But a new breed of start-ups like AirBNB, which apply the same model to service industies, where responses times are critical, and relationships matter, may not  fare so well.

Here are three examples where service oriented community network business models fall short:

1. When Buyers Need Protection – The more important relationships are to successful transactions, the more risky peer-to-peer transactions are.  When there is very little promise of future revenues, sellers are much less motivated to perform. If I chose to purchase raw materials from a vendor based soley on price, and the quality is inferior or they can’t deliver on schedule, that could shut my plant down. And time is money, so I need a relationship with someone who can fix problems quickly. And the same is true in most service industries, which is why they may ultimately fail at collaborative consumption.  Take AirBNB for example. Their listing hosts can evict guests without cause, and there’s virtually nothing meaningful the service can do about it. On the other hand, if guests back out of a booking, they could wind forfeiting half the booking fee.

2. When Buyers Need Support - Recurring revenue is what motivates sellers to remedy problems.  In the case of a community networks like AirBNB, where the likelihood of repeat business between the same buyer and seller is much lower than it would be for a hotel chain, motivating the seller with the threat of a bad review is defeated by the seller’s ability to slam the buyer with an equally bad rating. And AirBNB does not serve as an arbiter of truth. Given the size of the network and the number of transactions, how could they? Service oriented collaborative consumption business models don’t scale well.

3. When Response Times are Critical – If you’re unhappy with a purchase on Ebay, you can file a dispute on your own time, from the comfort of your home. But if you’re locked out of an apartment you rented from AirBNB, your ride doesn’t show or your task doesn’t get done, you could be looking at 5 hours in dark hallway, a missed flight or no dry cleaning.  Mishaps are often nobody’s fault.  But when they happen, they do need to be resolved, and that’s what service industries are about. Connecting buyers and sellers to trade services without protecting either side with adequate support is critical.  But the expense of providing that support for a community network just may not be scalable for these nascent companies.  Adding standards and verification could be the answer. The question is can these companies afford it without sacrificing their profitability?

Social media business models are not one-size fits all.  Just because collaborative consumption works for some online marketplaces does not mean it works for all, and services may be too economically challenging for these start-ups to delivery.

The jury is out on whether or not service oriented collaborative consumption businesses like AirBNB, Uber and TaskRabbit will be able to adequately satisfy those customers in an environment where response times and relationships are important.

This post is based on an experience I had renting an apartment through AirBNB.  If you’d like to hear a podcast discussion about what happened, click here.

With all the talk about the complaint PhoneDog.com filed against Noah Kravitz for “misappropriation of trade secrets and damaged the company’s business, goodwill, and reputation” some companies are liable to update their social media policy.

But those that do are making a mistake. Because if they’re going to be heard through social media, they’re going to need as much help as they can get. And they’re not going to get it by imposing ownership claims over their personal social media accounts

I don’t intend to make any substantial changes to my Social Media Policy Template because of it, and here’s why:

On social networks, crowds direct our attention. If it trends, it upends. And if it doesn’t, it just ends.

What one person tweets matters only a little. What the crowd retweets, matters most. The same social gravity applies on Facebook, Linkedin and G+.  An effective corporate social media policy protects the organization and its employees alike. Afterall, why would your employees retweet your message on their personal social networking account if they’re concerned it might get them fired, or if they’re concerned you might someday try and take it away from them?

Imposing strict ownership requirements over an employee’s personal social media account discourages them from using social media for on theior employers behlaf, which means they won’t be retweeting your message.  And in nowadays, you need retweets, Likes and +1s to get noticed. So a good social media policy must encourage employee participation.

Sree Sreenivasan, a professor at the Columbia Journalism School, who is paraphrased in a story about the incident by New York Times reporter John Biggs (@JohnBiggs) says it best:

…many industries had policies that required sales staff to leave their Rolodexes behind, but that these policies were as relevant to social media as Rolodexes are to the modern office. After all, social media accounts are, almost by definition, personal.

He also said that the average Twitter account had less clout than many might think.

On social networks, we crowd source news and information. If companies want to get noticed, they’ve got to get crowds talking. And in most cases, their employees are going to be easiest place to start.

Do you intend to update your social media policy as a result of this complaint, or will you wait to see what legal precedent, if any, transpires?

Image By: Dbarefoot

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how best to conduct social media training online.  I do a lot of live training, which consists of lectures and exercises, and I see first-hand how tough it is for anyone to take in reams of information in real time.

Lectures are inhumane. You sit with a bunch of people you don’t know and hear one person share basic concepts. You can ask only one or two questions. There’s not much time for instructor-student dialogue.  Everyone’s forced to learn at the same pace. And students are not empowered to apply what they’ve learned.

Tests don’t accurately assess ayour capabilities. GPAs, transcripts or completion certificates say nothing about whether or not you really have the skills that were taught.  Yet testing is the main way you’re evaluated, even though projects work is a much more realisitic simulation of how you apply practical skills to real world situations.

With exception of the big name Ivy League schools, academic credentials are certainly no guarantee of employment. Attending college affords you a valuable life experience, but it doesn’t mean you’ll get real skills and be able tp earn a living.

Technology has the potential to change all that, as Khan Academy founder Sal Khan and Stanford AI professors Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun discussed in a recent Google+ Hangout about the future of technology in education.

The video, in which students from well known universities ask the three questions about how technology will change education, lasts about 45 minutes, which is not exactly the granular chunks Sal says students need, but if this subject interests you, it is well worth watching.

Here are the major take aways:

• Gamification makes learning more Fun: Scores are more fun and more motivational when they’re presented in a competitive, game-like fashion. What is a report card other than a score?  Some people think of their bank account as a score.  Why not use game mechanics to encourage participation and improve performance?

• When people are together physically, they learn more through one-on-one mentoring and group interaction than from a passive lectures. Use technology to convey basic principles in granular chunks that students can stop, rewind and replay, and make class time a more human experience through more instructor/student/peer interactions.

• The challenge of integrating technology into education is combining personal and group experiences, where the personal experience is the student’s interactions with the course material, and the group experiece is the student’s interactions with their instructor and peers.

• Educators can use technology to collect more detailed data on student performance, much like Google Analytics collects detailed data on website usage. Grades are too broad a measure of performance to have real value to employers. Online learning allows instructors to use A/B testing to see what students respond best to and improve their courseware, and to capture performance data as well.  But more importantly, using the web for personal learning could also let students focus on project work that can form the basis of a portfolio, a more meaningful way for employers to evaluate them as job candidates.

• Just cause something’s recorded, doesn’t mean it has to be perfect. Perfection is the enemy of the good.  Use online video to explain things, and break those explanations down in bite sized chucks.

• Everybody has something to teach. Crowd sourcing knowledge online has real value. The challenge is enforcing standards. We may find that crowd-sourcing combined with content curation is the answer.

The other big challenge, as I see it, is getting students to actually watch the content, particularly in today’s online environme with so many distractions. Sal says the relationship between the on-demand content and in class content is the key and suggests wrapping projects and in class discussions around the on-demand content.

