DavidLibby.com

Pop quiz: You LOVE the TV show Mad Men, go to its web site, what's missing?

You watch Mad Men on AMC every Sunday at 10PM. You love it! There's something Thirty Something about it, in a 60's kind of way. You want more. You go to the web site. There's a blog. Cocktail guide. Facebook Page. An iPhone app. What's missing? It's (maybe not so obvious) bigger impact aka broader influence on its audience.

Mad Men is so wildly popular that's it possible the show could influence how people (not just ad execs) dress up in the office. It could also influence, or maybe it has already, office style. Yet, there's no note of it in the experience of the show off TV, online. And, why not?

It's no secret that the show is one that highly rates next to The Sopranos and other famed cable series. People are talking about Mad Men online, offline, and back online (again). The show isn't getting old. It's only getting better, and more people are watching it now, at least in my personal circles.

Maybe the show's producers are too close to tell, so I'll give it up - media influences, even in the smallest of ways. Media can make a huge impact on the U.S. culture - TV, film, and online I'm referencing, of course.

Look what TV did for the Vietnam war. You can't tell me that TV didn't influence JFK's win over Nixon, right? Rocky, Star Wars, Schindler's List all had cultural impacts on and off of the screen. Now it's Mad Men's turn.

Don't get me wrong. Mad Men will not have the same kind of massive societal influence as did the televised event of the Vietnam war. But, in it's only little way, Mad Men will change (and I believe it already is) the way in which we see ourselves in our work, and at work. And, how our work reflects who we are, at least in part.

My message to the producers of Mad Men?

Leverage it through social media...

Here's some ideas:

1) Furnish online - Partner with a style shop such as Room & Board, which resembles the show's furniture style, and re-create the sets - in their showrooms. Bring people into the stores to sit at Don Draper's desk and take in the real feel of what it's like to be "Mad." Maybe even tie a contest into the recreation of the set design.

2) Create your own office - Take real world photos of Room & Board like furniture and allow visitors of the site to build their own Mad Men office. What could your ideal office look like?

3) Make a suitable wardrobe - Get in touch with Wil Boehlke (one of my former clients) and ask him to guest blog about the latest and most stylish wares for men, on your blog. Give away a private fitting with Wil, photographed of course for posting on Facebook, your Mad Men blog, etc.

4) Run an architectural contest - Maybe Mad Men is thinking about opening a new office, say in LA, what would it look like? Take it to your viewers to decide. Give them the tools to design the LA office, and award the winner an all expense paid trip to a glam hotel in LA.

Where do the producers of Mad Men begin?

Brainstorm.

Hook up your show writers, publicists, with a team of social media strategists, and get cracking on how you can widen your brand awareness online and really touch on the influence that your show is making on your viewers. It will be a win win for both you and your viewers, believe me.

I would love to be sipping scotch sitting at Don Draper's desk. Even if just in a virtual world...

Small businesses think too small when it comes to public relations and social media marketing

I've been running my public relations consultancy for over 8 years now and can tell you that when it comes to marketing, the small businesses we've worked with think too small. It's not that the small businesses don't think about what they can do with their small business, they don't know how to think about it - beyond what it's going to cost, and, in some cases, don't know where to start. Here's some tips on how to think about public relations and social media marketing for your small business.

1) Just admit it, you're not the marketing expert - Often times our clients get sales, business development, and marketing confused, jumbled, and lump everything into one basket. The truth is, one is very different than the other. Don't expect to know how they all work, nor find one person that does. Hire the right public relations expert who can suit your needs. Sometimes these means finding a person who has experience in your field or someone who you like and feel you can trust. Other times, it's a person who's reaped great success for their clients, similar to your company.

2) Don't focus on the tools - Your public relations staffer is no more going to know more about your business than you will about theirs. Just because you've heard of Facebook, Twitter, press releases, etc., don't assume to know how those tools may best suit your business. They may not. One thing's for sure. Make certain that your public relations professional has an open mind, that's focused on how to help you grow your business, not on how the success of your marketing will influence theirs. If they create a customized public relations and social media marketing plan for you, it's most likely it will be successful, especially if done in concert with your audience targeting and messaging.

3) Take your time - It's not the quick "hit" in a local newspaper that's going to turn your business on it's ear. Public relations is an evolution, not a revolution. It takes time to build up brand awareness, develop relationships with journalists, industry analysts, and generate new business leads, partnerships, etc. What's important is that you start with a plan, and stick to it best you can, of course being flexible to any market or inside company changes.

4) Push, don't pull public relations - Running a public relations campaign is much akin to planting and growing a garden. You can't wait for it rain. You've got to water your own plants. Get out there, tell your public relations professional everything that's going on in your business, the related economy, what's up with your competitors, and get marketing. Your public relations plan should consist of many elements which compliment one another. Don't just rely on one press release. Create a calendar of your upcoming announcements, look at what your key publications are writing about / what they could write about, think about what you can do with your partners, and much, much more!

In conclusion, public relations and social media marketing are not thankless jobs. Assuming (and hoping) that all of your efforts point to your business and marketing objectives, you will have marketed your company well in a very challenging environment. It's not an easy task to take, but one that has to be collaborative with your public relations professional and supported by the energy, enthusiasm, and growth which your company deserves.

Listen up PR peeps, make social media work for you, now!

If you're a public relations professional like me, you're probably using Cision (aka MediaMap) or Vocus or EdCals.com, or one of the many other tools to make your life more effective for your clients. But, many of you are not using social media tools. And, those can be just as effective for informing your target audiences on your messaging and client news.

But, wait! You say you are? How? What?

Because every time a press release comes out or an article you secured hits the Google News Alert, you "tweet" about it? What you're really doing is wasting your (and your clients') time, and not maximizing what you could be doing on the social web.

Here's some tips on how to make it all worth it:

1) Research off Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn - There IS life beyond those networks (ie. Ning, Google and Yahoo Groups, etc.) where you can find niche networks (and email list serves) where you can non-commercially become a part of those communities and add value to them, engage in dialogue, inform, and spark conversations. And, you don't have to necessarily be the focus of the conversation either...

2) Use social bookmarking services - Get creative on how you're tagging your news and information on social bookmarking services (ie. DIGG, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc.) to attract a broader set of audiences. Also, find like people who may be interested in your information and news and befriend them. If you're consistent with the information and news that you send them over time, you'll notice that they'll be sending you the same.

3) Don't worry so much about the numbers - So, you're targeting a certain group of people (ie. web developers) and have a couple hundred followers / friends on Twitter. Don't try to make conversations with them all. That's impossible and not needed. Only a very small number will influence the many. Target the most well liked and conversational. Notice I didn't say to target the one or two with the most followers / friends. When you converse with those few folks, keep it within the context of a group (ie. #webdev - if one such exists - research it first on Twitter search), and expand the audience in that manner, not by spamming another person's Twitter followers.

4) Re-read your content to see if it has a broader reach than you originally thought - Your press release was about a new product for web developers. But, after re-reading the piece, you realize that it could be of interest to security minded folk too. BTW, This kind of realization is best done prior to the initial outreach because the messaging to different audiences will be, different. But, now you can run the same exercise as mentioned in 1-3 above and expand the brand footprint of your client's information and news.

There's a lot more we could do as public relations professionals to leverage social media tools, but this is just a start. I hope it was helpful in expanding your mind on the subject.

Good luck!

How to cultivate your social media garden

Social media is organic because it's authentic, unpredictable, and natural. The 64 million dollar question? How do you make the unnatural, organic? Social media is organic because it is derived from living organisms. How do you direct it? How do you harness it? How do you control it?

How do you cultivate your social media garden?

If you believe your social media program is alive, hence organic, feed it. The grass in your garden will die if not watered. The flowers in your pot will wither if not placed in the Sun. A garden needs to be nurtured. And, you're its gardener.

How do you know if you have a green thumb for your garden?

First off, ask yourself if you like to garden. You may be a better landscape architect. You may be a better owner of the property the garden is growing upon. You may be a better admirer of another person's garden. Know thyself.

Next, are you an expert of all things gardening or just great at growing the grass under your feet?

Ask yourself if you can indeed see the big picture of what is the garden today and what it will be in the future. It's knowing that you can create what you can not see is what makes you the expert gardener. There's no fault in being a masterful grass-ethician. Though, do not try to fool yourself into thinking otherwise.

