One fine example of this trend is PressBooks, a book production tool built on WordPress. While using WordPress to make ebooks is an interesting idea, that’s only half the story. PressBooks also produces print-ready PDF files, making it a serious book production tool for publishers and authors alike. Creating a beautiful epub file has never been so easy.

I’ll be co-presenting a workshop with PressBooks creator Hugh McGuire at O’Reilly Media’s upcoming Tools of Change Conference in NYC on February 13th. We’ll be talking about WordPress as a platform and the making of PressBooks. Attendees will also have an opportunity to create a book of their own during the workshop. Registration is still open, but space is limited. Use the code toc12omw and save 15% on registration.

A few weeks ago, book designer Craig Mod released Bibliotype, an HTML template system that designers can use to explore typography on the iPad.

Bibliotype is a thoughtful approach to designing typography for long-form reading on tablet devices. The template includes support for several viewing distances, portriat and landscape orientations, and a hyphenation library, among other features.

If you’re a book designer looking to experiment with typography on tablet devices, Bibliotype will jump start your design process.

What’s missing from Bibliotype is a way for designers to easily work with real content. If only there was some way to connect Bibliotype to a light-weight, user-friendly, content management system.

Well, now there is. Presenting Bibliotype for WordPress.

As a WordPress theme, Bibliotype becomes a framework for publishing beautifully designed books on the web for consumption on tablets.

Point your iPad here to see the theme in action. Or download BiblioType for WordPress and start designing your own web-based book.

Event Alert:

I’ll be speaking about Open, Webby Book Publishing Systems at tools at O’Reilly Media’s Tools Of Change conference next week in New York City. Registration is still open, but probably not for long. The event sells out every year. If you’re planning on going register today and use the Medialoper code toc11med to save 15%.

There’s just one problem with being an early adopter. Over time your cutting edge technology slowly turns into a cranky legacy system. For CSMFO the creaky system was a 13 year-old bespoke content management system built on ColdFusion.

While CSMFO’s legacy CMS served the organization well over the years, the limitations were many, and typical of 90′s-era web technology: the system lacked RSS feeds, had limited templating capabilities, ugly permalinks lead to poor search engine performance, media handling capabilities were non-existent, and there was no support for mobile devices.

By early 2010 it was clear that CSMFO was in need of a modern CMS.

WordPress To The Rescue

When CSMFO asked Oxford Media Works to propose a new content management solution, our thoughts immediately turned to WordPress.

WordPress has many obvious advantages: The system is open source, runs everywhere, and is well documented through the official WordPress Codex as well as hundreds of books, websites, and third-party training resources. Additionally, the open nature of WordPress has spawned a huge community of developers ensuring that organizations that build their website on WordPress will have no shortage of support alternatives.

That’s all well and good, but if you only know WordPress as a blogging platform you might be wondering if it’s up to the task of replacing a custom CMS that was designed to manage a very specific type of content. Until last year I would have been hesitant to suggest WordPress as a general purpose CMS. That changed last spring with the release of version 3.0. Despite its blogging roots, WordPress has become a legitimate general purpose CMS framework.

Project Highlights

A few highlights that demonstrate how Oxford Media Works used various WordPress CMS features to meet CSMFO’s needs:

• Custom Post Types. In addition to the standard WordPress post types, the new CSMFO site uses custom post types for RFP submissions, Policy Documents and Member Surveys. Custom post types allowed us to easily migrate thousands of content objects from the legacy system to WordPress.
• Custom Taxonomy. Good metadata is critical to both usability and findability. WordPress custom taxonomy enable the creation of category and tag collections specific to each custom post type — or shared across post types where appropriate. We’ve used custom taxonomy throughout the CSMFO build in conjunction with custom post types.
• Widgets, Widgets, and more Widgets. In addition to the standard widgetized sidebars, the entire CSMFO home page is made up of WordPress widgets. While widgets are more of a presentational feature, they give editorial users the ability to easily position, organize, and add content in a way that has typically required intervention from a programmer. Additionally, we created several custom widgets using the WordPress API to integrate the site with remote resources.
• Menu Builder. WordPress’s menu builder greatly simplifies the creation and maintenance of the site’s navigational elements.
• Mobile Ready. Increasingly CSMFO members are accessing the association’s website from mobile devices. The WordPress theme API is used to deliver a mobile-ready version of the site where appropriate.
• Extending The WordPress Core. The core WordPress system is extensible by design. The use of WordPress hooks ensures that site-specific changes won’t be obliterated by future WordPress updates. We’ve used a handful of plugins as well as custom code to integrate CSMFO’s main website with the organization’s membership and event management systems.

