy.  All they have to do is advance to the slide and click on the image to get to the site I’m showing. Here’s how I format my decks for sharing:

 

• Solicit Recommendations - If you want to go into the social media training business, you need people who have taken your workshops to recommend it to others. Linkedin Recommendations is a great way to get testimonials, because they have to actually be written by another Linkedin member, and they can be rescinded at any time, so they’re more credible.  I’ve built up plenty of recommendations for my social media trainings on Linkedin, and send people a link if they’re on the fence about enrolling in one of my courses.

I thoroughly enjoy leading social media training workshops. It’s incredibly inspirational to see others awaken to the possibilities of social media marketing.  If you would like to use my training materials to lead your own workshop, go right ahead. I ask only that you attribute my slides to me, and that you share them as well with whoever you show them to.

If you’d like to hire me to conduct a social media training, or would like attend one of upcoming public sessions, please check my availability and contact me directly.

About the Author
Eric Schwartzman (@ericschwartzman) provides social marketing research, social marketing servicesand social marketing training to businesses, government agencies and nonprofits. His book Social Marketing to the Business Customer with Paul Gillin is the first book devoted exclusively to B2B social media marketing.

In the U.S., the decision to go to war is made by the president, and the decision of whether or not to stay at a war resides with congress.  During the Vietnam war, this distinction must not have been clear because American civilians greeted returning service members by spitting on their uniforms, as if they were somehow solely responsible for the atrocities of that war.

Military service is voluntary in the U.S.  Growing up in West Los Angeles, I had no friends or family members who elected to join up, so I had no first hand experience with men or women in the armed forces.  But in 2007, I was conducting a social media training course in Boston that was attended by group of senior officers and their gunnery sergeants from the United States Marines Corps.

Not only were they among the most physically fit specimens and I had ever seen. They were keen of mind, and with razor sharp of wit, as well.  And over the course of the two-day social media workshop, I became more and more enthralled by their sensitivity to ethics, loyalty and total commitment to the United States of America.  And today, the U.S. Armed Forces lead the private sector in their use of social media for public affairs.

Here are just some of the commands that are leveraging social media effectively:

• How DoD Social Media Trains the U.S Armed Forces
• Balancing Public Disclosure Against Operational Security at USMC
• Inside the Pentagon with the Asst. Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs
• Social Media inside the U.S. Dept. of Defense with Greg Reeder
• US Navy Admiral TL McCreary on Why He Decided to Embed Journalists with Military Units in Iraq
• How DoD Got Social: Origins of Social Media at the U.S. Dept. of Defense

I developed professional relationships with many of them, consulting on different strategic communications projects and was even invited to audit a Marines Boot Camp training at Parris Island in South Carolina.  Ans it was there, at the Marines Recruit Depot, that I witnesses something truly remarkable.

During the final, culminating 72-hour training exercise known as The Crucible, in between excruciatingly difficult physical exercises, drill sergeants gathered their troops and read short stories about Marines who had succeeded under what seemed like impossible circumstances.

When I asked Brigadier General Padilla what that was all about, he explained that when you send armed troops into battle, they need to be able to make ethical decisions quickly, under duress. By instilling “Core Values” as part of the boot camp training, they were taking measures to make sure troops were prepared not just how to fire weapons, but to decide when and when not to fire them as well.

Since that time, I have been have been honored to provide social media communications training to the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, NORAD Northcomm and U.S. Pacific Command. I am also proud to say that I call many them personal friends too.  And it has been my experience that these men and women who serve in the U.S. military come from all different types of socio-economic backgrounds and political beliefs.  I even met one who was a Harvard graduate who could have had any job, but he decided to join up instead.

I have never met a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who was in any way, predisposed to violence.  Instead, what I found were pragmatic, honorable men and women of service who have made conscious decision to sacrifice their well being for the collective good of their nation.  They are men and women who understand the meaning of the following quote:

“It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

Robert E. Lee, Statement at the Battle of Fredericksburg (13th December 1862)US-Confederate general (1807 – 1870)

War in service of access to resources like oil, rather than in service of human rights, is misguided and ugly to me personally.  I cannot say I am firmly behind all the decisions our political leaders have made that have resulted in armed conflict.  But I can say, unilaterally and unequivocally, that I feel nothing but respect and support for the men and women who go into harm’s way, and who have died, in service on our way of life. Whether I agree with that way or not.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the thing for those US policymakers who, in service to corporate greed, choose to send troops into battle for the sake of commerce.  To the president and congress, on this Memorial Day, I say this:

Before you send troops into battle. Before you support actions that will require the U.S. Dept. of Defense to carry out. Let’s make sure our policies are worth their sacrifices. And the sacrifices of civilians who will undoubtedly suffer under combat.

Let’s send a clear message to our legislators.  We owe to those who have sacrificed everything to serve in our military. We owe it to innocent civilians who will get caught in the cross fire. We owe it to ourselves.

Let’s honor the fallen everywhere with policies that put people, not companies, first.

To stay up date to date with the U.S. Military, follow this list of U.S. military commands on twitter.

After that day, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube presences – along 100 million blogs, social networking sites, microblogs, online forums, etc. – could be tracked by Cision clients alongside more aged media

Each “clip” also came with a report on related comments, views, unique commentators and Twitter followers. As inheritor of the Bacon’s tradition, Cision has decades of experience in deciding on who should be monitored and listed in databases

Whether the company continues to lead will depend how they handle the fact that just 20 percent of leading bloggers today are traditional journalists, with the remaining 80 percent made up of business people and consumers.

Social influence, with its changing landscape, requires that communicators make sure they are engaging with the most influential people at a given moment. Are you building a media list when a Twitter-based list is called for? On the flip side, is your blog or Twitter feed designed to rank for influence according to the latest database metrics?

Heidi Sullivan (@hksully), vice president of Media Research at Cision, leads a team that adds 100 or so new blogs to the database each week based on new, and in some cases automated, measures of influence.  She wrestles with questions like, who has more social influence; Brian Solis (@briansolis) and Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) with their armies of unique visitors; or Deirdre Breakenridge (@dbreakenridge) and Jay Baer (@jaybaer), who have fewer new visitors but more return visitors that stay longer?  Use the insights provided by Heidi to benchmark your efforts at social media influencer analysis as you ready your next outreach.

Go Ahead and Specialize

Social media research pivots around the one percent of social web participants that create content, and perhaps around another 9 percent that share content, according to a post by Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava) on his Influential Marketing Blog. The other 90 percent are really hard to reach except through influencers, says Heidi.