Still, I think it might be tough to get someone who is disengaged due to personal or family issues to find the uninterrupted time, which in-class sessions guarantee, to consume the on-demand content. But that’s another issue entirely.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the Hangout.  Thank you Sal, Peter and Sebastion for taking the time to make the video. It definitely helps me sort out my thinking on how best to use technology to conduct social media training.

The biggest search and social networking companies to date were born in America, so it’s easy to be seduced into thinking that the American way of doing things online is the best way of doing things online.  But most netizens today are not Americans.

The majority of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin users reside outside of the US. And in many of those places, commerce is not necessarily the primary objective of business. In some countries, the ambitious are suspecting of undermining the public interest.  Profits are like air.  You need it to live, but it is not the purpose for living. Surely, you can’t deny that in the US, there are corporations that profit at the expense of the greater public interest.

Maintaining sensitivity to cultural nuances outside the US is key to successful online communications.  SXSW, the annual mecca for the global tech community, draws an international audience.  But it happens in Austin, so the global perspetive is diluted through an American lens.

Le Web on the other hand, which happens every December in Paris, showcases the global tech scene through a distinctly European filter, which is extermely valuable to communicators residing inside the US.  Produced by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, it is the fastest-paced, most entertaining of the tech conferences — with the best food and the higest production values — and packed with hard newsbreaks.

Here’s some of the announcements at this year’s conference:

• Release of the new, new Twitter with a new algorithm “discovery feed”
• Live demo of Ice Cream Sandwich, the next Andriod OS, with desktop widgets and facial recognition
• Facebook’s committment to HTML5, even though the BRIC nations won’t have the infrastructure to support it for years
• Uber’s $32 million in funding for an app that makes cars services in most major cities available via mobile
• Evernote’s deal with Orange which will give customers access to the premium version for a year for free

But the bigger, more strategic lesson I got came from experiencing the emerging online tech sector in a mature market like France.  Consider the history.  The French government has long been regarded as overly bureaucratic, contempous of corporate greed and downright arrogant.  Here are a few examples:

• Just a few days ago the Autorite de la Concurrence slammed P&G and other soap companies with huge fines for price fixing
• Wirelss broadband is simply not available from any local provider in Paris without a one-year contract
• Last minute scheduling changes at Le Web happen daily. It’s just the way they do things. Shut up and wait.

It’s easy to dismiss the French as aloof.  But my take is, they just have different priorities. You may not be able to get online easily, but if you have a medical emergency, they’ll take care of you for free, with or without insurance. The French also have a much lower tolerance for anticompetitive practices and revile unchecked corporate power. They seem to legitimately want to put the public interest before commerce. It’s a noble goal. You don’t get ripped off on soap and you can get healthcare when you need it. But it doesn’t always work, especially when it stymies innovation.

In his keynote, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said the role of government is to equip citizens with reliable, fast and affordable wireless and stationary broadband, so they can innovate themselves out of the current economic funk.  Rome had roads. Then came highways. But today, if you want to spur innovation and commerce, you need high-speed broadband.

Easy, cheap access to the Net in Sweden lead to a number of breakthrough technologies including the peer to peer file sharing, which led to Skype, and more recently Spotify, a social network that lets user share privately, who’s founder also presented at Le Web. Silicon Valley needs a competitor, says Schmidt, and unless you want to live in Berlin or Stockholm, other European governments need to make it easier for people to innovate.

Some say unchecked corporate power in the US has led to an environment where corporations have grown at the expensive of individuals. Last week the Federal Reserve reported said household net worth declined 4% over the summer, while company holdings climbed for the fifth consecutive year.

The bigger lessons from this year’s Le Web is this:

• It’s less expensive that ever to access global markets
• The cost of doing business keeps coming down
• The size of the market keeps expanding
• Access spurs innovation
• Incentives spur commerce

But cultural differences really do matter. Different cultures have different expectations which anyone selling to a global audience needs to be mindful of.

I rented an apartment in Paris through AirBNB while attending Le Web and after getting locked out, l was challenged to overcome a difficult situation without anyone to advocate on my behalf in a timely manner.  I have since exchanged tweets with the company’s founder Brian Chesky inviting him to discuss my experience at On the Record…Online, and spoken to the company’s staff, but no one appears to be willing to talk to me on the record about my experience.

In my next post I’ll write about my AirBNB experience.  I’d like to acknowledge AirBNB’s point of view of in my post, so I hope Brian, or someone at AirBNB, will agree to a constructive, civil dialogue about my Paris apartment rental experience.

Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (@Karl_Lagerfeld) will offer a new couture brand “Karl” direct to consumers via the web, and has put up a sign-up page with details here.

The new line will be available through Net-a-Porter as soon as Jan. 25th, it was annouced today at Le Web 2011 in Paris, says Lagerfeld, a self-professed “paper freak” and an early adopter of technology who sketches on the iPad, his 4 iPhones  and hundreds of iPods.

Despite his decision to announce his new brand at Le Web, Lagerfeld says he hates promotion. “It’s what people do with my name,” says Lagerfeld, who learns by doing and says in a world where we have access to information, it’s very easy to inform yourself.

Why promote, when you can do? If you do something interesting, people will find it and share it on their own.  I love that point of view. I think it’s the future of social media.

Why use social media just to market products, when you can use it for all public communications and leave behind shareable moments?  But Lagerfeld doesn’t have time to share on social networks himself. “Just because you’re over connected, does not mean you’re well connect,” says Lagerfeld.

The Fifth Annual PRSA Digital Impact Conference will be held April 2-3, 2012 in New York City.

We’re looking for online influencers, experts and leaders on the client and agency sides to present strategies, theories, ideas, research and results.

Caryn Marooney, director of product communications at Facebook is confirmed to keynote, and we’re now accepting speaker proposals until Dec. 9, 2011.

The Digital Impact is dedicated to profiling the impact of digital technology on the business of communications. We are looking to spotlight projects, programs, organizations and individuals who are effectively leveraging the power of digital to get their message across, increase productivity and manage reputations.

So if you’re ready share detailed, thoughtful information and concepts (no creme puffs, please) that attendees can put into action immediately, check out the official Call for Presentations here and submit to present on one of the following three conference tracks:

• Strategies and Innovations
• Trends, Tactics and Tools for Industry Marketing and Communications
• New Communications Research

Conference co-chairs Elizabeth Albrycht, Kevin Sangsland and I, with the support of the PRSA Technology Section and the Society for New Communications Research are all actively seeking online influencers to share their knowledge and experience at our upcoming conference, presented by the Public Relations Society of America.

Thanks for considering this speaking opportunity. Looking forward to your submissions, particularly if you can show us how to find influencers online.

Photo By: Kaysha

I conducted a Social Media Training in Chicago yesterday as part of my Hands On Training tour with Social Media Today.

I had senior executives and C suiters from the corporate sector, nonprofits, B2Bs and agency principals attending.  Here’s a picture of me with some of the attendees at the end of the session, who all seemed very happy.  I’m very excited about his new workshop. I think its definitely got legs.

