Chris Brogan          Peter Shankman

Together, they’re now etched in history as “Broman,” thanks to the August 4, 2009 seminar held via Conference Call University.

I wisely spent an hour and $50 yesterday listening to social media gurus Chris Brogan and Peter Shankman talk about how businesses can take advantage of social media. If you already paid that fee to listen to Conference Call University’s hour-long session, you can re-listen to it at http://bit.ly/BZqEy.

I love the pearls of knowledge and wisdom I get from these exceedingly bright and wise sages of social media, and I’ll bet you do too. So I’ve created this summary of the key points I picked up from their conversation. 

My notes reflect the flow of topics and conversation as I heard them. If I’ve omitted something, please feel free to add it as a comment, because I was multi-tasking during the conference – tweeting about it from @michelledamico while taking these copious notes. So I admit, the following is not an exact transcription of the vibrant conversation that took place. But it does capture the essence of what was discussed and I think it’s definitely worth a read. So here are the best nuggets I culled from their seminar:

Listening is more important than talking. Social media provides the opportunity to enhance your personal/corporate brand. It’s the place people go for valuable information. So provide a value for your info. Utilize social media listening. You can’t listen if you’re constantly talking.

The tools are just tools. You’re not going to save the world. If you’re not considering a better way to interact with customer, these tools won’t help at all.

The number one rule, improve your customer service. We’ve seen companies being raised to new heights by rabid fans who fall in love with something the company marketed to them or fixed a problem for them. A company that uses social media tools and fixes problems for them through social media will attract happy customers. Their customers will get the feeling that “I matter.”

In social media, your big job is to get customers and clients to do your PR for you. You can do great things on this scale.

Look at Facebook – Fan Page, a rudimentary way to communicate with your audience. The first hard-and-fast Fan Page rule: a fan page only works with interaction. Shankman said he had inside knowledge from Facebook that people who join fan pages, will soon be able to see month and day of their birth. What does that mean for the company that owns the fan page? Make it your routine to go into Facebook on a daily basis and reach out to each person celebrating a birthday and wish them a happy birthday. That generates a smile and top-of-mind presence, you’re generating interaction. Social media is not a one-way street; Radio is a one-way street. With social media, you ou have to communicate back.

Information used to flow from outside the network in.  Now it flows from inside the network, out. It’s all about listening at the point of me. Bloggers and tweeters are asking Questions every day. There’s an opportunity to do business fast with people who are asking for it.

Are your competitors on there? Are they doing a hell of a job? It’s a defensive move as well. If you’re competitor is on social media, you have to get in on defense.

Chris Brogan said posts case studies at del.icio.us.com (I didn’t have great luck finding the case studies, and will tweet him for the link).

B-to-b use of social media: Thing to remember in b-to-b, people are still in business with people. There are large b-to-b businesses that are doing well in social media, particularly technology companies such as EMC (a storage company) Cisco, IBM.

If you’re a b-to-b company, the first thing you should do on social media is to determine what people are saying about you. Go to search.twitter.com and find people talking about you. Use Blogsearch.google.com to see if they’re talking about your products. It’s not always there.

Chris cited an October 08, Social Media Optimization article said b-to-b marketers are still struggling. Less than 31% use blogs, podcasts, social networks to engage. Don’t be discouraged by those stats: All that’s saying is that they’re waiting for somebody else to pave the way.

Go where there is no road and leave a trial. It’s cheap and inexpensive. You can take first steps without selling the bank.

A lot of services professionals are also questioning the value of social media for their practice. What can come from lawyers on Twitter? They can share interesting thoughts. Answer commentary. People who put interesting thoughts about the industry on a regular basis tend to wind up being searched.

Here’s social media’s secret trick: putting our wishes and wants on the web every day.

You have to switch from thinking about ”where do I advertise?” to “where do I listen?”

To move at the speed of trust will generate revenue. If not today, than it will happen down the line. Pass along information we find fvaluable and can trust and we will give it to others. If we trust it enough, we’ll put it out there. We are participating in the action call to viral.  You can’t create anything viral. But you can create something good!

Funny and timely don’t necessarily = viral. It has to be helpful to be viral.

Some of the best revenue generators start from doing something with no course of action. Giving information as a free gift will generate people coming to you and asking what else do you have?

Have to answer real questions from real customers. Because  people, more and more will ask real people for help before going to Google. You need to create an army of loyalists for stellar client relations so they come to you first for help.

How can you use the human web to grow your business? By having your clients and customers grow your business.

Shankman cited this “brilliant” idea: Large and small companies are creating “So you found me on Twitter?” pages.  Those companies are asking visitors to provide the names of folks who recommended the firm on Twitter. That gives you the chance to send a thank you to whomever gave the referral.

Build followers by providing valuable info that you know will be retweeted.

Audience question: Should you have one message across all platforms? No, they are different audiences and be human in treating them that way. I’d rather have the most famous Tweets vs. most followers. If you respond to people, you’ll get more loyal communicators.

100,000 followers doesn’t mean that much action. Compare that to the percentage of people who take an action when you ask them for help.