Even Cision’s large research teams cannot list 100,000 people in a database, so they strive to be truly selective based on influence. Social influencer list builders, on the other hand, now have the ability now to drill down into niche topics like never before, which gives database clients the ability to target more specifically than before.

There has never been a magazine for people with disabilities that enjoy travel, or for vegan footwear enthusiasts, but there are blogs for both, Heidi says. Her team recently found that there are six blogs for the automotive adhesives industry alone.

Keyword research, and then listening to conversations around them, remains the best way to learn about communities, that is until the “semantic web” becomes fully realized. In one example, the term “shape-ups” (a best-selling Skechers brand) is hotter right now than “gym shoes,” a recent development, says Heidi.

New Tools Matter Less Than New Practices

Even with database and analysis tools more powerful than ever, the changes in how the tools must be used are more profound than the changes in the tools. Social engagement is much more important than outgoing messages today, and communications teams must commit resources to listening to communities with a growing list of “awesome” tools, Heidi says.

Influencer engagement must be shaped by the specifics details of their interests, and based on relationships built over time.  Social media intelligence gatherers must resist the urge to listen only to conversations about their brands, Heidi says.  Influencer measurement is about following people, not counting impressions, which is especially true for an industry with a traditional addiction to simple, but some might argue, partly artificial results numbers (e.g. ratings, circulation and impressions).

The danger is to settle for measuring the number of Twitter followers or the number of unique followers per month, as important as they are, and leaving it at that. To truly measure new media influence requires researchers to determine the sites that get people to change their behavior, to act and interact in a measureable way (change political opinion, decide to buy).

The public relations industry is still working toward a full understanding of the value of reaching out to communities instead of audiences, Heidi says.

No One Measure Good Enough

Media relations specialists can get an edge by following the Cision example, which is to combine in-depth media research experience with new technologies to create more thoughtful outreach efforts.  Cision, for instance, built a tool internally that automates the process of letting the research team know which blogs have not posted in the last month (which have gone under), to keep the database up to date.  This represents one more reason to post often if you want your blog to be influential.

Klout.com is a strong influencer research tool, as are Pure Index and Edelman’s TweetLevel, but no one metric will suffice, says Heidi. After these starting points, Facebook makes a good next stop in the search for influencers.

Look at a communicator’s Facebook group and number of fans, and next at their blog posts, how many votes the posts receive and the unique commentaries they engender. Heidi’s advice: mix as many useful metrics as possible.

About the Guest Blogger

Greg Williams (@gregscience) is a consultant specializing in public relations for medical, science and technical companies. After beginning his career as an editor for the Associated Press, Greg has since served as a public relations strategist for two international public relations firms and two university medical centers, and as a writer for institutions including Eastman Kodak and the National Academy of Sciences.

LISTEN

Show Notes:

1:50 Search industry changes reflect profound shifts in how people are using the web, with the usage pattern shifting from searches for websites using keywords to attempts to complete complex and personal tasks and projects, Sohn argues.  More than typing in a single term to find a web site, searchers are looking to book travel, make purchases or research health conditions, for example, and in a more relevant way.

 

2:30 Search engine industry analysis reveals that one in four searches fails, in that the user is not able to easily accomplish what they set out to do. Search engines, to reach the next level, will need to successfully analyze the intent of the searcher to make the search meaningful.

 

2:50 Search sessions are now lasting longer than ever, with more than half running 30 minutes or more. That suggests two things to Bing: people are seeking to complete more complex tasks online and may be having a harder time doing so.

 

3:35 Google search continues to dominant the search industry, with the competition composed of would-be challengers like Bing seeking to steel market share. 

 

4:10 Search industry evolution is proceeding apace as new forces like social networking and mobile input have an ever greater impact on search.  Once upon a time, search   consisted only of a bunch of web sites and algorithms to find them. Now vast amounts of information are flowing into the web each second from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare … user- generated video via YouTube, Quora’s conversations among experts, and mobile aps where location matters.

 

5:00 Geolocation search is an important aspect for the future of search engines because, with your permission, search engine companies will soon be able to use where you are to empower your searches.  Mobile phones generate sensor data that can make search algorithms smarter in their offerings. In a future scenario, search engines may see that you are searching for driving directions, combine that GPS data from your phone indicating that you are moving 65 miles per hour, and then surmise that you need driving directions and freeway routing.  If you were at moving 2 miles per hour, the same search would ideally yield walking directions.

 

5:55 Social search and mapping represent other near-future advances in search, Sohn says. Say you are using a search engine to find a place with good pizza. The search engine would then layer social networking on top of mobile searching, giving you note only the closest restaurant as you move, but an idea of which of your friends have already checked in there.  Sohn believes people will interact with search on a digital map canvas in many cases, as well through voice-activated search. Mobile and mapping will remain areas of focus for search design because of their explosive growth.  

 

8:50 Search continues to grow, and Bing sees it accelerating further still as generations of young people continue to graduate from high school and college who have never searched for anything without using the web.  Other segments continue to increase their increase their use.  Bing recognizes that it is a lesser player, but it does reach 30 percent of the market on its own and in combination with Yahoo, its strategic partner.

 

13:05 Social media marketing is clearly as vital to search companies as many others. Bing has success with contests featuring user-generated content (who can come up with the best Bing jingle) as well a partnership where Bing users could gain credits with the Farmville social media game.  Bing’s marketing team is constantly trying to predict the direction that the search engine industry will move in, and social search was a trend they spotted a while back.  This has its most impact when you can spot a trend in technology and match that with marketing strategies that meet a customer need.

 

14:08 Facebook search is obviously an emerging force online, and Bing is poised to take advantage, having announced last October a partnership with the social networking giant.  Bing has been working hard to take Facebook information and merge it into Bing.  Again with the user in complete control, and seeing only things you’re friends want to show you, you would know have a social signal in your search results. Not only would do you see ten blue links in your search results, but also notes on which links your friends have ”liked” one of those ten.  Such personal search results help you separate the wheat from the chaff.  Social search will be a huge investment area for Bing, which is the only search engine with a Facebook deal.  Bing expects to announce related news in the next few weeks.

 

17:10 End

 

About the Guest Host

Greg Williams (@gregscience), an independent consultant specializing in public relations for medical science and technical companies. After beginning his career as an editor for the Associated Press, Greg has since served as a public relations strategist for two international public relations firms and two university medical centers, and as a writer for institutions including Eastman Kodak and the National Academy of Sciences.