After 7 years leading Social Media Boot Camps all over the world, I wanted to add this new workshop to my roster to focus more on applied social media communications skills. Once you know what social media is and why it’s important, you need to learn how to actually use it effectively.

Most people know by now that search engine optimization is important, but how do you actually learn how to do it? How do you learn keyword discovery, how to use embed codes, how to add Facebook Like buttons, Tweet buttons, Linkedin Badges, how to launch Facebook pages, use Tweet and Follow buttons and use Linkedin Answers, Signal and Groups? How do you launch a blog? Bloggers know this stuff already. But most people don’t blog.

There’s a whole wide world outside the tech bubble that can really benefit from learning these skills. The problem is, there’s a very real dearth of practical soial media training opportunities.  A hotel conference center with anemic Wi-Fi, not enough power strips, banquet chairs and round tables is no way to conduct a computer training course.  But unfortunately,  these types of conferences are all most people know about, and their only option for learning how to use social media for business.

I’ve been on the conference circuit for years and I’m here to tell you that while you may hear motivational speakers, interesting success stories and provocative, high-level theory about why social media matters and where it’s headed, you’re unlikely to get any practical know-how. The war against digital illiteracy will not be won through keynotes or PowerPoint. What’s required is hands on training.  Because at the end of the day, somebody has to actually do the work.

I put together a comprehensive, balanced cirriculum covering all aspects of social media communications, so attendees can get the skills you can put to use immediately.  No hotel conference centers.  I teach at computer trainng facilities with reliable broadband, proper seating, ergonomic desks and enough power strips to go around.  No PowerPoint. No canned demos.  All exercises are conducted live.  And if you need help securing an internet connection, there’s a certified Microsoft network engineer on-site to resolve your issue.

Attendees bring their computers, logon and get real world experience learning to use social media for business.  Or for those government or military personnel with locked down laptops, we provide desktop a computer they can use for the session.  I’ve been wanting to teach this class for a long time. And I’m really glad it was received so positively. My US tour wraps with a final session in San Francisco tomorrow and Friday.

But given the positive feedback, I expect to announce dates for additional sessions in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I publish my training calendar here.

Or, if you’re based in Europe, join me for my German-American Social Media Boot Camp in Berlin October 10-11, 2011.  In my upcoming social media training in Germany, I will be adapting the cirriculum to feature local case studies and examples.

In fact, as part of my research to prepare, I recorded a Social Media in Germany panel last wel with Thomas Praus (@stylewalker), Oliver Gassner (@oliverg) and Sebastian Vasta (@sebastianvasta) who are all social media specialists in Germany.  If you’d like to down that panel as a podcast, here’s a link.  Enjoy and hope to see you in Berlin!

Thanks to all who attended, and if you have a moment, please share your experience at the session as a comment to the blog.  Would you recommend the session to others?

(PHOTO BY POOJA) Pictured left to right are Sarah Theresa (@sarahtheresa), Reed Evans (@GreenActionGal), Lydia Baehr (@LBPR), Moyra Knight (@moyraknight), moi [seated], Peter Vukosavich of Studio V Design, Annette Howard, Erika Roberts (@JigGarden), Jim Papariella and Sherry Bale.

How to share social media is becoming a prominent part of our personal and business lives. It’s important to know the correct way to share and how to engage other people in the process.  Businesses and people alike are asking questions about social media, like why use Google+ when I already have Facebook and Twitter accounts? People are confused by social media but it doesn’t have to be hard to use.

Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan), best-selling author of Trust Agents and renowned blogger is immersed in social media daily. He juggles work and home life while being involved in every aspect of social media. We can all learn a few things from Chris with his insights into the complicated realm of how to share social media.

Keys to the Best Facebook Wall Posts

1)     Joe Ciarallo (@joeciarallo) of Buddy Media found in a study that the best Facebook wall post does not use promotional language; it could be the kiss of death.

2)     Use the 12 to 1 rule, says Brogan, where you promote other people’s or companies things 12 times more than your own. This is the best way to earn and build relationships.

3)     Sometimes, the best Facebook wall posts or twitter posts are those where you recommend your competitor because your product isn’t the right product. This may seem odd to some, however it’s a huge opportunity to win the trust of the community as well as become an influencer.

Benefits of Google+

1)     One of the key benefits of Google+ is that it allows a better opportunity to build more relationships than other forms of social media.

2)     Engagement level is far deeper, which Brogan says is an advantage of Google + because he has seen more traffic through Google+ than he has on Twitter.

3)     Opportunity to keep the conversation going, unlike Twitter and Facebook.

4)     A benefit of Google+ for first adopters? An opportunity to teach businesses and people what to do next.

The Three A’s

One of the keys on how to share social media content correctly is using the Three A’s: Acknowledge, Apologize and Act.

1)     Acknowledge:  If there is a problem you have to acknowledge it. Previously, PR professionals could get away with spinning even the worst news around to make themselves look better. With all of the online social networks like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ you can’t do that anymore.

2)     Apologize: Find out from your legal department what you can and can’t say and apologize without sounding like a bad person.

3)     Act: Act upon your apology to solve the problem.

How to share social media is an important part of businesses today. But using it correctly and in the most engaging way is difficult. Use these Chris Brogan tips and you should be well on your way to sharing, engaging and building relationships!

About the Guest Blogger

Jenna Andre (@jentopthat) is a public relations professional at Orange Communications in Minneapolis where she works with manufacturing, professional service and wellness clients.  She is newer to the industry, having only graduated from Purdue University in 2008. She is a member of PRSA and volunteers within the Minnesota Chapter.

I spoke with Neville Hobson about the specifics of my upcoming Hands-On Social Media Training in London on Sept. 8-9, 2011 presented by Social Media Today. You can have a listen at:

If you’re interested in attending, you can sign up here. Reduced pricing ends Tuesday, August 9, 2011. Hope to meet you there!

You should follow me on Twitter and send a question if you’ve got one by clicking here.

Are you proficient in the use of social media for business communications?

In some ways, social media’s like a flame. In undiscerning hands, it can be dangerous.  Many companies are choosing to vest responsibility for social media at the bottom of the org chart. With digitally illiteracy rampant in the C-suite and board room, we’ll no doubt see more foolish smear campaigns, Twitter gag orders and silly black hat SEO attempts.

What would you do if your Facebook page got brand jacked?  What if your boss said she thought social media was a waste of time and money? Could you figure out and open her eyes to the opportunity that social presents for you? And could you track the ROI of your efforts to sustain and grow your budget allocation over time? Because if you can’t, you’re not proficient in social marketing. You may understand the “what” and the “why,” but to make social media work, you also need to know “how” to use it.

We all know everyone’s using social media. And we know how to post a Facebook status update and send a tweet.  That’s the “what” and “why”. But developing the practical, applied skills for “how” to use social media communications strategically to support corporate objectives is something else entirely.

If you don’t have these skills, you’re not alone. Most professionals in the workplace today still lack the ability to win buy-in and resources for social marketing initiatives, let alone put a program into place that works without relying on an outside specialist.

