Conversation Agent

Marketing in 2010 (free eBook)

2009-12-18T07:00:00-05:00

When we talk about brand awareness, consciously or not, we correlate "brand" with one specific phase in the marketing funnel. Many have defined brand as a set of expectations and experiences.

These in turn generate stories we identify with as we develop our relationship with the brand and the company and people who represent it in our minds and interactions over time. Brands that set themselves apart command a premium.

Brand impact in valuation has been a challenging, but not impossible, feat to measure. It's a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data collected about the brand's public profile, its present role in creating demand, and its future strength as an asset.

I equate brand with the infrastructure upon which everything else sits. It needs to contain the integrity of a good reputation, the capacity for trust, the flexibility for evolution over time, and the simplicity to be understood and infused with your customers and employees stories.

Applications like sales, product development, engineering, customer support, and all of the other functions you associate with operating a company sit on that infrastructure and borrow from its characteristics.

Brand also includes the environment or context a company builds around itself to operate, its culture.

This is the sum total of rites, stories, and dynamics that bind people, inside and outside the organization. It includes channel partners and joint ventures. It may also include vendor relationships. An important point to consider as the service and media industries continue to consolidate.

Now think about social. Through the tools we have at our disposal we extend the reach of those interactions and experiences. The results flow back into how we think about our products and services (or they should). The stories your brand creates extend it beyond the company walls and, by reflection, deep inside them.

Execution in social media enriches brands and the people or tribes that make them work. It means you are changing the world and allowing the world to change you as a business in commensurate parts, while you interact with it.

What are the ingredients of this exchange that make social operational?

Tribe and networks (people)
Direction or compass (objectives)
Action and outcomes (measurable goals)
Maps (strategies)
Tools and tactics (media)

Engagement and outcome derive from the active - and continuous - participation of individuals and groups in the knowledge flows - within their tribes, and outside them. We constantly evaluate, consider, test, experience, adopt and filter information and ideas while we get them and us done.

How can we use these connection points between ideas and people to change businesses and their stories? This is the question for 2010 - social media becomes operational. Read on.

***

Thanks go to the generous contributors: Jason Baer, Olivier Blanchard, Danny Brown, Mark Earls, Rachel Happe, Gavin Heaton, Jackie Huba, Jonathan MacDonald, Amber Naslund, Shannon Paul.

***

Download the free Marketing in 2010 eBook here.

Ten Ways to Spot a Fake (when hiring a consultant)

2009-12-17T07:00:00-05:00

You've probably been there yourself. You're in a situation where someone you meet or come into contact with pretends to be different than what they are.

Market corrections and due diligence will take care of that. Meanwhile, since you need to get a project done and need to enroll help with it, what do you do?

Well, it's easier than ever to spot a fake. Here's what you do.

(1.) Their references lack sufficient authority to be credible - most people can find a few professional allies willing to say good things about them. Vet these. Are they in a relevant field? Do they have any particular accomplishment or expertise? Have they ever paid your expert for services, and were they satisfied with the results? Sort the qualified endorsements from the puffery, and see what is left over.

(2.) Limited accomplishments in their stated field - there are professionals who provide their services on a confidential basis, but most self-professed experts should be able to point to personal achievement in their specialty. If your SEO expert has an unranked website, ask why.

(3.) No evidence of a long-term commitment to their discipline - there are prodigies, but these are the exception. Most experts learned their trade with concentrated effort and practice over a period of time. If you see evidence of unrelated professional activities is the recent past, dig deeper.

(4.) Unwilling to explain positions when challenged - this indicates arrogance, impatience, or a lack of deeper knowledge.

(5.) They think what you're doing is crap - there are crisis managers and people who attempt to demonstrate their worth by manufacturing crisis. If you knew enough to consult an expert, you're probably not a total idiot. If the guru immediately pronounces your past work to be a complete disaster - thank goodness they've arrived - your expert isn't a good listener.

(6.) They won't work on-site, or in front of you - possibly evidence that they're subcontracting exactly what they're selling you - at a markup. Find the real gurus, and hire them.

(7.) Failure to acknowledge the contributions of others - perhaps the most annoying characteristic of all (particularly from the viewpoint of Creatives). Your guru should feel confident enough in their own worth to freely acknowledge the contributions of other individuals. Taking talented people to the next level is precisely the sort of expert service worth buying.

(8.) Magic bullets - real experts know that success is gritty - the result of singular dedication to a goal, superior work ethic, and doing the basics right on a consistent basis. There are very few magicians out there. Beware those who claim to have a single technique, product, or service that will radically change the nature of your business.