 

These show notes were search engine optimized by Greg Williams.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/how-bing-is-chipping-away-at-googles-marketshare.html/feed 0 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/prsa-digital-impact-conference-keynotes-%e2%80%93-adam-sohn.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/prsa-digital-impact-conference-keynotes-%e2%80%93-adam-sohn.html#comments Fri, 06 May 2011 12:30:41 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1252 “Google, News and Google News: Get a Backstage Pass” – Sean Carlson from Google News will be LIVE here today at 12:30pm ET from the PRSA Digital Impact Conference Keynote.

Every month, Google News sends more than 1 billion clicks to news publishers large and small. In this session, you’ll go behind the scenes with Google News to find out how it works, what it can mean for public relations professionals and what other Google efforts — in areas like search, mapping, translation, and trend analysis — you can use to shape the future of communications.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/prsa-digital-impact-conference-keynotes-%e2%80%93-adam-sohn.html/feed 0 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/3-podcasting-equipment-rigs-for-content-marketers.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/3-podcasting-equipment-rigs-for-content-marketers.html#comments Tue, 03 May 2011 20:43:02 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1274&isalt=0

In B2B social media marketing, where sales cycles are longer and decisions are made by committee,  podcasts can be a great tool for educating your prospects, since it’s easier to listen than it is to read, and easier to watch, than it is to listen.

The cost of the equipment required to produced audio and video on demand has come down in price significantly.  But with so many choices, researching the right rig for your needs, and securing the right cables can be a real pain in the ass.

After getting asked dozens of times what gear to be, I finally decided to blog the answer.  So here’s my spec for three different rigs all designed for different situations.

1. Mobile Audio Podcasting Rig: For the man on the go. In the world of mobile devices I like the Marantz PMD-620 and the Roland R09-HR.  Both have an internal mic, external mic inputs, and record MP3 or WAV file formats direct to an SD card.  This unit is self sufficient. As long as you can control the background noise, you don’t need external mics, and even if there is background noise, you can use the record like it’s a mic and swing it between your chin and the chin of your interviewee. But if you want a free solution and have a smart phone, try Cinch.

2. Stationary Audio Podcasting Rig (pictured above): For the desk bound. In my opinion, the gold standard direct o compact flash audio recorder is the Marantz PMD-660. If you want to set up a rig to record interviews via Skype, you’ll also need a Behringer audio mixer, a Sennheiser e835 mic, a mic stand, headphones, a female mini to male 1/4 inch adapter, a female XLR to male XLR cable, a male XLR to male mini cable, a stereo to male mini cable and a USB card reader to transfer files to your computer.

3. Versatile Video Recording Rig: For everything EXCEPT live streaming.  My favorite video recorder is still the Sanyo Xacti HD2000a, mostly because it’s so small, is so light weight, and is so easy to hold.  But it also has a nice zoom lens and an external mic input, so can use a wireless lavaliere mic and get great audio and video without crowding your subject. But a word of caution. If you’re shooting in small areas, pick up an Xacti 0.7x Wide Lens with Macro.  And for support, get a mono pod like this one so you can run and gun, and a desktop tripod and you’ll never have to check luggage when you take your rig on the road.  To monitor the audio, use your ipod ear buds.

These rigs are great for recording audio and video. But you still need to edit your footage, and you still need a way to release it online.  For audio and video podcast distribution on iTunes, I like libsyn. For video on demand, I like Vimeo. But for audio on demand, I’m still looking for a service. If you have one to recommend, please share it here.

And if you want to dive deeper into the world of online video, pick up a copy of Get Seen by Steve Garfield.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/3-podcasting-equipment-rigs-for-content-marketers.html/feed 1 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/how-avery-dennison-and-johns-hopkins-are-social-networking-for-internal-communications.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/how-avery-dennison-and-johns-hopkins-are-social-networking-for-internal-communications.html#comments Mon, 02 May 2011 23:32:02 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1267

Marcie Steerman from the technical communications group at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and Heather Marks, Director, Interactive Communications at Avery Dennison talk about how their organizations are using private online social networking platforms behind the firewall as part of their internal communications strategy.

Johns Hopkins is redefining internal communications practices with a social network that facilitates dialog among more than 4,500 staff members spread across a 300 acre campus. Their most dynamic platform is called the Cooler (as in water cooler) ans it’s powered by Elgg, an open source social networking engine. Because it’s internal, staff members can discuss proprietary ideas without making inadvertent intellectual property disclosures.

Avery Dennison is using Lotus Connections to power their social networking internal communications plan. It’s a global company with more than 32,000 employees at 240+ facilities in 60 countries, and they’re using their private social network to time-shift and place shift conversations.

Neither Elgg or Lotus Connections appear to have the types of activity streams that has made Facebook and Twitter so popular.  Elgg looks more like an online forum with user profiles and IBM doesn’t make it easy to find screenshots or samples of Lotus Connections online. Avery uses primarily the wikis, forums and blog modules to foster internal collaboration, rather than what Facebook or Linkedin users would recognize as a familiar social networking platform.

But both organizations are realizing significant gains from their internal online collaboration initiatives, and in this episode they talk about:

1. How they’re using internal social networks at their organizations.
2. The benefits of social networking in a private environment.
3. How they achieved widespread adoption.
4. The importance of:
a. Securing strong, executive sponsorship.
b. Social media literacy among management.
c. Comfort with social networking websites for external communications.
5. The benefits and drawbacks of open source vs. proprietary social networking software.

it will come as no surprise to listeners of this podcast that social networks have value to internal communicators.  We may see social media literacy become an integral part on most internal communications jobs in the future.

This episode is a follow up to a previous show on Private Social Networks with Robin Daniels of Salesforce.com Chatter.

Subscribe:

• iTunes
• Twitter
• Facebook

Other Recommended Episodes:

• Private Social Networking for Business
• Interview with Mark Yoltan on the SAP Community Network
• Mobile Search Strategy

 

About the Podcaster:

Eric Schwartzman (@EricSchwartzman) provides social marketing services, social marketing research and social media training to businesses, government agencies and nonprofits. He over 15 years experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications programs.  He has served Boeing, BYU, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Government of Singapore, Johnson & Johnson, NORAD Northcomm, Southern California Edison, Toyota, UCLA, US Dept. of State, United States Army, US Embassy of Athens, US Embassy to Rome, United States Marine Corps and many other small to medium-sized companies and agencies.  Eric is also the instructor behind top-rated social media training seminars and the Social Media Boot Camp which are offered monthly in the US and abroad. Visit the social media training calendar for upcoming dates.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/05/how-avery-dennison-and-johns-hopkins-are-social-networking-for-internal-communications.html/feed 0 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/if-you-know-the-value-of-social-dont-read-this.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/if-you-know-the-value-of-social-dont-read-this.html#comments Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:56:56 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1193 Keynoting the Dell B2B Social Media Huddle last week, Brian Solis shared with laser precision the reason you’re reading this blog post, why I wrote it and what social means for the future business.