The Future

While WordPress solved CSMFO’s immediate content management needs, the system also leaves the organization well positioned for the future.

Possible future enhancements include the use of WordPress multi-site to power mini-sites for the association’s regional chapters, or even a collaborative social network for finance professionals built with BuddyPress. What’s more, the WordPress API and active development community ensures that the CMS will support new technologies and web services as they emerge.

On New Years Eve I tweeted a book recommendation for Digging Into WordPress and 5 minutes later four of my followers had paid $27 for a PDF file (one actually bought the ebook/print combination for $67).

Throughout the past year we’ve witnessed heated debates over the issue of ebook pricing. Publishers want to charge as much as they can for new releases, whatever the format. Meanwhile, Amazon has pretty much set the standard by pricing the Kindle ebook editions of most hardcover and trade paperbacks at $9.99 or less. As a result, consumers increasingly expect ebooks to be cheaper than their print counterparts.

So, what changed on New Years Eve?

After thinking it over I’ve decided that nothing changed. Rather, I think the incident serves as a reminder of some basic marketing principles that apply to ebooks just as much as they do to print books. These are principles that will ultimately determine how much publishers can expect to charge for an ebook.

First, I should note that the book in question is an in-depth software guide. It seems unlikely that I would have had the same response from my Twitter followers if I’d tweeted a recommendation for a $27 e-novel. In other words, I’m not sure my New Years Eve experience tells us much about ebook pricing for trade fiction. Regardless, there are still other valuable lessons to be learned from the experience that apply to all books.

• Trusted recommendations sell books. This has always been true, but recommendations take on added importance in a media landscape saturated with a glut of digital content. This applies to all books by the way, but, obviously, if you’re going to charge a premium for an ebook, then trusted recommendations carry extra weight. Twitter, by the way, happens to be an incredibly efficient environment for recommendations to spread.
• A book isn’t expensive if it provides real value.. Consumer perception of value is influenced by any number of factors. In the case of Digging Into WordPress, the book’s authors provide value by bringing readers comprehensive and up to the minute coverage of a fast moving technology, combined with the promise of free updates for life. Further, the book is sold without DRM, thus assuring consumers that the book won’t self-destruct at some future date. Compare this to most print editions of WordPress books that sell for around $30, and are typically a point release behind by the time they hit the bookstores. It’s pretty clear which product provides consumers with more value.
• Free sells. By providing a free sample that included the complete table of contents and a sample chapter, would-be customers are able to see exactly what information is covered in the book, the quality of the writing, and the quality of the design (the book looks great, by the way). By the time I had skimmed through the sample chapter, the authors had a sale. It is extremely unlikely that I would have paid $27 for an ebook without first reviewing a sample chapter.
• Consumers are willing to pay for information they can get for free. Not only is the web full of excellent WordPress resources, the authors of this particular book have made much of the book’s content available for free on the book’s blog. Yet consumers will gladly pay for the convenience of having quality content aggregated in a nicely formatted package that provides a great user experience.

Disclosure: I’ve linked to Digging Into WordPress using an affiliate code. As a general policy I only recommend products I’ve actually purchased at full price. I only recommend products that are exceptional in some way. Digging Into WordPress meets all of those requirements. If you’re looking for a WordPress book I give Digging Into WordPress my highest recommendation.

I remain deeply skeptical about most reputation defense services. One obvious problem is that many of these services claim to undo negative publicity after the fact. In a world where Google has essentially become an on-demand private detective for the masses, that’s an approach that simply won’t work. It can take months to counteract negative information that turns up on the first page of Google search results. In some cases, it simply won’t be possible to counteract negative search results.

Companies that care about their reputation need to be proactive about creating a positive search profile and strong consumer relations well in advance of any bad news. In a world of blogs and social networks that means participating online and actively engaging consumers in a transparent and authentic manner.