(9.) No means to quantify your expert's performance - when hiring a guru, firmly agree upon what constitutes success. This needn't mean the end of their engagement with you. No real expert will object to establishing reasonable benchmarks and goals.

(10.) Leading questions are the only kind of leading they're familiar with - these are especially interesting when the subject professes to be conducting research.

While any true expert might fall short on one or two of these, you might consider them warning signs and dig deeper if something doesn't sit well with you. Do your due diligence and find out if there is a fit with your desired objectives and business outcomes.

Asking questions is the best way to start a conversation and in no way it's an indication of lack of trust. Trust is the new transparency and credibility is built through work and proof. Your best ROI starts with selecting the right team for the job. Remember that this also applies to you.

© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Meet Bruce Christensen, the Virtual Gift Giving Enabler

2009-12-16T07:00:00-05:00

When I met Bruce Christensen, I didn't know he spent his days managing equipment manufacturing in McMinnville and his nights dreaming up Facebook gift exchanges.

Since I was curious about how his Facebook app AlbinoPhant works, Bruce gave me a demonstration by inviting me to a party. For the online White Elephant gift exchange to work, you need to have at least three people participating.

You may select a price point for the gifts, and that includes an estimation of shipping costs. Right now, the app uses Amazon/PayPal but in the future the Christensen hope to be able to add other merchants.

What's nifty is that within the portal, you get all of the functionality you'd have in the room with your family, including the ability to steal someone's gift. That's in the best family exchanges tradition even outside White Elephant parties. Any interaction by the players triggers an email to other participants, so people can stay in the loop over days and distances.

Let's hear it from Bruce about his online presence, and then we'll wrap up about the application.

______________

Why are you online?

Bruce: To share an activity that our family has discovered, which allows us to share gifts and stay close when distance keeps us apart.

More about the Christensen Family.

What prompted you to post in "About You" at Conversation Agent?

Bruce: I enjoy the conversation here and I want to share in the discussion. I believe that others will find what we are doing with this party as an interesting way to keep the conversation alive among friends and family.

More about the application.

What are you working on that you feel will connect ideas and people?

Bruce: The tradition of supporting family and friends with gifts does not end when distance separates us. Nether does the desire to have a meaningful conversation with those that we love.

Parties are the traditional gathering point for both conversation and gift-giving among those who desire to support each other on special occasions. When distance interrupts this opportunity to gather, we all feel a loss of personal connection.

We are building this online party application as a demonstration that the tools of the modern web can, at least in some measure, replace the actual party experience with a valuable substitute.

Amazon provides a trusted shopping portal for gift purchasing. PayPal allows for secure payment systems. And AlbinoPhant provides a fun way to gather on Facebook to pass out all the gifts.

It is our belief that the online party niche can help Amazon sell more gifts, assist Facebook in broadening reach, and make PartyWeDo the party activity portal for gift and conversational support among family and friends.

Our plan is to develop a series of party activities that will support birthdays, weddings, baby births and the holidays. When friends and families are looking for a way to bridge distance, we intend to give them an engaging way to share gifts and conversation on the internet.

Who would you like to connect with?

Bruce: We have three groups that we would like to discover our story:

1. Individual families and friends who want to stay connected and share real gifts

2. Internet thought leaders who could inform others of this emerging niche involving an ecommerce and social network partnership

3. Potential investors who are looking for a sustainable monetization solution for social-web properties

***

Note that Bruce is not a developer, nor is he a Facebook geek. He's a professional with marketing experience developed over the years, and a desire to connect his family and an idea to help you do the same with yours.

Your turn, what questions do you have for Bruce about his Facebook app?

Use offer code 1234 to host your own party on a trial basis.

_________

Additional links:

The How-to Videos

A sharing widget

Rules of the Game

Your Service is Content

2009-12-15T07:00:00-05:00

The best way to tell customers about your service is by showing them. Service is content marketing, the most powerful kind of content that people will gladly share with each other when it's about them and their stuff.

Think for example about the fascination we have with knowing where our books or other items we order online are.

This is not so much because we're in love with physical objects, which, admittedly, we may be. It's about the idea that we bought a gift, and it is now in transit to its destination. Imagining the look of surprise when our friend or family member unwraps it, and their appreciation, is what makes the process special to us.

So when we look at Amazon.com fulfillment center, we don't just see a huge warehouse filled with boxes. Interesting in and of itself. We don't merely recognize the efficiency of moving all that inventory and get each box to its destination. Although that is a modern feat, isn't it?