And here’s a little hint.

It’s not about PR.  And it’s not about marketing.  It’s about something much, much bigger.  If you read this excerpt from his talk, which I’ve listened to several times already, you’re taking the first step toward reinventing your future and your role as an agent of change at your organization.

Here it is…

“It’s up to you to figure out the value you’re going to produce and then just do it.  Invest in your community through intelligence, help, insight and guidance.  It’s about becoming that expert that you once relied upon to get your story out there. You’re job moving forward is to find the social consumer, engage with the social consumer. Build authority for yourself and he organization you work with and then design the entire ecosystem around experiences that can be shared and should be shared.”

“This a real powerful time in the history of business. Where people want to engage directly you and you want to engage directly with them. This isn’t just about social media. It’s also about business reinvention. It’s about revisiting your mission, purpose, story and culture. Because in order to have a front facing engagement strategy, a lot of those things are going to have to change.”

“It’s not just about social media.  It’s bigger than that.  What you’re looking at right now, why we’re here together right now, is actually one of the first steps in transforming business, putting customers right back into the front and center of everything you do, which goes against decades of companies moving away from that. As a consumer, we all know that pain. When’s the last time you tried to get someone on the phone at a business because you had a problem help with their product or service. The process is automated know.”

“And know, suddenly Twitter, Facebook, blogs, everything that gives customers a voice, gives them power. So now businesses have to do an about face.  And this is part of the job that we each have.  We have to show why, we have to show how, we have to show to what extent, we have to show the business value and the business outcomes of all of this.  But more importantly, you’re change agents.  And you jobs overall, is to make your companies more relevant, not just to the social consumer, but to everyone in general.”

I interviewed Brian Solis for a chapter on building the business case for social marketing in my book Social Marketing to the Business Customer. This was before he joined Altimeter, and he outlined the social media research methodology he was using at the time to collect, classify and analyze evidence of purchasing decisions being influenced and made through social channels.

One of the things he mentioned, which he repeated in the Dell B2B Social Media Huddle Keynote, was the amount of time and energy that goes into collecting the necessary research that goes into building a smart social media strategy.  This makes his move to Altimeter a wise one, because now, he no longer has to give that research away to make a market for his services.  Now, social media research IS his service.  Kudos Brian!  Very well done.

And thanks to Neville Hobson for recording the presentation and making it available as a podcast.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/if-you-know-the-value-of-social-dont-read-this.html/feed 10 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/3-ways-to-outsource-social-media-without-selling-your-soul.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/3-ways-to-outsource-social-media-without-selling-your-soul.html#comments Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:32:34 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1143 I took some flack over my last post about outsourcing your social media voice — which in spite of drawing some very thoughtful comments — I still believe is the wrong way to go for most companies to go.  So now that you know what I think you can’t do, I’m going to share what I think you can do.

Clients need help.   And there’s plenty agencies can do for them.  Here are the 3 areas I believe are smart to outsource, and the smartest spots for agencies to concentrate their efforts.

Accelerate Social Media Literacy – Help your clients develop a better understanding of how to use social media literacy companywide.  Think beyond just marketing and public relations.  When we use social media to conduct day-to-day business, we leave behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs that is discoverable, shareable and leads back to us.

If employees resolve a customer issues on Twitter, or help someone do figure something out, they do it in full public view, others see it, and has public relations value because it builds goodwill.  If I answer buyer oriented questions about on Quora or Linkedin Answers intelligently, I’m not just helping that one person, I’m building my own credibility as a thought leader, and that benefits my employers because others will contact me when they need help solving similar business problems.

The more people who use social media to do their job, the more bread trails they leave behind, and the more it helps you build awareness and generate leads.  When social marketing is done right, it becomes a natural byproduct of sharing. As I said in my previous post, that actual sharing is very difficult to outsource, because it’s the people in the organization that have the ability to answer questions about their area of responsibility. Could you imagine outsourcing questions about shipping procedures to PR?  It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Social Marketing Strategy - Second, companies need help developing a strategic approach to social marketing.  Clients are overwhelmed with options, have limited resources, and often lack the necessary skills to determine which channels are mostly likely to yield a short-term ROI.

In Social Marketing to the Business Customer, we lay out a framework for finding and engaging customers, and for measuring and assessing the outcomes.  And it starts, by the way, not with talking, but with listening. You need to know who your customers are, what they’re saying and where they’re saying it before you open your mouth.  And this is something agencies can do quite well.  Companies need help listening.

Content Marketing – And finally, companies need help creating compelling content.  Manually generating a steady stream of compelling, useful content to share on blogs, and via social channels is labor intensive and takes time.

I’ve been releasing a new episode of my www.ontherecordpodcast.com almost every week since April 2006.  After 5 years and nearly 250 episodes, I’ve gotten really good at doing it very efficiently.  But it still takes me at least 6 hours to record, edit, SEO and upload a new episode.  Writing a good blog article with hyperlinks and an arresting, appropriate image take time too.  SEOing the blog article takes even more time.  Companies have an ongoing need to feed the beast, and good agencies make good content.

Find an agency that’s good at creating compelling content.  Outsourcing content creation, as long is it’s done transparently, is perfectly ethical, and frankly, a very smart way to go.  Scott Monty says he outsourced much of the content creation that was used to support the web of Ford Explorer.  But wisely, in my opinion, he kept to the voice of the brand at Ford.

So rather than tweeting or Facebooking on behalf of your client, teach them to use these channels responsibly, help them by creating search optimized content and help them integrate social media strategically into their existing external communications apparatus so they can discover where the opportunities are and strike where the iron is hot.

There are plenty of ways to outsource social media without selling your soul, just don’t let go of your voice.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/3-ways-to-outsource-social-media-without-selling-your-soul.html/feed 1 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/outsourcing-social-media-is-selling-your-soul.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/outsourcing-social-media-is-selling-your-soul.html#comments Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:06:57 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1124 I was the voice of dissent on a panel yesterday at SXSW titled Outsourcing Social Media without Outsourcing Your Soul with Nicole Simon, Kate Buck and Elizabeth Bellanti.  In room packed with agency people, my opinion on outsourcing social media marketing was more than just a little controversial.

We stirred up a heated back channel debate that’s still going on a day later.  So be warned that if you read this blog post, you might wind up feeling angry, upset or possibly even threatened.  If you’re an agency person, you might feel the need to speak up and defend yourself, or your clients. And you might think that I’m your enemy.