If this sounds time consuming, it can be. Not only that, chances are this new approach will require a skill set that might not fit neatly into existing job descriptions or departmental structures.

However, the payoff is clearly worth the effort. Companies that succeed in building goodwill with consumers and strong organic search results will be well positioned to weather any attack on their reputation in the future.

If you’d like to talk about building an effective social media strategy with an eye towards defending your corporate reputation online, give us a call.

• How To Protect Your Reputation Online
• The Thin Web Line

Not so long ago Twitter seemed like it might be a passing fad. Recently, the service has matured to become a nearly indispensable social media tool. With Twitter’s regular outages (mostly) a thing of the past, usage is skyrocketing. As a result, the service is branching out beyond alpha-geeks and into the general population. More and more regular people are embracing Twitter as a way of communicating with friends and expressing their opinions to the masses. Frequently, those opinions involve complaints of some sort — some of those complaints may even be about your brand.

A few companies are starting to realize the value of monitoring Twitter. When TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington tweeted about his frustration with his Comcast internet service, a company executive contacted him within 20 minutes attempting to resolve the problem. Comcast apparently tracks Twitter as part of a comprehensive effort to monitor the social media space.

A proactive monitoring approach is bound to save a lot of grief in the long run. It doesn’t take much for a Twitter meme to carry into the blogosphere, and once that happens there’s no telling where the story might go next. Just ask Dell.

It’s no surprise that Dell is already on the case with multiple Twitter accounts. The company has been proactive in its approach to social media ever since blogger Jeff Jarvis watched his Dell Hell complaint turn into an internet phenomenon.

As Read/Write web reports, Dell is not alone, being joined on Twitter by Southwest Airlines, among others.

One company that doesn’t seem to be monitoring Twitter is Washington Mutual. A user named WaMuWhooHoo has begun posting regular tweets touting WaMu’s $33 overdraft fee. In one tweet the user compares WaMu’s fees to other banks and notes “we suck less”. I somehow doubt that’s an official WaMu marketing slogan.

If you’re just getting started, here’s your action plan:

• Create a Twitter account: At a minimum you’ll want to create an account using your company name (before someone else does).
• Monitor Twitter for your brand and key terms: I’ve written about monitoring your brand in the past. Twitter should be added to the list of social media outlets that you track regularly. Use Tweetscan to search for all of your key names and phrases, then save the RSS feeds into your aggregator of choice.You might also learn a lesson from Comcast. When your search turns up something of substance, respond back via twitter as appropriate.
• Consider using Twitter as an official customer support channel: If your monitoring efforts turn up a substantial amount of commentary, it may be an indication that you need to devote official support resources to Twitter. While Twitter users may only be a small percentage of your customer base, chances are they’re a vocal and influential group. Providing them with support on their platform of choice could generate a substantial amount of good will.You may also find Twitter to be an efficient tool for support. What other support system limits a customer’s feedback to a mere 140 characters?

The best companies will use these tools as an opportunity to engage consumers in a dialog while respecting the social media ecosystem.

However, simply setting up a blog and sending your employees to dive into the deep end of the social media pool isn’t enough. Without a firm understanding of how social media works, the results can be lukewarm, at best, and disastrous, at worst.

Just how bad can a corporate social media campaign be? The following case study analyzes the unfortunate social media campaign of the DuroSport corporation. If you’re involved in planning social media strategy for your company, I hope you’ll take this opportunity to learn from DuroSport’s many mistakes.

The Company:

For over forty years DuroSport has been the leading manufacturer of consumer electronics in Moldova and parts of Eastern Europe. Despite the company’s long history, North American consumers have had almost no exposure to the DuroSport brand. Furthermore, based on the company’s stated mission and promise there is some question whether American consumers will be receptive to the style of products that DuroSport manufactures.

The Goal:

DuroSport’s market research indicated that the company was making minor inroads with an older demographic group than the company desired. Apparently the company’s very large products appeal to older consumers with failing eyesight.

In an effort to reach a younger demographic the DuroSport marketing department decided to use blogs and social media to promote the company’s Prism media player. This decision was arrived at after a series of contentions meetings and the strenuous objections of Prism product manager, Nero Tarlev.