What's out there now?

No garden starts with nothing. Weeds can be beautiful too. The content of your garden, what's working and what doesn't, and how it's managed, all comes into play as to whether or not it is best to add more plants, nurture them, or start over. There are always set legalities (ie. the biggest tree in the backyard simply can not be cut down without causing great harm to the landscape of the neighborhood, and subsequently fighting off an ensuing homeowners association lawsuit).

How do the plants work together?

There are obviously dominant plants in your garden. Those which can uproot others, and stand out among the pack. Do those need more attention, or less? How does the climate affect your longest and best standing trees? Do they prevent others from being the same?

What else is in your garden?

The non-organic always mixes with the organic. The placed rocks. The iron gate. The outdoor furniture, and obscure pieces of art scattered across the yard. Do they need to be moved? Taken out? Replaced? Why were they put there in the first place? Do others need to be added?

Then there are those of us who garden with cement.

The wall is built to hold back the displaced hill. The shrubbery is only there to hold up the heavy dirt. The trees and plants are only watered by nature, or by an automatic watering system which takes no person to control. Is it too harsh? It is stale? Or, does it work for the community which is serves. Is it only meant to serve a purpose, and not be cultivated?

There are dozens of magazines on gardening, even more books, how do you learn how to garden?

There are also websites and experts. There are speakers and conferences. There are tens of thousands, if not millions of examples, globally, of gardens, and plants, flowers, trees, and gardening tools. There is no right or wrong way to garden. Some gardens are more pleasing to some cultures than others. And, others are just down right frightening, and disturbing to some.

What's the first thing to do before tending to your garden?

Look around and ask yourself what surrounds it. The people? The structures? The weather? The earth? The stars? And, remind yourself, every single day, that even though you may be the gardener, this may not be your garden, surrounding your house, in your community.

But, you know how to cultivate it.

Why informational needs, not conversation will drive social media

Do you want to show your boss, investors, partners, or clients that you ran a successful social media program? If so, show them the results. The results of how it grew their business, how it met the bottom line, and how it met their goals, business objectives. That's how. Doesn't it sound easy? Well it's not. Most people can not think that clearly, at least not in terms of how what they could do could meet their business objectives.

I'm not saying you have to go back to school to learn these terms or pick up a book on marketing. But, I'm suggesting that if you're thinking about social media as how you can leverage a tool to get the most followers or fans or just use social media as a direct marketing tool, you'll only be using it for a short period of time.

What's happened is that we've lost the importance of a brand because the industrial revolution industrialized our society. The Internet has taken it further by two dimensional-izing our lives. And yet we preach about how social media will fundamentally change that conversation, but the fact is, there is no conversation. There is information.

It's the information that will drive social media, the need for information. Think about it. The most active social networks online are those where people need a constant flow of information (ie. parenting, healthcare, entertainment, travel, etc.) It's those industries where "social business design" will flourish, but not part of some grand scheme where marketing takes no place in it all.

The brands must earn the trust of their customers through marketing, slowly, then the customers will take part in the brand experience, and the two will learn from one another. The customer will engulf information needed to maintain a healthy and happy life, and the brand will watch - en masse - the behavior and attitudes of those groups - and adjust their marketing to fit those groups' needs. Isn't that classic marketing on an Internet scale? Call it online focus groups, whatever.

The point is while some of us are trying to figure out what we should be doing with social media, others are focused on industries where there is a real need - today - for a social business design that speaks to the people who really need it.

Meet Us @ SocialMediaTalk on LinkedIn

We're taking the conversation one step further and have launched "SocialMediaTalk" on LinkedIn. Our mission is to provide a community where small business owners and professionals can help one another navigate the convoluted social media world for their businesses and themselves. We hope you'll join us in conversation. Click here to join.

Looking forward to talking with you further!

David Libby

A Deeper Understanding

As I write this I'm thinking it may be best to post this blog entry as a personal log of sorts, maybe write it, publish then delete. It's always embarrassing, and scary to boot, being honest, even transparent with one's thoughts. But, this I can not hold back. It's tugging at everything in my being, from how I interact with my children and wife to how I am in the workplace, one not being the same as the other, though not as far apart as I would like. What it is that I have come upon, realized in my maturity as a father, husband, and public relations veteran is that whether it's in the bedroom or the boardroom, everyone and everything needs a deeper understanding.

Honest to gosh, it's probably to my benefit now for not being the kind of person who responds well under pressure. I need time to think, understand, evaluate a situation. I used to think that that was my way of looking for the easy way out, trying to escape, while all along it was me thinking of a way to figure out the not so obvious. I can certainly state the obvious in "real-time" and expand based upon my experience, but what truly shines is the ability to "take a step back" and think about the unknowns, be creative, and come back to the person in question with a deeper understanding of what it is they are facing and how they may tackle that situation in question.

How did I get here? Mentors.

While public relations is an aged old practice, and social media relations is but an infant, it shocks me to think that very few of talk about our mentors. Those who without fail continue to inspire, teach us, and drive the profession forward. It's those people who have helped me grasp a deeper understanding of my thoughts and actions in the public relations field. Funny enough, as my practice is moving more and more toward social media relations, not just the traditional PR, my mentors remain offline, nameless as you would think, yet quite famous, and infamous, in their own rights, and god bless them, the underpinnings of who I am today.

Everyone of us has regrets. Everyone of us would have wanted to do one thing, if not more, different than the last. But, truth be known, if it wasn't for the experiences we shared and gathered from those mentors, and peers, we wouldn't be where we are today. So, as we celebrate Labor Day, as it comes to a close, my hat goes off to all of those who struggled to share their love of the profession with me, their teachings, and may their memories, and experiences live on in the lives of others.

Delete me as your friend

I'm begging you to delete me as your friend. This is not a dare. I am not drunk. For those of you who know me, I can hold my liquor. And, that's my point. For those of you who know me, know me. For those of you who don't, let's either get to know one another or not. I am not good at my public relations profession because you can see that I have many connections on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

I did a quick look around and found many like individuals who have been in the PR biz for over 15+ years like yours truly have the same amount of "friends" and followers. My lists have gotten so out of control that on Facebook I created separate lists and only regularly check on those - and make comments - as those people I truly know.

So, why bring this up now? Yes, our digital Spring cleaning has come and gone. And, the summer is about to come to an end. However, with every end, there is a new beginning. With every death of an idea, a new one is born. By that I beg of you to delete me as your friend on any one of the social platforms, or choose to make conversation with me, or be deleted. 

I also imagine that at some point this will become an emerging trend. People will begin de-friending one another, and brands. They'll have to. As the web widens, and we become more naturally social online, so too we will need to limit our interactions with people and brands, and only keep a simple few (or a little more) within our circle of trust.

With that said, I'm going to take a stab at what defines how a person and/or brand can build that trust in me.

1) We share a past connection - you and I went to a school together, and knew each other, dated, are family, worked together, shared common business interests, former competitors, were close or distant friends, or friends with my sister.

2) We're the same religion - not just that we're both the same religion, but have identified around it together, by attending the same religious school(s), camp(s), youth group(s), etc.

3) We both like the same things - not saying that everything has to be identical, but if you're a big Depeche Mode fan, I'm sure we'll find something to talk about. I also love Radio Shack, science fiction, Apple, Nordstrom, Build-A-Bear, Sprite, Red Vines, etc.

4) We behave in similar ways - I love to be creative, generate ideas, be playful, sing, share and tell, etc.

5) We're at the same point in our lives - you're married with two young kids, living in the San Francisco Bay Area, are an active Dad / parent, etc.

6) We share the same hobbies - you like to collect stuff, read business books and science fiction, watch independent movies, listen to music like Zero 7, play the guitar, walk the dog, etc.

...and the list can go on and on. 

If someone said, "David Libby I dare you to sit down right now and delete a bunch of people (and brands)," it wouldn't be hard. And it won't be difficult for you either because you'll find that once you've shed those who are stalking you, and not talking with you, you will begin to recognize who is listening to you, and who you are listening to.