But if you take the time to read this ENTIRE post carefully, and genuinely consider the argument I am about to make, you’ll probably wind reassessing your approach to social media marketing altogether, and realize that I’m not writing this post to deprive you of agency billings.  I’m writing it to help you by telling what no one else will. I’m going to show you how and why the way you’re trying to win new business for your clients is distasteful at best, unethical at worst.  And also why, ultimately, it’s a dead end strategy.

But before I ruffle your feathers, let me first say that if you’re a client, I DO think it IS possible to outsource much of your social media marketing workload, and if you’re an agency, there ARE plenty of ways you CAN help your clients with social media marketing.  There’s no shortage of billable social media hours to be outsourced.  The mistake, as I see it, is that a lot of clients are taking an unsustainable approach which is likely to result in a rude awakening, kind of like the wake-up call Chrysler’s agency sent to the automaker’s management last week.  Had there not been such a severe case of social media illiteracy in the boardroom, Chrysler never would have outsourced their voice in the first in place.

So here it is, the bomb I’m about to drop.  Are you ready?  Clients outsourcing their voice, and agencies accepting that bsuiness, are blowing it big time, because when it comes to social media marketing, outsourcing your voice is almost like outsourcing your integrity. The smarter approach is showing employees how to use these channels appropriately, because they know more about your business already, and have a much stronger incentive to see your company win. At the end of the day, most employees care more than outsourced labor, because they get more than a paycheck for their efforts.

Outside the Austin Convention Center during SXSW were hoards and hoards of temporary hires handing out coupons, stickers and postcards. If you ask any of them a question about the brand, product or service they’re promoting, it becomes clear rather quickly that they have no specialized knowledge in what they’re promoting at all.  What’s the ROI of that strategy?  By handing out collateral and not being able of having an intelligent conversation with prospects, they’re going the megaphone route.  They’re not listening.  And they’re incapable of responding.  It’s antisocial behavior.

And that’s why for most companies, outsourcing the conversational side of social marketing is a bad idea, because unless your representatives are as knowledgeable about your products and services as your employees are, they’re not going to be able to hold up their side of the conversation.  Marketing has become analogous to a sort of cocktail party.  It’s not about monologues.  It’s about dialogue.  And the only person who can represent you at a cocktail party is you.

As a former big agency guy, I’m going to tell you something the big agencies will never admit.  Agencies, regardless of what they’ll say publicly, would be out of business if they invested that heavily in any one client relationship.  Sure, there may be a few out there that can brag about 20 and 30 year client relationships.  But they’re in the minority.  Client turnover happens so often  it’s the driving news beat in the ad trades.  So if you’re okay with flying soulless, go ahead and outsource your voice.  But if want hold onto your integrity, outsource anything BUT your voice.

In my next post, I’ll give 3 smart strategies for outsourcing social media marketing without selling your soul.

Photo by Thomas Churchwell under Creative Commons License.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/outsourcing-social-media-is-selling-your-soul.html/feed 22 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/b2b-social-media-at-sxsw.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/b2b-social-media-at-sxsw.html#comments Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:11:19 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1106 I am excited to be headed to SXSW for a Social Marketing to the Business Customer Book Signing, a panel discussion on Outsourcing Social Media without Selling Your Soul and the opportunity to see and meet up with the largest concentration of forward-thinking social media minded professionals in any one place, anywhere in the world. I’m a huge SXSW fan not just because they draw such an informed crowd, but also because I’m guaranteed to hear new ideas and actually learn something.

But one thing I find a bit striking is the fact that in an industry where Linkedin and Hoover’s are poised to reinvent sales prospecting, Saleforce.com is unleashing to power of social networking inside organizations and B2B social media is predicted to grow at 21% annual compound rate through 2013, not a single B2B focused talk is on the agenda this year.

Having just completed the first book devoted exclusively to the use of social media for B2B marketing, and having spent most of the last six months researching and writing about the topic, perhaps my vision has become too myopic, but given just how thorough the conference programming is, it’s a little surprising to me.  Is it you?  Do you think it was a conscious decision?

Any event, if you’re a B2B looking for answers on how to integrate social media into your business processes, I may be able to help.  In Social Marketing to the Business Customer we lay out a practical strategy for finding and engaging business customers and include case studies showing exactly how B2B companies in and out of the tech sector are using social media to drive revenue.

If you’re interested in B2B social media stop by my book signing at SX Bookstore on the fourth floor of the convention center on Monday, March 14 at 11:30am.  I’m organizing a B2B social media meet up directly afterwards via #SXSWB2B.  Hope to see you there!  Or tweet me up @ericschwartzman and perhaps we can arrange a time to meet separately.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/03/b2b-social-media-at-sxsw.html/feed 1 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/autographed-the-last-copy-of-social-marketing-to-the-business-customer-at-barnes-noble-at-12th-e-st-in-dc.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/autographed-the-last-copy-of-social-marketing-to-the-business-customer-at-barnes-noble-at-12th-e-st-in-dc.html#comments Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:43:34 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/autographed-the-last-copy-of-social-marketing-to-the-business-customer-at-barnes-noble-at-12th-e-st-in-dc.html?isalt=0

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/autographed-the-last-copy-of-social-marketing-to-the-business-customer-at-barnes-noble-at-12th-e-st-in-dc.html/feed 0 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/why-your-company-sucks-at-social-media.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/why-your-company-sucks-at-social-media.html#comments Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:17:24 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1047 Unlocking the true potential of social media for business relies on increasing social media literacy levels enterprise wide.  As long as we treat emerging media as a marketing and PR opportunity, we will fail to realize the true promise of many-to-many communications.  In addition to teaching the mechanics of social media, we need to inspire leadership about the potential of social media, or I predict we’ll see more opportunities and revolutions pass us by.

Social media has forever changed the way organizations compete and the way individuals communicate. It has dealt paralyzing blows to the media and entertainment industries, rendering much of what they do redundant and their distribution models obsolete, and reshaped almost every industry where middlemen profit from inefficiency. Social media literacy levels outside of external communications remain largely anemic.  And you can’t effective leverage emerging media if you don’t know what it is, or how it works.

Yet despite all this disruption, few social media training opportunities exist for top-level decision makers, and others outside of marketing and PR.  Social media is a no brainer for communicators.  But for the rest of the organization, the opportunities and threats are not always so clear.  Truly arriving at a place where everyone in the organization appreciates the value of shifting from a “need to know” to a “need to share” mindset will require a holistic approach to retraining the workplace.

