I have been consulting or working inhouse for companies dealing with social media for six years. Over that period of time I’ve worked with companies ranging from tiny non-profits to large Fortune 500 companies. In the last two years I have kept my feet in both spaces because I like the different types of creative solutions that they require

While the solutions for a large company versus a small company are usually pretty different because of the size, scope, and budget the one thing that routinely stays the same are the problems. When we talk about social media I think this point often gets lost in the discussion, people assume that because large companies have the resources to throw at solutions that they don’t have the same problems your small business does. That just isn’t true.

Here are three common issues I see in both small businesses and large companies:

1)   Listening- Getting started, listening to what is being said about your company on the social web is the easy part. People will often will set up keyword searches on Twitter around their brand and will sign up to something like Google Alerts. When you get awoken to what is out there and you realize that you could be missing out on other possible conversations, this is when things get more complex

Companies of all sizes face problems from configuring their listening tools to figuring out how and when they are going to respond. Listening tools – whether a combination of free tools or paid enterprise tools – need significant testing and adjusting.

2)   Content Creation - Who is going to do it? Where is going to come from? If we get our community involved, how is that content going to be moderated or presented? These questions are ones that I have been asked in the last year by two different companies –  one had ten employees the other had ten thousand.

3)   Being Efficient - If you don’t approach social media with some sort of strategy or vision, it can be a massive time suck. With all the great content, conversations, and sharing that is going on you could easily sit down and look up four hours later wondering what you have been doing. A combination of strategy, tools, and time management go a long way into making your participation in social media efficient.

So why write this post? Like I said above; while the solutions for these problems are usually vastly different, understanding them and seeing why they are important are universal. A lot of companies don’t pay attention to these three key points. Some want to skip ahead and just get involved with specific tools, some want to make a big splash and do something cool, others start participating but aren’t efficient with it and social media is viewed as a waste because it wasn’t used effectively for that company.

Big or small, these are common problems that need to be addressed. If they aren’t,  you are going to have a pretty ineffective social media presence no how much money or manhours you throw at it.

Honestly, the entire reason I wanted to write this blog post was to reference a Notorious B.I.G. song.

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At the heart of it  they wanted to give people the ability to get the news and the information they wanted about specific items they produced. It is a legitimate idea and I think  their intentions were pure. However, when you looked at their current social media usage you saw that they could barely manage their single outposts or the handful that they had. It was a struggle to create content and to get any traction. If they were to do this they would really dilute their brand by splitting things up that much.

Hey what happens if we split this up 75 times?

I’m not saying the idea of breaking up your social media presence by vertical or product is a bad idea.  For example, if you are a Proctor and Gamble you need to do this because most people are more familiar with the individual brands than the company, you have way too many products and companies to just fold under that umbrella and you have marketing teams for each of them to produce good content.

Proctor and Gamble have the infrastructure, the need, and the people to pull it off. The companies I was talking to did not.

Before you begin to split up your social media you need to consider these things:

1)   If it creates more work, do you have the ability to do it? If you are having problems creating content for one page, imagine creating it for six. Are you going to have the ability to keep the content flowing and make it interesting when you begin splitting up your outposts? If the answer is no or you see it being a struggle don’t even consider making the move because you will be spreading yourself thin and killing off your brand.

2)   Sometimes it is a sign of other problems either workflow or control. A lot of the time when different divisions or locations want their own outposts it is a sign of a communication, workflow, or control issue. For example, if a resort in the Bahamas had people controlling their amenities and they felt the person updating their social media outposts weren’t posting things about those amenities they may want to create their own outpost. Soon when people would look for that resort they would find pages and profiles for each amenity. At that point they had to choose what they wanted to follow,watering down the brand and missing out on key information from the other places. Creating a social media workflow and improving internal communications could have stopped this problem.

3)   What is the value of doing this? - Most of the time people answer this question by saying, “Well customer A only cares about product B, so we are just giving him the news they want.” That is fine, but when your company only puts out three tweets in a day  and only one of those tweets are about product B only,  I am sure customer A is fine with the other two tweets. If you feel strongly that people only want information about a single product, but don’t want to water down your brand, create custom feeds or other things that you can aggregate on the outpost. For example: If you have a Facebook page, create a tab with different feeds you have available by product or vertical. There you can blend together news from Twitter by a hashtag,  posts from your blogs  and other outposts. There are ways to give people options of just following one piece of news without watering down your brand.