Despite Tarlev’s opposition, he was assigned to be DuroSport’s social media project lead and was asked to move quickly to establish a DuroSport presence on various social networks.

DuroSport Goes Social:

On the surface, DuroSport’s social media marketing strategy makes sense. Consumers are more likely to learn about new products from gadget blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget than through a corporate press releases. They are more likely to seek out the opinions of fellow consumers on social networks than they are to search out the product specifications and marketing material on a corporate website. Clearly, a company like DuroSport could benefit by engaging consumers through the use of social media.

Unfortunately, in practice DuroSport seems to have almost no understanding of how social media works, let alone how to use it to engage consumers in a meaningful way.

Despite these limitations DuroSport proceeded to implement a haphazard social media campaign that included the following:

• The Corporate Blog: For most companies the first attempt at social media will be a corporate blog. Blogs are probably the best way to give your corporation a human voice. Blogs are an essential tool for initiating a meaningful and ongoing dialog with your customers.The DuroSport Insider blog was started as a way to give customers a behind the scenes view of the inner workings of this unique electronics company.

  In the beginning, the blog wasn’t so bad. Tarlev, the newly dubbed “social media guru”, made an effort to deal with uncomfortable issues head-on. His post explaining the reason behind the company’s rather embarrassing t-shirt recall was remarkable for it’s candor. Few corporate bloggers would be so transparent about the role of canines in the garment production process.

  Regrettably, later posts saw Tarlev veer off into unfortunate territory as he used the blog to attack his competition, engage in a heated public argument with employees of Best Buy’s Geek Squad, and insult the intelligence of readers who doubted his claim that DuroSport had invented an unbreakable DRM system.

  Worse yet, at some point Tarlev was joined on the DuroSport Insider Blog by Chief Product Engineer Vladimir Concescu. While group blogs can be used quite effectively to give multiple perspectives from inside your organization, that wasn’t the result in DuroSport’s case.

  Concescu’s poor command of the English language, combined with rambling posts about his favorite television program and life in Moldovan prison added nothing to the dialogue DuroSport was attempting to initiate with its customers.

  As corporate blogs go, the DuroSport Insider Blog is a textbook case of what not to do.

• MySpace: At the instruction of his marketing department, Tarlev proceeded to setup a DuroSport profiles on MySpace. It’s fortunate for Tarlev that his blog has so few readers, because it’s likely that most MySpace users would be offended by his claim that they are a bunch illiterate hoodlums.Based on Tarlev’s profile and meager collection of friends it’s obvious that he didn’t spend much time on this project. It actually looks like he fulfilled the bare minimum obligation so that he could check this one off on his social media to-do list.

  On the contrary, Concescu embraced MySpace with enthusiasm. Perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. According to Tarlev, Concescu’s growing obsession with MySpace is partially responsible for the company missing key product release deadlines.

  While Concescu’s profile may be fine for a personal account, the fact is that he’s linked his profile to the DuroSport corporate blog and vice versa. Whether he realizes it or not, his profile has become an extension of DuroSport’s larger online presence, and it does not reflect well on the company.

• Facebook: Compared to MySpace, Facebook presents a much more hospitable environment for businesses of all kinds. Facebook Pages, combined with Facebook’s advertising platform and targeted demographics are an almost ideal environment for marketers wishing to reach consumers through social media.Surprisingly, DuroSport has no presence on Facebook. This curious omission makes it seem like their social media strategy might be based on a two year-old white paper. MySpace may have been the big story a year and a half ago, but Facebook is the story today. Tomorrow, who knows? The point is that social media is evolving rapidly and your social media strategy can easily go stale if you don’t review and update it on a regular basis.
• Second Life: Just as Concescu embraced MySpace with great vigor, Tarlev seemed to be a little too at home in Second Life. As a result, DuroSport spent an extraordinary amount of time and money building a presence in the virtual world. A presence that Concescu now refers to as “Nero’s Folly”.Reviews of the virtual DuroSport store were not kind, and there’s no indication that the project did anything to increase sales or brand awareness in the real world.

  While some have argued that virtual worlds are the future of the internet, the truth is that these environments still reach a very limited niche audience. Never mind the highly misleading numbers thrown around by Linden Lab. Second Life has a very small (and mostly inbred) gene pool.