The problem is a dearth of hands-on training opportunities.  I’m talking about workshops where professionals can actually learn to use social media without getting upsold ever 5 minutes by a consultant. Yes, there are plenty of conferences where social media is covered, but you won’t get a comprehensive overview or participate in any hands-on exercises designed to teach you how to do it yourself. You won’t launch a blog, embed widgets, install Google Analytics and Feedburner or learn how to figure out the phrases your prospective customers are searching when they’re looking for you. You won’t learn the skills you really need.

Instead, you’ll hear mostly unpaid speakers seeking to recoup their travel costs through new business leads. They may throw you bone or two, but they’re going to focus on telling you all the great things they’ve done for their clients, avoid mentioning any of the nasty little mistakes they’ve made, let you ask one question and give you their contact info so you can hire them when you’re ready to get started.  And that’s a problem.  Because you’ll still be in dark.

In an effort to help change that, I’ve partnered with Social Media Today to bring you a new Hands-On Training workshop.  This September, I’ll be in Sydney, Singapore, London, Paris, Toronto, New York, Chicago and San Francisco and if you want real knowledge, please consider joining me.

If know already how many people are using social media and why you should be too, it’s time to learn to execute. And that’s going to require hands-on, practical instruction. No keynotes. No panel sessions. No PowerPoint. Just step-by-step, hands-on exercises. Ask as many questions as you like in a safe environment with other professionals.

For the last five years, I’ve been traveling the world conducting social media trainings for Fortune 100 companies, government agencies and small groups of committed professionals and here’s what they’ve had to say about my workshops.

I don’t teach at hotels.  All sessions are held world-class computer training facilities. Bring your laptop, logon and learn to search engine optimize copy, build social media monitoring dashboards, launch blogs, produce and edit audio and video, launch Facebook Pages, master Linkedin and Twitter, build a social engagement dashboard and much, much more.

So if you’re ready to get serious about social media without getting burned, join us for our new Hands-On Training presented by Social Media Today. Space is limited to 30 people per city, and admission is first come, first serve.

Feel free to tweet me your questions.  Hope to see you there!

Make no mistake about it!

The killer app for B2B social media at trades events is, believe it or not, the app.

But not just any app.  Mobile apps.   More and more, attendees are using iPhone and Android apps to network digitally at events, and marketing them in the process.

Most of us have had some experience using mobile applications at professional conferences and corporate events to post status updates, tweet, check-in and exchange ideas with others who are either in attendance or following the event remotely.   With the help of hashtags on Twitter, the social media back channel makes for better networking, spreading awareness worldwide all the while.

So powerful is the prospect of mobile social networking at events that a number of conference organizers have already taken a stab at building their own, branded mobile apps. So far, the results have been mixed.  Because just like any other social media channel, those that go the distance prevail.

That means using technology to add value to the stream, whether it’s through content marketing, community management or automation. You’ve got to offer people something of value, be it ease-of-use, networking with a targeted community or the ability to engage in a niche back and forths without spamming your friends and family.  B2B mobile apps can deliver this value at events.

For a B2B mobile app to deliver, it’s got to help attendees get more out of an event and give the conference organizers a way to generate excitement before during and after the program dates.  For an app to get used, it’s got to do more then just provide the program schedule, speaker bios and basic event info.  It’s got to enable interactions, both in popular social media, and via partitioned, semi-exclusive spaces.  But what exactly does that mean? And what specifically does it take to succeed and delivery a truly useful B2B social media mobile app?

Here’s my punch list:

1. Social Sync – Perhaps the single, biggest benefit a mobile app can offer event attendees is the chance to see if anyone they know is registered to be there.  Social sync gives them a way to see of any of their Linkedin connections, Twitter followers or Facebook friends are planning on attending. Working with Janrain, the mobile app at SXSW 2011 allowed attendees to cross-reference their social networks with registered attendees to see who they know that’s attending.
2. Make Public Posting Optional – It’s great to be able to publish to Twitter or Linkedin from a branded, mobile app, but don’t force the user to do so.  They may want to use the app to have a segregated conversation with attendees without crowding up their Twitter feed.  Not that they would need to keep those conversations private, but they should be able to decide, on a per share basis, what they want on Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook, and which ones they think are only useful to people on site at the event.
3. Think Beyond the Event – It may be tougher to get people to download and invest their time in a mobile app for a single event.  From a B2B social media marketing standpoint, the whole idea of the app is to generate excitement for the event before it happens, and extend that excitement after it’s finished. Cisco Events used Double Dutch to build what is one of the most useful apps I’ve seen to date for extending the reach of B2B events via the social web.
4. Location Based Social Networking – B2B mobile app should let attendees “check-in” on their mobile device at different locations. This can be a great way to drive traffic to exhibitors or sessions.  To make sure attendees don’t check-in without visiting an exhibitor’s booth, build a QR code reader into your app, and offer incentives to attendees who check-in the most.
5. Auto Generate Hashtags – For those attendees who choose to publish their shares from your mobile app to their Twitter stream, make sure you give them the option to include the conference hashtag in their tweet.  If it’s an internal company training event, use different QR Codes on the last slide of every presentation deck and use incentives, like leaderboard listings and other event privileges, to attendees who collect the most QR codes.
6. Socialize the Photo Opp – In the old days, trade show exhibitors would book a celebrity to come by their booth for photo opps.  Nowadays, it would by silly to do something like that without integrating social to extend the reach via the web.  Make sure your app offers a way for people to share photos and video among conference attendees and easily publish them to Twitpic, TwitVid, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook as well.  Remember my cardinal rule of usability: ease of use drives adoption.
7. Notifications – Don’t make your attendees have to open your app to see new activity. Offer push notifications as an option and make darn sure the mobile app icon on the device home screen displays a number in a red circle in the upper right hand corner of the desktop icon to indicate new activity since last time it was opened.
8. Offer a “Pull” Option - The value of syncing your Linkedin account with your Twitter account is not so much the ability to syndicate tweets to Linkedin, but rather to search the tweets of other Linkedin users by industry, geography, company and time frame.  Go to Linkedin, sync up your twitter account, and try searching Linkedin Signal.  The tweets from your first, second and third tier connections appear, and can be segmented by a variety of options. If your app can pull in and display all the social networking activity of other conference attendees, that’s useful, even after the event is over, because it serves as a sort of lens to bring social networking activity of a particular community into focus.
9. Offer Keyword and Klout Score Search – B2B decision makers in different parts of a company have different priorities.  Give users the ability to isolate the discussions they’re most interested in by keyword or phrase.  To fight digital illiteracy, let them also filter by user’s Klout scores, so they can learn what online influencers do to stimulate engagement. These are features in Hootsuite’s premium service, which is very useful when conducting influencer relations at live events.

The Cisco Events app that I mentioned earlier offer many of these features.  But if I had one piece of criticism, it would be that the app offers social sync for Facebook and Twitter, but not Linkedin, which is, in my opinion, the most important network to B2B users.  According to my discussion with the folks at Double Dutch, this is something they expect to offer very soon. In fact, some time has transpired since we spoke and I wrote this up, so it’s entirely possible they’ve got it up and running now.

