Without going overboard in its definition, I believe that social equity happens organically and is the net result of relevant content, in any form, that is produced and that the community finds valuable and shares.  The way to increase social equity is to do just that:  create relevant and valuable content. And, just like the value of a home, social equity can go up or go down.  The best example that is top of mind for me is my friend Chris Brogan. I think we can all agree that he is a very popular guy with a significant following.  But more importantly is his ability to create relevant and valuable content, consistently; which is why he is where he is today.

At Intel, we talked about this concept when referencing the social equity of Intel employees who participate on the social web.  In fact, I learned just the other day that Intel has over 1,000 employees who have completed the social media training and are now engaged online and all over the world.  It’s a huge milestone and other organizations should take note.  Yes, Intel the brand has significant social equity for this reason and they should be applauded.

What’s your definition of social equity?

Here is real time search can drive business results:

• Increased reach of your messages
• Growth in social equity
• Potential customer acquisition

.. and here are some challenges that brands will now have to come to terms with:

• Marketers need to be empowered and willing to participate on the social web
• Technology today is still not fast enough to monitor live conversations. Real-time search requires “real-time” monitoring which translates to “boots on the ground” brand participation. If a brand is highly engaged and savvy with Twitter, it will be ready to respond when issues arise on the fly
• Brands must be more strategic when posting updates on facebook and consider what keywords to use

The article is timely, since I wrote about how brands should be living in the conversational stream earlier this week.

I would think by now that the majority of marketers are beginning to understand the dynamics of social media.   With all the published case studies, surveys and data available, one would think that marketers would invest more in creating a framework that facilitates conversations between a real-person-of-a-brand and a consumer. In my mind, this is the true nature of social media.

A study back in 2008 showed that 55% of consumers want ongoing conversations with companies and brands. The study investigated how brands and consumers interact and how consumers want brands to engage with them. And the results were awesome. In addition to the 55% wanting an ongoing interaction, 89% of respondents said they would feel more loyal to a brand if they were invited to take part in a feedback group.

A more recent study in 2009 (you can download here) found that 85% of Americans using social media think companies should have an active presence in the social media universe. What’s even more interesting is that those users actually want interaction with these brands. Here are some other data points you mind find useful:

Out of the 85% of people who want companies to be present in social media:

• 34% want companies to actively interact with them
• 51% want companies to interact with them as needed or by request
• 8% think companies should only be passively involved on social media
• 7% think companies should not be involved at all

This survey alone tells me that marketers should pay a little more attention to their customers and less on spitting out traditional one way messages.

Image from Nielsen Blog

Ahh, so what is this conversational stream you ask?  Well, given this growth in social networking, I wonder how often you check your Twitter stream and hit refresh? What about Facebook? Do you click back and forth between the “live feed” and “news feed” to see what your friends are talking about? I do quite often. Have you ever noticed people talking about a product, brand or maybe the outcome of an election? This is the conversational stream (some call it activity stream or just stream).  Brian Solis refers to this as the attention dashboard; whereby all of our attention is deep rooted in the thoughts, ideas, opinions, and perceptions of the communities that we belong and subscribe to.

As a consumer, living in the attention dashboard is natural.  I have a vested interest in what my community actually cares about. So when a friend posts a link to a review of product that he/she just bought and raves about its features; I am probably going to click on it to see what all the hype is about.

For a brand, this is a huge opportunity but it also presents a few challenges.  Steve Rubel, a friend and colleague at Edelman sums it up here:

To mitigate this ongoing trend of streams, communicators will need to: 1) be as ubiquitous as possible, 2) adopt multiple messages, stories and formats and 3) make sure you allow your employees to get out there – in other words, use the force, don’t fight it.

Here is how I see it. Brands need to be relevant. Skip the marketing messages that go through rounds and rounds of approvals from the brand and legal teams. No one reads it anyway. Equip and empower your marketing/PR/product groups to become brand evangelists so they can participate on the social web starting within their own micro-communities. What you will find is relevant messages appearing in others’ streams. Participation means that “relevant branded content” will be omnipresent on the social web; from the Google search results, Delicious & Stumbleupon bookmarks, to links being shared in Twitter and Facebook.

Of course, I have a tendency of oversimplifying everything. There are many issues to consider about real time community engagement but you catch my drift, hopefully.  If not, get with me on Twitter and I will clarify.

