I just read an interesting study from the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) that said, “80% of businesses plan to boost investment in social networking.” I can’t say this surprises me too much and don’t know what their definition of “boost” might be going into 2010 budgets:). I do think that as communicators and advocates of social media we need to be cognizant that social media isn’t our savior.

Okay, I won’t go as far to say that social media isn’t right for business – I actually do think there is a place in social for every type of business. What gets me the most excited is what the practice of social media has now uncovered in business communications. For example, I believe that businesses are now smarter about how they are distributing their stories to the audieneces that matter most…through social and traditional means.

As a result, here are 3 ways your organization can benefit from implementing a formal Story Distribution process:

1 – Leveraging Existing Communications – One of the biggest mysteries in the world of corporate communications is why so many useful and amazing studies, stories and facts are bottled up internally as if it were a map to the Holy Grail. Instead, look at each of these valuable communications tools, wrap your company messaging around it in an email and send it off to your employees, clients, investors and prospects.

2 – Actually Deliver an ROI – There is nothing more frustrating as a communications professional than having to quantify how awareness and branding effect a company’s bottom line. You know why? It doesn’t! Before you jump all over me…give me a chance to explain. There is significant value in landing a media story, having bloggers buzzing about your brand and unbelievable engagement across your social platforms. It may even result in a sale or two or several for your company. But it isn’t and shouldn’t be a direct tie into sales…until your Story Distribution process came along. Now imagine all of the validity, awareness and branding that you’re helping establish for your company is repurposed throughout the organization and among your targeted audience by the sales team, HR, investor relations, customer service, etc. In essence, you would be hedging your bet by doing so and allowing your communications to actually tie into your company’s bottom line – a true ROI.

3 – Because It Already Exists – What I mean here is the communications tools and channels already exist within your organization. Your sales, HR, investor relations, customer service and marketing teams already exist. You just need some real time communications tools developed around each story being distributed in a way that is complimentary to the platform and process that already exists. If Sales need it in a PowerPoint slide – it happens. If HR needs it in a 500-word article for their weekly newsletter – it happens. If Customer Service needs it in scripted bullet points – it happens.

I’ve always been a big believer in Story Distribution processes although I have also been caught up in the traditions of clip reports and focusing on the results. Today, I’m happy to say that I believe my job begins when the story takes place because now it is time to share that story with others…through social media, through additional media coverage, and through hand-delivering the story to your key audiences.

Do you use Story Distribution in your communications strategy? If so, how is it working and what makes it happen? If not, why not?

Should it be of any surprise that consumers think of themselves and their personal needs before the brand they’re buying from?! Not to me…

I just read today’s SmartBrief on Social Media - if you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter, please do so ASAP – it’s great! Below is a link to my video response/reaction to a study that recently came out from The Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report 2009.

Take a look at the report yourself as I’d love your thoughts on the findings! Thanks!

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 had to chuckle when somebody left an online comment about a Chicago Tribune story this morning. The article, ”Twitter forcing a strategy shift for business,” was lambasted by someone as “glorious nonsense.” If you haven’t read it yet, I urge you to do so for the impressive social media usage stats that reporter Julie Johnsson shares.
Glorious Nonsense? Not one bit! Any business person who laughs at Twitter’s future potential does so at his/her own peril. I agree with Forrester researcher Josh Bernoff- the dialogue is happening on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. As we remind those who attend our Social Media Workshops, the dialogue will happen with our without you, so why not glean valuable business intelligence and engage with customers as well?

Threadless‘ Jeff Kalmikoff makes an excellent point – this is a new marketing frontier, and first arrivals and risk-takers will be viewed as leaders. Yes, it’s a big experiment now & what better time to try new things when business is hurting for creative marketing tools that are free and can attract loyal customers.

Besides ceding control, companies must also be transparent on social media. Twitter and Facebook are not places for corporate mouthpieces. Comcast and Ford Fiesta are two brands that have demonstrated the benefit of being genuine and really engaging.

While  Twitter and Facebook are free, they require a commitment of staff resources. Too many companies jump on the social media bandwagon and pump a lot of time into learning about, creating a fan page or a Twitter handle, and then do little more. If you’re going to take the plunge into social media, assign someone internally who is committed for the long haul.

As a marketer and PR professional I am targeted (weekly if not daily) with a new seminar, conference or webinar on various ways I can leverage social media and the various platforms for my profession. A recent example includes a “Twitter Boot Camp for PR & Internal Communications Workshop” hosted by Ragan Communications (a very trusted source in our industry) which is actually being led by two folks I really admire – Allan Schoenberg (CME Group) and Barbara Rozgonyi. In fact, I recently led the conversation for a “Twitter 101″ webinar for PR professionals with CISION, the leading media relations software provider. Over the course of two sessions we had more than 2,000 participants!