The Power of Influence

“Eavesdropping isn’t influence, engaging in a conversation is”…leaked a speaker prior to the start of “The Power of Influence,” an assemblage of eclectic panelists at the Social Media Club San Francisco / Silicon Valley’s late June gathering at Eastwick Communications in Mountain View, California. Sponsors included eCairn Inc, Eastwick Communications, DiGirono Crispy Flatbread Pizza, Amazon Consulting, and Krause Taylor Associates.

Read the whole post here at the Social Media Club web site.

Social Media IS a Super Food

Right now 55 percent of my business is social media relations, 45 percent is media relations, and 5 percent is helping a client get speaking engagements at nationwide conferences. I expected it to be different. Also, interesting, is that more than 60 percent of my time, monthly, is being used to contact the press aka media relations and secure mentions in print, online, and blogs. Only 10 percent of my time is spent doing social media relations, yet it accounts for 55 percent of my total business. What's my point? My point is: social media is a super food.

And, only one of them. While direct marketing and public relations agencies swallow the gift that is social media, form new muscle, and wreak havoc on expanding client programs beyond traditional means, social media relations is only one of the many super foods we eat up every day.

SEO is another. Podcasting. Webcasting. And so on and so on. If you were to sit down and map out the universe of PR, it is expanding, and now involves a smorgasbord (had to look up the spelling of that one) of integrated elements, similar to how we entertain our palettes with a complementary selection of wine, food, and desserts. Yes, I am hungry now.

My data also indicates that as PR people - and those who are without carrying the official title - can strategize and execute a social media PR program with very little and generate great results for clients. But, of course, any good chef - still hungry - would admit that to make a certain dish, you must allow for the right amount of time.

And, results are subjective - oh, lots to talk about here - unless of course you and your client or company identified the objectives up front - and all forks are pointed forward. Social media for the sake of doing social media is at the sake of social media. Unless of course, you know you have to do (social media) - which you do - and you get creative with it, instead of sitting on your hands.

Or, creativity is simply identifying what your competitors are not doing with it, and doing it better, as you can easily find the best practices of most anything these days - on the Internet! 

So, which super food is social media. They're not all equal. I think blueberries are one of the best. Walnuts are good too. It's been a long time since I've studied up on this stuff. My running days are long gone. Maybe it's worth applying this kind of thinking into how we strategize a PR program - push social media aside for a moment - and integrate SEO, social media, podcasting, webcasting, etc., all into the mix. Sound like too big a venture?

Probably so. But, nonetheless, worth the exercise. I think that while those blueberries may be the best thing on the super market shelf right now, it's not in excess, and, not without what else balances out that food with what else your body needs. Water, after all, makes up 70+ percent of your body. What kind of water are you drinking? Not drinking enough? Eating dark chocolate? Drinking one or two cups of coffee a day?

And, don't even get me started on what outside of the super food group will make you feel and look better aka exercise just the way advertising, direct marketing, and email marketing can blow your PR - and social media - program, most days...

I'll say it again - even though 55 percent of my current business is social media relations, my core business - media relations - is at 45 - and climbing. Just like any diet, I know what my vocational body needs. It needs to stick to the core of what is driving everything else. The PR objectives are the same, the tools are what's changing. 

Maybe one day social media relations will be a significant majority of my PR practice, but PR will still be at the core of my practice, just akin to water being at the source of my life - without it, I would die.

Notes from @shelisrael @dmscott @dspark @dowjones panel on "How Social Media is Changing the Enterprise" #djconvo

Dow Jones & Company hosted on Wednesday of this week what I have to call a special treat. An intimate cast of leading technology brands and social media marketers gathered around an antique wooden conference room table in the Wall Street Journal’s former newspaper Board room to talk new media. How ironic. Here’s the video compliments of UStream (turn up the sound or get really close to the speakers),

 

and below my notes. 

David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist, Keynote Speaker, and Author of the hit new book, World Wide Rave; Shel Israel, Best selling author of Naked Conversations and the upcoming book Twitterville; David Spark, Tech Journalist and Founder of Spark Media Solutions; and moderator Daniela Barbosa, Business Development Manager, Dow Jones, opened up the floor to discuss the new ways your employees, the outside world and future generations will communicate and collaborate using “social media.”

“How do you get started? How long does it take to get it right? How do you build a following?,” were a few of many questions Barbosa tossed at the panelists throughout the chat. The first thing is attitude, Meerman Scott responded. People get wound-up in the tools they have to be on. The four ways to generate attention for marketers, communicators or innovators are

1) you can buy attention – advertising

2) beg for attention – PR

3) you can bug people – sales

4) social media - different because you get attention by putting yourself out there on the web and earn attention.

People are coming at social media with one of the other ways, not earning the attention, unfortunately.

Spark says the same thing. People ask for a video and want to know what it costs. Better to see whom the audience is and if the audience will want to consume a story in the video. His four steps are

1) assessment – assess the situation – what do we have, who are the smart people in this room, who are our customers / partners who are smart, where are our connections

2) harness that in our editorial, create our own voice – not begging for attention – we’re being seen as a peer for equal information

3) production – instead of five videos, let’s create one video for multiple outputs and

4) social media is the distribution end – being on Twitter and Facebook is not understanding the business.

People may be talking about your business on a list serve, and no where else…

Israel disagrees with both.

He looks at it differently. Begin by listening and respond when you care to. Social media should not be approached to get a goal. It’s a “telephone,” communications tool. He takes the long view. People are pretty much the same. Earlier he was joking about killing a mastodon as being the dawn of social networking, getting others to collaborate over the shared need to carry away the heavy pieces of meat. One person (obviously) couldn’t do it alone.

What it (social media) does, Israel explains, that previous “social” technology didn’t do is let people interact very quickly, interact online as they do in “real life.” It’s a natural phenomenon that sometimes leads to conversations, sometimes not.

Are you thinking about your 15K followers when writing a Tweet? Israel has “milked the cow” of social media to get ideas for his next books. He’s asking questions to get answers. Israel wouldn’t get all of this help if he were not generous. If you want something, you have to give something that may not give back, he returns.

From a business perspective, how you can give to get, Meerman Scott retorts is, “If you’re interesting, people will want to follow you. If you have a bunch of people paying attention to what you’re saying or what you’re doing, it depends upon what you want to ultimately get.”

Social media is a cocktail party, Meerman Scott smirks. You can be a loud mouth salesperson, an advertiser pasting up banners all over the party, pay a PR person to talk about you, or have interesting conversations with people to see how you can help each other.

The topic is authenticity.

Do you let your PR person blog on behalf of the CEO? How do you get a salesforce into the conversation? Meerman Scott says to think about it, it’s how do you behave. When you’re thinking about guidelines, the lawyers are one viewpoint. You should listen to the janitors, secretaries, etc. as well. Take a look at IBM’s social computing guidelines – publicly available on the web to get a clue on how to do it right within your organization.

Divorce the media from the behavior of communication. How do you teach salespeople to use social media? Israel says not to push the tool on anyone. Salespeople typically need to use social media the least anyways because they are on the frontline, talking to customers all of the time. Social media’s greatest power is bringing that conversation into where it’s being discussed – outside the organization.

It really takes a key person to get the conversation going in social media, Spark says. “How do you teach it?,” Israel asks. What kind of conversation do you want to have? First start listening to the conversation that’s going on, then join in, if applicable. The experience always evolves from start to finish - when executives first start with social media, it never ends as the way it began.

You won’t believe the results you’ll have doing the tiniest things, Spark says. Meerman Scott says it needs to start with the people you’re trying to reach. You should have meetings with your potential customers, if they’re on social media and what they’re doing. Kids are on Facebook, salespeople listen to podcasts because they’re in their cars a lot. Organizations fail in social media efforts because they start from egotistical efforts – it’s all about what they have to offer when it shouldn’t be…

Israel disagrees and points out that it’s “less of an audience target sort of way.” You go where your (potential) customers can be found, does make sense, tipping his virtual hat to Meerman Scott. Though, Dell finds comments, where people say they suck. The first group that won’t change their mind is forgotten, but the others who say Dell sucks -for a reason - are responded to with thoughtful answers that solve those customers’ problems.

Frank Eliason started ComcastCares on Twitter. The brand damage was on YouTube, when the Comcast service person was video taped asleep on the job, but the social media marketing program went to Twitter because that’s where the Company (Frank) chose to connect with the customers. Type “Comcast sucks” into Google and there’s a quarter of a million responses, but there are more than half a million ComcastCares comments on Google too. There may be a group not in a place you think there is, Spark adds. The San Francisco comedians are not grouped together on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else. They have their own private wiki.