The evidence is everywhere.  Outside the world of business, social media is serving as a rallying point for protesters throughout North Africa and the Middle East who are frustrated by sclerotic leadership, inequality, abusive government and high unemployment.  Protesters are using social media to accelerate the pace of change, and regimes that respond by strangling the internet are effectively shutting down commerce as well.  For regimes that need or want to respond to the aspirations of their people, openness becomes an economic and political necessity.

But in spite of all the evidence, many businesses and government agencies are still struggling to adapt. To be fair, coming up to speed is no small order. It involves instituting change throughout the organization, which is often provokes fierce resistance.  Most people still have relatively little first hand experience operating in this new environment, and lack the skills to evaluate social media’s effectiveness.

According to recent report by Marketing Profs and Junta 42, organizations with low executive buy-in for social media also find it to be less effective than organizations where executives do buy-in.  Misunderstandings at the top result in unrealistic expectations and misguided strategies.  Social media is much more than a bigger bull horn. Authentic outbound engagement is not enough. We should be working to ignite self-sustaining communities, rather than just unleashing the marketing department on Twitter.  Social media is a rallying point for organizing movements, not just a parking lot for content marketers.

But how do you empower everyone to participate in a movement if you block access to Facebook.com, restrict employees from discussing business-related matters online and provide no useful, practical guidance on how to use these channels responsibly for business because the top level decision makers are largely illiterate about the useful applications of social media for business?  The real challenge, as I see it, is not teaching the external communications department to Tweet authentically, but overcoming social media illiteracy.

Having led Social Media Boot Camp training seminars all over the world for professionals of different disciplines with very diverse priorities, I can tell you that they all need different information to understand how social media applies to their corner of the organization. In my experience developing social media policies for clients, I can also say that the most labor intensive task is never drafting the policy, but educating diverse stakeholders from different departments.  If they don’t understand the basics,  policies are gutted of useful information, access to social media inevitably gets choked off, and the company’s reputation undoubtedly get determined by an online conversation in which they don’t participate. The net result is they effectively wind up sacrificing their credibility in exchange for the illusion of control.

But right now, it’s still the external communicators who are being trained to use social media. Until we start offering leadership and management the interdisciplinary social media training they need to understand how these emerging channels impact their vision, and how to realistically translate that vision into realistic strategies, I fear the true promise of social media will remain just out of reach.

http://spinfluencer.com/2006/01/profit-from-inefficiency-and-die-says-esther-dyson-on-charlie-rose.html?isalt=0

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/why-your-company-sucks-at-social-media.html/feed 3 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/b2b-social-media-book-authors-waive-speaker-fees-with-bulk-book-orders.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/b2b-social-media-book-authors-waive-speaker-fees-with-bulk-book-orders.html#comments Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:59:34 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1049 As many of you know, my book Social Marketing to the Business Customer with Paul Gillin was released this month and is now available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and other booksellers.  It’s the first book devoted exclusively to B2B social media, and definitely the most comprehensive collection of best practices and case studies currently available in print.

B2B is hot topic these days as marketers look for applied wisdom and operational frameworks to help them integrate social media into their existing organizational outreach efforts.  Everyone seems to be interested in the concept of using social media to reach a focused, select group of individuals.  I was in Rome for Social Media Week earlier this month where I taught a Social Media Boot Camp for Entrepreneurs, a Social Media Boot Camp for Journalists and gave a talk to the US Embassy about B2B social media and much more.  If social media for business is your mind lately, consider picking up a copy of the book, or downloading one of our B2B social media podcasts which we’ve been releasing over the last couple of weeks through On the Record…Online.

If you’re looking for speakers to address the subject of social media for business at your next conference or event, both Paul and I are waiving our fees now through June 1, 2011 with bulk book purchases of 200 of more copies. So if you’d like to have myself or Paul present on B2B social media at your company or conference, we’ll present and autograph your 200 copies in person.

Some of the topics we can address include:

• Building the Business Case for B2B Social Marketing
• Generating Qualified B2B Leads with Social Media
• How the B2B/B2C Difference Applies to Social Media Strategy
• Current and Future B2B Social Marketing Trends
• Or challenge us with some aspect of social media specific to your interest

If you’re interested in having me present, please check my online calendar first to see if I’m available.  Or if you’d like to have Paul, you can check his online calendar as well. I speak for both of us when I say that after all the research and effort we put into the book, we’d both be honored to talk your group about B2B social marketing specifically, or social media marketing in general.

We look forward to hearing from you!

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/b2b-social-media-book-authors-waive-speaker-fees-with-bulk-book-orders.html/feed 1 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/social-media-and-revolutions.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/social-media-and-revolutions.html#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:12:50 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=1033 Tweet

It may not be because of Facebook, Twitter or Wikipedia that revolutionary fervor has taken root in North Africa. As Steve Coll writes in The New Yorker, ‘…youthful populations, high unemployment, grotesque inequality, abusive police, reviled leaders and authoritarian systems” are to blame.  So let’s give credit where credit’s due. It’s bad government that led to the situation at hand. Social media just made it impossible to ignore.

Social media is not much a disruptor as it is an accelerator.  Armed with a report published by Wikileaks confirming what they already knew was a systemic abuse of power, the Tunisians ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Next, in spite of a state sponsored internet blackout, Egyptians took to the streets to fight for their future.  And it seems as if it’s spreading even further.  Right now, King Abdullah ll of Jordan is dealing with a wave of regional discontent and thousands of young Sundanese are braving beatings and arrests to protest against their government. And it has all happened in a matter of weeks.

Social media policies are useful because they help organizations push decision-making authority down through the ranks. Command and control style management hinders organizations from responding, reacting or engaging in real time.  Organizations that have a practical policy in place can move quicker, because everyone is empowered to participate responsibly. In a world where we check our activity streams every minute or so, conversations move faster and farther than ever before.

The logic applies to revolution and diplomacy as well. No Mr. Gladwell, Twitter may not be a driver, but it is an enabler.  Social media are accelerating the pace of change. For the US, which has been backing these corrupt autocratic regimes, we’re now learning that social media cuts both ways. What empowers the people to band together and overthrow their governments, can also be used to challenge hypocrisy.  But given the openness than social media provides, Washington really has only one choice: to support the transition toward inclusive democracy.

But perhaps more importantly, social media’s velocity forces organizations to re-evaluate the way they make decisions. In this light-speed environment, command and control, hierarchical models are severely handicapped, because by the time they make a decision, the opportunity has passed them by.  Old school strategists who strive to control the conversation, perfect their “talking points” and get everything just right before they enter the conversation, will never be able to leverage real time conversations to achieve measurable outcomes because conversations and trends online move to quickly to afford any such luxury.