  There’s no doubt that virtual worlds have a high coolness factor. However, they have an equally low efficiency factor. As a result, they should not be considered a key part of your social marketing strategy. At least not yet.

  As a side note, DuroSport’s Second Life build did have one positive aspect. It allowed the company to make the claim that its virtual media player has outsold the iPod in Second Life.

• Flickr: In a rare moment of social media lucidity, DuroSport’s Flickr photostream actually makes sense. The company used Flickr to post photos taken in and around its Second Life build. Given Second Life’s small user base and high system requirements, these photos actually allow DuroSport customers to experience the virtual store without the hassle of installing special software and learning to fly.Flickr’s funny that way. There are lots of interesting ways to use the service and it can be a great resource that supports some of your other social marketing efforts.
• Twitter: Depending on your worldview Twitter is either a revolutionary micro-blogging platform, or a highly overrated time sink.Twitter’s reach can’t compare with more mainstream social networking tools. But sometimes quality trumps quantity. That’s certainly the case with Twitter as the user base tends to be extremely high tech and very well connected.

  There are any number of ways a company might make creative use of Twitter as part of a larger social media strategy. However, reporting on physical ailments and insulting Robert Scoble are probably not the best approach. Needless to say, that’s exactly how Tarlev has been using “the Twitter“.

  I do think Tarlev may be on to something when he offered Evan Williams a job. Twitter could be a great recruiting tool for tech companies.

Where DuroSport Went Wrong:

Social media is an opportunity to engage consumers in a way that has never been possible with traditional media. Unfortunately, it’s clear that DuroSport has no real interest in engaging its customers. If anything, DuroSport is hostile towards its customers.

While I suspect this attitude may be prevalent among lots of other companies, it’s an attitude that won’t get you very far on the social web. These days if you hate your customers, they know it, and they’ll hate you right back. Worse yet, they’ll tell all their friends about it.

If DuroSport’s disdain for its own customers wasn’t enough to sink any hope of success in using social media, the top down approach certainly was. The most successful social media strategies will emerge from the most unexpected places. This is not something your marketing department can dictate and force on unwilling employees. Your social media guru has to be, well, sociable.

DuroSport’s Marketing department should have sought out and cultivated the involvement of employees who were already using social media (just not Concescu, obviously). In some ways this is like the early days of the web, when successful early web initiatives emerged from just about everywhere but the IT department.

Whether you’re already engaged in an active social media marketing campaign, or you’re just starting to explore the possibilities, there’s plenty to learn from the mistakes of the DuroSport corporation.

Do you have an online reputation management strategy?

Unfortunately, for many businesses online reputation management is an afterthought. It’s only after something major goes wrong that businesses begin thinking about the issue, and by then it can be too late.

A recent New York Times article (via Pronet Advertising) documents some of the pitfalls that can occur when angry customers take their grievances to the web.

So, what’s a business to do? Here’s a checklist you can use to start developing your own online reputation management program:

1. Monitor your brands and key assets. The first step is the most obvious. If you want to know what people are saying about you, you have to make an effort to monitor the conversations that are taking place around the web.There are a number of services that allow you to easily monitor activity on blogs and social web sites. Use Technorati and Google News to setup saved search queries that monitor the web for references to key assets. These searches can be setup to run at regular intervals. Any time a new result is found you’ll be notified by email. Both services also offer RSS feeds for your search results.

   Make sure you setup searches for your company name, all brand or product names, service names, and key employees within your company.

   When a new reference to any of your search phrases turns up in your inbox, be sure to check it out immediately. It’s worth noting that it’s not always bad news. You’ll want to know when you’re getting good publicity as well.

2. Blog and engage in relevant social media sites. The biggest risk is that someone will post something negative about your company that will rise to the top of the search engine results. This is less likely to happen if you’ve spent time developing and cultivating your search profile. The best way to do that is by blogging, acquiring positive links and mentions from around the web, and participating in social networking sites where appropriate.Use blogging and social media interaction as an opportunity to tell your story and establish a dialogue with your customers. The relationship you build with your customers now will be a valuable asset if your reputation ever comes under attack.

