Selling Social Media to Your Boss

hat tip to Social Computing for their post

As the millennial generation enters the marketplace there has been an increase in the use of social media tools in the overall marketing strategy for medium to large size businesses. Over the years, business owners attitudes have shifted from out-right against to open yet apprehensive. Their apprehension is intensified when a “social media” advocate cannot fully outline the benefits of using social media for a company. Believe me when I say, It’s cool just doesn’t cut it anymore.”

How do you sell a social media strategy to your employer? Better yet, how do you explain the benefits of social media in a business communication strategy?

Before we get into a list of the benefits of social media there needs to be thought involved in this process. Just because social media, social networking, and blogging are overused in the marketplace does not mean they fit your communications strategy. After reading this post, think long and hard about the positives and negatives of social media and how it relates to your communication strategy.

WHEW. Now that we have that out of the way: How to sell social media to the layman:

Social Computing had a couple good points:

1. Internally, social media tools can be used to help with status information, training, project collaboration. Most tools like blogs, twitter-clones like identi.ca, etc can be set up internally instead of used on the public web, for more privacy.

3. Building a social network group (either on someone else’s platform or around your primary site) encourages customer retention (a huge metric for lots of companies).

4. When you open up your communications platform to blogging and social media you are adding a new depth to your company. Consumers want to know there are people behind the product. They want to know there is something authentic behind the service they just purchased.

5. Use an example of a company who has been successful in this new world. Ex: BestBuys Internal Social Network for Employees.

There a plenty of other examples of the benefits of adding social media to your communications strategy. I encourage the layman and the advocate to get together and discuss. Without discussion and debate the communication problem will grow and manifest from apprehension to aggression.

Godin and Social Media: Don’t Just Do it. Sing it.

Many marketing and business professionals alike follow Seth Godin’s blog from time to time. We have been inundated with his brilliant marketing mind and tend to put his strategies to practice. I am an avid reader of his daily blog but there are many times in which I wish he spent more time on social media community platforms. I try to take his thought on marketing and business communication and apply them to a social media format.

Tonight I had the pleasure of catching up on some of Seth’s post. He has a post entitled; Sing it (please S I N G I T), which is absolutely brilliant in the context of business communication. In the post he talks about attending a concert where a band was playing a classic rock cover song to perfection (note-for-note, chord-for-chord). He talks about how the musicians just stood there with no energy.”

Excerpt:
A concert isn’t about the music, is it? And a restaurant isn’t about the food.

The funny thing is that learning to Sing It is a lot easier than learning how to play the guitar. For some reason, we work on the technique before we worry about adding the joy.

He goes onto say that many times we care more about the technique than we do the actual delivery. It made me debate the online communications strategy deeply embedded in the message: Don’t just do it. Sing it.

The key is not deciding which networks to join or how many profiles created. It is about the time involvement in a niche number of networks. When you join a social media network follow Seth Godin’s rant, “Don’t just do it, sing it.”

A blogger can be an amazing writer but if personality is not involved in the post it will fail. A musician can perfect guitar chords and solos but without passion the performance will go unnoticed. A business owner can have an MBA and know all the techniques in the world but without drive the door will close.

Add some passion, personality, and drive to your social media experience. Devote time and energy to the process and you will experience return.

One of the Coolest Apps Of the Year: FIREFLY!

(hat tip to Mashable for hooking me up with the site)

Firefly is a brand new application that is currently in beta. I was reading through the Mashable post (found here) and thought to myself, “This is kind of a cool concept I am going to check it out.” I linked to http://firef.ly and tried out the service. It is amazing!

The basics:
Firefly is a chat tool that allow site owners to hook up a chat room on their site that is sleek and very-functional. If your website is supported by firefly a user can click the icon and a semi-transparent window will pop up. You are able to see the mouse icons of other users in the chat moving over the screen.