Audience questions:

Q: But what if people are creeped out by companies following them? If you’re posting information to the public, you’ll be surprised when a company answers; not creeped out. You want companies to pay attention to you.

Q: How often should a small business tweet or Facebook? All the time.

(Don’t remember if this was a question or a comment) Some of most interesting stuff we’ve seen comes on a corporate level. The most informative tweets come from people who have screwed up royally and are willing to teach people what you’ve learned from it. Saying sorry fast is also huge.

Tony from Zappos. He shares  real personals thing. Shy is interesting. He has admitted that he doesn’t understand humor so well. Share your failures. They are people like us. We’re all at different parts of the race.

Final inspiriting quote from Peter:  Only way to silence the voice of self doubt is to cross the starting line. It’s a lot of fun out there!

Here is an example of taking a negative situation and spinning it into a wonderful positive situation.

I’m sharing with you a post http://tinyurl.com/cpl5hp I read from @NemoHQ.  Nemo, like many other companies, had to layoff nine valuable employees.  What Nemo did, unlike others, was to feel such a deep loss, they took their welfare into consideration.  They turned to Social Media and used the power of Twitter’s community to help them.  Nemo’s goal was to reach out to companies, making them aware of these talented individuals who are looking for work.  The result: overwhelming tweets of well wishes and business owners expressing interest in their former employees.  In fact just days later, many had interviews lined up.

So why is it that other companies can’t do the same?  Do they not feel the same loss that Nemo felt?  Perhaps the people making the layoff decisions have no idea who those employees are, just a name and job title.  I believe that’s the case for large businesses and corporations but that’s still no excuse.

My very dear friend is an HR professional.  She’s been the messenger consistantly since last November.  It’s been extremely stressful and draining on her and she is the one feeling the loss for her company, not senior management.  I shared the Nemo case study to show her the power of community, hoping to diffuse some of that stress.

What companies do you know of who cared enough about their employees welfare and have reached out in other ways to help?  Post a comment, I’d love to hear from you!

Since I mentioned my family’s love of  pancakes in a recent post, and since I used the image of gooey pancakes as a metaphor for “uncooked” tech devices, I thought it my duty to share my favorite pancake recipe. It  comes from the most used cookbook on my shelf Joy of Cooking. My version finds this recipe on page 795. The variations at the end are my doing! Enjoy.

Basic Pancakes

makes about 12 5-inch cakes

Prepare and preheat your griddle

Whisk together in a large bowl:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3 tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Whisk together in another bowl:

1 1/2 cups milk

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (I also substitute oil)

2 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla (optional, but a must for my family. Also try lemon or maple extract, depending on your mood.)

Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and gently whisk them together, mixing just until combined (at this point you can add a bunch of different ingredients — fresh or frozen blueberries, mashed banana, toasted pecans, chocolate chips, shredded apple and cinnamon, mashed mango, cooked leftover oatmeal and raisins, mashed leftover candied sweet potatoes, crumbled bacon etc.).

Spoon 1/3 cup batter onto the griddle for each pancake, nudging the batter to rounds. Cook until the top of each pancake is speckled with bubbles and some bubbles have popped open, then turn and cook until the underside is lightly browned. Serve immediately or keep warm in a 200 degree F oven while you cook the rest. Serve with butter or maple syrup — the REAL stuff. Pancakes this good don’t deserve Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth!

In the wake of all the AIG news, I’m becoming quite intolerant of greed.  Recently, I read Schaefer’s Blog, which talked about personal responsibility http://tinyurl.com/6nkau5.

Cameron Schaefer hit the nail on the head.  What did happen to personal responsibility?  Schaefer continues , “I believe in America and what it stands for.  This is why something needs to change – and instead of demanding it from everyone else it has to start with us.”  But what do we stand for?  Status and power seem to be the popular vote.

Last month at a cocktail party, a gentleman was commenting on having to cut hours and wages of his employees due to the slowing economy.  He later proudly spoke of a major luxury purchase he got for his family.  Good for him right?  How’s that for personal responsibility?  Company is slow, wages are cut, let’s go to the beach house kids!

We are appalled at what Bernie Madoff did, but how is that so different?  Power, status, wants becoming needs, sound familiar?  Maintaining image thru greed and power is no different than those homeowners buying that house they couldn’t afford.  Once you get caught up, it’s hard to get out.  Knight Kiplinger  Editor in Chief for Kiplinger Publications wrote, “Most of our economic wounds are self-inflicted, stemming from our inability to live within our means.”

In the end, it all washes out anyway.  I wonder at what point, individuals accept responsibility for their actions.  What would have been the taxpayers’ reaction if AIG publicly announced the issuance of bonuses due to contractual agreements and senior management will be giving that money back immediately?  AIG’s image wouldn’t be so tarnished.

I welcome any thoughts and comments you might have.

This past holiday season I conducted a pseudo study of all the holiday or Christmas cards I received. Much to my sjogren, I discovered that almost 75% of the cards received hadn’t one bit of personalization on them except for the handwritten address. And probably half of those that weren’t personalized at all didn’t even have a handwritten address…but a printed lable. 