Take the recent Alterian Annual Survey 2009 (just released yesterday) as an example and it paints a very important picture. Here are some key insights of the study:

• 40% of respondents anticipated a shift of over a fifth of their budget, with 21% predicting more than a third of their budget will shift towards digital/social channels.
• 66% of all respondents plan to invest in Social Media Marketing in 2010.
• 57% of respondents reported a plan to invest in engaging individuals on their websites.
• 36% of respondents plan to invest in Social Media Monitoring tools.
• Over half of all respondents (51%) are expending a ‘fair’ or ‘significant’ amount of effort to ensure integration of their communication strategies.
• 54% of respondents said social media was ‘increasingly important’ to the overall marketing mix, with 14% believing it to be ‘critical for success’.
• Only 6% of respondents felt ‘extremely prepared’ to take advantage of the new techniques that digital and social media represent with 40% of respondents believing that their staff had either ‘none’ or ‘some – with a plan to invest further’ of the skills necessary to take advantage of new marketing or customer engagement strategies.

What this data tells me is that more organizations are taking social media consumers more serious by listening to what is being said about their brands online and making a strong financial commitment to engage with them.  The data also suggests that most organizations are not ready internally to take on this challenge and it’s quite possible that they may fail. Financial investment is imperative but that’s only half the battle.

Download the full report here (registration required).

I love Twitter because it allows you, me and just about anyone to take action and do something for someone else.

This is Gideon from Tanzania

Please meet Gideon. He is the kid on the right who is reading Twitterville written by my good friend Shel Israel. From what I have been told, he is a dynamic and energetic young kid with a great big heart.  I hope to meet him someday. He also attends Shepherds Jr. School in Arusha, Tanzania which needs financial support.  The tweetup I am hosting next week (January 20^th) is an effort to raise funds not only for Gideon but all of his classmates at his school. Funds raised will go toward a much-needed orphanage/boarding facility at the school. The total estimated cost of the facility is USD $50,000 which will accommodate approximately 50 children. Every $1,000 raised will ensure that one more child has a warm, safe place to call home, with a loving Mama from their community to make nutritious meals and tuck them in at night.

My goal for the tweetup is to raise $2000, at a minimum; and even if you cannot attend – which I hope you will – I would ask that you please click here and make a small donation via paypal.  The great thing about this is that you can track the progress of this project that you are donating to by simply following Gideon’s blog or even interacting with the Twitterkids on Twitter.

Thank you for your support; and you are more than welcome to come to the tweetup next week if you want. You will have an opportunity to meet Shel Israel and purchase an autographed copy of his book.

I was inspired from this post by @mediaphyter a few weeks ago and I thought I would reflect back on 2009 and mention a few people who have really impacted my life and my career. These are friends I know personally and I look up to based on their knowledge of the social space; leadership qualities or things they do in their personal  lives to make change and help others, all in a 140 characters or less:

Jennifer Leggio | @mediaphyter

Personal friend, influencer, partner, smart, good hearted person who has been to my house before and we broke bread for my birthday

Ted Murphy | @tedmurphy

Entrepreneur and good friend; he has given me solid career advice and I am inspired by all of his achievements despite constant criticism

ps..and this doesn’t count against the 140.  I promise to never leave you alone at a club in Vegas, AGAIN.

Bob Duffy | @bobduffy

Strategic & he is capable of managing any social media team for any large org. He understands people, technology, marketing and organizations

Becky Carroll | @bcarroll7

All marketers should think like her; customers first. Smart, savvy and has an awesome radio show which will be syndicated, I’m sure of it

Sanjay Patel | @sanjspatel

I just met Sanjay and admire his ability to put other peoples’ needs before his. I wish there were more Sanjay’s in this world.

Thank you all for an awesome 2009. I look forward to watching you grow as I grow in 2010.

Measuring Social ROI – The question we need to start asking ourselves is “how do we go about quantifying metrics to show how they drive true business value and/or revenue?”

Research: don’t just talk about it, use it – There was a time in my life when I hated research; especially since I spent three years in grad school, yes three. But research is a valuable asset if you do more than just talk about it.

Top-Down Organizational Support – If an organization is not ready to embrace social media 100% internally from their leaders, they will not succeed in driving effective customer relationships externally; it’s a fact.