A diluted presence means you have a diluted base of fans, friends, and followers. It is harder to activate them, it is harder to get good conversations going, and it is harder to hold their interest if everything is so watered down. You really need to think long and hard about splitting up your brand in social media, the last thing you want is for things to die slowly.

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SocialTalk from Syncapse

What is it: An enterprise level social media management tool that includes reporting around your social media efforts.

What Sites Does It Manage: Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Movable Type (YouTube shortly)

What I Like About the Product: The real selling point of this product is the workflow it creates within an organization. For example let’s say that you need to have managerial or legal approval for every piece of content you generate. (Think highly regulated industries.) After the post is crafted it can be submitted for approval, after the posts gets approved it can then be submitted for publishing, throughout the entire process there is commenting and communication about the post.

In the past working with different industries such as wine and spirits, this would have been a lifesaver instead of 100 e-mails to a legal department.

Additionally you can categorize your posts into different campaigns which I think helps with the management and reporting angle to this product. Especially with companies that have multiple products or locations.

From an agency standpoint you can brand the tool around your agency or around the client’s company. (This feature is included at no additional cost.) Also they include a branded URL shortener that you can use in your content.

What I Don’t Like About the Product: The biggest issue I have with the product  (and really this isn’t about the product as much as it is about the industry) is that so many enterprise companies don’t use the two blogging (WordPress and Movable Type) tools that are included in the product. (Even more so when they have communities built in.) Currently I am doing an evaluation of four specific tech companies for a client project and out of the 90 blogs that these companies have (employee and company branded) only a handful run on either platform.

(Don’t get me wrong I LOVE WordPress beyond belief and wish more of these companies were using it.)

This is the problem with a lot of enterprise software, which isn’t the fault of Syncapse. A lot of the white label community software doesn’t play nice with tools that make lives easier for people in the social media world. (Yet another selling point for WordPress.)

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Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to be able to log into a location-based service and not only let me friends know where I am at (and see where they are) but see a copy of the menu and what my friends rated the dishes. (Beyond just a few tips and to-dos.)  Furthermore if I am at a place that has a tour that works with augmented reality it would be nice to launch that through Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook, Whrrl, Twitter, Brightkite, Yelp, or whatever service wins out in the location war. But we aren’t even there yet. Not only is there a lack of functionality but also ultimately there is a lack of wide adoption.

Recently I drove cross-country and checked in at the various places I stopped.  One of the cool things about Gowalla is that you get badges when you check into new states. Staringt in Massachusetts then driving through: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and then points south and west the sharp decline on the amount of check ins to a state went into a staggering decline. Looking at that decline how can I make a recommendation that people should be jumping on “the next hot thing”?

New York: 7428

Pennsylvania: 3219

Ohio: 2410

Indiana: 1525

Kentucky: 1261

While visiting my friend’s bar in a college town in Western, NY I noticed that if I went bar hopping two nights in a row I would discover and become mayor of just about every establishment in town. This isn’t an uneducated area with a base of technophobes, there just isn’t a desire to use these products yet.

So who should be experimenting with location?

1)   Businesses in destination cities: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York are all places that not only have a decent size population base (Vegas less so compared to the others) but also have people traveling in that are using check in services. Business in this area should experiment with location-based strategies.

2)   Cities with a strong tech reputation: Boston, San Francisco, Austin, and Seattle. These cities are full of early adopters; this is something that local businesses should leverage.

3)   Tourist areas: (I know this may tie into number one) You can do some fun things in tourist areas that aren’t in large cities. This needs to be less about mayorships and more about either random checkins or strong to-dos.

I want to be clear about this, I think there is a lot of potential in this area for businesses to do a lot of interesting things. However I think for the vast majority of businesses it should not be a focus right now. Worry more about local search, the tools that people in your community are using (maybe it is location based services), and make sure you are listening and managing your reputation. Then if you want to dabble in location-based services… give it a try.

What do you think about the emergence of location based technologies?

