Sifting through my email this morning I read my regular blogs including Chris Brogan’s. I was fortunate enough to see that Run Level Media captured a recent talk he gave at New Media Atlanta last week. I’ve been fortunate enough to see Chris talk a few different times on the topic of social media, but this one seemed a whole lot different (see video below).

Throughout the talk, Chris hits on several points that I believe are so relevant for businesses participating or looking to participate in social media. After hearing Chris talk I was inspired to put together the Top  3 Ways Businesses Must Embrace Social Media:

1 – Listen & Learn: How often do we forget as marketers that our organization’s biggest fans aren’t fans because of the product, service, upgrade, enhancement or features that we offer & often promote through our various communications platforms. The reason your organization has fans, advocates and perhaps even a growing Tribe is because you make them feel special. I believe part of triggering such feelings and emotions with your audiences are to spend some time on these various social media platforms listening & learning.

2 – Solve a problem: Once we have observed our audiences through listening and learning about their problems, we must do whatever we can to begin answering these questions, solving their problem or referring them to others who can. This act is so incredibly humbling and selfless and should be done in a way that may not immediately feel so comfortable…but in its essence is so incredibly natural.

3 – Give others a voice: You can be a large Fortune 100 company or a small business with very few customers and perhaps no other employees. Regardless, your end result across all of these social media platforms should be to empower and educate others to be the voice of your organization. You should view social media as your organization’s opportunity to create a tribe, army, nation of individuals that will do one of your hardest jobs for you – promote the value of your organization to others.

I’ve been blessed over the past two years of diving in head first into social media. I’ve learned so much from folks like Allan Schoenberg, Kelly Olexa, Sarah Evans, Chris Brogan, Arik Hanson, David Mullen, and literally hundreds of others. If for nothing else, I hope that you can add to this list in your comments below and pass along to others that might add to these “best practices” and/or perhaps learn from them.

Thank you & have a wonderful day!

I’ve had the great fortune over the past two weeks to speak with some of the top government agencies throughout North America at the Social Media for Government Conference (with the top federal U.S. government agencies in attendance) and then in front of some top local municipal governments in Canada via a webinar last Thursday.

I find it a bit ironic that for the first time – ever – our governments are now trying to be transparent and sharing the vast amount of information they possess. In fact, Computerworld wrote a nice piece from the SM for Government conference talking about this subject.

For those of you that aren’t aware, President Obama signed a bill on January 21, 2009 that called for “openness, transparency and engagement” among the U.S. government.

Here we are nine months later and what has changed? Surprisingly, I have found many great examples of social media being used in the government sector – some of which I’ve shared in my presentation from SM for Government. Overall however I found that many of these large federal government agencies face the same issues of the private sector. One head of communications for a large federal agency was telling me how they have to roll out engagement on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. – yet most of these sites are blocked:).

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out within the public sector. I’d be curious to hear what your thoughts are on this subject…do you think our government should be sharing everything with the public? When does this approach a security breech? For those agencies that are utilizing SM…are they empowering the people within these platforms?

Is it possible that social media is bringing our great nation back to its roots?

I’ll leave you with the concluding paragraph from President Lincoln at the Gettysburg Address in 1863, “…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Who do you follow? After only reading the first half of Seth Godin’s Tribes, a better question might be who do you lead?

Perhaps you’re immersed in a cause you really believe in, advocating daily about something that is really important to you or better yet leading a tribe. Seth Godin seems to hit the nail on the head with his book, Tribes.

If you’ve already read Tribes, I welcome you to add to this list. If you haven’t, I hope these three points made by Godin encourages you to go out and buy it!

Loaded with many great case studies and points, I would like to point out three things that Godin talks about in Tribes that I think are worth sharing with each of you (again, I’m only halfway through):

1 - Be a leader not a manager – “My thesaurus says the best synonym for leadership is management. Maybe that word used to fit, but no longer. Movements have leaders and movements make things happen.
Leaders have followers. Managers have employees.
Managers make widgets. Leaders make change.”

2 – People don’t care about your product or service; they care about how you make them feel - “Too many organizations care about numbers, not fans. They care about hits or turnstile clicks or media mentions. What they’re missing is the depth of commitment and interconnection that true fans deliver. Instead of always being on the hunt for one more set of eyeballs, true leaders have figured out that the real win is in turning a casual fan into a true one.”

3 – The social media tools we’re using today won’t matter if we don’t adopt the right social media mentality - “Blogs and Twitter and all manner of other tools will come and go, possibly by the time you read this. The tactics are irrelevant, and the technology will always be changing. The essential lesson is that every day it gets easier to tighten the relationship you have with the people who choose to follow you.”

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of Tribes tonight…then on to Meatball Sundae (also by Godin) and Now is gone by Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis – both of whom I have a ton of respect for within this space.

If you’ve read Tribes, I’d be curious to hear what you took away from the book. If not, I’d still like to hear your thoughts on these three points…do you agree these are very strong points to make about social media, business or life for that matter?