   The SEO consultant quoted in the NYT article estimated that it could take a year to push a negative reference off the first page of the search engine results (at a cost of $3,000 per month). When your reputation is under attack a year isn’t fast enough. Better to start building those positive links and references to your company now — at a much lower cost. The more positive references there are to your business on the web, the harder it will be for a single negative comment or blog post to rise to the top of the search results.

3. Protect your name. Ideally, you should own the rights to the .com, .net, and .org domain names associated with your company and brand names. The last thing you want is a competitor in control of your identity on the web.Also, as The NYT article notes, your brand names should be trademarked. That will prevent unauthorized use of your name, but having control of the domain names to begin with will prevent the need for litigation.

   I’ve heard some experts recommend registering what are commonly referred to as gripe domains. I’m less enthusiastic about this idea. While you might sleep better at night owning the name MyCompanySucks.com, critics can be quite creative in their choice of domain names. Think of all of the variations of gripe domains that can be created based on your company name and you’ll quickly realize that you could spend a substantial amount of time and money acquiring and managing a portfolio of domain names as a paranoid strategy against possible misuse. Better to trademark your name to prevent it from being used in any negative context.

While these initial steps won’t prevent your company from being unfairly attacked online, they will at least minimize the damage. And when someone does make an effort to damage your company’s reputation there’s a good chance you’ll know about the attack right away. How you respond is another matter entirely.

Some negative references will be legitimate complaints about your product or service. If that’s the case, use the opportunity to set things right with the angry customer. Doing so in a timely manner will likely win you a loyal customer for life, and could even generate a positive buzz around your company.

Unfortunately, not all criticisms will be reasonable or rational. As the business owner profiled in the NYT article found out, sometimes the only solution is to resort to taking legal action. Also, it’s worth nothing that when dealing with an irrational critic, sometimes responding directly can actually make the situation worse. Dealing with this type of criticism more of an art than a science, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

Traditional media outlets have been struggling to adapt their formats in a world where their audience already knows the news. Meanwhile, communications professionals of all varieties are trying new strategies for disseminating their messages to audiences facing information overload.

While media organizations have been focused on competing in a world of increasing competition and decreasing audience attention span, a complex social media ecosystem has emerged to present us with an entirely new type of news cycle — the viral news cycle.

Blogs, social news aggregators, podcasts, and web video have proven to be a highly effective platform for propagating news, in a manner that couldn’t be more different from traditional media. While traditional news cycles offer a top down dissemination of information, viral news cycles have emerged as the result of news audiences sharing and filtering news directly with their peers.

In many respects, the viral news cycle exists in an entirely different dimension from the traditional news cycle. Traditional news cycles are linear, viral news cycles are jagged and unpredictable as stories work their way through a complex mesh of social media nodes.

Social news aggregators like Digg and Reddit have the power to expose even the most obscure news items to incredibly large audiences. As a result, stories that would never be covered by traditional media are reaching a global audience, and stories that are already well documented by mainstream media are receiving a wider range of analysis and interpretation.

There are many well known examples of seemingly minor stories gaining mainstream media coverage after first receiving exposure in the social media realm. One recently example is the story of an airline customer and the bad experience he had flying on Spirit Airlines.

Alex Rudloff’s sad tale of poor customer service, compounded by a personal insult that was inadvertently emailed to him by the company’s CEO, probably wouldn’t have made it into his hometown newspaper in the old days. Thanks to social media and the viral news cycle, Rudloff became something of a minor celebrity and his story is now known far and wide. After making the front page of Reddit the story was picked up by blogs, then eventually mainstream media outlets.

This story is a classic example how social media empowers consumers to become both news creators and news distributors. The Spirit Air CEO told his employees to “let him [Rudloff] tell the world how bad we are”, and that’s exactly what Rudloff did. The CEO didn’t expect the world to listen. Chances are he wasn’t even aware that it was possible for a single consumer to reach such a wide audience with his complaint. That’s the power of the viral news cycle.

In the old days unhappy customers told all of their friends about a bad consumer experience. Increasingly consumers are now using their blogs to tell their friends, and the world, about their bad consumer experiences. The best (as in worst) stories are reaching a huge and receptive audience of networked consumers. If you thought negative word of mouth was bad, it can be catastrophic when it hits the blogosphere.

