There is a constant challenge today convincing the top brass at various organizations about the value and benefit of social engagement for their respective business. Earlier this month Performics came out with a great study looking at how consumers are connecting with brands across social networks. Some of the key findings from the 3,000 social network users include:

• 80% of respondents have an active Facebook account, and 23% of those without an active Facebook account plan to join in the next six months
• 67% of respondents have reconnected with people through social networking sites that they never would have otherwise
• 39% of Twitter users respond to other people’s tweets once a week or more
• More than 30% of respondents access Facebook and/or Twitter from their mobile phone (through a browser or application) once a day or more

I highly recommend you review all findings in this study because they point to a growing trend that executives are going to have to start realizing – we are experiencing a Shift in the way consumers communicate and engage with their brands.

What are some of the points of resistence you’re seeing among companies considering a strategic transition into social engagement? Do you think statistics like this might start changing their mind?

YouTube, celebrated its 5^th birthday last month and earlier this week the power of video achieved yet another milestone as Mashable’s Ben Parr captured in his story, “YouTube Surpasses Two Billion Video Views Daily.” Keep in mind that this figure is nearly double the prime-time audience of all 3 major broadcast networks combined. Here are some more figures from Ben’s story to ponder… 

• 24-hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute and the average person now spends 15 minutes a day on the site
• 209.43 million – the number of times the most popular YouTube video, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” has been played
• More video has been uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major broadcast networks created in 60 years

The stats speak volumes on their own but we as marketers we can’t ignore the fact that video must be a part of our communications solutions efforts ASAP. Here are 3 Reasons Marketers Can’t Ignore YouTube & Video:

1 – Consumers are lazy – I mean this will all due respect, but we are experiencing The Shift in the way we communicate with folks in this new world of ME Media. Consumers are in control and are demanding that video be a part of their “experience” with your brand and as a result, they can easily share with others via email, Facebook, etc. YouTube has become a force that dares any marketer to consider the full impact of the notion that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then moving pictures on YouTube are worth thousands if not millions of engaged viewers who virally share video content across their social networks.

2 – Making video doesn’t have to break the budget – The barriers to creating video have fallen so low in terms of cost and ease to produce that anyone anywhere with a $100 Flip Video Camera in their hands can create and share content worldwide within minutes. The reality that is hard for companies to embrace is letting go of the polished and professional-looking (expensive) videos and going with the more “raw” video files produced by Flip Video and others.

3 – Puts a human face on your brand – If done well video is an imprinting medium that will allow your company to put some human qualities around how you are solving problems for your customers and fans. People remember what they see and with the power of the camera you can put your organization’s story in the context you want your key audiences to view it in.

This list could have just as easily been 10 Reasons but I believe with this recent milestone from YouTube, the three listed above clearly spell out a case for the use of video by every marketer.

I’m anxious to hear your thoughts around this subject and how you are using video – Happy Friday!

Within the past 24 hours I’ve received 18 pieces of direct mail that quickly landed in my recycling, I fast-forwarded through several dozen ads via my DVR and quickly hung-up on 2 automated “marketing” calls on my cell phone…from companies I had never heard of before.

I’m sure you’ve continued to experience similar examples as marketers continue to speak to not with consumers. Today we live in a world where technology has enabled consumers to turn traditional marketing upside-down – a world of “Me Media.”

Never before has the phrase, “the customer comes first” been so incredibly true. Last week, Harish Kotadia had a smart post entitled, “How Customer Engagement will determine winning brands in Social Era.”  Within Harish’s post he talks about a study from ENGAGEMENTdb which ranks The Top 100 Global Brands. As Harish points out (as does Danny Brown in his post today entitled, “The Metrics of Social Media“) there are clear ways that companies are leveraging and measuring these new social technologies against the key business metric – sales.

Here are 3 Steps To Creating a “Customer Engagement” Program in this new world of “Me Media”:

1. Gather Data-Driven Customer Insights – If your company doesn’t have good customer data, engage with a company like Anthem Marketing Solutions or others that do an amazing job of becoming your customer insight engine. Without objective data points on your customer, you might be “assuming” more than you should about your customer or prospect.