And what’s the biggest barrier to social media - fear, fear of the unknown, fear of what the lawyers may say, Meerman Scott says. It does take time to do social media. Who’s going to do it? What kind of time is it going to take? But, it all comes back to fear. Spark adds that if you can’t get business done right now, work on this time to build your reputation. “Does the social media stuff get me business?,” he reflects. Prices for Spark’s services have gone up 200-300 percent since he improved his reputation through his own PR (and social media) efforts.

Quick aside from Terri Molini, Corporate Communications at Sun Microsystems:

You do have to provide your employees with guidelines and a direction to the platform. Companies also have to have a dialog with their employees so they don’t get afraid or get frustrated with the platforms, which leads to adoption of social media - teaching your employees to become empowered.

When a person does something inappropriate in social media, the community jumps on that person, before the lawyers do, because the community doesn’t want one person to screw it up for the rest, Israel adds. Social media is real life.

It’s ok to be a dork or screw up online too. Though, if you make a mistake, and if someone is really angry with you, let it go. It’s ok to make mistakes with social media. Spark covered this topic, the biggest mistakes made by social media gurus, at length on Mashable.

What should you write (blog) about?

Take inward facing information, that’s not proprietary, Spark says. People are looking for the information, and if you get it out there, non-proprietary info, then people will discover and make decisions on purchasing your product. Meerman Scott adds, never write about your own products.

Nobody cares about your products, they care about problems and answers to problems. Once when Meerman Scott blogged, he admitted, a simple blog post got thousands of hits and tons of comments, but when he talked about his new book, no one has responded.

Real estate agents are the worst - rather than talk about the 3 bedroom house on Twitter, they should talk about issues homeowners are facing, schools their prospective homebuyers should live near, etc. Blog posts are all about the houses. Why? Real estate agents should give their audiences give more value.

Social media makes conversations scalable, Israel says. ComcastCares reaches more people than all of the people in the call center. However, if you look at social media as a mass medium model, unless you’re Barack Obama, it’s not going to work for you. In the reverse, if you can collect information from Twitter streams and blogs, from live events - get the bodies in the locations that you want them to be, then you’re golden, Spark adds.

We don’t like marketing messages, Israel repeats. If a person joins a conversation and yells “buy my product,” the people in the room are gone, Meerman Scott adds. We like being listened to. We do like people asking us what we think. Questions like where do you live, what do you do? That is the natural evolution of a conversation. As far as scale goes, Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “little things make a big difference” and you can make a big impact doing little things with social media. 

Open Letter to Social Media Experts

Dear Social Media Experts,

You know who you are - all 4,000 plus and more of you. You are a marketer, public relations professional, hobbyist, developer, integrator, what have you - and you have no place within a marketing organization. So, go out and make one. That was the big take-away at last night's Social Media Club San Francisco / Silicon Valley Chapter. 

There's really no place for you within any organization. The brands aren't sure where to put you - in the marketing or public relations departments. The best you can do is to focus on creating social media "campaigns," right? Wrong.

This is our chance Social Media Experts. Social media can be the glue which finally (and firmly) binds marketing and public relations. And, as Ustrategy's Ravit Lichtenberg pointed out - your social media strategy should also get buy in from other departments as it will impact your organization on a much larger scale than you have ever experienced before.

You know your customers are in control. Your brand is in their hands. Do you fight to make it what you think it should be or join the conversation. The ladder of course. Of course you say? You're still thinking of social media strategies as publicity stunts, marketing schemes, and advertising campaigns? Am I boring you when I remind the lot that we are turning communication into conversation? No, but you don't know what to do, do you?

Here's what needs to happen:

1) Business objectives need to be identified and outlined from the top down, from the client, by the client, and for the client. Collaborative programs between client and agency are key.

2) Benefits need to surface from deep within the weeds. Encourage clients to tell you what they think they need and give them options on how to improve their bottom line, give value to customers and get value from customers, build marketing / PR / social media into the whole ecosystem of the organization to meet business objectives.

3) Get to know the culture of your client's company or you will never hit your target - or get a chance to execute your social media strategy. The client has to be happy. And, you know when he/she is, you just do. Tap into what - emotionally - drives them to work everyday and how that translates in products and services to their customers. 

4) Learn from your clients and don't think you know their customers. Ask them. Most companies have done some preliminary or in-depth customer research and have insight into their customers' interests and behavior. Develop strategies which speak to their customers, where they are, giving them what your clients' know they want. 

5) Analyze your results, and analyze them again, and again, and again, over time. Marketing / PR / social media is an evolutionary process, not a revolutionary process. It takes time to develop, mature a brand, and time can change your client's brand, in good ways or bad. Be ready for anything, and stay on top of what is going on...

6) Bring your best game to your clients and don't be afraid to take risks and make strategically sound suggestions. If you're armed with the right data, historical data that is, and you've studied your client's business, you will be able to make creative and intellectual recommendations, setting them apart from the rest.

7) Oh, and, by gosh man/woman, don't start a client thinking that you're going to win an award for your work. Put your eyes on your client. Focus your heart on helping them improve their business. This is NOT ABOUT YOU. It's about what you have learned and how you can apply your background to change or improve your client's business.

We all "get" social media. It's not rocket science. But, what I'm finding is that a lot of us don't know how to or understand that it's important to develop a social media strategy that fits within your clients' marketing and public relations departments, and speaks to reaching your clients' business objectives.

Now go impress those clients.

Warm Regards,

David Libby

Don't Be a Social Media Blow Hard

If I was "Tessie" in Annie, the broadway musical, right now my line would be, "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness." Yep, hope you read that with feeling. Because aside from expressing any vulgarities in this blog post, that's the most passionate way I can communicate that there are a host of social media "blow hards" out there, and I hope you're not one of them.

What's a social media blow hard? You get the tools. You're an expert on everything and anything Facebook, Twitter (and all related tools), FriendFeed, yada yada. But, what you don't get is that without a background in marketing and/or public relations, there's no sustainable program for you, your client or your company. It's all about the tool.

And, it's really not all about the tool I'm going to say that again. It's not about the tool. It's what you do with it, and why. And, in some cases, hopefully more than I can count on my fingers and toes, a good number of you are working with clients or within your company to find ways to innovate beyond the limits of the current social media tools.

SO, there you have it, I said it. Don't be a social media blow hard. Though, I think it's best if I spell it out for you in more ways than one. Here's some tips to avoid being the blow hard in your agency or company. And, you can say I said so...

1) You're the tree, now branch out - You've had a few, five or fifteen years in marketing and PR and don't know what to do next. All of your new hires come with chips inserted into their brains and just get this social media stuff. You think you're obsolete, but your so absolutely unique because so few of you actually get the big picture and can apply that knowledge to executing with social media tools. You just need to branch out. Take a risk. Take what you've learned over the years in marketing and PR and apply it to social media to create sustainable word of mouth campaigns.

2) Get out more often - I know you're bedtime has become earlier as you've aged, but get over it, and get out, go to a select number of social media events, and listen and learn from those who have new ideas and books to share. Don't be afraid to admit (to yourself) that you don't know what the heck that new social media tool is, and take the time to put it all together as it may apply to driving revenue for your clients and increasing the number of personal relationships and brand awareness for your clients (or your company).

3) Get your hands dirty - Don't pass off any social media development to junior staff. Do it with them, and do it yourself. Don't get me wrong. I don't think you should marry yourself to the tactics of the medium, but don't divorce yourself from being that close to it either. You need to be as much in the weeds as everyone else in your organization, and hope that in 6-12 months you put yourself out of a job because you're onto the next great marketing discovery.

4) Oooh, you're strategic - Do the right thing and follow the right people and READ Forrester's book Groundswell and Adam Metz's book There is No Secret Sauce, among many others (which I'm not given' up on this blog post). You have to learn from the best to stay competitive and understand the breadth of what you can do with social media and how best to do it.

And, lastly, if you're a social media blow hard, admit it. There are those of you that excel at focusing on the technology and developing it. If that's what you do, God bless, we need you too. Just don't try to oversell yourself on strategizing and executing on everything and their mother. Sell yourself as part of a larger team, give your clients options and help them map out a plan. Play to your strengths and let others play with you, and focus on building the brand awareness and revenue of your clients or your company!