What we imagine is our package making its way to its human destination. Our friend opening it and enjoying its contents. You can see it in this discussion on FriendFeed. Getting the gifts to their destination on time is the magic of operating a fulfillment center. We love to see how that happens, watching the service delivery part.

When service is the delivery business as in the case of UPS and FedEx, the story of how that service was started and grown fascinates and provides many lessons on dealing with operational issues. Although I have not read either book, if this topic is of interests, I found a good starting point.

The unofficial story told by long time UPS employee Greg Niemann in Big Brown, the Untold Story of UPS. And the book authored by FedEx own Roger Frock, Changing How the World Does Business: Fedex's Incredible Journey to Success - the Inside Story.

What is clear from the conversations about Amazon.com fulfillment - check out also this slide show by BusinessWeek - and the comments on the books written about the two goods delivery companies, is that service and operations may look easy when, in fact, they're not. It takes vision and day in day out dedication to make the service substantial and valuable enough to pay for.

What can you learn from this?

Regardless of the industry or company you're in, you may start thinking about your service as content. How can you provide more visibility into how you do what you do?

In the same way that Amazon.com opens its doors to journalists and the public about its operations, you could think of ways to provide more transparency or visibility into how you deliver the service to customers.

Some ideas you can implement digitally, and in person:

give product or service demos
allow customers to take a tour of your site
post images of how you get it done to make your site more interesting
show stages in your service fulfillment or delivery, just like tracking codes allow you to do
use digital media to get interactive with your customers allowing them to post comments and images of their packages or good, for example

This concept is what makes Build-a-Bear a best seller. Hands-on experience where the service to you is the experience of building your own bear, and the word of mouth value to the company become your bragging rights.

There is a place in the communications cycle for glossy marketing brochures, when written with the customer benefits front and center. So this is no ding on the work of good writers.

More and more, service and experience are the content.

What about you?

How can you look at your business, its service components, and find a way to make that part of the content marketing mix? Where is your sweet spot for customers? Should you build a "delight-o-meter" a-la Amazon.com to let them track your work and see your service?

[image courtesy of Amazon.com]

Don't Try to Be All Things to All Customers

2009-12-14T07:00:00-05:00

Or else you'll come across as not caring about one or more customer segments and needs. When it comes to branding, less from you is more. An additional lesson for companies is to stop trying to be a bad copy of some other company. "Me too" is the biggest branding sin of all - you're doomed for failure, especially when there are already two companies going at it in one category.

The idea of picking one thing and sticking with it is valid on the service end of things. You position your company by making a statement with your message, and delivering on that statement with your service. It sounds simple, but we know it's easy to get in trouble by over promising on both counts.

Al Ries provides plenty of examples of unfocused brands in a post at Brand Strategy Insider about social media not the answer to weak brands. A memorable example for those in the service business is:

What happened at Citigroup? Same old story. It started with Citibank, its consumer banking operation. Then it bought Travelers (insurance), Smith Barney (stock brokerage) and Salomon Brothers (investment banking.) In other words, Citigroup started as a bank in competition with the other major banks in America and then tried to fight on four fronts: banking, insurance, stock brokerage and investment banking. Not a good strategy.

They may seem like adjacent businesses to you, but to a customer, they spell very different support and service needs. Imagine your day job suddenly becoming so big that you cannot do it all. You're stretched in so many directions that you're at the point of losing track of what you're doing.

The same happens with brands.

Today you can increase sales and profits by:

serving your existing customers better
trimming your product line and offering only what you can truly support well
being on the same page with customers as to what your product/service means to them

More focused means that you have one conversation going and many possibilities within it for your customers - and employees - to become evangelists on behalf of your brand.

Let's say you started the company by dominating a category. Why did you stop embracing that position and moved away from what you did best? You did that despite the fact that even today customers continue to associate you with that brand position.

Companies do that when instead of innovating from the inside, they buy other companies that seem a good deal as a growth strategy in new directions. In other words, they think differentiating is a good strategy for the business, and neglect to take the existing brand equity into account.

To continue with the Citigroup example. If they had expanded on their consumer banking operations before Commerce Bank took the number one spot in retail banking for customer relationships (before the Bank's demise and sale, they were considered a Maverick brand), they would have been able to get up close and personal and offer amazing service.

Instead, they expanded into insurance - not a core business, and with quite different customer needs - stock brokerage, and investment banking. What all of these service lines or lines of business have in common is money. But they express very differing models in terms of customer relationships and information needs. Not to mention that they speak to different customer segments in terms of value.