Please don’t get me wrong, we had a nice family photo card made via Shutterfly this year, last and probably the year prior.  But my wife and I usually sit down and sign each card typically writing a little personalized note on each. Besides, for many, this may be our only interaction with them all year!

Unfortunately, I believe we’re in a new era of “Template Personalization.” The dichotomy of the phrase is on purpose as ”template” and “personalization” are as opposite as “night” and “day.” Yet we see examples of this being used across all mediums of communication today. Here are 3 additional examples of “Template Personalization”:

• Blast Emails – We see this one all too much within the business world and in particular within public relations as many PR firms and professionals see a need to blast a pitch and worse yet, a release to hundreds of journalists…hoping for something to stick.
• Evite – I’ve used Evite’s many times and will continue to do so as they’re a great way of managing a party or event. But when you have a small group of friends, family or even coworkers your inviting for an event…why not use print invitations and write a personal invite on each?
• Automatic Direct Messages on Twitter - When you start following someone on Twitter (kind of like your “friends” on Facebook for those of you not using Twitter) there are many services out there that allow for you to send a template response or direct message to those that started following you. I’ve recently started calling attention to these via my Twitter account (here is a link to these tweets).

What are some good (or bad in this situation) examples of “Template Personalization” that you’ve seen? I look forward to adding to this list as I definitely plan on tweeting & posting on this subject often…consider it a pet peeve of mine:)

I was recently reminded of the challenging and difficult decisions that we must make in the business world…especially those that cause many sleepless nights and constant second guessing. As a business owner I’m often faced with such decisions yet I rarely find myself losing sleep or second guessing myself. I’ve been raised to follow your heart and do what I know is right…even if it hurts.

Without naming names or getting into too much detail, several months ago I was faced with such a rare situation – in the first year of my business. Even though the end result was one of the most important decisions I’ve made in my young career as the owner of my company, it didn’t make the situation any easier to deal with at the time.

Several months back we had just started working with a new client who had an amazing new technology. After several months of sharing ideas and swapping business philosophies, we were eager to get started on this new client. Surprisingly, our first task was to support a decision they had made to litigate against a competitor infringing on their technology patent instead of leading with the various positive story angles around their innovative technology. We agreed to support such an announcement but advised that we shouldn’t be proactive with our outreach as with any litigation, they couldn’t get into details about the lawsuit at the end of the day. A story came out in a popular technology blog that the client viewed as unfavorable and ironically, this blog also happened to have a partnership with the competitor they had just named in a lawsuit. Here is the kicker…the very next day this blog was added to the lawsuit despite the hundreds of other partners this competitor had…the blog was the only partner added. That’s when my ethical radar kicked in.

To make a long story shorter, I made the decision to let that client go. Not because I didn’t agree that fighting for your patented technology was the right thing to do, but because they were leveraging litigation to get back at an unfavorable blog post. Not to mention my name & my firm’s name was on the release.

The reason I’m sharing this story with each of you is not to discuss if it was right or wrong to make this decision (I am at peace of mind today about my decision), but to remind each one of you to follow your heart and above all else…make the right decision, no matter how wrong it might feel at the time.

Have you ever looked back on a decision you made in business (or life) and no matter how hard it was to stomach at the time, felt refreshed that you truly did the right thing?

I’ll leave you with the words of the wise and crafty Mark Twain…”Always do right – - this will gratify some and astonish the rest.”

For anyone that knows or follows me on Twitter they know how passionate I am about “doing the right thing.”  Most recently you’ve probably seen how frustrated I’ve been about this week’s national media blitz from Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

As a business owner and PR professional, I make it a priority to focus on ethics above all else.  In fact, let me share my checklist for any new business opportunity (more for myself vs. a tried & true process):

1. Does the prospect have an amazing story to tell…if not several amazing stories to tell? If yes….
2. Would I feel comfortable representing such a client and introducing them to the media contacts that I cherish? If yes…
3. Do they have a clearly defined need tied into a business goal or goals for our services (i.e., not just wanting to see their face in the WSJ)? If yes…
4. Do they understand the value and process of media relations? If yes…
5. Is there a reciprocating connection between the prospect and our firm (sometimes a gut instinct)? If yes…
6. Do they have $ and time to invest in this process (daddy does have to feed the boys, right?)?

I feel the need to share this with you because I learned that Gov. Blagojevich had hired a firm in Tampa, FL called The Publicity Agency to represent him on this recent media tour.  Glenn Selig, owner of this firm touts right on his homepage that his firm also represnted Drew Peterson, a former Illinois police sergeant who was accused of killing his third & fourth wives.  Was there any ethical decision made when Mr. Selig decided to take on both Blagojevich & Peterson as clients?  Did Mr. Selig apply a similar set of personal requirements when assessing either of these opportunities? 

I would love to hear from others on this topic and specifically on this particular example.  Is it our “duty” as PR professionals to represent these characters (accused criminals)?  Once again, ethics should drive every decision we make…my answer is plain and simply, “no.”