The Affects of Social Media on Culture

Last week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Christopher Richards, an old friend and colleague, and founder of slownowdown.org, an idea originated from his post-graduate work on finding a balance between work and life. We talked about his latest projects, slowdown.org and how social media has (and has not) affected the rate at which we run our lives. 

“Coming to America (from England), I was surprised to see how hard American’s worked,” Christopher started. He was really trying to design a life for himself, allowing him to live a creative, more purposeful life. “Time is all we have,” he added. And, quoting “Why We Make Mistakes” by Joseph T. Hallinan, Richards pointedly asked me, “how do you want to spend you time?”

The pressures doctors go through studying to be doctors are extreme. They have to operate on four hours of sleep, Richards continued. But, there needs to be more rationality around it (the use of time). “The Promise of Sleep,” by sleep researcher, William C. Demnent, another reading list recommendation by Richards, has amazing stories about how stupid we become when we’re sleep deprived. We actually lose IQ points when we’re sleep deprived. Chronic stress can also blind you to your unique identity. You might be a good performer, some of the time, but you can forget who you are.

Richards went to art school in England. “I learned that in order to draw, you have to slow down. You see differently. A colleague once talked about how he needs to slow down and, in terms of sensory input, “you’re cut off from the body. What do your socks feel like right now?,” he asked. Nobody knows.

As educational guru, Sir Ken Robinson says: We’re educated from the neck up, and slightly to one side. We value the left-brain only. The right brain gets shut out and depersonalized.

To get back in touch with your creativity, “take a drawing class,” Richards recommends. “You’re slowed down, and paying attention to what’s going on. You become more aware of people, what’s going on in relationships, or just in terms of listening to music, observing if you’re a ‘painter.’ You will have a richer perspective of being in the world, your everyday moment to moment experience.”

“Everything we know is in the past.” Slowing down allows you to view things in a different perspective.”

Richards organically created slownowdown .org through his rich vein of humor, and an idea of play as outlined on Ted.org, by Dr. Stuart Brown. The more we work, the more we identify with work and cling, hang on to that, which is not good because if we’re let go (fired), we lose our identity. We’re kind of doing too much. Slowing down is not doing too much. It’s doing just enough. Like on LinkedIn, we see who has the most connections, but “who (really) cares? There is value to discovering a more vital personal self.”

Time is the real value. Everything needs time. Of course, we need money to get by. You can’t just kick back and be a lazy bum. Slow isn’t about being lazy.

There are a lot of people grasping at the bottom, who are so hungry, panicked, tightly bound, that they cannot be expansive and generous. Even if you have no money, you can be generous. Look at the sales model, where people are put into competitive, grasping environments. It’s not a healthy state of being.

You do have an identity on social media. People who take the time to view a person’s profile can learn a lot. “There is value in social media,” Richards exclaims. People can help one another using social media. There’s value in having a connection. It can be meaningful in many different ways. There are some people who just want to talk about the weather or what they saw on TV last night.

People will choose their level of engagement that suits them with social media. There is definitely a craving for face-to-face interaction. Things run a course of their own. You may be working in your office by yourself, and then you’ve had enough. You want change. You may want to get out and meet some people.

“I see the media as being very democratic.”

There are millions and millions of different viewpoints. In some areas, we have the same values. Social media has opened us up to seeing other people’s point of view. And, it takes time. If you can be doing something better, then do it, like learning a language, becoming better at bridge – like in the 50s when people supposedly had “hobbies.”

Social media may cause people not to have interpersonal skills, he counters. Coming back to slowing down, people used to focus on body language. That informs us, informs ourselves, and is where we began. Knowing the limits of social media is good. There are people out there with addictive personalities who are going to be addicted to social media no matter what. If it serves them, then that’s good. Some people make money on the Internet, others use it as a form of entertainment.

Either way, Richards says, he’s not for or against social media, and he himself is solely focused on having a richer, more satisfying life where he can be free to do the kind of work he finds interesting while also painting, writing humor, and slowly appreciating the world and people around him.

The Long and Winding Road of Social Media Marketing and Public Relations

"What is your social media marketing strategy?," wrote Lee Odden on his Online Marketing Blog, in March 08. I had to mention the date because I think his blog post was ahead of it's time. No, Odden doesn't owe me any money nor do I owe him anything in return. Though, I do owe myself (and you) one thing, and that's perspective on where we are (and should be) with social media today. And, that's where Odden hits the mark.

Odden wrote about social media being an "effective marketing channel." I often talk about it as being an "effective public relations tool." Both are correct, but very different in strategic development and execution. One step further, my friend Adam Metz talks about himself as being the "how to guy" (and agency) for strategic creation AND tactical execution of social media. Then there's your "Pink Floyd" of social media, Brian Solis, as Metz aptly coined. The "visionary," talking about the culture of social media. I've also heard Social Media Club's Chris Heuer be very Solis-esque.

So, yes, "There is No Secret Sauce," as Metz explains in his eBook of the same name - when it comes to social media strategy and execution. And, as you've (hopefully not) just realized - there are a lot of different kinds of sauces to choose from. Ketchup is ketchup is ketchup, yet all brands are different, and some are better than others.

I think this is why I had such a hard time swallowing the social media press release. There's no one way of doing anything. Is there? Aren't our approaches based on our respective experiences, and how we were taught to swallow and spit them back out? So, how is it that one document can be the guide for every way that we disseminate information, socially? Maybe it was just meant to be the starting point of the conversation?

Steve Rubel, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang, Tara Hunt, Clara Shih, Adam Jackson, yours truly (some of whom are mentioned on Odden's blog post above) are all not the same person. Every one of those "experts" in this economy are going to do quite well, if not doing so already. Why?

Social media is new. It's like the film business was in the 20s. You could take big risks, experiment, identify some stand out talent, and make big bucks. The real question is who will be standing on the long tail, 6 months from now, maybe even 5 or 10 years from now? I have to point back to Odden. I'm not suggesting that we should add yet another expert to the list, but have to give you a virtual slap upside the head - and remind you (and myself) that social media IS AN "effective marketing channel."

I reminded a client's social media developer vendor of this in a meeting when I said, "It's not about the technology." He disagreed. Sure, the technology enables us to do great things. But, we create the technology for a purpose, not the other way around. Well, we're supposed to. Twitter got lucky.

And, if that technology doesn't exist, we can create it. That's the power of companies like Gigya, and why it is still around, and growing. It innovates to serve the purpose of its client's marketing and public relations objectives. Not the other way around.

So, who will be left standing? It will be the “digital agency” that isn’t afraid to let its marketing and public relations heritage shine when developing social media strategies and integrating them within their overall marketing and public relations programs. Oh yeah, and being able to execute on that doesn't hurt either. Most folks fall down over their ideas, and trample themselves. But, I digress...

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of social media “experts” out there which know how to drive social media strategies and tactics for clients, but so few who can actually take those clients – on a road trip with their marketing and public relations programs to show their clients' customers the benefits of trusting their brands, now and forever.

See you on the road…

How to Build a "Circle of Influence" in Social Media

Working in "Hollywood," we had celebrity clients who had millions of fans, some who had thousands, others who had hundreds, and a few who were relatively unknown. All had one thing in common - all created a "Circle of Influence." Every star had an audience who surrounded them, supported them, and were loyal to their celebrity's craft because in one way or another, that famous person touched each fan in a very personal way. What each personality had in common was an uncanny, in some cases trained ability, to believe in their character, their purpose. And, that is the cornerstone of building a "Circle of Influence" in social media.

I've heard social media experts talk about being "down to earth," "helpful to others (not just for their own commercial good)," and focused on "listening, not always talking" in conversation. Those are all tools, some inherent in who we are and other traits which we can learn. But, the act of being "nice" or "genuine" can not bare fruit unless one believes in themselves and what they have to offer.

It's that foundation, that passion, that drives visionaries to tirelessly focus on what they can do to reach their end goal. It's that studying, that dedication, which helps us connect with others, build community, and work hard together toward a common goal. That is the power of social media and how you can build a "Circle of Influence."