Organizations will need to push more authority to edges to train individuals to make choices based on practical, rational guidelines.  But reorganizing authority internally to accomplish this shift requires a level of social media literacy that does not currently exist at most organizations.  In my next post, I will discuss a strategy for overcoming this challenge with a holistic approach to social media training.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/02/social-media-and-revolutions.html/feed 2 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/01/facebook-marketing-tips-understanding-the-true-power-of-the-social-networks.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/01/facebook-marketing-tips-understanding-the-true-power-of-the-social-networks.html#comments Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:26:17 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=999 Tweet

If the case studies and news highlights in this blog post are any glimpse of things to come — and I believe they are — social media dotcoms will start to become less important as marketers learn that the real power of a social network is not so much the Facebook.com or Linkedin.com websites, but the data they store about your customer’s preferences.

The dotcoms will remain important to individuals.  But for companies, the real opportunity is the ability to collect, analyze and market to the connections, identities and interests of a social network’s members.  When aggregated, this data becomes a research panel that is richer and more accurate than ever before.  We are  starting to see evidence of web marketers using this data to drive sales on their own websites.

It is already possible for websites to integrate social networking features with Facebook’s Graph API, which lets visitors bring their friends and interests with them to any website.

It all starts with the “Login with Facebook” button. It gives visitors the chance to log into your website with their Facebook user name and password, and is followed by a “Request for Permission” screen (above), which gives website operators a chance to capture extended information about the visitor, such as the “like” buttons they’ve clicked, their birth date, the city they live in and more.

Unlike Facebook’s Social Plug-Ins, which are very simple and easy to install, the Graph API is a bit more difficult to get up and running, but it also offers much greater access to read and write information from Facebook.com to a third-party, destination website.  Websites that take time to do that, have access to richer information about their visitors than ever before.

Facebook users profiles and actions create more accurate, detailed demographics than any other media channel.  Integrating the Graph API allows online marketers to build stronger relationships with website visitors through greater insights about the preferences.

Rather than just offer a searchable database of albums, artists and tracks and overwhelm visitors with infinite choice, online music service Spotify integrated the Graph API so users can see the music their friends like.  Users can share play lists and see which songs their friends listen to most. “Spotify now sees 60% of their traffic coming from Facebook,” says Facebook partner engineer Simon Cross.  The power of the Facebook platform is not so much Facebook.com, but rather, the connections, identities and interests of the network’s users.

Amazon is using Facebook’s Graph API to take even more guesswork out of gift giving.  Amazon introduced recommendations before Facebook even existed, but they were recommendations from anyone who had purchased something we bought. They weren’t personalized.  They weren’t social.  By integrating the Graph API, Amazon lets visitors know what recording artists and authors their friends like, what they’ve bought themselves in the past and when their birthdays are.

Facebook Places recently announced their first European mobile integration with review site Qype, which has 17 million unique users across 10 countries and 9 languages.  Since the launch, they’ve had 1 million mobile downloads of the iPhone App, which lets users see where their friends have checked in, see their friend’s check in history and check in at a location on Qype and Facebook in one action. “For us, the importance of Facebook information is about the power of friends to make a local decision,” says Qype Country Manager for France Vincent Wermus.

From a marketing standpoint, Facebook’s Graph API solves a longstanding problem advertisers have with social media.  They know mainstream media is inefficient, but at least they get demographics.  RSS is a great distribution tool.  It’s effective, efficient and cheap, but you have no idea who’s downloading subscribing to your blog or podcast, and no what they think about it.  On the other hand, Facebook’s Graph API allows marketers to collect demographics on visitors, and in some cases, demographics visitor’s friends as well.  When you have a rich store house of user preferences to cross reference website activity against, you’re in a much better position to profit from them.

From a consumer privacy standpoint, as people start waking up to how the Facebook Graph API works, they’ll become more demanding about the quality of the services they trade their personal information for.  If it’s lame, why give up your extended data, or your friend’s data?

Facebook’s Graph API is the most powerful way of leveraging the Facebook platform, but Facebook’s Social Plug Ins and Facebook Pages are worth investigating as well.

Interestingly enough, last week Hoover’s announced a deal with Linkedin to provide “seamless integration between Hoover’s information on 31 million companies and 37 million people with LinkedIn’s professional network of business contacts.” We’ll have to wait and see how the actual wind up doing that, but what we’re witnessing is the next evolution in social marketing. Companies are beginning to appreciate that when you have a rich store house of demographic and psychographic to cross reference your website activity against, you’re in a much better position to satisfy your customer’s preferences.

This post was written from a presentation delivered by Facebook partner engineer Simon Cross at Le Web 2010 in Paris.  A podcast of his presentation is available as well.

]]> http://spinfluencer.com/2011/01/facebook-marketing-tips-understanding-the-true-power-of-the-social-networks.html/feed 3 http://spinfluencer.com/2011/01/why-my-reallysimple-org-will-not-be-popular.html http://spinfluencer.com/2011/01/why-my-reallysimple-org-will-not-be-popular.html#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:50:16 +0000 Eric Schwartzman http://spinfluencer.com/?p=993 Tweet

I love RSS. And I love podcasts.  But I am not your typical, mainstream consumer. I’m a knowledge worker, and RSS helps me monitor conversations so that I can map communities, and that is very useful for my work.  So thank, Dave Winer. I appreciate it.  But RSS never achieved mainstream adoption and most podcast listeners never actually subscribe to a newsfeed. It’s too hard.  So they stream it off the publishers website as a digital download.

If you look at how the Italian Newspaper La Repubblica is using Facebook “Like” buttons to allow readers to subscribe to news by football team, you’ll see this social plug in being used as an alternative to RSS.  You click the “Like” button and get a newsfeed of stories about your football team right inside your profile.  How’s that for convenience?

I used to believe the core driver of technology adoption was ease-of-use. That was before I sat in on presentations by Christian Hernandez, Xavier Leclerc and Simon Cross of Facebook. They convinced me that the network effect is actually an even stronger driver, because the cost associated with taking your friends with you to another social network is exceedingly high.  I understand my.reallysimple.org is not a social network for interacting, but even with a service like Posterous, unless you an avid live streamer, why would you bother?

Last year, Facebook surpassed Google in total visits.  But Google still garners more unique visits.  The frequency with which people check Facebook allowed them to supercede Google for total number of visits, which means more people are starting and ending their day on Facebook. For most people, I have to think that this will seriously limit the chances they’ll use some other tool on top of Facebook to communicate.