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In order to sort through the industry beyond talking with the experienced members of the Clymb management team I reached out to a few different people who specialize in this space. I have to give a really special tip of the hat to Brad Werntz of Pemba Serves for taking the time to talk with me. He helped clear up some of my questions, validated some of my thoughts, and got me thinking about the industry in a different way. If you are interested in the outdoor industry at all you should subscribe to their blog.

Here are some of the lessons I have learned in the past six months examining this space:

The customers are passionate, loyal, and will tell people about their experiences. Out of all the niches I have been a part of this by far has been the most brand loyal group of people. (I guess when a lot of these products impact the health and safety of the athlete you probably form a little bit of a bond with the brand.) Through social media they have the tools to recommend product and they use this medium to do just that. Message boards are still a huge tool for disseminating information in this niche, some of the more common social media tools are gaining wider acceptance but a massive amount of conversation occurs on these boards where a lot of brands aren’t even attempting to navigate.

Brands as well as bloggers are still sorting this space out. Some of the major brands in this space have jumped into social media but most have holes in their campaigns (a lot of missed opportunities) or they are just using a few tools. Medium sized and smaller brands are a total mixed bag, it looks like they understand that social media is important but a lot of brands aren’t getting past one outpost.  (it also looks like there is a lot of confusion on how to measure it) At times there is a big disconnect between brands and the individuals, while people might follow a brand because they like their product there is often a lack of engagement with their current fans or strategy in bringing in fans/followers.

Bloggers aren’t always engaged by brands directly. The outreach has come from online and traditional brick and mortar retailers, REI has done a good job engaging bloggers. (it looks like they have a strong affiliate marketing campaign) Also bloggers are just starting to become aware of the power of their voice. I think there is a lot of room to grow relationships between blogger and brand, especially when compared to niches that have used social media effectively.

Even though brands don’t always have a comprehensive campaign it doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing some creative things. Social media created around brand-sponsored teams has been pretty exciting with a good blend of platforms and content. Some brands have really excelled in creating content on their blog. (Some haven’t been able to leverage outposts past that.) Another creative use of social media has been primarily around video. Video has been a great tool in explaining the quality of the product, putting a personality to the company, and engaging the YouTube generation.

The Outdoor Industry and it’s relationship with Social Media is really in it’s infancy, it is behind where the wine niche was when I looked at that area a year ago. There is so much potential here and watching the brands, retailers, and individuals grow within this niche will be pretty exciting.

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So step one was to compile the list, step two is going to be review these tools. This is a rough first version, I am going to add the trial periods for the paid apps and a notation on what apps are free. (Additionally how they are grouped will probably change as well.) This is a solid start though.

Blog
blogpulse
blogsearch.google
customscoop
ewatch.prnewswire
technorati
trendpedia
yacktrack
Buzz
ekstreme
google trends
omgili
Commenting
backtype
General
addictomatic
alterian-social-media
amplifiedanalytics
analytics.postrank
attensity
attentio
biz360
brandchats
brandseye
brandtology
brandwatch
buzzgain
buzzient
buzzlogic
buzznumbershq
buzzstream
chartbeat
collecta
collectiveintellect
converseon
crimsonhexagon
customscoop
cyveillance
dialogix
digimind
dna13
dj insight
ecairn
echometrix
expertsystem
filtrbox
google alerts
herdthenoise
howsociable
icerocket
impactwatch
socialradar
integrasco
jamiq
jdpowerwebintelligence
jitterjam
kaleidico
listenlogic
looxii
marketsentinel
mediabadger
mediamiser
meteorsolutions
networkedinsights
nms
onalytica
oneriot
overtone
ovrdrv
radian6
raven-seo-tools
repumetrix
reputationhq
rightnow
samepoint
scoutlabs
socialsee
sentimentmetrics
socialmetrix
socialscape
socialtalk
spiral16
startpr
statsit
statsmix
swixhq
synthesio
sysomos
tealium
thesearchmonitor
thoughtbuzz
tracebuzz
trackur
trendrr
tribemonitor
ubervu
cision
linkfluence
viralheat
visibletechnologies
moreover
whitevector
whostalkin
cymfony
Message Boards
boardreader
omgili
boardtracker
Microblogging
twingly
Reputation
steprep
reputationdefender
Sentiment
generalsentiment
socialmention
Television
livedash
truveo
Tools with reporting
cotweet
spreadfast
bantamlive
Twitter
backtweets	Free
feeltiptop
insttant
klout
search.twitter	Free
topsy
tweetbeep
tweetmeme	Free
tweetreach	Free
tweetscan	Free
tweetstats	Free
twitrratr	Free
twitteranalyzer	Free
twittercounter	Free
twitturly	Free
wthashtag
monitter	Free
twazzup
tweetfeel	Free
tweetlytics	5 campaigns for $199
twilert
twitscoop
Twitter and Facebook
tinker
Video
visiblemeasures