I'll even go as far to say that the size of your circle will vary depending upon what you believe. Some people believe in some things (and people) more than others. It's just natural. And, you don't need to have thousands, even millions of people in your circle, to be influential. I would, as a matter of fact, advise you to be careful not to attract too many people as you may then cause them by nature to believe that you have a social responsibility to be the pied piper within your circle of unconnected fans.

It's a rare superstar who can manage that level of influence because to be everything to everyone all of the time is to be no one at all, but to appeal to the masses at a great cost. The cost of not connecting with those who are actually connected with each other - and to you - through a common purpose, whether they know it or not.

It's also important to take calculated, strategic risks within your circle to challenge your followers, make them think, encourage them to participate, allow them to attract others, become part of the conversation, and grow with you.

We have great influence over our peers if we take responsibility for our actions and act morally within our cultures and societies, of which many are not even the same across the United States. We need to tap into what we really believe and stop thinking about how we can influence others because of how many people we can attract. We need to stand up for who we are even if it means letting some people down. 

I'll say it again. We can not be afraid to take risks. We need to believe in who we are and what we do to create a "Circle of Influence." It's just not good enough to be a nice person. We have to have a great product too that many can believe in whether you're the product or it lives on the web. 

Either way, it needs to live within you.

We Don’t Know Enough about Our Customers

“We don’t know enough about our customers,” kicked-off Andy Allbritten, 28 year veteran of international high technology and customer services experience with companies such as Oracle, PeopleSoft and National Semiconductor, at the East Bay MashEX in Pleasanton, CA. The event was hosted by yours truly, and Chris Symank and David M. Lu, financial advisors, respectively. Below are my notes from the event.

I hope you learn something, I did (a lot).

“Most businesses don’t even know who their customers are,” Allbritten continued. “Traditionally we used our sales teams to gather customer info, but after the initial sale it stops. Then someone calls for support – and we don’t know enough about them; who they are and what they need.”

Allbritten followed talking about how some  companies don’t match up who calls the help desk versus who is paying for it. Others don’t even know which products some of their customers own. Keeping track of what a customer bought and what they’re entitled to is even challenging at some of the best tech brands out there today, he added.

“Real business intelligence is knowing what your customers have bought and what they’re really using. You want to know what you can sell back into your customer base versus what they already bought from you.”

Allbritten resonated when he exclaimed, “In these tough economic times, you need to market and sell into your customer base.”

For retailers, discount cards are a great way to capture information about your customers. You can spend money to market and use it to capture information. You can also create services to market back into your customer base, assuming you know what your customers purchased and what they are using.

Unless you have comprehensive information about your customers it’s very hard to sell back into your customer base. With a new product, you need to know which person in your customer’s organization to market to. You know who purchased the product, but is that person the point person for what you’re selling now?

It’s important to “understand who the real customer is,” added Allbritten, “and creating services and products that serve that customer’s needs.” Customers can also provide you with great feedback on your competitors, and what they’re doing.

“You have to get the details,” says Allbritten.  An example is “The ‘customer hierarchy’.” How is the business of your customer structured? Who owns who? Has your client’s company been bought or merged?

Who is the customer? The person that approves the products, uses the products, pays the bill – it’s all of the above. In terms of measuring satisfaction, who are you going to ask? Knowing all of the people involved is important.

Customer data goes bad at a rate of 3 percent a month. If you’ve got less than 90 percent accurate data then it’s hard to make decisions on your business. People look at data clean-up efforts, but it’s not a one-time thing – but an on-going process to keep clean.

In providing support to customers “Problem solving should start immediately,” Allbritten continued.

“I’m not a fan of moving support offshore, unless the product is designed offshore and they know it well.” One company wanted better support and waited for the Australian support team to come online to solve their problems because those support teams were “better” than the people in Santa Clara.

If you are making major changes or going through an acquisition it’s critical to put together a communications plan. You can prevent from losing any customers by knowing who the customers are and communicate with them through email, direct mail, web sites, the “portal” and what every it takes.

Where do you gather information? Excel unfortunately has become the everything and anything solution, but is better than nothing. Companies also use CRM, ERP, FMS and SFA and other systems to manage customer data. Pick one place to store  customer data and integrate it all together. No one in the SMB space needs to buy software – because software as a service (SaaS) does a great job.

“What’s your single source of truth, for your customer data” was Allbritten big take-away message.

Customer data needs to be linked together, even if all of the systems are integrated together. And, what are some customer data common mistakes? According to Allbritten…

1. Don’t use an IT asset management system as a CRMS
2. Don’t use a trouble tick system as a CRMS
3. Don’t use sticky notes as workflow
4. Don’t use Excel as an SFA or customer database long-term
5. Don’t wait to address the data problem
6. Don’t think it is just a sales’ problem
7. Don’t interact with a customer without information
8. Don’t ignore the issue 

You can also provide incentives for the customer to update their own information through a portal. Customers don’t always update their information with the information you need, but the incentives will help.

What you SHOULD DO is to:

1. Create a process to capture and store customer data
2. Continually cleanse your data
3. Implement a real SFA system
4. Implement a real CRM system
5. Use SaaS offerings if possible
6. Do image contracts if possible – get rid of those dozens of boxes filled with paper contracts
7. Think globally / customers do
8. Automate product data capture
9. Create a “single source of truth.”

If you’ve acquired a company or merged with another, move quickly to integrate data quickly. You can use that information to communicate with customers – fast – to tell them what’s happening. You also really need to reward the forums and bloggers who are helping you support your customers.

“A simple definition of a satisfied customer:

• those who pay their bills on time
• buys more from you
• and tells others to buy from you

that’s what really makes up a satisfied customer.” 

Once you have customer information, measure it for profitability. Sales sometimes sells a lot more software than customers use aka “shelfware” or customers take a long time to implement the software purchased a long time ago. But, if you know what your customers bought and how they’re using it, your company could offer advanced customer service to take better care of those customers, helping them with what they already own beyond what your customer is using today.

How are you measuring customer profitability? Costs of attaining new customers is very high - do you know which customers generate the most profit? Can you shed the others? What are your floor prices? Are you billing everything owed?

Almost everybody needs to be supported. Most CEOs & CIOs will not buy software without support. It’s important to understand an agreement gets renewed. When we put in the proper sales process for selling services, you can get renewals at a 95 plus renewal rate and have a much more “comforting” financial projection. You are the trusted advisor and partner – not the vendor – the person who is part of the vision of your customer’s company.

How well do you know your customers?

Andy Allbritten is Founder and Principal of AE Consulting. In the fall of 2006, Andy Allbritten founded a consulting practice focused on providing international operational and organizational analysis to executive management of global enterprise software vendors.

Mr. Allbritten has provided services that have ranged from global pricing recommendations to analysis of global support, services, sales, IT, and development. He identified for one client over $10m in incremental revenue and cost savings. Mr. Allbritten’s clients have included Hyperion Solutions, iSOFT Group Plc and IBA Health Plc. Engagements have been in the US, UK, the Netherlands, Germany, India, and Australia. 



Prior to founding AE Consulting, Mr. Allbritten was most recently Ingres Corporation's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Support and Services. With more than 28 years of international high technology and customer services experience, Mr. Allbritten joined Ingres from Oracle, where he was Group Vice President of Worldwide Support Services Sales & Operations. Before that, he was Managing Director/ Group Vice President of Support Services, Worldwide Sales & Operations at PeopleSoft. In this position, he was responsible for PeopleSoft’s worldwide customer services organization, the global maintenance line of business and tiered services programs that accounted for $1.4B -- half of the company’s annual revenue.

He also held several other leadership positions within PeopleSoft, including Vice President of Worldwide Customer Services, Vice President/CIO of Technical Operations and Vice President of Business Operations for PeopleSoft eCenter (a hosting business), and Director of Corporate Pricing and Licensing. Before that, he spent 17 years at National Semiconductor in various operational management and production control positions. 

Mr. Allbritten has a bachelor’s degree from Santa Clara University and a master’s in business administration from the Anderson School at UCLA.

The Power of Social Networks Panel @SocialMediaClub Event, Part 2

Here's my take from the 2nd part of the Social Media Club event at Duarte Design on The Power of Social Networks. Panelists included were Clara Shih, who wrote the Facebook Era; Tara Hunt, who wrote The Whuffie Factor (it came out today!); Adam Jackson of 140 Characters; and John Hagel.

