My friend and former business partner, Gary Goldhammer, pointed me to a “must read” blog post the other day via Twitter - you know the way most tweet-peeps do – using one of those short untypeable urls. so followers can follow his link and Gary can check in on how many of us believed him.

That blog post was the author’s impressions of a talk she had attended by Edelman Digital’s David Armano on social media Engagement and Community Management. 

And from there, there was the usual social media sequence:  embedded in the author’s post was the Powerpoint Mr. Armano used during his talk.  Embedded on that Powerpoint was a link to the document sharing site, Slideshare, where I could download the presentation.  From there I could “like” it, “share” it, comment on it or link through to check out Edelman’s other presentations and where I could “follow” Edelman Digital’s posting activity so I’d be alerted when new stuff was uploaded there for my enlightenment. 

The end game of Mr. Armano’s talk (and that which comprises much of today’s professional social media zeitgeist) is how marketers might best go about using Engagement to Sell people – and ultimately reap the benefits of doing so (from sales to shareholder value).

Gary, Edelman Digital, and Mr. Armano are doing so and reaping the benefits.

And lucky me.  I have the skills to take up Gary and Mr. Armano on their information offers, and Edelman gets one more marketplace reputation or popularity point among us onliners in the guise of a follower or commentor or a tweet or a share.

But here’s the deal - today, right now, a Very Large Percentage of people - inside every kind of organization – giant, small and in between, and Buying People, Selling People, Servicing People and Governing People do not have the knowledge and skills to participate in, lead, implement, strategize or evaluate social media.

If Engagement is so vital to the marketplace (and it is), and resources are (necessarily) shifting “online,” brands ought to look very hard and very soon at who is NOT there to Engage or to be Engaged.

-- Who among their customers is not there?

-- Who is “not there” among their employees?

-- Who is “not there” among their leaders?

Who is “not there” because they don’t have the skills to lead or influence or participate in the connected marketplace?

And the answer is “most people,” “most employees,” “most leaders,” “most consumers.” 

So I ask - or rather throw out the challenge – if social media Engagement is so vital could just ONE of those social media initiatives a brand undertakes be about bringing people IN?  Not another initiative to get a like, follower or mention but another Person to Engage or to be Engaged.

Could it be about not just hiring the best social media guru out there, but training employees and giving the organization - and the Employee People in it - 21^st century skills security?

Could just one be not only co-opting an online community of people already there, but building up the community of people who can be there with some initiative aimed at giving them either access, knowledge or skills?

Could it be about engaging with high schools, colleges and universities toward adding digital skills and professional social media skills into curriculum? Or supporting organizations like P21 (Partnership for 21^st Century Skills)?

Or, what about sponsoring an online community or non-profit group trying to get people up to speed so they can reap the benefits of being connected and have some kind of skills security?  I’ll bet WeAreVisible could use a boost.

Or, maybe it is simply authentically supporting digital literacy as public policy and taking a hard look at their own efforts toward Net Neutrality and broadband public policy. Does their stand on these really synch up with their online Engagement and Community Management activities?

Engage, manage and build community around that, please – just a little.

Because our social media world is not “The World.”  Not even close.

Yet.

Part two in a series of two. Read Part 1 here.

Social media can, and should, change the way you interact with your customers. But few companies can quickly transform their marketing the way a social media might require.

In the interim, integrating social media with existing marketing programs gives your business two valuable propositions: 1) additional support for your traditional marketing programs; 2) opportunities to measure social media effectiveness alongside your other familiar marketing efforts.

In the last installment, we considered how social media fits into your search and web presence marketing. Now we look at integrating social media into e-mail marketing, events and loyalty programs.

Social Media and E-mail

E-mail is the most popular way people share information online. A recent study shows 46 percent of content was shared via e-mail, 33 percent on Facebook and just 6 percent on Twitter. 

The sharing picture gets more interesting, though, when looking at “click-throughs” – the number of times people people click on the shared info: 40 percent of clicks come from Twitter, 35 percent from e-mail and 25 percent from Facebook. Visitors coming via e-mail stay longer, visiting 2.95 pages on average. Twitter visitors flit away quickly, only visiting 1.7 pages.

Making that click is so similar between e-mail and social media, that it’s smart to integrate the two:

• Add a “share” button to your company e-mail messages so people can share instantly in their preferred places.
• Use social media “chicklets” (linked icons) inside your e-mail and on your e-mail-to-web landinpages to encourage social followers.   

