So I was talking with a peer recently about his online community work, and in that conversation I asked him what his company’s social media monitoring and response strategy entailed. His reply:

“Oh, you know, we’re using Radian6….”

Frankly, his reply didn’t surprise me. Radian6 *is* a kick-butt service that a lot of companies are using, ours included, however, the more I think about his response and continue talking with other folks about conversation discovery, tracking, analysis, and the like, the more gaps I find….

And, well, the more it seems that very few companies actually have a fully baked social media monitoring and “engagement” strategy.

I think part of the problem is that for too long now, too many companies, like my colleague’s above, have just wanted to get their arms around the conversation discovery challenge, and things like analyzing, acting, and archiving those conversations were secondary concerns. And, you know, that’s fair enough, but by no means is that a complete plan.

It’s with this in mind, that I thought it might be interesting to outline, at a really basic level, what a social media monitoring and engagement program looks like in its entirety (if you take a sec and extend it past the obvious tasks). And note, I’m looking at this more from a general internal infrastructure perspective, so yeah, beware, your mileage may vary.

Step 1: Conversation Discovery

This is pretty easy: How are you discovering conversations? Are you using brand monitoring services like Radian6, Nielsen, Cymfony, and the like? Also, are you using keyword watch lists and alerts; at very least, doing persistent searches? Typically, for larger brands, it takes a combination of the paid services and select DIY search hacks to generate a healthy river of news.

Step 2: Conversation Aggregation

Again, easy stuff. What are you using to gather up all your data sources; all your inputs? Is it a commercial feed reader, like Google Reader, Netvibes, My Yahoo!? Or perhaps some sort of proprietary dashboard, like TruCast? For some, well, actually a lot of folks, their email inbox continues to be the preferred repository for all this information — for better or worse.

Step 3: Conversation Escalation

This is the step where a program transitions from passive watching tactics, to analysis, response planning and ultimately, to participation. To get this job done right, there needs to be some sort of logical escalation path for getting front line issues to behind-the-line experts who can provide the best information and value — the fastest. I’ve seen big, bulky ticketing and delegation systems used for this, as well as simple group email aliases. At Voce, we’ve custom built our own lightweight system. The important thing here is to establish some sort of process/place to rely on and record activity.

Step 4: Conversation Participation

What’s the best way to participate? Do you prioritize and pursue direct methods, like comments, posts, tweets, emails, etc? Or do you explore indirect methods of participation like social bookmarks, tagging, favoriting, err, “likes,” etc? Lastly, at what point is participation more effective offline? I’m a big believer that participation takes a variety of shapes and forms, picking which form is right for a given context takes, well, takes some experience and skill, but mostly patience.

Step 5: Conversation Tracking

How do you keep track of all the posts, tweets, comments, links, and otherwise, where you’re participating in conversations? Do you use an industrial strength CRM or maybe one of the many comment management systems on the market, like co.comment. Or worst case, do you simply rely on email strings to help track important conversations?

Step 6: Conversation Archival

Hands down, one of the biggest challenges of any social media monitoring and response program is recording or archiving actions taken, opportunities lost, and most importantly, outcomes achieved. Likewise, capturing and recording conversation patterns, identifying gateway topics, keyword mentions and the frequency/sentiment of sources, perhaps for more targeted influencer outreach work at some point, are all important.

Again, this is just a very basic breakdown here, but I think (I hope) it shows that conversation discovery is really just a small slice if what you need to round out a larger social media monitoring and response strategy.

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So you could argue that the Achilles heel of most social media programs is that we’re all, in some way, increasingly relying on a variety of third party services and tools to augment our efforts online — and with that reliance comes an assumed risk that these services will remain accessible and dependable all the time, especially when we need them most.

But what if they aren’t? What if they break? What if the ‘new fantastic tool’ turns into more of a liability than an asset?

At what point do certain social media services become, well, too risky for corporate use?

Take Twitter for example, a service I personally dig and use regularly, and one that’s already been examined and adopted as a comms tool inside some very large organizations. Twitter has become, sadly, the poster child for inconsistency, poor performance and frustration among many, at least lately. I don’t doubt that Twitter’s technical woes will get figured out, but it’s all coming at a cost to others, and if you’re Dell, Southwest, Red Cross, and the like, you have to wonder:

Do the advantages (and potential) of Twitter still outweigh the risks and headaches that come with relying on it right now?