If you’d like to hear my briefing with Double Dutch, I released it as a podcast at On the Record…Online, so jam the like button, follow us on Twitter or subscribe on iTunes and listen in.

In my book Social Marketing to the Business Customer with Paul Gillin, we deep dive into every aspect of B2B social media marketing, from winning buy-in from disengaged managers and clients to B2B search and social optimization, and it will be no surprise to readers of this blog that Linkedin is by far the most important social network for business professionals.

I hope my B2B mobile app list of features is helpful.  What features did I miss and what B2B mobile apps do you think are most effective?

Which are the best B2B mobile apps from a user and a B2B social media marketer’s perspective.  Please post your favorites here, and let’s see of we can get a list of the most important functional specs for event-focused B2B mobile apps ever assembled.

What features would you put in a mobile app designed for use at B2B events?

But if blogs and podcasts are so ineffective, why is it that some use them successfully, while other fail? What is it that bloggers like Chris Brogan and Brian Solis, and podcasters like Mitch Joel and Shel Holtz do differently to make these channels work?

The answer is, they’re digitally literate. They’ve invested to time and energy and learned how to communicate effectively through conversational, inclusive media.  They’re learned by doing, trail blazing a path. The war against digital illiteracy will not be won by attending social media conferences. What’s required is hands-on training. Not keynotes and panel sessions, but actual training in a wired classroom with broadband access, step-by-step exercises and expert instruction.

In my book Social Marketing to the Business Customer with Paul Gillin, we cover every aspect of what marketers who get social media right do differently. They listen, create interesting, useful content in a variety of formats and ask meaningful questions.  They leverage the latest online tools and services to do more with less. They understand that the message, independent of the media, must have merit. They appreciate the difference between marketing and editorial content.  But most importantly, they have a high-level of applied social media literacy.

The fact is, most companies think social media marketing is launching a Twitter feed and a Facebook Page and spamming the community with links.  They lack the skill and stamina to locate buyer-oriented conversations or steer purchasing decisions.  And they regard social media as mass media, so they broadcast promotional messages and wonder why it’s not working.

There’s a real lack of practical, applied social media training opportunities out there, and not enough employers are investing in developing social media literacy in the workplace.  I’m not talking about the dozens of social media conferences where speakers cover, at a high-level, case studies and success stories.  I’m talking about a training environment where you bring your laptop, participate in exercises and gets hands-on training.

Thanks to PRSA and my clients, I’ve had the opportunity to lead over 100, two-day social media training courses over the last five years. I’ve trained Fortune 500s, government agencies, the military and nonprofits.  If you’re interested in developing your digital literacy level, I have a Social Media Marketing Workshop in Los Angeles June 30 – July 1, 2011.

When I first started, we called it new media training. Then it became new media and social media training. Now, with social becoming a component of destination site, search and database marketing as well, we just call it social media training.

I’ve had a chance to spend a lot of time thinking about how to advance social media literacy rates.  So if you’re considering conducting a social media training class, or even starting your own social media training business, here are my top tips for what it takes to lead an outstanding web 2.0 training:

• Live Demos – Teaching people how to use social media via PowerPoint borders on criminal. Make sure you have high-speed web access and do live demos.  And don’t do canned demos. Conduct actual keyword research for someone in the course so everyone can see how it’s done. Before I lead a social media workshop, I look over the list of registered attendees and make sure I’m prepared to focus all my demos around their particularly areas of interest. And I also make sure my case studies are applicable to them.
• Lead Exercises – Most conferences have woken up to the fact that wireless connectivity is like air conditioning. But in a social media training course, broadband access for everyone is mandatory.  Live demos may engage your audience, but the knowledge transfer process gets cemented through experience.  Have your attendees bring their laptops and lead them through a series of exercises.  These are some of my favorites:
  • Keyword Research – Show attendees how to use Google Wonder Wheel to discover relevant keyword phrases, Google Insights to get a handle on search volume, Google Keyword Tool to analyze your competitor’s website for keyword recommendations, how to check a site for meta keywords and how to use a density analyzer to check for keywords when no meta keyword data exists.
  • Competitive Analysis – Once they have an understanding of the keywords that are relevant to their business, show then how to see who else is out there already, competing for the attention of their audience. Have them search the keywords and analyze the top results in Yahoo! SiteExplorer for inbound links from external domains, and Compete.com for uniue visits.  Then have them do the same for their own site.  If their competitors have established an overwhelming lead, ask them to reconsider their keywords. Show them how to add keyword modifiers to compete in the long tail of search. They may reach fewer prospects, but those who do find them will have a higher probability of conversion.
  • Social Media Monitoring – Once they got a better handle of what they should be listening to, show them how to pull Google News and Google Blog Search RSS feeds into Google Reader.  Then show how to monitor Twitter, forums, Wikipedia, YouTube and Linkedin by keyword via RSS as well. There’s a chapter that walks you step-by-step through these first three bullets in my book.
  • Social Media Mapping - Once people start to see how difficult it is to drink from a firehouse and retain intelligence, show them how to use a social bookmarking service to build influencer lists.  Demo Delicious or Diigo for tagging useful content and thought leaders, and show them how they can collaborate with colleagues to divide and conquer broad swaths of information. By monitoring and mapping, you find those hot pockets of activity I mentioned earlier.  Then, you can strike where the iron is hot.
  • Launch a Blog - Instead of just talking about the benefits of blogging, show them how to launch a blog for the purposes of education only.  It doesn’t need to be a blog they are going to maintain. Use Blogger as a digital sandbox to show people how easy it is publish and mash-up content from other sources on the web.  Have them all write an innocuous blog post, embed a Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo, blog a YouTube clip, install a Facebook “Like” button, add a Tweet Button, a Linkedin Share Button and install Google Analytics.
  • Record a Podcast – Record a short, one-minute interview with a session attendee, edit it in Audacity, ad an intro with royalty free music, compress it to an MP3 and ID3 tag it in iTunes, right in front of everyone.  Then show them how to get a podcast listed in the iTunes directory.  Pull a streaming audio widget and show attendees how to embed a podcast episode in a blog.  The show them how to record and upload audio from a smart phone with Cinch.
  • Distribute a Live Stream – Use a consumer video camcorder and an MacBook Pro with firewire ports to live stream to Ustream. Have the attendees embed the stream in their blogs. Then show them how to live stream from a smart phone with Qik.
  • Launch a Facebook Page – Show them how to establish a Company or Brand page on Facebook, install a few apps and show how to check a page’s usage statistics in Insights.  Head on over to the “Marketing” tab in the Facebook Page admin console and Create an Alias, Add a Like Box to your Blog and Get a Badge to install as well.
  • Set Up an Engagement Dashboard – Show them how to use the “Send To” function in their Google Reader to curate content for posting to their blog, their Facebook Page and their Twitter account.  If there’s time, use TweetDeck or HootSuite, and show everyone how to pull their Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts in so they can spend more time engaging, and less time going from site to site.
  • B2B Options - If your audience is interested in B2B social media, show them Linkedin and SlideShare as well.  On Linkedin, demo Groups, Answers, Signal and Linkedin Today.  On SlideShare, show them how to upload a deck and embed it in their blog.
• How to Format the Take Away Info - In the old days, people used to print out their PowerPoint decks and hand out hard copies. But if you’re workshop is all about online tools and services, that’s a whole lot of URLs for people to have to write down and remember.  What I do is link any JPEG I show in a slide back to the URL where I got it from.  And I number each slide in the upper right-hand corner.  I upload the deck to SlideShare so everyone has a copy.  All they have to do is advance to the slide and click on the image to get to the site I’m showing. Here’s how I format my decks for sharing:

