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?

Yes, I now have a Flip Video camera and I think that gives me the right to be on camera…right? Not really. I just did my first (unedited) video from my office on Friday making a brief introduction to each of you. I promised to get better with your feedback, tips and guidance:) Enjoy!

Even though that was pretty bad, I am so passionate about what I do for a living and feel like doing more video will truly show that passion…I hope:).

Again, I look forward to receiving your comments, tips and feedback!

I’m always amazed when I meet with “search engine marketing” firms and they tell me how they always recommend their clients start a blog. I typically follow-up that conversation with, “how do you guide them around producing an effective blog?” Unfortunately, the answer is usually, “nothing, that isn’t our area of expertise.”

Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of advocacy taking place around blogging – I remember this post from SocialMedia.biz , there is even a site called BloggingTips.com which I’ve found very helpful.

Over the years I’ve come up with my 4 L’s of Blogging summarizing some effective blogging tips:

Lead the Conversation -  It’s always important to show some degree of thought-leadership in your blog – besides, that’s why you have one right? – but you also have to remember that you are starting a conversation. Don’t get up on your soapbox…people don’t follow blogs to be spoken to but instead to be spoken with.

Link, Link, Link - Blogs have always fought the credibility battle and it is my belief that like a traditional news story, a blog should always contain links to other sources including reports, studies, traditional media, influential bloggers, websites, etc. Although I’m sure anyone with a blog is credible , you have to gain respect by linking out to other credible resources. Plus this spreads your conversation out…which is another great idea.

Less is Always More – I would keep your blog post to 250-500 words (tops) and always try and utilize lists (i.e., Top 10 Reasons, 5 Ways To, etc.). The bottom line is folks that are reading blogs just don’t have time to sift through stories and chapters so follow the old K.I.S.S. method – Keep It Simple Stupid.

Let Others Contribute – This isn’t just about “letting” it’s about encouraging others to contribute to your blog. Remember this is your conversation starter and you can’t (I suppose you can) have a conversation by yourself. This means always asking others for their thoughts or advice about the topic you’re discussing.

What are your best practices around blogging? Do you agree/disagree with my 4 L’s? I’d be curious if others have a simple strategy…I’m always game to steal great advice and give credit of course.

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?

As I was participating in #journchat LIVE last night here in Chicago (which was a great event…thanks Sarah Evans!), I realized that many of the topics we were discussing, although important to our chat topic, were really the types of conversations we need to be having with non-marketing folks.

In fact, I just wrote about this subject last week in my post Social Media Advocacy: Stepping Out of Our Silo.

Then I wake up this morning with several voicemails from local media asking me to talk with their business listeners/readers about this very subject. It turns out one of the local papers the Northwest Herald did a piece in today’s paper, “PR firm a Pipeline to social media for firms” . Although I’m very humbled (goofy picture aside…below) to receive this coverage, my vision is that CEOs and general business professionals will realize the value (or not) of social media instead of passing it off to the marketing/communications team.

Sometimes I realize if it’s the “social media” term that throws them off? Perhaps we need to start advocating around “the new word of mouth” – maybe this is a term that is more C-level friendly?

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.

  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!

I’m usually pretty good at including links in my blog posts (as I advise any of my clients to do) but surprisingly, I can’t find much about a topic that has been very near and dear to me recently – advising businesses on how to effectively leverage their media coverage and other news to their targeted audiences.

Myself included, I believe that PR professionals should take a hard look at how we are conducting business. Too often the end result of our efforts are in the form of a “clip report” listing out all of the media hits we’ve received for the month or targeted campaign. Although media coverage is an essential part of what we do, it is only the beginning to an end.

As a result I’ve come up with “5 Steps to Effectively Leverage Your Media Coverage”:

1 – Gain Organizational Buy-In - It is so important that the most influential departments of an organization (not just marketing and sales) understand the value of passing along successful media coverage to their targeted audiences. These departments don’t need to create new ways to communicate with their important audiences, they just need to understand the value in “merchandising” these stories to such audiences. By doing so your entire organization is hedging your PR spend bet by ensuring these audiences have seen the coverage…directly from you.

2 – Customize Your Distribution – Once you have buy-in from the most influential departments (i.e., sales, marketing, customer service, HR, IT, IR, etc.) you need to make sure the materials you are arming them with are customized for their specific needs. For example, HR might prefer to send something out to the employees via an email while sales might prefer some speaking points about the coverage since they typically meet face-to-face or over the phone. In order to support the entire organization, you must customize your correspondence accordingly.

3 – Designate a Department Contact - It is one thing to arm a department with the right tools to effectively communicate with their respective targeted audiences, it is another thing to assume they know what to do with these tools and/or will use them at all. As a result, you must have a point of contact within each department who takes ownership of this communications strategy. Someone who can train, advise and measure how effective such outreach was within each department.

4 – Measure Your Impact - Building on point #3…you must develop the appropriate mix of measurements that are consistent with you management team’s expectations. Typically this is a blend of quantitative and qualitative measurements. Quantitative might be tracking how many people each member of your department reached out to with these tools – via email, phone, in-person, etc. Qualitative might be some anecdotal feedback you received from your targeted audience about the coverage.

5 – Report to Key Management – Once you’ve discovered the right mix of measurements for this program, you have to ensure that the executive teams are able to see how such a program is being implemented across your entire organization. In addition, they have to see how effective such outreach is for the overall goals of the organization. Seeing that you’re creating a minimal amount of work and leveraging existing means of communications…they’ll likely see the value of such a program.

I’m sure I’ve left out some of the important steps or details but I believe we as communications professionals need to remember that the validation we create with media coverage is only as good as the number of targeted audiences that see it. What am I missing? As always, thanks for reading and/or joining the conversation!

This morning I was once again reminded that not everyone truly understands the value of social media – transparency, authenticity, 2-way, personal, etc. Last night I decided to go against the grain a little and visited two of my favorite tools to find people on Twitter – Twellow & Mr. Tweet. I found many that “seemed” to be folks that I should be engaging with. They were in PR or marketing, jouralists, social media hounds, etc. WRONG!

Once again, I was bombarded by many (probably 75% of the people I just started following) who sent me automatic direct messages. I’d list them all here but I’m considering starting a new advocacy site called StopAutoDMs (www.stopautodms.com – not yet mine).

Then I read this great post from Mike Doyle at ChicagoNow.com entitled, “Four Reasons Why Bloggers on Twitter Shouldn’t Pimp Facebook.” It reminded me of a post I made back in March entitled, “The New Era of Template Personalization.”

Perhaps I’m a little set in my ways about this, but I just think there is a black and white way we should be acting here on social media. Do you agree? Disagree? As always, I’d love to hear from you on this one!