Yeah, it’s easy to pick on Twitter here, but frankly, this bigger point of social media “risk assessment” is not unique to Twitter at all and can — and should — be applied to any third party service that sits in a broader social media program.

The truth is, almost every service out there has its shortcomings and fail points. YouTube constantly hiccups with its flash conversions. Del.icio.us has a wonderful way of stalling out with multiple API calls. Feedburner freaks out with certain media enclosures. WordPress WYSIWG, well, any WYSIWG really, just never quite works, and the list goes on….

It doesn’t mean these problems outweigh the potential and return of these services, but it’s safe to say, as companies rely more heavily and frequently on these tools — and micro collections of ’subscribers,’ ‘followers’ and ‘friends’ develop around them — there’s an inherent responsibility as both a consultant and as a company to commit to the tools that will last, and to at least consider some sort of exit plan if they don’t.

Ultimately, it’s still about picking the right tool for the job, a choice that just increasingly requires all of us to first ask:

Will this tool work all the time, most of the time or just, you know, some of the time?

The answer we’re each content with is our choice to bear and perhaps over time, a reflection on our abilities to discern between what’s popular verse what’s functional, what’s an okay free tool verse what’s a great paid service, etc., etc., you get the gist, good luck.

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Alright, so one of the weird little misconceptions I’ve been dealing with for a while now is the belief that social media marketing is, well, how do I say this? “Cheap.”

It’s an opinion often held by marketers, communicators, executives, and the like, many of whom have clicked on the pony-tailed chief’s ‘DIY’ blog and the clever, professionally underproduced video on YouTube and the messy, yet oddly functional fan page on Facebook, and because of this, have formed an opinion of what social media marketing is, how it’s done, and ultimately what it must cost.

And really, can you blame them?

These folks are simply making a calculation of value based on the tangible merit of what’s being presented to them — with very little insight, understanding or weight placed on the effort required to really bring these projects to life, let alone what it takes to keep them going and make them truly successful.

Of course, to complicate things, there’s a near endless parade of free online tools and services that are surfacing every month, each in their own way perpetuating the “man-this-stuff-is-cheap” mentality as their own hype cycles crest (cough, FriendFeed) and later crash.

Lastly, and most importantly, I think there’s a tendency in ROI conversations to over indulge in hard numbers sans consideration for all the underlying soft costs of social media projects. And by “soft costs” what I’m really getting at are the *absurdly high* time and attention investments that typically come with these projects and what are the unique shared scars among many a social media practitioner. If you’ve ever administered a blog or a community of sorts, you’ll know what I mean, nuff said.

Sadly, time and attention factors are often overlooked and greatly underestimated in most marketers’ understanding and appreciation of these projects.

Now, does this mean social media work can’t be done on the cheap? Nah, of course not. You go right ahead and create your corporate Blogger account and your executive’s MySpace page and that barely-discernible-but-kinda-indie looking mobile video of your company event;)

Kidding aside, just remember that free is never really free. That time’s an investment too. And that social media marketing requires a lot of it and because of this, “cheap” investments could end up costing you a bundle if you’re not clear about what you’re buying.

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Alright, so there’s all sorts of assumptions companies make about social media these days, one of the most dangerous of which is the assumption that the feedback, opinions and insights people share online are absolutely representative of their customer base.

Be careful about walking into this particular perception warp, it’s very easy to fall into and terribly difficult to escape.

Yeah, there’s a ton of valuable customer feedback to be gathered and analyzed on the web, however, more often than not, that feedback is coming from what’s best described as, well, a vocal minority. The perception warp is believing this group of customers online reflects the opinions, attitudes and experiences of *all* your customers (e.g., the much, much larger silent majority).

I was reminded of this recently on a client project where we were analyzing commenter registrations on the company’s blog. Our WordPress admin page showed thousands of comments and thousands of registrants, but as we chopped up the user data, we found that about *40* commenters accounted for nearly a third of the total comments.

I’ve seen very similar patterns on other projects, and generally speaking, I think there’s plenty of evidence to support the fact that the ratio of writers to readers online is wildly disproportionate. And unfortunately, once again, it’s one of those unique challenges that falls onto the laps of those who manage social media programs to determine just how much weight to put on the collective customer feedback culled from the web; also I suppose, how influential (or not) your vocal minority of customers are to your silent majority of customers.