One of the coolest features of the app is the chat history bar at the bottom of the chat box. It looks like a video timer on YouTube videos. You can drag the cursor right-to-left and see the chat history of your room.

I love the fact that the Firefly programmers have created a chat application that is easy to install, looks good (isn’t a bulky chat window or IM box), and is completely AWESOME! This would be huge for an active blog or a social media site.

Your chat archive is stored at the firef.ly site. Think about it: active LIVE chat on your site. This would also be a great tool for training.

Blue Chip Expert :: Is It Worth It?

Many of you have probably been getting hundreds of invites for a site called Blue Chip Expert. I decided to join and check it out for myself. The site touts itself as being the “Premier Talent Source.”

In the about section of the site they state:
Blue Chip Expert is in the business of making recruiters more efficient and more effective by automating the agency search process through a combination of premier social networks, advanced people search technology, and targeted job referrals.

Basically the concept of the site is to gain multiple network professionals within a certain area to refer their contact list. The site pulls white collar workers into the site by stating they will give referral dollars to any of the contacts that receive a placement through the Blue Chip Network. Good idea? Maybe.

The Blue Chip site has created a network which creates a database of white collar workers throughout the country. My guess is that they are betting on a small number of the thousands of invitations being sent out to be credible sources for job placement.

Can they get it done? Maybe. Hopefully soon. I am tired of getting invitations.

Adjustment to 4-TouchPoints Model of Social Media

I spoke with Lorraine Ball this morning about the 4-Points model I talked about in my post, Being Productive with Social Media.

She had some excellent ideas that rounded out the model to perfection. Anymore thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

We have rounded out the four touch points to a more “proactive” arrangement: Business Interaction, Business Productivity, Social Development, and Education/Information. An example of each can be seen below:

How to be Productive with Social Media!

Lifehacker had a great post where they interviewed social media expert, Steve Rubel. Steve had three steps to making social productive, I have outlined them below and added a couple of my own.

Step 1: Set A North Star
(Keep it real and be honest. Why are you using social media? Apply social media to reach your goals. How can you use it to accomplish your goals?)

Step 2: Apply the Pareto Principle
(80% of the value comes form 20% of the content. Use tools to aggregate great content and make the most of your time spent using social media)

Step 3: Face-to-Face Newton
(Make time for being social. Face-to-Face Interaction)

Steve Rubel makes some great points in the interview. I thought I would add a couple of points that helps me stay productive in the Social Media world.

Step 1: Use the 4-Points Model

When using social media you should keep in mind the 4-points model. There are 4 points social media applications should touch in regards to your daily life: Business, Local Business Networking, Social, and Information. Choose four main networks where you spend the most of your time.

I use LinkedIn for business applications, Smaller Indiana for local business networking, Facebook for social application, and FriendFeed for information. LinkedIn can be described as my connection rolodex. Facebook is to keep me updated on my friends and acquaintances from college and high school. FriendFeed is a wonderful information aggregation tool where you can follow influential people and the information they share. Smaller Indiana is a great place to connect to local professionals and share ideas on how to make Indiana a better place.

Step 2: Commit Yourself

You get what you put in. How many times have we heard that? When using social media commit to a set amount of time a week to using your applications. You will find yourself spending to much time on your applications if you fail to designate a certain amount during the week.

I try to designate an hour of each day to information sharing (writing blogs, commenting on blogs, perusing my Google Reader) and an hour a day to using my other networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Smaller Indiana).

Step 3: Be Authentic

I get numerous e-newsletter in my inbox everyday, most of them vary from mundane to outright boring. When posting on your social media applications, try to add some authenticity and personality to the information you are sharing. When I am reading blogs and posts on social applications the last thing I want to read is an impersonal e-newsletter. I want to know that the keystrokes behind the information is an actual person. Be personal. Be Authentic.

There are the three steps I use to get the most out of Social Media. Cheers!

Screw OpenID. Screw It.

I am impatient.