Never mind that it’s in their best interests, because we flock to where others are.  For the last 7 years of my life, as chairman of iPressroom, I was forced to use a PC because our bank’s wire approval system was not Mac compliant. So I wasted I good part of each day on Windows, a decidedly inferior operating system.  Once I sold the company, one fo the first things I did was switch back to Mac, because I was no longer responsible for approving wires to our Russian office.  What a relief!  Scoble is a content machine because he sticks with best of breed solutions. He doesn’t waste his time fiddling around with stuff that doesn’t work well.

But in the case of social networks, if our personal or professional life drags us onto Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin just to participate — whether or not we’re kicking and screaming — ease of use is actually less important than where the action is.  The cost associated with dragging people outside of their natural social network is just too high.  Sure, there are advantages to a centralized social media engagement dashboard.  But these have their drawbacks too.  I wrote about this when I covered the risks of social media engagement platforms a while back.

As an information professional, I see value in aggregating all my content somewhere where I control the terms of service.  But when you couple Facebook’s 500 million users, with the fact they still have the easiest interface for participation, why would someone other than a social media activist take the time to invest on a new engagement dashboard? Am I missing something?

This post (written based on the presentation embedded above) explains how the Facebook “Like” button is poised to kill online display advertising as we know it, and help you understand why the social networking giant has been valued at $50 billion.  It is the second in a series of posts about marketing with Facebook. The first post with about marketing with Facebook Pages and Facebook Ads.  Let’s get started.

At first, the web was about surfing the information highway. Then it evolved into a place where the focus was on web content, pages, databases and documents. Today, it has become a place to connect with friends and trusted colleagues.  The web of tomorrow will be about finding relevant content from our friends, signaling the end of algorithmic search as the dominant means of locating relevant content online.

Facebook is a platform, which means third-party software developers can create applications that run inside the service. Since the launch of Facebook in May 2007, more than 550,000 Facebook apps have been created.  Today, more than a million developers are creating Facebook apps. And, as you probably know, the social network counts 500 million users.

Facebook “Like” buttons are the killer app for achieving the kind of reach that up until now, had been the exclusive province of mainstream media. “Like” buttons are the most used and easiest to use of Facebook’s Social Plugins and they provide a practical way for filing URLs and other online objects as nodes on the Facebook social graph.  But if you count all Activity Feed (meant for news sites), Live Stream (meant for Live Events) and other Facebook  widgets, more than 2 million websites are extending Facebook functionality to their sites and roughly 10,000 new sites  are joining them every day, using Facebook social plug ins.  Today, 250 million people use Facebook through destination websites without visiting Facebook.com, every month.

Life is Short. You’re Busy.  Why Bother?  Three Reasons:

• Traffic - Getting people to your website who wouldn’t otherwise have found it.
• Engagement – Like, comment and share functionality results means they do more and stay longer.
• Insights – The ability to see exactly how people are engaging with your brand, get demographics on who they are, and improve your efforts over time, whether its at Facebook.com or via your destination domain using Facebook Connect.

How Do You Do It?

What’s the easiest way for a nontechnical person to extend Facebook functionality to their website?  Here it is.

“Like” Button – This is by far the most important Facebook Social Plugin.  It’s how Facebook users can attach an object, like a web page, to their newsfeed and social graph.  They click the “Like” button and create a feed story, which can be seen by their friends at Facebook.com.

Their friends can “Like” it as well, attach a comment to it or forward it to their Facebook friends by clicking the “Share” button, extending the object’s reach and adding social relevance. “Liking” an object also means it becomes a node on the Facebook graph, so it appears in search, and if it’s a product, brand or service, it also appears on the Facebook profile page of the “Liker.” On social optimized sites, the “liker” or recommender’s profile picture appears beneath the “Like” button. So in this case, if you like the movie The Social Network, your Facebook friends will see your “like” as a recommendation on IMDB as well.

Last summer, Facebook director of media partnerships Justin Osofsky launched a campaign to get more news media outlets to integrate Facebook functionality, so their audiences can share articles in their newsfeeds, and find articles that their Facebook friends have “Liked.”  The Independent newspaper in the UK has done so by positioning the “Like” button in the upper right-hand corner beside every article on their website.

The advantage of integrating the Facebook like button in this manner — rather than just using a simple share button such as Add This — is that if any of my Facebooks friends “Like” an article, I wind up seeing their profile picture on the Independent’s website. In the example above, if my Facebook friends happen onto this story on the Independent’s website, they can see I’ve recommended it.

The article also gets posted to my newsfeed. The more of my friends who “Like” it and comment on it:

• The more people who see it
• The more social relevance it gets
• The broader the reach
• And the more referrals to your website

When installing a “Like” button, you can elect to show faces, and set the width . Given the amount a real estate the default settings require, the inclination is to go adjust the setting and so with the smaller “Button Count” or “Box Button” options.  But these are not nearly as effective because profile pictures do not appear.  The options shown below right, which are the default “Like” button widget settings, are much more likely to encourage engagement.

Seeing faces amplifies the likelihood of getting click recommendations ten times, says Facebook partner engineer Simon Glass.  As the research from Facebook shows, once just two Facebook friends have clicked a “Like” button, the likelihood that others will click it as well increases exponentially.

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica is using the Facebook “Like” buttons to let users subscribe to their content in their Facebook newsfeed.  Instead of relying on users to come back to their destination website to “like” content, La Repubblica readers can use the “Like” button to subscribe to news by subject-matter, and any stories the published on that subject appear automatically in their newsfeed at Facebook.com.

Readers can “Like” their favorite football team, and links to stories about their team are syndicated directly to their Facebook newsfeed in one click. La Repubblica got 104,000 “likes” in the first 5 weeks of deploying their new “Like” button subscription integration.  “You can kind of think if it like RSS, but that people actually use,” says Mr. Cross, who formerly worked as a developer for the Beeb.

What are the benefits of using Facebook “Like” buttons?

• Distribution on Facebook.com
• Collect social recommendations
• Reach new people through personal recommendations
• Drive inbound traffic and user engagement

Half of Facebook’s users visit Facebook.com every day, and many of them do so multiple times daily.  Before La Repubblica integrated Facebook, readers had to go to the website to check for updated content but with this new integration, the newspaper can get links to it’s articles in front of readers where they spend the majority of their time on the Net.

Facebook users spend on average 5 hrs 25 mins on Facebook.com per month, versus 2 hrs 17 mins on Yahoo, 1 hr and 52 mins on AOL, 1 hr and 41 mins on MSN, 1 hr 17 mins on YouTube and 1 hr 14 mins on Google.

This blog post was written using source material from a special session at Le Web 2010 presented by Facebook partner engineer Simon Cross, a complete audio transcript for which is available at On the Record…Online. At the time of this writing, the PowerPoint presentation he used was also available.