• Publish your e-mail newsletters on a blog and put those social chicklets there as well.
• Build your e-mail list by adding an e-mail list sign-up widget to your blog, Facebook page, and social profiles.

Social Media and Events

Social media is ideal to promote events, encourage buzz during it, and a way for people to engage afterwards. Services like Twitter are especially useful for “virtualizing” events because of their “happening now” nature.

As you begin to promote your event, announce a “hashtag.” Hashtags evolved on Twitter as a simple way to organize a pubic discussion around a particular topic. To create a hashtag pick a keyword and put the “pound sign” in front of it, like the one for the South by Southwest conference and festival: #sxsw.

Anywhere you post about the event use your hashtag. Tell attendees about your “official” hashtags so they can use and follow it; then watch the conversation emerge and grow. Monitor it by searching on your hashtag – and embed the conversation in your event site using a widget.

Use the same technique to hold “group chats” on Twitter. Pick a time, a hashtag and invite people to participate. Announce the chat through e-mails, social spaces and on your Web site. Bring in a subject matter expert or invite a Q&A session for your customers.  Do it regularly and build a following, or make it an “extended session” for your physical event.

The folks at wine retailer Bin Ends combined wine tasting and Twitter to encourage sales. On their Web site they identified the wines they would taste, provided free shipping, promoted the wine expert who would be commenting and invited customers to gather with friends, wine, a laptop and Twitter. The virtual events have proved so successful they now have a dedicated community, Taste Live and they hold virtual tastings on both Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media and Loyalty Programs

Most loyalty programs are in serious need of modernizing. Keeping them high-touch and high-value is key to success.

TastiDlite offers extra rewards for connecting your reward card to your Twitter, Facebook or foursquare account (see below), automatically sharing each “Tatsi experience.”  

Foursquare is a location sharing service that’s part game, part city guide and part social networking. People use their mobile phones to “check in” with friends, telling them when they’re at local spots. Each check-in earns users points, and frequent check-ins earn freebies. Merchants actively use foresquare as a way to reward and recognize customers.

Sites like foursquare and mobile technologies are allowing merchants to combine the physical with the virtual, rewarding and supporting customers’ digital lifestyles.  

Social media works best as part of a cross-media strategy. A little social media sprinkled in with your traditional marketing can go a long way to getting your business on the digital track.

This post also appeared in Orange County Local News Network.

Part one of a two-part series. Part 2 here.

Do any of these social media maladies sound familiar in your business?

The Shotgun Wedding: the proverbial gun in your back to get your social media presences going.

The “Two Twitters and a Facebook” Directive:  the boss wants to keep up with the competition and he wants it now.

The NTBE Bug: No Time, Budget or Expertise.

If so, you are not alone.  Businesses are flocking to social media sites in droves, often in an urgent effort to be hip, to connect with customers on their own turf, or as a fresh way to engage them.  

Your customers want something else.  They want relevant information where and how they like it, a personalized view of it, and ways they can share it in their own web spaces.

To truly bridge the two, a well-planned social media strategy is important to long-term success, but in the meantime there is lots of tactical  “socializing” you can do.

Five easy ways are:  using social media to support search results; using it with your web site; within your email marketing; for your events; and in your loyalty programs.

These five tactics are a good start to getting you on board with social media, meeting some social customer expectations, and for curing that NTBE bug. Let’s look at two of them to start.

Social Media and Search

Search is key to your “inbound marketing” - that is, the way customers find you.

Hubspot finds that companies that have blogs get 55% more web traffic. And a recent study found consumers exposed to a brand’s social media were more than twice as likely to click on its unpaid search links, and almost three times more likely to search for the brand’s products.

Social media can work hand-in-hand with your search optimization by socializing your existing content (your white papers, presentations, videos, etc.).

Your Web content can be distributed onto social platforms, expanding the concept of your “Web site” to your “Web presence” – linking them all to each other and to your Web site. This creates more search results, more places for people to find you, and allows them to choose formats that fit their personal information habits.For example, “socialize” that whitepaper by making it available on your web site, upload it to Scribed, summarize it in a PowerPoint presentation and upload it to Slideshare and Scribed, videotape a brief interview about the topic and upload it to YouTube and iTunes, embed the video or slide presentation into your LinkedIn profile.  How about a Google Knol on the topic?

