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?

I’m sure you’ve all been in a similar discussion. Last night I was playing poker with my neighbors and someone brought up how frustrated they were with their wife always on Facebook. Another chimed in, “she’s on Facebook while I’m on porn. I’m good with that!” Which you can imagine lead to a series of discussions that took us in many directions:).

With my ”social media advocate” hat on I quickly turned to the Internet on my BlackBerry to see what I could find in the debate – Social Media vs. Porn. To my surprise I came across a number of posts from this June that proved my poker buddies wrong…Social Media has become a more popular online activity than porn! Steven Stark talks about it in his blog post, “Social Media Beats Porn” which references the SearchEngineWatch.com article by Erik Qualman entitled, “15 Social Media Maxims for Marketers” from June 1 citing recent Hitwise data. Although I question the interpretation of the study…I still think it’s a pretty cool stat to throw out as we’re educating folks about social media.

So I suppose we as Americans have now added to our vices? Sex, gambling and Social Media?! I suppose it could be worse:).

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?

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:).

Jumping on Twitter this morning I was bombarded by numerous updates about the continued love fest for Twitter (for which I’m certainly a part of) including – Adam Lavrusik of Mashable’s, “5 Reasons Why Twitter’s Growth Cannot Be Stopped”  and Erick Schonfeld of Tech Crunch’s, “Twitter Reaches 44.5 Million People Worldwide in June.”

All this love for Twitter and social media in general reminded me to make a point that I had been meaning to blog about for some time -

“Social Media (including Twitter) and the relationships we develop, massage and foster online are only as good as those we can convert offline.”

What I’m ultimately getting at is that we can get all hung up on the love around Twitter and social media – including these very impressive stats – but unless (as business professionals) we can take these relationships offline (where business really happens) this is all worthless.

I know this is a pretty broad blanket statement, but in general I think we need to realize that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogging, etc. are additional communications vehicles to help us more effectively do whatever it is that we do in our careers.

I’m stoked that Twitter had more than 44.5 million unique visitors in June. It’s shocking and reassuring to see all of the stats around this space we all love (here is a great presentation on that). But none of this really matters if businesses don’t understand how to leverage their social media strategy and initiatives to help accomplish their business goals (shocking…I know). Yet the overwhelming majority of businesses I’ve talked with on this subject don’t have a formal strategy in place.

I’ll get off my soapbox as I’d love to hear more from you about your feelings about where social media is heading for business. Of course, I’ll continue to advocate:).

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!

It’s time to put my foot down and just say it…social media isn’t a savior for businesses. It isn’t going to be that secret potion that pulls us all right out of this recession nor will it compensate for a business model that…well, wasn’t going anywhere anyway. It’s not to say that social media can’t supplement your business communications, marketing, customer service and many other departments. I just want to be clear that it isn’t for everyone BUT if you take the appropriate steps it can be an amazingly powerful move for your business.

It is my belief that most business professionals (or consumers for that matter) don’t fully understand what it means to participate across these social media platforms. As I continue to work with businesses in this space I continue to hear the same song and dance, “we’re using Twitter and Facebook but think they’re a waste of time for our business” – if they’re even on the platforms as most are standing cautious to determine if it is right for their business (which is actually a better move than just jumping in unprepared).

WARNING: If you’re drinking the social media Kool-Aid, you may not like what I’m about to say…social media isn’t for everyone.

I’ve put together a brief checklist of 5 considerations any business professional (or organization) should make before make before moving any time, $ or resources over to social media. Here we go:

• Are your audiences participating: The simple fact is that if your audiences aren’t participating in social media…you and your organization shouldn’t spend time, $ or resources on a social media program. However, if any are there, so should you
• Plan, plan, plan: Quoting the great Paul “Bear” Bryant (former University of Alabama football coach) – “Have a plan. Follow the plan, and you’ll be surprised at how successful you can be. Most people don’t have a plan. That’s why it is easy to beat most folks.” Like anything else in business…without a strategy, plan and measurement your attempt at social media will fail
• Get ready for the good, bad & ugly: If you decide that participating in conversation is important to you and your organization…get ready for the good, bad and ugly. You can’t block negativity within social media (i.e., delete negative comments on your blog), you can only hope to neutralize or if you’re lucky convert them into positives
• Consistency is crucial: The single biggest way to fail at social media and dig yourself a deeper hole than not participating at all would be to start a blog, launch profiles and then have your audiences experience the deadly silence. Consistent participation is crucial
• Gain executive buy-in: Even if you’re ready to make the move into the social media conversations, are your executives comfortable and supportive of your efforts? If not, you need to ensure C-level buy-in before making any next steps

I’d love to hear what advice you provide to business professionals looking to get into or fine tune their social media program or what you practice yourself. In addition, I welcome each of you to join my new Twitter profile (SM4Biz) which will be focused on this exact subject – helping business professionals understand, plan and participate in social media.

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!

NOTE: This is a joint post by Matt Batt and Heidi Sullivan. It is cross-posted on Story Assistant and CisionBlog.

Cision’s Director of Media Research Heidi Sullivan) and I did a free Cision Social Media Webinar earlier this month titled Twitter 101, and we received more great questions than we could answer about engaging in Twitter on behalf of a company, organization or brand. In an occasional series of posts, we’ll be answering some of those questions over the coming weeks. Here are some questions and answers about Twitter Account Set-up and Twitter Handles.

Twitter Account Set-up

Emily: If you are tweeting for a non-profit that really needs to get their brand out there, do you still think it is better to use a photo or is it better to use the logo?