 

• Solicit Recommendations - If you want to go into the social media training business, you need people who have taken your workshops to recommend it to others. Linkedin Recommendations is a great way to get testimonials, because they have to actually be written by another Linkedin member, and they can be rescinded at any time, so they’re more credible.  I’ve built up plenty of recommendations for my social media trainings on Linkedin, and send people a link if they’re on the fence about enrolling in one of my courses.

I thoroughly enjoy leading social media training workshops. It’s incredibly inspirational to see others awaken to the possibilities of social media marketing.  If you would like to use my training materials to lead your own workshop, go right ahead. I ask only that you attribute my slides to me, and that you share them as well with whoever you show them to.

If you’d like to hire me to conduct a social media training, or would like attend one of upcoming public sessions, please check my availability and contact me directly.

About the Author
Eric Schwartzman (@ericschwartzman) provides social marketing research, social marketing servicesand social marketing training to businesses, government agencies and nonprofits. His book Social Marketing to the Business Customer with Paul Gillin is the first book devoted exclusively to B2B social media marketing.

The first step is the toughest one. But it’s also the most important.

Provide everyone with clear-cut, easy-to-follow guidelines to help them distinguish between conversations that can happen in public, and conversations that need to be kept private.

Social media has become an integral part of our personal lives.  Unless organizations take the time to specify how (not if) employees can use social media at work, they risk forfeiting the chance to:

• Capitalize on social marketing opportunities
• Attract and retain top-notch personnel
• Thwart obsolescence

Here’s why:

On social networks, trends direct our attention.  We have more confidence in crowds than individuals. A Yelp restaurant listing with a 3-star average and 300 ratings is more meaningful than one with a 5-star average and just 12 ratings.

For the same reason, organizations realize the true value of social marketing when everyone gets involved.  The more people there are discussing a topic, the greater the likelihood others will discover it.

A corporate Twitter feed and Facebook page driven by a PR department are nice to have, but they’ll never be as useful as the conversations of a diverse, engaged community.  And the larger the community, the more confidence we have in what they say, and the more likely we are to give it our attention.

Whenever an employee uses social media to get their job done, they leave behind a digital record that can be found and shared indefinitely.  If you have no policy, that notion is more than a little scary.  But if you’ve thought it through, it becomes a productivity windfall, because marketing becomes the byproduct of using social media to get the job done.

Remember, your employees are using social media already in their personal lives.  If you’d like them to use it for business too, they need to know what’s expected. Leadership needs to set clear-cut boundaries, so employees know what is and isn’y acceptable.  Companies that fail to take this step, will most likely also fail to mobilize their personnel to make the best use of social media.

It’s critical that the social media policy leadership sets be fair and just.  Blocking access to Facebook from the corporate network while expecting employees to respond to email outside of business hours sets uneven standards.  In fact, blocking access to social networks is both unfair and futile, because workers should have the right communicate with their friends and family, as long is it doesn’t interfere with the quality of their work.

Social media blackouts are the result of digitally illiteracy. They are enacted by misguided leaders from an age when the restricting information flows was possible and effective.  But as Wikileaks, Twitter and Napster have proven, the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Or as Esther Dyson said back in 2006, companies that profit from inefficiency will die, and for many types of communications, social media is simply more efficient.

Once the boundaries are in place, and everyone knows what can be public and what should be private, social media becomes a productivity gain, not drain.

Check out how Johns Hopkins and Avery Dennison are using internal social networks, or the workplace productivity gains of Chatter.

In this environment, the organizations that can draw a clear line between public and private have a huge advantage.  The road to getting there runs straight through policy, because you can’t draw that line between public and proprietary unless you do the homework to figure that out, and you can’t teach others to respect boundaries if they don’t know where they lie.

Social media without governance is reckless. And rules without training are toothless.  Take a look at my Social Media Policy Template to accelerate your policy development efforts or attend my upcoming Social Media Marketing Workshop in Los Angeles June 30 – July 1, 2011, where we spend a fair amount of time on this subject.

Welcome to the social media world of uncontrollable communications. You’re in it, whether you like it or not.

In my next post, I’ll start getting into what it takes to host an effective social media training.

In the U.S., the decision to go to war is made by the president, and the decision of whether or not to stay at a war resides with congress.  During the Vietnam war, this distinction must not have been clear because American civilians greeted returning service members by spitting on their uniforms, as if they were somehow solely responsible for the atrocities of that war.

Military service is voluntary in the U.S.  Growing up in West Los Angeles, I had no friends or family members who elected to join up, so I had no first hand experience with men or women in the armed forces.  But in 2007, I was conducting a social media training course in Boston that was attended by group of senior officers and their gunnery sergeants from the United States Marines Corps.

Not only were they among the most physically fit specimens and I had ever seen. They were keen of mind, and with razor sharp of wit, as well.  And over the course of the two-day social media workshop, I became more and more enthralled by their sensitivity to ethics, loyalty and total commitment to the United States of America.  And today, the U.S. Armed Forces lead the private sector in their use of social media for public affairs.

Here are just some of the commands that are leveraging social media effectively:

• How DoD Social Media Trains the U.S Armed Forces
• Balancing Public Disclosure Against Operational Security at USMC
• Inside the Pentagon with the Asst. Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs
• Social Media inside the U.S. Dept. of Defense with Greg Reeder
• US Navy Admiral TL McCreary on Why He Decided to Embed Journalists with Military Units in Iraq
• How DoD Got Social: Origins of Social Media at the U.S. Dept. of Defense

I developed professional relationships with many of them, consulting on different strategic communications projects and was even invited to audit a Marines Boot Camp training at Parris Island in South Carolina.  Ans it was there, at the Marines Recruit Depot, that I witnesses something truly remarkable.

During the final, culminating 72-hour training exercise known as The Crucible, in between excruciatingly difficult physical exercises, drill sergeants gathered their troops and read short stories about Marines who had succeeded under what seemed like impossible circumstances.

When I asked Brigadier General Padilla what that was all about, he explained that when you send armed troops into battle, they need to be able to make ethical decisions quickly, under duress. By instilling “Core Values” as part of the boot camp training, they were taking measures to make sure troops were prepared not just how to fire weapons, but to decide when and when not to fire them as well.