Don’t forget to “optimize” this distributed content with links to your website, choosing a clear title, including keywords in the description, and using any “tag” feature to enter words or categories people might associate with the subject matter.  

Social Media and Your Website

An essential social feature is RSS – Really Simple Syndication. It is a small bit of web code that people use to subscribe to and receive your updated content in their personal news items. The easiest way to add it to your web presence is to publish your newsletter or updates on a blog.  RSS is built into blogs.

On your website, invite social followers by placing icons and links to your distributed content, such as on Slideshare, LinkedIn, or YouTube.  This helps visitors find your official social accounts.  
 
Use social widgets to bring social content onto your website. Widgets are simple ”cut and paste” applications for this very purpose that require no programming expertise. Most social services offer you free widgets, but there are thousands available.

Some essential website widgets:

• A sharing widget:  let people instantly share your web page to their networks;
• Ratings, rankings or polls:  insert reviews automatically or get input from visitors using polls;
• Twitter and Facebook widgets:  bring your Twitter or Facebook posts onto your web pages;
• YouTube channel:  website visitors can browse your video library without leaving your site.

Now that your search and web site are going social, next we’ll look at doing the same with email, events and loyalty programs.

This was also posted at the Orange County Local News Network.

This is a cross-post of my article at Orange County Local News Nework

Her tone told me the question had been brewing for a while.  My 83-year old mother asked my opinion of people who Blackberry or text message in a social setting.

My first thought was, “Excellent! She used ‘Blackberry’ as a verb.”  I mentally verified mine was stowed during our visit and replied, “It depends.”

My mother’s question about acceptable digital behavior is posed often, but in other ways like, “what if I don’t want to accept a ‘friend’ request?”; or “aren’t kids being rude, standing around texting while supposedly visiting with their friends?”

Society has always had to navigate old rules of behavior around new technology. There was a time when it was considered bad form for a single female to accept a phone call in her private home.

It can be tough to gauge good digital behavior while society is still forging the new cultural norms that guide us.

Probably the most contentious etiquette issue today – one that usually falls along generational lines - is digitally divided attention.   A baby boomer considers it rude when her granddaughter text messages during their conversation to her friend. But the girl’s friends consider it perfectly acceptable because she is including someone who can’t be there physically in the conversation.   The MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Youth Project has found that by “digitally hanging out,” young people are learning basic social and technological skills they need to participate in modern society.
 
But, unless you are in the company of the obsessively connected, keep the digital device tucked away and on silent.  Attention is respect.  If you must monitor your device for something urgent, ask your companions if they mind if you keep an eye out, and when it appears, excuse yourself.

In meetings, proper digital behavior may be a little fuzzier.  Digital devices are our notepads and calendars so it’s impractical to ban them.  Establish rules about their use at meetings and honor the rules set.  When with a client, if you intend to use your digital device for taking notes, ask first.

Establish a personal policy about your virtual spaces and don’t be shy about communicating it.  This helps you know exactly how to respond to the unwanted friend request.  For example, many people prefer to use Facebook for their close connections and not for business contacts.  When that uncomfortable request comes in, you can use the “ignore” button (no one will know) and invite them to join you on your business network, such as LinkedIn or Plaxo.  Add a personal note or introduction.  Never settle for only sending the impersonal invitation the network provides.

Other modern manners:

Do

• Please use salutations, pleases and thanks you in email and sign off with your name.
• Keep shared calendars current and free of personal appointment details.  Mark out needed personal time, but hold the details for your private calendar.
• When joining a digital interest or work group, introduce yourself before jumping into the conversation.
• Feel free to remove “tags” from photos of you that have been shared. It’s okay to ask the sharer to take them down.  Cooperate graciously if someone asks you to do either.
• Always use private messaging for sensitive matters.
• Know your technology.  Understand where postings will go and to whom, how to set privacy settings, and how to control your personal preferences.

Don’t

• Upload or tag video or images of people without their permission.
• Limit your conversational account to only those you are following and then prominently display “follow me” invitations.
• Have a conversation intended for just one person in public messages.  Take it into direct messaging.
• Refer to a person’s full name when they use a social pseudonym.
• Join a network and allow it to invite everyone in your address book.
• Abandon a network profile without putting up a “left town” message.

The Emily Post Institute reminds us of one very important and timeless thing:  etiquette is for building relationships.  Choosing behavior that builds them is your best guide. 

What digital behavior bugs you?