Matt: Logic (and others) might tell you to use your logo for branding purposes but the reality is that on Twitter and in life, people like talking with people. For this reason, I would suggest that you use a photo of the individual representing your non-profit on Twitter. If there are multiple people managing the profile, I would try and customize your background (see next question) to reflect the pictures and individual profile names for each and/or I would switch out the photo each time someone new is managing the profile. Ironically, here is a great example of this from Cision.

Tim, Megan, Mark, Amy, Sara: Do you have any tips on making compelling Twitter backgrounds?

Heidi: The best practices in social media apply to creating your Twitter background as well. Your Twitter page provides a snapshot of you so it should reflect your brand (personal or professional) and your personality. A customized background will draw more attention than the blue-skies-and-clouds Twitter default. ZMogo has a nice post that lists the 10 best sites that offer free Twitter backgrounds and templates. I recommend scanning through the comments as well – lots of readers offer additional tips and sites to get started.

Abbey: On your setting panel should you protect your updates?

Matt: Quite simply, never protect your updates. In the spirit of social media which includes transparency, interaction and conversation…hiding behind protected updates just doesn’t make any sense. I have heard of organizations that do this for media purposes (i.e., they release embargoed news to a select group of journalists) but honestly, I don’t think it makes sense. I use the same logic when I look at companies using the Facebook Group (vs. Fan) page and restricting members. I understand the need for privacy…but take it off social media then.

Twitter Handles

Taylor: I heard a rumor that most Twitter usernames with numbers are spammers, is that true?

Heidi: Most of the spammers that start following me do have numbers after their names, but I have also noticed that a lot of ‘legit’ followers have started the practice as well. As Twitter has grown in popularity, more and more handles are already taken and adding a number to the end of your name can seem like the easiest way out. However, I have heard the same rumor about spammers, so if you’re creating your Twitter account for the first time, it’s best to avoid the numbers game so that others don’t think you’re a spammer. Don Reisinger wrote a post about creating your handle on CNET and argues that adding numbers after your name is “so 1999.”

Beth, Nelda, Taylor: My blog name/last name/company name is too long for a twitter username, suggestions?

Matt: This is where years of trying to guess the license plates during long road trips come in handy! Seriously, you have to get creative. You can always elaborate on your bio to spell out all of the details. One of the most important things is to create some consistency with your brand across all of your social media platforms.  Liz Hover had a guest blog post about this subject earlier this year.

Amanda, Jeanne: So if I didn’t take Twitter seriously + need to change my name, do I cancel and start again?

Heidi: If you aren’t happy with the handle you created because you didn’t realize you’d be using your SexyEyez875 account to interact with clients and the media, there’s good news for you: you can change your handle and keep your followers. Go to Settings > Account > Username to change your handle. Just remember to let your key followers know that your handle has changed so that you don’t miss important tweets. It’s probably also a good idea to set up Tweet alerts (we recommend the RSS function in Twitter Search or TweetLater) for your old handle to catch any residual tweets that you receive.

Shawn: By using my first and last name as a profile name am I detracting from my personal and professional brand?

Matt: Similar to my answer above, you have to determine what your personal brand is on Twitter and across all social media platforms. Take myself for example, it would have made all the sense in the world to have used @MattBatt for my profile name especially since my name is so catchy or I could have used my business name @PipelineMR (Pipeline Media Relations). Instead I decided to brand myself as @StoryAssistant because I didn’t want to seem at all self serving with my agency but also wanted to build a relevant brand vs. my name.

I hope we answered some questions here with this post! Please chime in if you have alternative and/or complimentary advice. Remember, we’re all learning here!

Our next post will be focused on “Multiple Tweeters & Following People on Twitter.”

One thing is for sure, the Twitter train has left the station for businesses…are you on?! I’ve been doing a lot of Social Media Boot Camps for businesses recently and I’m consistently asked the question – is this really worth it for business (both B2B and B2C companies)? Then I’m reading USA Today on Friday as Jon Swartz pens a story entitled, “Businesses get cheap help from a little birdie.” The story of course about how businesses such as Comcast, Dell, JetBlue and Starbucks are benefiting from Twitter’s “popular communications technology.”

I think it’s important to stress that I’ve created the following list looking at 5 reasons businesses should CONSIDER Twitter. The reality is if your targeted audiences aren’t participating on Twitter…neither should you or your business. The one caveat to this argument is that someone who isn’t your “targeted audience” might still benefit or add value to your business…always true. Personally I wouldn’t advocate for a business to launch a Twitter strategy if they don’t have a major (influential) audience already actively participating in conversation on Twitter.

So, here goes my 5 Reasons Businesses Should Consider Twitter:

1 – Monitor Your Brand: If you decide that Twitter isn’t write for you to allocate time or budget towards a solid strategy for your business, at least consider monitoring what others are saying about your company.  Here is a great story from Robert Scoble in Fast Company earlier this year on this subject;

2 – Join The Conversation: To the USA Today story, many businesses are successfully creating brand champions as well as mitigating major customer service issues through engaging with their customers on Twitter. Don’t just push out your information…add some value and respond directly to your customers;

3 – Its Free: Okay, so time = money…and it certainly takes time to execute an effective Twitter strategy for your business.  But, with the right time management tips and tools you can optimize your time on Twitter while still effectively delivering on your set strategy;

4 – Supplements Traditional Marketing Program: One of the main reasons I like and recommend Twitter to so many businesses and organizations is that it does a really great job of leveraging many of the traditional marketing tactics you are already implementing.  For example, when your company appears in the New York Times you should leverage your audience on Twitter to share the story;

5 – Innovate or Die: Okay, so maybe not so extreme, but the reality is most brand leaders have leveraged Twitter and social media to their advantage – just look at the Blog Council members as a case in point.  Perhaps Bill Gates said it best, “Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.”

I’d love to hear your additions or edits to this list…thanks!