In the service business, when it comes to customers, it fundamentally comes down to two things:

how you serve customers
how you communicate with them

The more audiences and segments you have - which depend on your product or service lines - the higher the complexity in delivering to all the same standards when it comes to meeting customer service expectations and communication needs.

That in turns weakens your overall brand position. Customers are the best source of referral a business has. With social media, that can turn out to be a big win if your customers talk about your business in good terms, or loss if they're at a loss on what to say about you.

The lesson: don't try to be all things to all customers.

Do you think it's the human innate desire to please all that comes into play here? Why is there still such a gap between what companies think they can deliver, and what they deliver?

How to Prepare Your Subject Matter Experts for New Media Interviews

2009-12-13T07:00:00-05:00

During the recent Mediabistro panel in New York, I had the pleasure of meeting Shirley Brady who was community editor at BusinessWeek. Shirley explained that her role at the magazine ranged from running point and connecting readers with journalists to connecting journalists with stories.

It was a comment from a professional participating in the event that brought about a rich discussion on crowdsourcing. Journalists started using this device more frequently to source additional information for a story they're writing. Often that looks like a question put out on Twitter or another social network.

You can find a great example of the use of crowd sourcing by journalists on The Guardian site where readers can investigate the MP's expenses. To sift through 40,000+ pages of material the Guardian asks for the cooperation of readers who are also citizens with a vested interest in learning more.

In a news environment where a reputable newspaper, the Post, is letting another publication do the fact checking for them, the Atlantic [hat tip Jay Rosen], it's not difficult to grasp the importance of having your act and facts together when speaking to the media.

Back in June, Vadim Lavrusik shared 10 ways journalism school are teaching social media at Mashable. The ideas no doubt come from his exposure as a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

For the purposes of your subject matter expert preparation, you should pay attention to how journalists and news organizations are starting to interview, do their news gathering and research, build source lists, publish with social media tools, and integrate their blogs to the news sites.

Some ideas on interviews.

Preparing for the interview

Preparation cannot be stressed enough. This is especially helpful for a subject matter expert who's not used to speaking to the media. It is also key when the interview is with a more mainstream publication than the trade press you're used to dealing with.

The interview could be conducted by email. In that case, you need to learn to convey meaning within a short space. Often reporters prefer bullet point responses to essays because they're working on collecting broader commentary than your specific points.

In that case, decide where you stand on an issue, or what your top advice is and prepare to back it up with data and examples. Since the interview or quote could come from a Twitter or Facebook chat, be prepared to be pithy in your response and still pack it with value.

Doing the interview

Skype deserves a special mention, because it's starting to be used more for video interviews. That's because video is one of top traffic attractors in a site or newsletter. Having a high level script to keep you on track works, being personable and looking comfortable adds a nice touch to video.

The best way to prepare for that is by shooting videos with your subject matter experts and let them see/critique themselves. This can be done fairly inexpensively with a Flip camera. The only addition many who use the camera would make is that of an external mike.

Since journalists use real time search tools with increasing frequency, it's also a good idea to perform those searches on your company on a regular basis to learn what comes up. If you use a social media monitoring tool, you're already doing that.

Follow up after the interview

When you're helpful with additional background material, share links and resources about industry trends and stories, a click of a button may add you to the journalist's source list.

Another way to continue the interview is to participate in the story via links and blog posts that extend the conversation in live streams, comments to blog posts, and building on the story with an example at your company's blog.

This part could also become attractive for your customers and partners to participate in part of the interactive experience by offering anecdotes and additional information or data. It's also easier for employees to track the progress of your company's coverage by sharing links on internal communities.

Your turn

I've done a couple of video interviews on Skype and I can tell you that it's easy to shift your eyes and body around without realizing. I saw the video of a recent talk I gave and almost got dizzy with myself - I was pacing the room too much. We're all learning all the time.

What else could we add to these ideas? What other tips have worked for you and your team?

[image by Steven Parker]

Does Your PR Read Like This?

2009-12-11T07:00:00-05:00

Do you want to run a successful business? Communicate effectively with your communities. Employees, customers, partners, developers, investors, whatever the case may be. If both you and the other achieve a mutual goal through communication, then you will be successful in applying social media to business as well.

There are two dangers in communications:

you don't have a clearly defined goal, therefore you don't know where you're going
you're speaking a different language, therefore there is a disconnect in understanding

In both cases, you won't be able to take the other with you. In essence, you'll be talking to yourself. No call to action for the first one. Nobody home on the the second - the audience has no idea what you're talking about. You don't believe me?