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I took to Twitter to see what people thought and the initial reaction was completely mixed.

My rule of thumb on this would be it depends on how they use these platforms. For example if it is mostly a marketing play (which I would hope it wouldn’t be) and a PR team mans the accounts then I wouldn’t expect them to be open 24/7. However if they do a lot of customer service from these platforms and their customer service function via phone or e-mail is available 24/7 I would have the same expectations of their social media.

With that being said I think it also depends on the company, the size, and the expectations they set using these tools. Just like when you go into a supermarket that is open 24/7 you know that you aren’t going to necessarily find the same services available that are available during the day. Companies need to establish how they are using these tools and what the customer can expect from them. (Obviously there is no hard and fast rule with this. )

When you use social media what are your expectations of business accounts and the hours that they keep?

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It is common knowledge that everyone considers Chris Brogan  a nice guy. I’ve met him a few times and I think he is a good dude and has a good sense of humor. (But what do I really know?  He could go home and kick puppies for a hobby.) Also it is no secret to how he built his social media footprint. He consistently put out content, he commented a ton of blogs, he interacted with people on Twitter, and he shared himself and his time. He was an early adopter, executing this strategy in a lot of spaces before others were and he has done well for himself with it. (Sure it is more complex than that but this isn’t an an analysis of how he built his footprint.)

This strategy is pretty much the basis for most social media strategies; grab any social media book off Amazon and it will probably have some version of that strategy as a roadmap to success. The problem with this strategy is that it can easily scale for a medium to large business but for individuals or small businesses it isn’t easy to do. Watching Chris work though this has led me to see a few main themes:

Eventually working hard and working smart aren’t enough. Through Chris’s blog we have seen him touch on this as he has had to adjust how people can reach and contact him. Also we have seen him set expectations on if and when he is going to reply to you and the best way for you to ensure that he does.

With personal brands and small businesses you eventually reach a point where no matter how you improve your processes eventually you can’t do everything you want or need to do. For larger businesses it is easy to hire more people to scale this but when it is just you it probably is not that simple. Eventually you have to figure out where you can use other people to power your small business or personal brand. Can they act as a filter for you to maximize your time? How much does help dilute what you are doing and how much will it enhance it? By giving up some control and responsibility it can help you accomplish more but at the same time you have to prevent the help from changing your voice.

When people or customers have an imagined relationship with you it is hard for them to understand why it changed. With Chris being active on commenting and interacting he has established relationships with a lot of people and turned them into advocates of his personal brand. I would assume a large majority of these relationships were created over an exchange on Twitter, interactions on a blog post, or even an e-mail exchange. However over a period of time as Chris probably participated in these interactions less and less due to the sheer amount of relationships that he has created. (It is unreasonable to expect him to do so.)

This ties in a little bit with my previous point about not being able to do everything. Eventually the amount of blogs you can read and comment on, the amount of Twitter interactions, or the amount of email exchanges you can have becomes so time-consuming that you can’t handle it. It isn’t that you are ignoring that relationship you cultivated but you may not be able to interact every time that other person wants you to. In their mind, while they know you have grown and expanded, they still can’t wrap their head around how that impacts your relationship with them. This can turn a prior advocate bitter quickly.

Your success is also your downfall. When you start with people as peers in this process and eventually surpass them this impacts the dynamic between you and them. When you do have problems responding or don’t respond as much these people quickly feel that you think you are better than them when that isn’t the case. It is just an issue with time. As a person, things haven’t changed. You are still just as nice, just as caring, but the circumstances around you have changed dramatically.