One interesting aspect of the Spirit Airlines story is that it runs counter to the widely held belief that only A-List bloggers can reach a large audience. There’s a common misconception that a blog has to be in the Technorati Top 100 to have a substantial impact. That couldn’t be further from the truth. While it’s true that the top bloggers tend to break stories more consistently, social news aggregators provide a platform that allows even novice bloggers to reach a huge audience almost instantaneously.

There are a number of lessons here for businesses of all varieties. Executives and business owners would do well to keep the following in mind:

• Your customers are more influential now than they have ever been before. They’re networked and they’re communicating directly with each other. In a world of pervasive social media it is no longer possible to control the flow of information. It’s much easier to treat your customers with respect and do the right thing.
• Social media is a legitimate force that can have a significant impact on your business (for better or worse). It’s time to start taking social media seriously, just as you would more traditional forms of media.
• If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to start learning more about social media. Make sure you, or someone in your organization, really understands the social media ecosystem — not only the blogs in your specific industry, but also social bookmarking sites, social news aggregators, and even more general social networks. When working in the social media realm, there’s no substitute for a deep knowledge of how the various forms of social media work and interact.
• It’s important to add social media outlets to the list of traditional media sources that you monitor for references to your company name, key employees, brand names, and service offerings. While a small mention on a seemingly obscure blog may not seem important, there’s no telling how far that mention might reverberate.

Viral news cycles and tradition news cycles are not mutually exclusive — they feed on each other and interact in unpredictable ways. Neither is going away any time soon, so it’s important to understand and work with both.

According to a recent LA Times article, more than a few city officials are finally waking up to the fact that large corporations have been aware of for a while now: When your customers/constituents have a problem with your organization they are increasingly inclined to tell the world about it on their blog.

The old rules of public communications are being turned upside down in the new era of conversation-based media. For city officials who haven’t bothered to keep current on the latest trends in the blogosphere, this news comes as a startling wake-up call.

The problem is that many government agencies have Web 1.0 tunnel vision, and are not ready for a Web 2.0 world. From the beginning, government agencies have used the web as a low-cost one-way publishing medium. In some cases they’ve developed eGovernment initiatives to streamline labor intensive processes and provide better constituent service.

Very few agencies have used the web as an opportunity to engage their constituency in an ongoing discussion about the issues of the day. Blogs make this engagement unavoidable. Citizen bloggers are having these conversation whether or not city officials choose to participate. Simply avoiding gadfly bloggers won’t make them go away.

Some advice for city officials who are finally realizing that blogging isn’t just a passing fad:

• Blogs are a communications challenge, not a technology challenge. It has been my first hand experience over the past 15 years that city officials are too quick to look for a technological solution to most problems — especially when the “problem” seems to be related to the Internet. The challenges presented by citizen bloggers can’t be solved by your IT department. In most organizations, blogger-relations is a responsibility that is most appropriately assigned to the Public Information Officer. Your PIO should be a new media savvy individual who is capable and competent to monitor a variety of media sources, and use a range of social media tools to interact with constituents.
• We’re living in an era of conversation-based media. It’s crucial to understand that you no longer have control over any public discussion taking place about your community. Your constituents are talking about issues outside of the regularly scheduled council and commission meetings. You might want to listen to what they’re saying.
• Be proactive about monitoring the blogosphere. You should already be monitoring traditional media sources for mentions of your agency. Blogs should be monitored as part of this ongoing effort. Use tools like Google News, Technorati, and a good RSS reader to setup pre-defined searches for a variety of names and topics, including: the mayor, council members, city manager, key employees, and key project names or issues.
• Participate in the conversation. Blogs have comments for a reason. When a blogger misrepresents your organization make it a point to respond in the blog’s comment section. Surprisingly, only one official mentioned in the LA Times article is making an effort to respond to citizen bloggers. Many public officials simply ignore bloggers, or, at most, openly complain about the inaccuracy of the information on community blogs and the anonymity of the bloggers. A few officials have sought legal remedies — given the fact that there are more bloggers than lawyers, the legal approach is one that won’t scale and should only be used as a last resort, and even then only in the most extreme cases.

In my next post I’ll provide some guidelines for government agencies that are brave enough to consider blogging.