2. Develop Customer-Driven Messaging – I’m always amazed at the number of companies that don’t have any messaging architecture in place and I’d estimate that 99% typically don’t have messaging that helps solve customer problems as discovered from their customer insights (see #1)…but instead tries to sell their product or service. If your goal is selling to a prospect, try speaking with them vs. at them.

3. Engage Your Customers In The Business - It’s one thing to be having conversations with your customers and prospects via social media, but it is another to actually engage them in the business. Many call this “crowdsourcing” as you empower your customers to help you make important business decisions. Earlier this week, USA Today talked about how several large brands like Papa John’s, Mountain Dew and American Express were using social media for this purpose.  

At the end of the day we need to ensure that our communications efforts are truly engaging our customers and prospects. If you do nothing else after reading this post, please spend a few minutes evaluating how your business is currently (or could be better) engaging with your customers and prospects.

Happy Thursday!

The growth of social media in this new world of word of mouth has sparked many different questions and debates about the value of such strategies for business. One of the social advocates I admire most, Brian Solis, just released a book called Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web. Another that I’ve integrated into my personal vocabulary is Seth Godin’s Tribes - here is Seth talking about it at the recent TED conference…

So many great advocates talking about so many different valuable insights for businesses to leach onto and turn into immediate success for their business.

I believe that the crux of all these valuable messages can be narrowed down to one simple thought – give your customers a seat at on your board.

Here are 3 reasons why this is so important (and easy to do effectively using social):

1 – You Can’t Afford Not To – Businesses have always preached “the customer always comes first” but in today’s world we have quickly turned into a society of “Me Media.” If you aren’t engaging with your customers and making them part of the decisions being made about your organization, services and brand – you will be replaced by a brand that cares.

2 – Your Customer Is Your Tribe…Or Should Be – As Seth Godin so accurately talks about in Tribes, your fastest route to amazing word of mouth is through the audiences that are already fans of your brand. Making them a part of making important decisions for your business will result in providing your tribe with the ammunition they need to fire off wonderful comments, reviews and opinions about your business.

3 – Reduce Costs – I know, this one should probably be first in today’s challenging economic times, but the reality is making your customer a real decision maker for your business means that you spend significantly less dollars on things like focus groups, market research, and hhhmmm marketing (yes, I just said that).

It has forever been a mystery to me why businesses fail to engage in this simple yet unbelievably effective process of making their customers an integral part of the decision-making process.

Let’s make today the last day that we don’t engage with our customers and make them a part of the solution.

I’ve seem many great examples of companies who are doing this such as Modcloth, Threadless, and Kayak. Do you have other great examples you can share?

Yes, I’m crossing the social barriers and talking religion here, kind of…

For some reason, I’ve had several businesses challenge me recently that Facebook isn’t the right platform to engage with their audiences. Although I’d agree that having a Facebook page or group isn’t always the best solution for an organization’s social strategy…you can’t argue with the fact that if Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest ahead of the United States (308 million) with more than 350 million active users.

While reading through a recent Marketing Profs white paper entitled, “Facebook Success Stories” featuring 21 companies using Facebook successfully, I started documenting the similar traits of each featured company. Many were using contests, fun tools, offering special deals, and even integrating video to entertain their fans.

As any marketer might do, I started brainstorming a simple way to present this to businesses, clients or others that are looking for an easy-to-use formula for leveraging Facebook for business purposes.

Growing up as a Christian (Missouri Synod Lutheran) I had to memorize a number of creeds including the Nicene and Apostles’ - both statements of belief often recited during church services. As words fell into place, low and behold I have come up with The Facebook CREED to serve as a statement of belief for how businesses can best utilize Facebook…

Contests that encourage word-of-mouth driving new friends to your page

Real engagement and feedback with your fans

Entertain through videos, games, applications, or other creative forms of reoccurring engagement

Educate them about the things that matter most to them – how to use your product, tips, advice, etc.