Let's take a peak at what happens when the press release is written by top consultants used to working with upper management:

Company XYZ Unveils Ground Breaking, Scalable, Value Added,

Solution Driven, Easy to Use Widget

Date -- Company XYZ today introduced an innovative, market-leading, mission critical, world class widget that aligns XYZ and ABC best of breed capabilities, providing customers with cutting edge, turnkey, holistic solutions for their flexible widget requirements across the technology infrastructure enabling peak performance.

See what I mean? It takes sophistication to read this masterpiece. Let's get practical instead, then. See what would happen if sales wrote the release:

Leading Company XYZ Pushes Totally Awesome,

Cheap, Fast, and Good Widget

Date -- Leading company XYZ today announced the best ever widget in the market. It will ensure you never have to worry again about a thing. It will do things you haven't thought about, yet. Want a custom version? No problem. This unparalleled jewel will take you to the next century easily. It uses the most advanced technologies with literally hundreds of millions spent to give you the very best. Now more than ever, you need the thousands of hours of experience we have. Buy now!

Much more down to earth. However, you may be the kind of audience that needs some technical information to evaluate a product. No worries, product engineering comes to the rescue:

Widget 5683372134N is a Right-Sized Product for the Enterprise

from Company XYZ

Date -- Widget 5683372134N by Company XYZ was launched today. Configured with side pockets and right-sized for the enterprise, it meets the specs and requirements of WWW technologies and the NZ784492 ARP systems. It solves complex algorithms when in full load and has a capacity of 7,096 18-bit words, memory cycle time of 3.0 microseconds. It works with DGST, RVO, MNO and M7Ms. It's robust, resilient, and can be expanded.

Better, isn't it? Now we have a lot more technical detail to sink our teeth into. Do we have an ending for this post? See if you can write the press release as if it were for the customer.

Widget will do the Job of Your Old One -- Better and Cheaper!
by Company XYZ

Date -- Widget announced by Company XYZ today. It will be on sale at your favorite online store, do the job you need done better, and be cheaper than the previous one. Need a new widget? Wonder what's out there? We'll make it easy as possible for you to see what everyone already said about it, and buy it with one click. And no, we won't track you for the rest of your browsing history.

That's the final lesson. It's not very sexy, but no matter what you feel your company or product's best features are, no matter how well you communicate between management, sales, and engineering, the language you must really write in is increasingly the one your customers speak.

With social media, you have the opportunity to go direct. You can expand your news to include more technical information for later browsing. You can test to see if stories and other kinds of descriptions work online, definitely include images and comments by others.

Write your PR like this, or else you're just talking to yourself.

© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Are Your Facebook Fans Truly Engaged?

2009-12-10T07:00:00-05:00

There are five ways to keep your Facebook pages working for you - and your fans - without running into cycles or idle chit chat, says Italian digital media agency Frozen Frogs. They did some work to figure out fan engagement rate and found that:

(1.) New product releases

Let's face it, our brains are wired for novelty. Hence the love for shiny new objects.

What if you don't have a lot of new product releases? What would constitute new? How about new uses for a product? Maybe suggested by your fans somewhere else - in forums or at your blogs - that you can work with them to repost there, after vetting as necessary to make you feel comfortable.

Run a video interview via Skype of your customer talking about the new or innovative use for it, then post it. This would also pay off the fifth way listed here.

(2.) Promotions and discounts

Putting cash back into people's pockets is still a great way to get traction.

Things may be tight for many businesses at the moment. Points towards a purchase, or a way to create a community bartering system for certain parts of the service might be an interesting option.

Another idea here is to allow customers and fans to earn points towards a charity and then profile them talking about the reason why they picked that charity - there's the story again.

(3.) Eco-friendly initiatives

For real though, not green washing. Eco-friendly can be minimizing your company's footprint, supporting causes the community cares about, building a tangible and concrete story around responsible care.

Car companies have a good angle here.

(4.) Something remarkable

Think about something special and unexpected you could do for your fans. If you're a very popular brand, think in terms of access - giving them access to a unique experience they cannot get elsewhere. Make sure it ties into your brand.

Surprise fans every now and then with something unexpected. You can combine this with special promotions.

(5.) Video narrative

Telling a story visually is very powerful. There are so many ways to involve the community with video - company-driven promotions, special community profile stories, new product uses, guest evangelists. I'm sure you can come up with very creative ideas.