I am a millennial that gets pissed off when something takes longer than 5 minutes to figure out.

You can call me an idiot. You can call me an OPENID hater. That’s fine because, at the moment, it’s true.

Whether or not there is an easier way around the OpenID comment feature on the Google/Blogger platform it doesn’t matter to me. I couldn’t figure it out. Chalk it up to being 12:00am at night or maybe it is because I have a splitting headache.

I have been attempting to post a comment on Anthony Juliano’s post, “Two Great Reminders of What Works.” Good post Anthony! I scrolled down the page and clicked “Post a Comment.” I wrote the comment and scrolled down again. It asked for my Google/Blogger name or an OpenID login.

“Well, I don’t have an OpenID login name… Maybe I should create one.”

After 5 minutes of scrolling through the OpenID site and then scrolling through the ClaimID.com site. I still didn’t have it figured out.

Why can’t things be simple?

Write the comment.
Post the comment.

I would then bask in the glory of another successful attempt at providing content/comments on the web.

Call me impatient. I just wanted to post the comment.
I will still read Anthony’s blog because I like it.

Explaining Social Media. Brilliant!

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Microblogging=Money? Assetbar Thinks So.

Major props to Louis Gray for cluing me into a new development in the world of making money on the Internet. In his post titled Assetbar Launches Fanflow for Premium Messaging and Content, Gray talks about a new service offered from Assetbar called FanFlow. Long story short, it allows for the monetization of content from the developer to the reader.

There has been major strides in growing content on the Internet. Information is shared and updated by the second on millions and millions of pages. We have a way to create the content (ie Google Reader ) but we do not have a way to sell the content. I agree with Louis when he says:

One of the major issues hindering the growth of many Web services today is that users are not willing to pay. We don’t want to pay for using their service, we don’t want to pay for content, and we usually don’t want to see or click through ads.

I see it daily when it comes to growing social networks. Many people choose not to spend time developing content on social networks because they cannot place any value on the time they spend developing profiles and content on networks. When I am out talking up a new network or a new development project I usually get the response:

My time is worth (some dollar amount). I don’t have the time to spend joining and developing sites like Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Smaller Indiana, and Plaxo. How can I place a value on something so intangible?

Visibility is king for me when it comes to creating content and joining multiple networks. Though I have recently been conscious about how much of my time I spend on sites that do not create added value to my pocketbook.

Have we reached a breaking point on the Internet? Has growth been hindered because of the amount of time needed to spend on developing content doesn’t pay out?

Has Assetbar created a means to place a monetary value on time and effort in creating content? I think so. I am interested in seeing the development play out.

Should A NFP Use Twitter?

I had a great question posed to me by Scott Semester of Smaller Indiana in relation to my post about Comcast .

The question follows:

Kyle, can you talk a little more about (or recommend online resources that can explain) how companies and nonprofit organizations can use Twitter to connect with their target audiences? I have a Twitter account, but it’s just for personal stuff and I usually forget to use it at work. How might I and my colleagues add value for donors via Twitter?

What a great question!

The first step in utilizing a social tool like Twitter is to understand the human element in relation to social media. The human element can be referred to as an underlying form of authenticity when using social tools for communication. Scott made reference to using Twitter for “personal stuff” and he is on the right track. When consulting with a company, I tend to recommend two separate accounts. You should always have social media tools for your personal life, which SHOULD ALWAYS BE separate from your business.

When a person is seeking out information on your company they want two things concrete information (hard data, contact info, about us, etc) and the human element (owner, employee, company mission, etc). Twitter, not to mention every other social media outlet, gives you the opportunity to show a more human side to your business/organization.

Next step: Just try it out. Start an organization Twitter account (ie. Comcastcares). Search for people in your area and start following. See what happens.

Put some HUMAN into your COMPANY. Believe me, it is worth it.

After all, an empty, heartless logo is the last thing a donor will give money to.