Deals that are exclusive to your fans – they want to feel special for being connected to you on Facebook

Yes, I know there are MANY great ideas and ways for how to leverage Facebook beyond this clever acronym such as a blog I read last month, “How to create a business-friendly profile” and Mashable’s “30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook.”

What do you think…are you going to join me in reciting The Facebook CREED?! As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you’ve found something equally or even more useful. Cheers!

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?

I’m sure by now you’ve learned or heard that YouTube is currently the third largest search engine with 85 million unique visitors in November alone…

Compared to Google and Yahoo, YouTube is growing three times as fast with a yearly growth rate of 35% compared to 11% (Google) and 6% (Yahoo). I’d say Google has a lot to be thankful for here in 2009 as reported by the WSJ yesterday.

As PR and media relations professionals, I believe we have a lot to learn from this reality – people (including the media) crave video.

We’ve been incorporating video into our Awareness Campaigns for clients for well over a year now. One way has been creating vlogs which are part of an online library of video content for their websites  and even “vitches”…yes, you heard me right a vitch, a video pitch:).

Learning from YouTube’s popularity, we’ve come up with 3 reasons you and others should strongly consider doing vitches:

1 – Direct Contact to the Resource - The media’s needs continue to evolve and change. Traditional press releases are more for SEO today than for influencing a reporter to write about your company or client. An email pitch gives you limited time and words to make an impression. You might have great success picking up the phone…but time is even more of a crunch as newsrooms get cut and beats begin to pile up. Try capturing your next pitch on a Flip Video of your resource (not you), send the link to the video quickly outlining what the media contact will see in the video and see what happens. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

2 – Entertain Don’t Educate – Don’t get me wrong, it’s valuable and necessary to educate the media, but in today’s environment you might consider taking more of a lighthearted approach to convincing them of your story or resource. You don’t need to be “funny” but just by doing a video vs. written pitch you will allow them to sit back in their cubicle and give them a fresh change of pace to trying to figure out where their story is in your pitch or release.

3 – Broadcast Requires Video Footage – The vitch is especially influential when pitching broadcast including TV and radio. If they’re going to have your resource on as a guest they need to be sure they have someone who is going to be of value and is ready for a “live” interview. If they see your resource can carry the conversation for 60-90 seconds (the longest these should be) they’ll certainly feel much better about booking them as a guest.

Curious to hear if you’re vitching. If so, how’s it going? If not, why?! Looking forward to this conversation!

I chuckled as I read today’s USA Today cover story, “Could this finally be the season for Web TV?“.

The story quotes ABI Research saying that, “In 2014, consumers in North America will buy 45 million of these sets, representing 69% of all TV sales, ABI Research says. That’s up from 6 million and 14% of sales in 2009.”

I know for a lot of geeks have been leveraging such technology for quite sometime. For example, my good friends at Neuros Technology can attest to having created the Neuros LINK – an awesome device that connects you to the web for your own little jukebox of shows & movies. This came out over a year ago.

3 questions to each of you to think about & discuss with me here about this new technology:

1. Do you want to integrate your Internet & TV experience?
2. Won’t this mean we have to consider buying a new TV as often as a new laptop due to new features?
3. Since Yahoo appears to be the big player with this TV technology, will this level the playing field at all vs. Google?

Looking forward to our conversation about this…thanks!

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!

Despite leading workshops entitled “Twitter 101″ I can’t help but get concerned that too many businesses are getting caught up in the tools of social media. Instead shouldn’t we be focusing on developing the right mentalities enabling us to effectively communicate across the social communities that exist today and are yet to come?

Nonetheless, there is still a need to advise businesses on the platforms necessary to help them best connect with their targeted audiences. As a result, we’re asking you this poll question:

We realize that every business has different needs so we know we are generalizing with this question. It really depends on what your social strategy is and who you are looking to reach. In general, we’re curious to know which platform you recommend the most to businesses looking to get involved. Anxious to hear your thoughts on this topic!