Seeking Participation Across the Organization – A blog is good, but a blog without a solid editorial calendar, a human voice and a subject matter expert is not good. Too many times, marketing and PR departments launch blogs and expect for people to actually read them.

Global Social Media Programs – What may work in the US, Canada and maybe the UK will not necessarily work in India. For global brands, this nut has yet to been cracked but there are some good learning and best practices that can help brands manage this.

With that said, here are some high level thoughts on social media experts, social media snake oil and those who are just perpetrating (fakin’ the funk) and I decided on a bulleted list because it’s easier and much more to the point:

• Branding oneself on twitter (or social media in general) is MUCH different then helping a brand (big/small) build true connections on the social web
• Twitter is temporary (just a tool) and finite. Relationship building, if done right, can be infinite (at least a lifetime)
• You (not you the reader, personally) can’t teach/certify/preach/counsel/coach someone on a topic unless you yourself have been in the trenches and (behind the firewall) understand the dynamics of organizational culture. I certainly don’t mean that you have to work for a brand as an employee. Consultants and agencies deal with it all the time too
• I don’t entirely agree that there needs to be a “social media” certification for this space but I guess I could be convinced otherwise; as long as it’s not facilitated by an agency who is trying to monetize the distribution list either (see below for more on this)
• Social media experts are bad (very bad) and when I see that in a bio somewhere; i immediately unfollow/unsubscribe because self proclaimed experts have huge egos and I don’t have time to deal with it
• The folks at the International Social Media Association who created the certification program are just trying to monetize their micro communities. Nothing wrong with that at all; I am a true capitalist at heart. But the question one must ask before spending nearly $3K is … Will I be more credible after graduating? Will it help me get a job in social media with a big brand or even small company? Will it help me kick off my own consulting practice? Is there any value in the curriculum that I can’t learn myself by simply participating?

Hopefully this bit of advice will help someone before they spend a ton of money getting certified and/or hiring an agency or consultant. I would ask them how they would go about:

Measuring ROI: of course, counting twitter followers or RSS subscriber growth is easy; but quantifying those numbers to show how they drive true business value/revenue is not so easy.

Driving organizational buy in: building communities from behind the firewall is no easy task. There are a lot of things to consider; and collaboration across the organization (marketing, legal, PR, business units, customer support) is imperative. Decisions behind the firewall can take months and sometime years.

Integrating social media across a multitude of marketing channels: launching a blog, twitter account and Facebook page is useless unless there is tight integration across the board with retail, online, search, channel partners, resellers, paid media and the list goes on; and then deciding on brand/unbranded community, on domain versus off domain.

Seeking participation across the organization: a blog is good, but a blog without an author is not. A Twitter account is good; but a one way conversation spitting out marketing messages and press releases is bad. Marketing (and I was in marketing for years) is good at hiring agencies and building blogs. What they are not good at are being subject matter experts when it involves something technical or product relates. This is why marketing departments today have to seek out employees within the organization to “volunteer” their time to participate in the social web.

Launching global social media marketing programs: This was part of my responsibility at Intel and it “AINT” easy, trust me. What may work in the US, Canada and maybe the UK will not necessarily work in India. So how would a consultant/agency provide strategic and tactical support for launching a global campaign?

These are some things you should ask before any significant financial investment to any organization.  If they can’t answer any of the above questions in a somewhat coherent and intelligent way, I would suggest moving on.  Heck, these may even be good interview questions when hiring in house social media managers/strategists as well.

Look, I know and understand the game. You share what you know online, build a community; play Monday morning quarterback by criticizing brands when they mess up — and hope you get hired by one as a consultant so you can go create their Facebook fan page. News flash; it’s not going to work.  Companies aren’t stupid and you won’t get paid to have an ego.

On my way to the office this morning, I stopped by Starbucks and did what I normally do when I arrive at my destination – check in on Foursquare. I was surprised to see the following:

Foursquare has been offering this (or similar advertising) to many local businesses for quite some time but this is the first time I have experienced it firsthand. Of course I clicked and this is what came next:

The SparkAwards used Foursquare to drive awareness to their first multi-level design competition here in San Francisco at the Autodesk Gallery on November 4th. They even offered VIP tours to all who checked in on that day. After minimal research, I found that there have been 12 total check-ins with 10 unique visitors to the venue. Not the greatest set of metrics of course; but I am sure glad to see local businesses trying new things and experimenting on the social web.