All of these provide higher levels of engagement. Here's the full deck from Frozen Frogs.

Thoughts? Questions? Reactions? We've got to get the Ducati people or someone working on the Ducati digital initiatives in here, don't you agree?

[engagement levels for Wired and Ducati]

You Cannot do Social Without the Support of the Organization

2009-12-09T07:00:00-05:00

In other words, if you just hired a junior person or team to get you on Facebook and give you a helping of Twitter - good luck to you. This is the reality of business, and these days of the marketing side of business, that it wants to shave costs as much as possible. In fact, it trades growth for a predictable (if lucky) future.

Of course, you know that you can indeed have a few people on social media, even on behalf of the organization, without the organization being fully vested in its own success with social. It's an experiment, something we'll see if it works, for a limited time only. Maybe.

The experience part

As we discussed last night at the Mediabistro panel on community management, the emerging role of community manager deserves attention. The chart by Dion Hinchcliffe shows a very interesting portfolio of skills and experience suggested for the role.

A role for the depth of insight and execution Amber Naslund brings to Radian6, the knowledge of the editorial process and work Shirley Brady brought to BusinessWeek, the many case studies of successful examples Saul Colt contributed to making customers sit up, notice and spread information about a company (word of mouth).

Beth Harte shared her experience succinctly recently - I am a marketing professional who gets PR and social media. I have 15 years of integrated marketing experience. She is now community manager for MarketingProfs and doing a fine job of it, because of her deep passion for the profession and the years of experience as a practitioner.

Like Beth, I have years of integrated marketing experience under my belt and have augmented my knowledge by volunteering my spare time to understanding how you build community, along with the dimensions that need to be a consideration if the organization is to truly leverage social.

For more experienced community builders and community evangelists, check out the Twitter lists I created. What you will find is experience in the field the role supports. The position needs to be internal and the person needs to have a very good understanding of the business model, purpose, and path to growth - in layman terms, how the business makes money.

Hiring an experienced professional or team of professionals and allocating resources to them is step one in providing support for social. To make social truly operational, you need to take the red pill and step up your social media efforts.

The execution part

Integrated is the operative word here. This is necessary in order for you to integrate social in the organization, to do it so that it not just barely scratches the surface, but has real impact beyond positive sentiment and better reputation and awareness. Here I'm talking about money.

For that to take place, you need the support of the organization. The community manager role goes across departments and silos, it's not a marketing role, it's greater than that. That's why Dell created the communities and conversations group.

And it is Dell that once again provides us with an example of what's next. They got an early start, 3 years and going strong with Direct2Dell, @DellOutlet, IdeaStorm, Support.dell.com, and many other outposts on Flickr, YouTube, Facebook.

Lionel Menchaca outlines the details of the company's presence in a post that indicates our destination for this conversation - and yes, Dell's Twitter outposts have netted the company $6.5MM, perhaps a drop in the bucket to you, not chump change in terms of experience with their customer base. Dell now touches a community the size of the city of Chicago - 3.5MM people. That is the important number.

In Lionel's words (emphasis mine):

Twitter numbers and growth in Dell’s presence in other social networks is one thing, but what does this mean to our customers and for Dell’s social media strategy overall moving forward? In my mind, it boils down to a few key strategies:

Streamline our presence in social media networks, create meaningful content for customers and continue to increase our connections with them in those places
Focus on building a tighter integration between Dell.com, Support.Dell.com, our Dell Community sites with our presence in social networks
Continue our focus on scaling support of social media initiatives into the Dell business units

For Dell (or any company for that matter), isolated social media efforts won’t lead to long-term success in this space. Our long-term success depends on how well we execute on the key strategy points I outlined earlier in this post. My belief in the promise that social media brings combined with Dell’s commitment to our long-term social media strategy is why I continue to do this job.

This is why you need an experienced community manager. Lionel brings years of technical experience and customer service to his job. You may see him as a blogger, I know him as a very well rounded and skilled professional.

Thanks to him and the emerging role of community management, social is evolving from strategies to increase sales, improve reputation, and create better relationships with customers and partners into creating a better business.

***

This is a lot to digest in one sitting. Many organizations are still grappling with the question of how they get on Facebook. I suggest you pause and think about your long term strategy. It's the only way this social stuff will truly be an investment in your business.

What's next for you?

Now that you know this, you probably still have questions about selling social media to your boss, or teaching your team about crowdsourcing and online collaboration. What I'd like to do is for you to outline your challenges or questions in the comments, and we can take those one post at the time. Sounds good? Fire away.