The focus is on trust, Heuer leads. The rise of the celebrity culture, and the difference of strong vs. weak relationships. We need to be building the strong relationships. Isn't trust at the center? "Strong and weak connections are essentially important," states Hunt. That's important for our personal growth. We all had to build social capital from ground zero, doing good deeds. Oprah has an arsenal of "whuffie" aka likeability and brand trust. Now she's speaking at a conference on Twitter. "Expert," Heuer yells.

Oprah is the Godzilla in the Twitter City. All of sudden the context gets changed, and all of a sudden the bar is raised. Mainstream media is disrupting social media, Heuer adds. How do we express that better? Doing it from the Facebook perspective, the Facebook profile started with a trusted source. People are willing to give it up to get something back in value, Shih states. 

This is where I LOST my Internet connection at the event and LOST the next two paragraphs – so you will have to read Hunt’s book “The Whuffie Factor”…

The behavior of people on Facebook is not really to buy. Search is focused on intention to buy, Shih states. As we move off of Facebook, we are going to web sites where people do have an intention to buy. Ads are only shown to people who we know want products, people who are prime targets. Facebook is “hyper targeting” Shih continues. What’s really powerful is if a 13 year old girl shops for a camera and is shown age appropriate products.

Should we strengthen the weak ties? There is strength in the weak ties, Hunt says. In our strong ties, people that “have my back,” will help me move, I can cry on their shoulder. Reciprocity is important. You can ask a weak tie for a favor or an introduction for a job.

Final thoughts…

Your weak ties – your business relationships – is where most of your business will take place. Your friends and family are just that, friends and family, but not the source of your income. Facebook is more casual and more personal, because of the online identity template. Shih cold called people through her Facebook profile because it gave them context on who she was before they decided to buy her book “The Facebook Era.”

Business is not the be all end all, Hunt adds. Business and the personal has crossed over a lot. Her life does not revolve around how much she can leverage her personal relationships. Success has come to her. The most important thing is a friend who can bring you soup (when you’re sick). That’s what these social networks are all about.

Heuer adds, we have a different impression of the world around because we are consuming personal media from each other. We’re not consuming it from big media. Big media cares about the big numbers.

“People ask me if I should have a personal and professional Twitter?,” Jackson adds. How do I get the real big numbers in followers? If you’re going to go online, don’t be a big conglomerate, but “human.”

Hagel finishes, trust is a hugely broad concept. There’s a notion of situated trust. My doctor can give me good medical, not fashion, advice. The power of social networks is around talent development and learning, we have to holistically get to know people. The personal and professional need to be integrated - most of us compartmentalize each other. It’s important to create a presence and visibility. I worry about these tools which Facebook is using which “compartmentalize” our lives, Hagel said. 

How do we bring it all back together again and create trust?

The Power of Social Networks with John Hagel III @SocialMediaClub Event, Part 1

"Most people really don't care about privacy," started John Hagel III  at the Social Media Club's The Power of Social Networks event at Duarte Design in Mountain View, interviewed by Chris Heuer during a fireside chat.

What people really want is value. The point is getting value is getting value in terms of conveinence, and that which relates to you. Facebook isn't really an infomediary. The real potential is to become an advisory of what we're not aware of in terms of connecting with people and becoming aware of the right products.

Most of the social networks are having trouble harnessing advertising. Advertising is still seen as the panacea. The business model is advertising, Hagel adds. He's skeptical of advertising as the way to build a business on the Internet. It's "blasting them with your message" and marketing is more about attracting, getting people to seek you. Advertising will take different forms. The real necessity for businesses online is what is the value business can provide to customers, and what value will they really perceive as best for them.

"The Internet is at odds with the desire of the business world," Hagel was quoted by Heuer. 

Overall, the tendency is to focus on short term profits. Moving too quickly can undermine the long-term profitability of relationships. You really have to be focused on building the relationships, before you address building the business that relate to the relationship.

It's going to take a lot of lost money to drive home the message that if you're in it for short term profit, it's not the place to be. The Internet is a black hole for most large companies, Hagel continues. Metrics are tied to sheer numbers for impact, and eventually the lesson will be learned once they lose enough money.

There's a fundamental shift in society, from a world of push to a world of pull. What we're focused on, Hagel says, is how you're dealing with an uncertain world in a world of pull. How do you pull the resources to you which fulfill your needs. Search is the archytype of that. How do I create opportunities for me to be presented with opportunities and things that I didn't even know about. Most executives just say that's luck. 

"I think there's an opportunity to shape serendipity," state Hagel. 

Another level is achieving our most potential. How do you create environments where you build things and create things and build new knowledge in that process, so we all get better faster working collaboratively in these kind of environments.

"Not only how do you survive, but how you thrive?"

Most companies don't measure return on retention. Financial measures tell you how you did in the past. What you have to focus on are operational metrics which give you a view of the future. This return on attention is really critical, both from a customer viewpoint, 1) what am I paying attention to and 2) what am I getting in return.

How about return on information? How much time is a customer giving a company information? How much value is the customer getting in return for the information that he/she provided. The user needs tangible value for the information given, which builds trust. It's a return on information for the customer and vendor.

@SocialMediaClub Talks Big Issues Affecting Social Media with @briansolis @cathybrooks @chrisheuer

Cathy Brooks and Chris Heuer talk about the big issues affecting the social media industry today. This week, they are joined by Brian Solis to discuss his take on Social Media Club's Question of the Week #6, Is social media a popularity contest or is social media about genuine relationships? His blog post on Ashton Kutcher and CNN's race to a million twitter followers was a great exposition of this topic - "The Race to 1,000,000 Followers Sends Twitter and Social Media into Relevance and Irrelevance." You can listen to future radio shows by visiting http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Social-Media-Hour

Here's what I caught from their conversation...

"Things are changing toward the human," Brooks says. Are we learning to be better communicating using tech and how does that translate in the real world? Solis says that social media is opening new communication for many. Some haven't found their cadence or rhythm and others have. Some use social media to broadcast and self promote and many have used it as a way to pay it forward, spotlight others and for "good old fashion relationship building."

Heuer adds, "The more we use tech, the more we write, the more we Twitter - being forced to get those big ideas down into a Tweet have helped my writing skills." But, are you thinking in a 140 characters? Everyone is different, Heuer says, but, seriously, there are folks who don't even have a high school education and they're using these tools to communicate to friends and family. "We're expanding our overall media literacy."

Today's NY Times, front page of the science section, on "What are Friends For?" Brooks reads that friendship trumps friends and family. Now we're connected again to friends from high school, we're re-connected with our 9 year old friends. "For the most part," Solis adds, "I've used social networks to create relationships around social context, talking with people who share the same interests and passions." Consumption is an art of curating, an "attention dashboard - I still pick up the phone to communicate with family and friends."

"Social media is based on respect," Solis adds. Even if you have opposing views, you have an opportunity to express yourself, and you can walk away with different impressions and beliefs. Brooks says that a lot of her followers don't necessarily agree with her views, but follow her anyway.

Solis talks about the "race to a million" - @aplusk (aka Ashton Kutcher) wanted to have a million followers first on Twitter, to beat @cnn - and @oprah gets involved. Initially he was put off by the competition. Celebrities don't need to get that many followers to fund a charity. Ashton's video expressing the power of the experience was a good video. "You are going to be judged by your last 20 Tweets." Whether or not, these types of competitions might inadvertently change the culture of Twitter. It could change Twitter into a popularity contest, that is juvenile.

We have to talk about intent, Heuer adds. Though, celebrities are just now experiencing Twitter, and getting as excited as we did when we first came upon the tool. "Can you imagine if Princess Di had social media at her finger tips?" Another good reason for Oprah to join the social media fray. Interested to see if she will carry her brand onto Twitter.

We in tech are in a bit of a vacuum. But, actors like Ashton and Oprah are old school media types, Brooks said. Are they going to absorb us into the old school media world or are we going to drag them down into the weeds with us. "Can the statusphere save journalism?" Solis asks (as blogged about in TechCrunch). Instead of trying to get people to come to them, why not go to where the people are and build a community that represents them and get them to follow you. It's a great way to build a community around what you stand for, finishes Solis.