[cross-posted on Voce Nation]

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Alright, so here’s the deal, what we call “corporate participation” online can be incredibly valuable, and hell, at times, even a little fun, but it’s a messy, messy art. A few recommendations to consider if you’re a marketer about to dig into the new trenches of business:

First, remember, it’s about the purposeful conversation.

Too many bloggers, too many book authors and too many expert speakers have over-inflated the value of the proverbial “online conversation.” For that, I’m guilty too. The plain truth is that some conversations are indeed important for your business, but let’s face it, many of them are not.

As social technologies and tools saturate every corner of the web, you’ve got to be painfully realistic about calculating where you spend your time, energy and money — and making sure you’re purposefully investing it in those conversations where you’ll likely see the best return. For some, that return is a relationship formed, for others it’s the substantiation of a position or the change of an opinion. You have to decide.

Second, it’s about finding contextual conversations.

Over the last several years, I and many others have advised folks to simply seek out conversations about their clients, companies or products, and to watch and engage in this dialogue as appropriate. Do I still think this is a good practice? Yeah, sure, I think monitoring for mentions is pretty important, but I think we all need to take a step forward and look at conversational contexts much more closely.

Finding on an on-topic conversation is very, very easy, nowadays, however, determining which conversational context will *likely* illicit a desired action (e.g., a purchase, a recommendation, etc.), is much, much more difficult, but critical for those companies who want to squeeze the most value from their efforts.

For example, if you’re a consumer tech company, I’d be looking at the context of brand-related discussions and reviews on Amazon with *a lot* more interest, intensity and priority than, say, most of the random posts and comment trails that might surface across the web. Why? Because the conversations happening on Amazon are far more likely to influence opinions and perceptions and ultimately, the decisions of would-be buyers given the context and purpose for people visiting Amazon in the first place (i.e., they’re researching, they’re shopping…)

Again, keep in mind, participating online is a messy business, and navigating the mores takes a lot of time and patience and most importantly, a steady focus on what you’re hoping to accomplish. Sadly, most companies aren’t capable of throwing a lot of weight and resources behind these efforts (right now), which is why focus is so important.

Also, remember, there’s no single way of doing this successfully, but hopefully this gives folks in the trenches a little something to chew on….

Update: Rich Reader writes: “A guideline that Sylvia Marino shares is that the right time to jump in to the rightly purposed conversation is when your contribution either solves a problem or relieves pain.”

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So, you may have noticed there’s this little lime green book bubbling up everywhere called “Groundswell,” and my hunch is that if you read this blog, you’re probably already reading this book too. At very least, you’re familiar with the book’s co-authors, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, both are long-time industry analysts for Forrester Research, and generally speaking, are pretty smart folks when it comes to analyzing the adoption and application of social media in business.

It’s with this in mind that SNCR and the organizers of Third Thursday - Silicon Valley have invited Charlene to come in and speak at our next meetup about what the Groundswell is, how it’s impacting businesses today, and perhaps highlight some of the recent research and case studies she and Josh share in their book.

If you’re in the midst of formulating your own social media strategy, this is one of those must-attend talks.

Our discussion with Charlene is set for next Thursday, May 15 at 6:30 p.m. in downtown Palo Alto. Details are on the Third Thursday Meetup page. We’ve just about reached our capacity max for this event, so please RSVP soon if you’d like to join us; oh, and bring your Groundswell book.

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The case study chat with the new media team behind Sony PlayStation’s blog went well yesterday afternoon at the NewComm Forum, we actually covered a lot of ground - everything from content development and technical design to community management tactics and measurement. By the end of our session, the PlayStation guys had shared 15 “lessons learned” over the last year. I won’t re-hash all those here, I think some of them were fairly obvious and well documented, but there were a few lesser known/lesser discussed tips that shook out that are worth mentioning, here are three:

Sorry, Your Clever Blog Name Doesn’t Matter

Well, it matters less than you think, especially for big brands, big companies like PlayStation. Fact of the matter is that most people are typing “playstation blog” or a simple variation thereof in the search engines to find the blog. A lot of referral sites are also attributing/linking to the blog with the same simple terms, so, you know, if you’re working on a blog right now, don’t kill yourself over-thinking the name. There’s a good chance people won’t remember it or use it anyway…

Publishing Ain’t Pretty

Get comfortable reading and using html because most of the visual editors on the major blog platforms, well, suck. It’s not a huge hurdle, but for the uninitiated, it can *really* slow you down, especially when you have posts with special formatting like bullets, different font sizes, colors, etc. Consider creating a quick reference sheet for frequently used html styles/tags.