Since that time, I have been have been honored to provide social media communications training to the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, NORAD Northcomm and U.S. Pacific Command. I am also proud to say that I call many them personal friends too.  And it has been my experience that these men and women who serve in the U.S. military come from all different types of socio-economic backgrounds and political beliefs.  I even met one who was a Harvard graduate who could have had any job, but he decided to join up instead.

I have never met a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who was in any way, predisposed to violence.  Instead, what I found were pragmatic, honorable men and women of service who have made conscious decision to sacrifice their well being for the collective good of their nation.  They are men and women who understand the meaning of the following quote:

“It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

Robert E. Lee, Statement at the Battle of Fredericksburg (13th December 1862)US-Confederate general (1807 – 1870)

War in service of access to resources like oil, rather than in service of human rights, is misguided and ugly to me personally.  I cannot say I am firmly behind all the decisions our political leaders have made that have resulted in armed conflict.  But I can say, unilaterally and unequivocally, that I feel nothing but respect and support for the men and women who go into harm’s way, and who have died, in service on our way of life. Whether I agree with that way or not.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the thing for those US policymakers who, in service to corporate greed, choose to send troops into battle for the sake of commerce.  To the president and congress, on this Memorial Day, I say this:

Before you send troops into battle. Before you support actions that will require the U.S. Dept. of Defense to carry out. Let’s make sure our policies are worth their sacrifices. And the sacrifices of civilians who will undoubtedly suffer under combat.

Let’s send a clear message to our legislators.  We owe to those who have sacrificed everything to serve in our military. We owe it to innocent civilians who will get caught in the cross fire. We owe it to ourselves.

Let’s honor the fallen everywhere with policies that put people, not companies, first.

To stay up date to date with the U.S. Military, follow this list of U.S. military commands on twitter.

After that day, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube presences – along 100 million blogs, social networking sites, microblogs, online forums, etc. – could be tracked by Cision clients alongside more aged media

Each “clip” also came with a report on related comments, views, unique commentators and Twitter followers. As inheritor of the Bacon’s tradition, Cision has decades of experience in deciding on who should be monitored and listed in databases

Whether the company continues to lead will depend how they handle the fact that just 20 percent of leading bloggers today are traditional journalists, with the remaining 80 percent made up of business people and consumers.

Social influence, with its changing landscape, requires that communicators make sure they are engaging with the most influential people at a given moment. Are you building a media list when a Twitter-based list is called for? On the flip side, is your blog or Twitter feed designed to rank for influence according to the latest database metrics?

Heidi Sullivan (@hksully), vice president of Media Research at Cision, leads a team that adds 100 or so new blogs to the database each week based on new, and in some cases automated, measures of influence.  She wrestles with questions like, who has more social influence; Brian Solis (@briansolis) and Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) with their armies of unique visitors; or Deirdre Breakenridge (@dbreakenridge) and Jay Baer (@jaybaer), who have fewer new visitors but more return visitors that stay longer?  Use the insights provided by Heidi to benchmark your efforts at social media influencer analysis as you ready your next outreach.

Go Ahead and Specialize

Social media research pivots around the one percent of social web participants that create content, and perhaps around another 9 percent that share content, according to a post by Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava) on his Influential Marketing Blog. The other 90 percent are really hard to reach except through influencers, says Heidi.

Even Cision’s large research teams cannot list 100,000 people in a database, so they strive to be truly selective based on influence. Social influencer list builders, on the other hand, now have the ability now to drill down into niche topics like never before, which gives database clients the ability to target more specifically than before.

There has never been a magazine for people with disabilities that enjoy travel, or for vegan footwear enthusiasts, but there are blogs for both, Heidi says. Her team recently found that there are six blogs for the automotive adhesives industry alone.

Keyword research, and then listening to conversations around them, remains the best way to learn about communities, that is until the “semantic web” becomes fully realized. In one example, the term “shape-ups” (a best-selling Skechers brand) is hotter right now than “gym shoes,” a recent development, says Heidi.

New Tools Matter Less Than New Practices

Even with database and analysis tools more powerful than ever, the changes in how the tools must be used are more profound than the changes in the tools. Social engagement is much more important than outgoing messages today, and communications teams must commit resources to listening to communities with a growing list of “awesome” tools, Heidi says.

Influencer engagement must be shaped by the specifics details of their interests, and based on relationships built over time.  Social media intelligence gatherers must resist the urge to listen only to conversations about their brands, Heidi says.  Influencer measurement is about following people, not counting impressions, which is especially true for an industry with a traditional addiction to simple, but some might argue, partly artificial results numbers (e.g. ratings, circulation and impressions).

The danger is to settle for measuring the number of Twitter followers or the number of unique followers per month, as important as they are, and leaving it at that. To truly measure new media influence requires researchers to determine the sites that get people to change their behavior, to act and interact in a measureable way (change political opinion, decide to buy).

The public relations industry is still working toward a full understanding of the value of reaching out to communities instead of audiences, Heidi says.

No One Measure Good Enough

Media relations specialists can get an edge by following the Cision example, which is to combine in-depth media research experience with new technologies to create more thoughtful outreach efforts.  Cision, for instance, built a tool internally that automates the process of letting the research team know which blogs have not posted in the last month (which have gone under), to keep the database up to date.  This represents one more reason to post often if you want your blog to be influential.

Klout.com is a strong influencer research tool, as are Pure Index and Edelman’s TweetLevel, but no one metric will suffice, says Heidi. After these starting points, Facebook makes a good next stop in the search for influencers.

Look at a communicator’s Facebook group and number of fans, and next at their blog posts, how many votes the posts receive and the unique commentaries they engender. Heidi’s advice: mix as many useful metrics as possible.

About the Guest Blogger

Greg Williams (@gregscience) is a consultant specializing in public relations for medical, science and technical companies. After beginning his career as an editor for the Associated Press, Greg has since served as a public relations strategist for two international public relations firms and two university medical centers, and as a writer for institutions including Eastman Kodak and the National Academy of Sciences.

Despite the wide spread adoption of social media on a global basis, most companies remain clueless about how digital technology is changing the way people communicate and share information.

How else do explain the ineptitude that spurred articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal about these events:

• Burson-Marsteller’s email smear campaign against Google for Facebook. Seriously? That’s the best they could do?
• A famous British soccer player’s lawsuit against Twitter to unmask his anonymous critics. You’re kidding, right? Does he think he’s going to gag Twitter?
• Comcast’s threat to cut funding to a nonprofit that criticized its hiring of a former FCC commissioner on Twitter. And they did so via email. Did they think that was maybe a little risky? <sarcasm>
• JC Penny and Overstock.com’s decision to employ black hat SEO tactics, resulting in their websites being manually demoted in the search rankings. Guess that’s what happens when senior management is clueless about organic search.

The cold, hard truth is that these lapses in judgment are so sophomoric, all you can do is chalk it up to digital illiteracy.  And by the way, if the errors they made aren’t clear to you, you’re digitally illiterate too.  But don’t feel bad.  You’re not alone.  And chances are, it’s even not your fault.