I think its great our profession and industry are embracing social media advocacy and I can honestly say that I’ve never been on a call, webinar or attended a conference on this subject that didn’t provide at least some value. Most advice has been pretty solid for myself and I can only assume for the other marketers involved with each…but what about everyone else in business??

I’m a firm believer that as marketers and PR professionals we often operate in our comfortable “silos” (or departments). Some common examples of this are when your company receives media coverage and the marketing team might put a link to such coverage up on the website and perhaps have professional reprints made of the story for the sales team. Instead, shouldn’t the coverage be leveraged and packaged for all of your departments to effectively communicate with each of your targeted audiences? Probably…but we don’t.

I bring this up because I believe we’re missing the boat as social media advocates for business (as a whole). Instead we continue to educate within our own comfort zone, to our own people, and in ways that matter to our profession.

- What about the CEO who thinks social media is a waste of time…as he observes his teenage kids constantly communicating on Facebook?

- What about the Sales VP who doesn’t believe Twitter can generate any sales for her company?

- What about the SVP of HR and Legal Counsel who are trying to figure out how restrict their employees’ social media participation while at work?

I think you see my point. What can or should we do? I’m all ears:).

  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!

Scott Monty is head of social media for Ford Motor Company – here is his blog. 

Notes from session with Scott Monty at BlogPotomac (mainly direct quotes from Scott):

There is no greater crisis than for the auto industry at this time (how about that for a conversation starter…). Any good crisis is about taking a negative and turning it into a positive. 

What’s going on with Ford? – EX: last december – Ford was here in DC last December to show that we are all interconnected – “I was doing some serious digital hand-to-hand combating” – trying to add value on my end (Ford).  This really wasn’t any way to support our initiatives.  About 10 days after – www.therangerstation.com (a user site) – said that Ford was suing this site…$5,000 and hand over URL. Scott sent off emails internally to help gain an understanding – “I always turn to Twitter to pulse the first line of response” – just after the Motrin moms incident.

We obtained the facts and used a number of different tools and platforms to communicate these “facts” – I sent an email to the owner of the fan forum (www.therangerstation.com) – had a 20 minute conversation with him to make sure we understood our individual needs.

Lesson 1 – you have to monitor these platforms. Not every brand has this issue, but it is very important.

Lesson 2 – you MUST respond and invite them into the process to come to a conclusion with you – leverage this community.

Lesson 3 – have a digital hub where you can quickly post updates…and link to as many of the platforms as possible to help spread these updates.

What we did in early December we developed www.thefordstory.com. Constantly evolving and always under construction – this is our social media hub. A combination of Ford produced content and others content. What people are saying about you and your brand is so important.

Never before have such conversations been public. We know that people are going to go to other sites vs. ours (i.e., via Google). We want to make sure and capture others comments.

[Scott provided a great example of this with the Fiesta Movement example.]

I’m one person at Ford – finally hiring #2, we’ll see how that works out. 

The tools are irrelevant – they will always change – give people guidelines and a process to let people get out there and speak on behalf of the organization.

We have an online communications policy – our ethics statement: I will tell the truth, write accurately, correct mistakes promptly, never delete posts, stay on topic, disclose topics of interest, keep issues private…that are private (I’m sure I missed some of this…but you get it).

The goal – humanize Ford & our brand – we are trying to put faces to the blue oval and connect people with Ford employees and others with our initiatives.

Q&A Summary (Highlights):

Without senior-level support…any SM program will fail. It’s been an easy sell at Ford. I was used to doing the up sell but they were incredibly open to allowing me to do my thing. I’m within Corporate Communications but it shouldn’t sit there. You should apply this across all organizations, departments, geographic areas, etc. Show them how it is done & do it.

Become the world’s leading social media brand in auto – accomplished. Now our goal is to become the world’s leading social media brand…period.

I’ve often referred people to GM, Toyota, etc. It’s about providing value – not to sell cars.

Story: the desk was placed in the middle of the workplace for everyone to see whenever others were using this new technology (this was from the 1930’s and was the telephone). POINT: corporations have been resistent to change (technology change) since the telephone – email – Internet – and now social media.

Follow the stream of conversation about Scott and his session from Twitter here & here. Enjoy & please join this conversation!