When you have social media growth in your personal brand or for your small business it is a rough adjustment for people who you interact with to make and it isn’t the easiest thing for a single person or small business owner to wrap their heads around. At some point you have to make a move where you completely change how you interact and how you approach it, when that time comes it usually isn’t welcomed by the people you have interacted with over the last few years. I think this is a huge grey area that there aren’t clear rules for and watching Chris deal with it might help us determin the right and wrong way to proceed when individuals and small businesses get there.

Do you think there is an easy way to scale?

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Immediately I turned to the passenger sitting next to me, a middle-aged woman who was traveling with her husband and showed her the text, the couple wanted to know where it was from? I explained to them it was from the service where I booked my flight from and that when you book through them you could elect to receive alerts about your trip. The wife said, “Well how do you know that is right the Captain just said it would be only 30 minutes?”

That got me thinking. I had what was essentially a primary source just tell me information about my flight. (The captain.) And I decided to ignore that source and believe a secondary source that came in via text message. (Orbitz) Why did I do that? Was it the medium that it was delivered? Was it me being cynical? Did one give me the answer I wanted to hear?

The first reason I believed Orbitz over the Captain is based on past performance. I have flown a lot in my lifetime and every time I have been given an estimated delay time it was always off by at least 45 minutes. “We’ll be leaving in 30 minutes” has turned into hours on more than one occasion. This information was always taken directly from the airline. (I know these are “estimates” but on more than one occasion it seemed like the times were given more appeasement than anything.)

Orbitz has never given me wrong information.

I think that the second reason had to do with the medium. Automatically when I get a short burst of information electronically, with no opinion attached to it, I believe it because this is the medium I deal in most often. (I should know better.)  Hearing a voice over a PA system no longer outranks straight data to me and I am not sure if that is good or bad.

Eventually we took off, 35 minutes after the Captain announced we would be on the runway for half an hour and 85 minutes earlier that what Orbitz said. I guess maybe I need to reconsider the value I place on each source of information.

Is your evaluation of information colored by past experience, the medium that delivers it, or other factors?

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This week I finally sat down and did something about my inefficiencies. I combined, reorganized, and found myself moving a lot of my content to the cloud. (I know, I know, “the cloud” is marketing lingo.) Here is what I did:

E-Mail- I had five e-mail accounts going to three different sources. Two to different web mail accounts and three to my desktop e-mail client. While I had alerts coming into my browser from the online clients I recognized that having these three different sources for email was a complete waste. I decided to move all my e-mail into my Gmail account because I was starting to use Google Buzz a little more, I have a Palm Pre which links with Google products fairly well, and I wanted to get my stored e-mails off of my computer.

Concerns:

Backing my content up- Of course I am afraid that I could run into data loss or have my account arbitrarily deleted. Not having my data on my computer and on my backup drive does scare me a bit. I have been a customer of Backupify since they launched and felt okay with moving all my e-mail to the cloud because of it.

Signatures- One of the features I like about my desktop client is the ability to assign signatures to my various e-mail accounts. Gmail only allows for one signature, but there is a great browser extension in Wisestamp that allows for me to create multiple e-mail signatures for Gmail.

Bookmarks- I have used Xmarks for a long time and have always had a Delicious account. I realized that most of the time when I was bookmarking items they became a mess if I was putting them to Xmarks (I often didn’t organize these into folders). I decided that I should just move everything to Delicious and use that as my main bookmarking source. Besides making me organize my bookmarks better I can share this as content through various social media outlets.

Documents- I haven’t made the transition to Google Docs or anything like that. I am a slave to Microsoft Office products and it will be that way for the foreseeable future. One change I did make though is how I store these items. I have begun to use Dropbox (this is the only referral link I have ever used, when you sign up for free I get more storage for free) more and more as a data backup solution and as a replacement for my flash drive, as well as a way to share large files with my clients. Instead of using three different services: backup, file sharing device, and portable file storage I now have one tool to manage.

What tools are you using to make yourself more efficient?

Related Articles:

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• Hodge Podge of Tools
• Don’t Dilute Your Brand
• It’s All About Location, Location, Location?
• The Outdoor Industry and Social Media
• You are open 24/7 how come your social media isn’t?
• Topic du jour: Chris Brogan and Scaling Your Personal Brand
• My Review of Crush It
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