Ditch the “@Name” Comment Reply Practice

Sometimes, the more comments your blog generates, the more difficult it is to participate in the comment threads - at least not in as meaningful of a way as you’d probably like. The average PlayStation blog post is generating 135+ comments; very early on they learned their @name comment replies were helpful, but just getting lost with volumes like this, so they developed a custom WordPress plugin that allows their authors to reply in-line to all the comments (read more about that here). This has added significant value to the health and utility of the discussion threads - and the good news is that if you’re using WordPess, they’ve opened-sourced this particular plugin so you can use it too.

[Photo credit to Ryan Lack]

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Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be heading north to participate in another New Communications Forum, one of only a very few must-attend events for me each year. At this year’s conference, I’ll be co-presenting a case study on corporate blogging with clients from Sony PlayStation. The PlayStation guys have a very interesting and colorful story to tell and this will be the first time it has really been shared, at least in its entirety, so I’m looking forward to the discussion. We’ll be speaking on Thursday at 11AM, hope to see you then…

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I know, I know, posts here have been infrequent, but it’s for good reasons, some of which have been spilling out over on the Voce Nation, others are still to come. Unfortunately, this won’t change soon, I’m off to the UK tomorrow (with @Hyku) to meet with members of ION, an international network of consultants we work with, to exchange ideas, learnings and some best practices in the area of new media and communications.

Also, while we’re visiting, this Saturday, April 12th, Neville Hobson has organized a very cool “PR geek dinner” in Soho. He just posted an update with all the details. If you’re living in the area and would like to join us, please get in touch with Neville. It sounds like several people will be participating, maybe we’ll record something special for FIR, regardless, this should be a lot of fun…

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So last Friday, half a dozen students from Chico State’s journalism program (my alma mater), came to Voce’s Palo Alto office and spent the day observing and discussing agency life.

As part of this visit, I spent some time talking about the web and its impact on the PR industry. It was one of those discussions where unfortunately you just end up having to go a mile wide and an inch deep on things, however, one question shook out of this talk that I thought other students and new grads might find interesting and helpful, I’ll elaborate on it here. The question was pretty simple:

What *new* skills are important to PR?

It’s a great question, one I could chew on for a while here, but if I had to pick three things, I’d say:

Learn Another Language
Seriously, as communicators, if you really want to be successful using your first language, consider learning a second — HTML. It’s a universal language that’s becoming critically important in PR, especially as the reach and influence of the web continues to shape and inform market opinions and perceptions. I think having some basic knowledge of HTML gives you a small leg up when, for example, you’re using a tool, such as a blog in business. It also provides you with a better understanding of how metadata, markup and the like all quietly work together behind the scenes to aid in the discovery and distribution of what you’re ultimately communicating via the web.

Learn Conversational Communication
This is admittedly harder than it sounds, and dangerous too, but it’s about learning a different style of communication, one that separates things like AP style and institutionalized standards of “business talk,’ from more informal and colloquial forms of writing and discourse. It’s important because the vehicles for communication are changing. We’re no longer confined to emails, or press releases or static corporate web pages. Yes, we’re still using these mediums, but we’re also communicating via blog posts, in comment threads, on IM and through other forms of media. The dangerous part of all this, particularly for those new to the workplace, is just learning to determine when this style of communication is advantageous, and, well, when it’s not.

Learn Media Production
Understanding how to plot, plan and produce media, particularly video, is important. It’s another communications tool, one that more companies are adopting as the cost and labor barriers to production continue to lower. Having some basic knowledge of composition, sound, lighting, and editing, is a skill set that has a lot of utility — be it an agency or inside a company. I’ll also add, understanding basic distribution techniques and services, like RSS enclosures, aspect ratios, iTunes directory submissions, etc., is helpful.

Again, there’s much more I and I’m sure others in the industry would say are important skills. Ultimately, however, it’s about getting the fundamentals right, first. It’s about learning to dribble, pass and shoot before you worry about learning how to dunk, but hopefully this helps.

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