You’ve probably been to a few social media conferences where you learned just enough to be dangerous.  Speakers took the stage and told you how well they did with social media to promote themselves and generate new business.  They avoided the gory details.  No one’s ever actually sat you down and explained how these channels really work, or how to master them.  Why would they? They want you to hire them.

The fight against digital illiteracy will not be won through keynotes or panel sessions. What’s required is practical, applied knowledge.  You need to know how to:

• Build a social media monitoring dashboard to find, listen and engage with your existing online community. You may not know it, but you’ve an online community already.
• Use white hat search engine optimization tactics to make it easier for your customers to find you via search. Coming up forst for the name of your company doesn’t count. Google gives you that one for free. It’s about coming up for early-stage, buyer-oriented keywords. Has anyone ever actually showed you how to find them? It’s not that tough.
• Or how to optimize a website or blog for social sharing.  Can you install Facebook “Like” button, “Tweet” button and Linkedin “Share” button on your corporate website?  And can you optimize your Facebook status updates from maximum engagement so you rank high in the social newsfeed?

Over the next few days I’ll be running a series of posts to help you stamp out digital illiteracy in the workplace. I’ll lay out specifically what you and your colleagues need to know, and how to teach it to those with only minimal exposure to social channels. And if you want to take a short cut, join me for my Social Media Marketing Workshop in Los Angeles June 30 – July 1, 2011.

Or just stay tuned to my blog.  I’m going to share my recipe for bringing digital immigrants up to speed and for winning resources and buy-in from disengaged managers and clients.

If you’re a past attendee of one of my trainings, what did you learn?  Was it valuable?  And how, if at all, has what you learned helped you avoid a major mistep?

Company and industry events are a great way spark online community interaction.

Professionals with common interests and goals regularly invest time and money to attend B2B events where they can network with others in their trade.

They’re engaged.

They’re motivated.

And they’re all in the same place, listening to the same speakers and visiting the same exhibitors.

They’re all on the same page.

What better place to launch a digital initiative that extends the excitement and the knowledge shared via social media?

After the carpet’s rolled up, and the staging’s been struck, and the keynote speakers have all gone home, what do you have to show for your efforts but a stack of business cards?  But if you could capture and archive what happened online, it could be discovered through search, shared on Facebook and Twitter and pay dividends in perpetuity.

Earlier this week, I conducted a B2B social media workshop for event planners at the Event Marketing Summit in Chicago (#emschi) organized by Dan Hanover.  I showed plenty of examples of how B2B marketers can use social media to generate excitement before, during and after business-to-business events like trade shows, conferences and strategic corporate training events.

Here are some of the take-aways from my workshop:

Socialize Your Event Website – Make your hashtags easy to find.  Include them in your logo, or in the banner of your event website.  Don’t gang all of your sessions up on one page, or one page per day.  Put each session at its own permalink, so people can tweet links to specific sessions. Include each speaker’s Twitter ID in their bio and make it clickable. Use Linkedin “Share” and Twitter “Tweet” buttons.  Never mind that Facebook isn’t distinctly B2B.  People spend time there, and there’s nothing more powerful the a personal recommendations from a friend.  Install a Facebook “Like” button as well.  And include an “add to calendar” widget that makes it easy to add sessions to your Outlook, iCal or Google Calendar with one click.  Make sure the calendar item has all the pertinent info about the session including the Twitter IDs of the presenters and the hastag for the conference or session.  For some ideas on event website best practices, check out the Event Bright and Cvent webpage templates.

Offer Social Sync on Your Website – How many times have you registered for a conference and wondered who you might know that’s attending?  At SXSW 2011, Janrain built this feature into the SXSW website, so you could cross reference  registered attendees list with your Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter contacts.  This was an awesome feature, because it gave you the chance to schedule more meetings and network smarter.

Promote Your Call for Speakers - If you want to generate excitement before an event, promote your call for speakers harder than the event itself.  Email market a call for speakers with a deadline and send two reminders as the date approaches. People are more responsive when there’s something in it for them.  Blog your call for speakers as well. And share a link to your blog post on relevant Linkedin Groups and via Twitter.

Post Your Event to Linkedin and Facebook – Go to Linkedin > More > Events and select the “Add an Event” tab on Linkedin Events.  Post your event and send out notifications to your Linkedin contacts who might genuinely be interested. You can also advertise your event on Linkedin, and the targeting options are very precise.  Post the event to the Events area on your Facebook page. Ask an easy to answer question and rewrite your meta data to encourage engagement in the stream.  The more “Likes” and comments you get, the higher the post will rank and the more people who will see it.

Post the Speaker PowerPoint Decks to SlideShare – Set up a channel and post the PowerPoint presentations directly following each session.  Velocity here is key, because tyou want the session attendees to retweet the link, and they’ll be more inclined to do so right after the session, then a day of two later.  Use your momentum wisely.  Tweet out a link to the deck with the conference hashtag and the Twitter ID of the speaker and watch the ReTweets come in.

Register Your Event on Foursquare – Take the time register your event in advance, and ask your sponsors NOT to register the event themselves on Foursquare, so you don’t wind up with multiple registrations for the same event, which confuses attendees.  If it’s an annual event, start the name of the event with the year, so people will be able to check in at the next event regardless of the location.  If you can get your hashtag into the name that you register on Foursquare, all the better.  And ask  each speaker before the start of their session to remind everyone to check in on Foursquare.

Podcast Your Sessions - At this point, the cost to record the audio from your sessions and make it available after the fact is pretty much just the cost of labor.  Bottle up the knowledge and insights your speakers share on stage and make them available immediately.  Draft a search engine optimized transcript, give the final MP3 file name that’s search friendly, upload it your blog, park your RSS feed at iTunes, social media optimize your feed and count the downloads. If you have the dates and location for next year’s event, include a brief, soft-sell announcement at the beginning of each recording to generate excitement for next year’s event. Don’t worry about losing registered attendees because you’re giving away the session recordings for free. People go to events to network and press the flesh.  You can’t do that on a podcast.

Offer a Branded Mobile App – DoubleDutch, a San Francisco start-up that recently secured VC-funding, offers a ready to go, skinnable mobile app with all the features you’d want at a B2B event.  Users can create profiles, connect with other profiles, use social sync to find Twitter and Facebook friends, share status updates, photos and links to an activity stream, like and comment on items, publish out to Facebook and Twitter, check in on the app and on Foursquare, unlock badges and watch video.  Cisco Events is using the app very effectively to sustain the buzz they generate at their corporate events.  They’ve even built in QR Code reader right into the app, which can be used for check-ins. Now you can use incentives to drive foot traffic to exhibitors and sessions by offering unique QR codes at different destinations.

By the way, I recorded the audio for the workshop which I’ll be releasing at On the Record…Online, so head on over now and subscribe if you want to make sure you don’t miss it.

How do you use social media for B2B events? Share your best tips for applying social to B2B events here as well.  And if you attended the session, what you think of it, and how are you applying social media to B2B event marketing?