Five Ways to Influence Perception

Yeah, I can't sleep. I wasn't tired when I laid down. Oh well. Messing around with the iPhone I found a TypePad blogging app. The app was easy to download, and so my amazing thumb is softly caressesing each shrinking word. The challenge is what to blog. 

I took most of last week off and kept the iPhone handy so as not to feel too much out of the loop. Most of my time was spent with my nuclear family and the extend(eads) on both my mother's and wife's sides. What was the great takeaway? Public relations only works if you achieve how you want to be perceived. 

Family is the master at spinning the truth. Doctors call it denial. Others call it protection or if put on someone else, projection. Though, whatever the label, and however it gets sliced, some believe that the truth really doesn't matter as long as the perception is believed to be true. Here's my top 5 ways to get across being perceived, as you want others to, truthfully. 

1) Have a story - no matter what age, people love being told stories. And, the more believable as it pertains to your shared experiences, the better. 

2) Say it with heart - stare off into the distance, shed a tear, say your story with heart. If you don't believe it no one else will. 

3) Be consistent - keep the story plain and simple (and short) and make sure it's the same one you're telling everyone else. 

4) Get others involved corroborate your story with others so factual events bring truth and meaning to your story. Ask others to contribute as that adds another notch of credibility for your story. 

5) Dont lie - if you lie it will come back to haunt you because a good story is told over and over and eventually someone will catch on. 

Perception is simply another way of viewing the same situation. Very few of us ever see anything in the same exact way. Colors are different, even sounds. But if you choose to share your way of thinking with another then they may come to perceive your way as their new way of thinking on any truth be told given subject.

Keanu Reeves Where Art Thou?

I've got the next greatest idea for a sci fi film and need to find Keanu Reeves. It's about a guy who, for decades, adds to his social networking profile through blogs, social networks, micro blogging, and other unheard of tools, only to find - two hundred years after his death- that he wasn't real at all, but only a network of interlinked web sites and social media tools. Scary, huh?

I was reflecting with my wife on the fact that it's unlikely that our children will know the names of and identities of our great grandparents, if even we do today (which I don't). Yet, my great, great, great grandkids, and beyond - assuming my kids have kids - will be able to "Google" or find me through some "WayBack Machine." Anything is possible.

As a matter of fact, I may (or my kids may, which is more likely) be able to sit down with their great great greats to do the search, assuming that our society can find a way to regenerate our cells at such a rapid rate that will cause us to age over 80 years, maybe even more. We've all seen those classic cars, still on the road, maybe not with wooden frames, but still on the road.

This is not science fiction. The possibilities of what we can achieve are limitless, if we don't kill each other first. Oh, and for those of you that want to follow Keanu Reeves, click here...even if it's not his "official" Twitter site.

Digital Engagement: The Book - by Leland Harden and Bob Heyman

If there's one thing that we share, and can not decrease or increase, it's a matter of time. Time is a constant. If you tell me you do not have enough time to go somewhere to eat, drink, sleep or read - Digital Engagement: The Book, then you just don't know how to manage the time you have, and are wasting time when you could be gaining knowledge.

There are some things that are definitely worth doing. And, besides the natural have to dos which keep us healthy, reading Digital Engagement will keep us informed as if we were digital experts from the very beginning. It's an unusual book in that it takes a person back and sets the stage for how that person can leverage - in the present - search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, and all of the Web 2.0 tools you need to compete in the digital marketplace.

The book, written by Bob Heyman and Leland Harden gives hands on advice on how-to "capture customers and build brand loyalty," in plain English. Don't believe me? Get a sample of it for yourself here or read a digital engagement expert's opinion on the subject. Either way, the book is a must have for any wannabe digital marketer who wants to get real world advice in case study form from many of the top brands of today like Toyota and Tommy Hilfiger, among many others.

Purchase a copy on Amazon here to learn how to engage customers online - or risk missing out on what you think you know...and don't!

Microsoft Online Services Available Worldwide

Furthering its commitment to deliver communications and collaboration software as enterprise-class services, today at CeBIT 2009 Microsoft Corp. announced that the Business Productivity Online Suite, part of Microsoft Online Services, is now available for trial to businesses of all sizes in 19 countries. In addition, Microsoft will release Microsoft Office Communications Online, for instant messaging and presence, and the Business Productivity Online Deskless Worker Suite, an extremely economical e-mail, calendaring and collaboration service for the occasional user.

That paragraph above was taken directly from the Microsoft Online Services press release. Why am I blogging about it? Aside from being one of the chosen bloggers to cover Microsoft Online Services in the U.S. and overseas, I think it's important to mention this announcement now because the move - for big and small companies - to any online services today will be a significant savings to their bottom line tomorrow.

“These services open up new possibilities for businesses to control costs while continuing to enhance the productivity of their employees,” said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division. “Customers can save between 10 percent and 50 percent in IT-related expenditures as a result of deploying Microsoft Online Services.”

And, those companies are not alone. Palo Alto Software shared that one of its Email Center Pro customers realized a 50-percent gain in email sales conversions by using the company's online email response management and distribution service for small businesses. HerbalBuddy.com, a top distributor of Herbalife products in the United States, was faced with a big work flow efficiency issue. Its previous email management system left the company uncertain whether or not customer inquiries were slipping through the cracks, an especially harrowing realization in the midst of an economic downturn. The bulk of its business is handled online and accessibility to customers is vital to its success.

HerbalBuddy.com chose to work with Email Center Pro, which centralized the customer and business email messaging effort and made it transparent to the entire organization. Messages sent to addresses like info@, sales@ and support@ are now accessible to multiple users inside one common interface. Once in this central location, users apply a host of collaborative features that truly differentiate the service.

A few days ago I hired a new employee and spent about two hours taking her through Email Center Pro. On her second day she performed flawlessly in the service. It was refreshing.

"We are at least 50 percent more efficient than before we started using Email Center Pro" said Daniel Lewis, HerbalBuddy.com Senior Partner. "The service has simplified things, streamlined our work flow and made us more profitable. In an (economic) time when you want to capitalize on every sale that you can, especially given the importance of the holiday retail season, Email Center Pro ensures that you're not missing out on any customer interactions."

Microsoft's Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are available for trial in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Organizations worldwide will be able to trial and purchase the entire Business Productivity Online Suite, including Office Communications Online, in April.

In addition, Microsoft is committed to providing opportunity for a global ecosystem of partners that will sell, customize and provide consulting, migration and managed services for Microsoft Online Services customers around the world.

The Deskless Worker Suite, including Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Online Deskless Worker, will also be available to organizations in the 19 countries. The Deskless Worker Suite is a low-cost solution designed for users who don’t have access to messaging and collaboration capabilities today.

The worldwide availability of the Deskless Worker Suite will offer customers an affordable e-mail and collaboration solution for occasional users. By providing a cost-effective subscription rate (currently listed at 2.56 euros or 2.01 pounds per month per user), the Deskless Worker Suite will make it possible for organizations to give all employees access to the same messaging and collaboration systems. Today, in organizations that have deployed e-mail, more than 40 percent of employees do not have e-mail.*

The Deskless Worker Suite will be available for trial and for purchase worldwide in April.

A growing number of companies across the globe, from small businesses to large enterprises, are already adopting Microsoft Online Services, which were first released in the U.S. last fall. Today, Microsoft announced that pharmaceutical multinational GlaxoSmithKline will deploy the Business Productivity Online Suite, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online, Office Live Meeting and the Deskless Worker Suite, to its employees worldwide.

“GlaxoSmithKline has more than 100,000 employees, hundreds of business partners, and locations around the world, so effective collaboration is critical to our business,” said Bill Louv, chief information officer, GlaxoSmithKline. “We have chosen Microsoft Online Services because it promises to deliver a simple intuitive Information Workplace that should not only value to the company through simplification, but provide an improved user experience and ultimately create a more productive GSK.”

“The move to Microsoft Online Services will help GlaxoSmithKline cut operational costs by an estimated 30 percent and create a variable cost model that will provide increased flexibility in the future,” said Ingo Elfering, vice president of Information Technology Strategy, GlaxoSmithKline.

An executive Q&A video with GlaxoSmithKline’s CIO is available.

A GlaxoSmithKline executive blog is available on the Microsoft Online Services team blog.

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