Shel is kicking of BlogPotomachere in Falls Church, VA – the unconference (i.e., no PPT, etc.).

The following are notes from Shel’s session:

We’re talking about “social media policies” – is it right to manage control around your company’s SM.  Those who are giving flexibility to their teams seem to be doing the strongest on this front.

Who owns SM? The leadership teams within should be driving the strategy and allowing all divisions to contribute where appropriate. Shel provided @zappos as a great example of a company using SM very well…across the organization.

Heard a quote from someone at a recent conference – “We need to drop the whole ROI and move to SOI – Spirit Of Influence” – good idea but we need to still be able to execute with the C-levels so this doesn’t really fly in the board room.

Summary: Shel had a whopping 10 minutes to talk here so he was really focused on the barriers of entry within SM – session title “Integration Challenges.”

Cultural barriers are a real challenge within the organization – especially with something so new as SM. Internal communications need to be about understanding the business’ communications strategy and how your employees can effectively share with their audiences.

Interesting question – “isn’t blogging ineffective since there are so many people doing it?” – Shel: “No” – most of what he reads comes from Twitter and he believes that every company should have at least one blog because of RAPID RESPONSE.

Here is a good stream on Shel’s presentation via Twitter.

Call it the “Oprah Effect” the “Ashton Effect” or the “Ellen Effect.”  With swarms of celebrities staking their plots of real estate on Twitter, the Twitterverse is now mainstream and I’m not crazy about it.

I was lured to Twitter more than a year ago by former CIO Magazine Editor Abbie Lundberg in a blog post on the Business Value of Twitter. I quickly learned that as a business tool Twitter lets you engage with people, learn from and  help others. When done well, Twitter will help you nurture relationships that could inspire you personally, and help you grow professionally.

I emphasize the “done well” part. All Twitter participants benefit from a two-way conversation.  Twitter done well is a 1-to-1 engagement, unearthing common interests and spawning new conversations. It’s relationship building 101 and the value we emphasize in the social media workshops we host for  friends and clients at Pipeline Media Relations.

How can you possibly build relationships when you have 1,299,224 followers, but  follow only 14 (yep, that’s Oprah’s status today). We all know her goal – use another medium to spread brand Oprah. Her intent is not to send a DM to JoAnne from Peoria.

So is Mainstream Twitter ruining it for the rest of us? Do the celebrity citings on Twitter turn off entrepreneurs and other business people who have already questioned whether Twitter is already a big waste of time? I hope not. I’m still finding great value in Twitter and have connected to  folks I never would have dreamed of meeting. How about you?  Would love to hear what you’re telling your clients about Twitter in the mainstream. Write to me at michelle@pipelinemediarelations.com.

You’ve just wrapped up a successful PR campaign and generated numerous stories across national, regional and trade media. Your client is pumped up as you deliver the culmination of your program in the form of a massive clip report. Everyone is happy…right?

I’ve constantly been agitated by the PR industry (for which I’m a part of) and our inability to tie into the most important aspect of our profession – validating the client’s that we serve. There are many different ways for us to measure the effectiveness of our programs. In fact, Katie Paine, founder of KDPaine & Partners is probably one of the very best at designing the measurement programs in our industry. However, I’m not talking about measurement; I’m talking about educating companies about how to effectively “merchandise” these media placements throughout their organization directly to their targeted audiences. Validating their business by hand-delivering such media coverage to these targeted audiences.

Here are just a few of the things you can do to make your PR program an internal success that will have the entire organization (and targeted audiences) singing your praises:

• A Reason to Call or Email - How many times do sales teams bitch and complain about having to make cold calls or never having anything new to take to their clients or prospects? Now they do as a result of your media coverage. Draft a number of communications tools including emails, speaking points, etc. that anyone in your organization can take to their respective audiences directly relating to these stories. They now have a great reason to connect that isn’t self serving or traditional.
• Encourage You Organization to Leverage Social Media – Too many times we hear about companies looking to put restrictions in place for their employees on social media. Bad idea. Instead, encourage and arm your employees with the links, Tweets, and summarized posts about the media coverage on their personal profiles. Besides any employee should be excited about their company being featured in the media.
• Wear it on your Sleeve – Okay, not literally but employees should be proud of such coverage and should let others know via their email signature, on their website, marketing materials, business cards, etc. Everyone appreciates being featured in the media and besides, it will certainly be a great conversation starter.

I could go on and on but would love to hear what you’re doing to “merchandise” your stories. This has become a standard practice for my firm and I hope others will catch on and not move on once the results come in but instead let the games (and outreach) begin!