LinkedIn can be like training wheels for business people who are new to online social networking.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Familiarity + Control. A feeling of control + familiarity can make someone new to social networking feel safer at LinkedIn than, say, jumping in to the “rougher terrain” of FaceBook and Twitter. The concept of “online resume” is grounded in the familiar, increasing the comfort level of participation. The executive who posts a profile has control over the content and the connections and recommendations he or she accepts. No one is likely to get past the gate if they say something negative or unflattering!

Where the Training Wheel Metaphor Ends. I’ve met with business people who are extremely connected on LinkedIn — they’re using this tool, and using it well. Other social networking sites hold little interest for them. FaceBook and Twitter seem frivilous and even dangerous. This is where the safety “training wheels” metaphor ends — these executives may have started tentatively on LinkedIn, but they have put their focus boldly on building and strengthening relationships within this powerful network.

Starting in Rougher Terrain… I’ve also met with seasoned business people this year who started their online social networking on FaceBook — usually at the behest of their adult children! Many of these people, surprisingly, have never even heard of LinkedIn. When I did a brief demo of LinkedIn to an executive who had been regularly interacting with his family on FaceBook last month, he exclaimed, “My Goodness! It’s Like FaceBook for Business!”

Different Entry Points. People have entered the world of online social networking from many different perspectives! Many I have talked with usually start with a technology (LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc.) instead of a business objective. They enter, play, gain experience with the technology, and then the synapses start to spark  — “Hey! How can I use this to grow or strengthen my business?”

Where did you begin your online social networking journey? How has it grown? And how have you strengthened your relationships over time?

Have you left your training wheels behind? How are you navigating trickier terrains?

When it comes to using social media for business, I often run into two camps of people. One camp views social media as a threat, and another camp views it as an opportunity.

• Those in the threat camp have an alarming tendency to put knee-jerk policies into place. “No employees will be allowed to have FaceBook or LinkedIn profiles. Absolutely no Twittering. If you blog, use a pseudonym, and under no circumstances will you identify yourself as an employee of XYZ company.” (Yes, really. Well, pretty close, anyway!)
• Those in the opportunity camp also have an alarming tendency to hurl themselves zealously into a zillion different social media activities, without any thought to potential communication, brand, employee, or reputation implications. “We just  learned how to get 2,000 new followers every day! We’re popular!” (Well, popular with spammers, anyway!)

Those in the middle. Fortunately, I also come across folks in the middle of these two extremes. I meet a growing number of business people who understand that social media represents a huge opportunity for their organizations. They are also concerned about how reckless use of social media may lead to a damaged reputation or brand. They realize that without policy for acceptable use, it can be a major resource drain.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

The Social Media Balance Challenge. These smart business people invest in growing their organization’s social media literacy. They realize a major shift is fundamentally changing the way they do business. They know that social media isn’t just a marketing thing,  it’s not an HR thing, or a customer service thing — it’s an “everybody” thing. Appropriate social media use needs to be embedded into every aspect the the organization.

Here are 8 ways the smart organization proceeds with using social media for business:

1. They listen before they talk.
2. They do not participate in goofy social media marketing schemes.
3. They update their HR and communications policies to include appropriate employee use of social media channels.
4. Their brand guides include an employee section on appropriate tone and image to use in social media channels.
5. They build real relationships through authentic conversations.
6. They outline consequences for employees when they fail to live up to policy guidelines.
7. They do not outsource social media activities to marketing agencies.
8. They invest in employee training (after all, employees need to know more than how to use the technology, many also need communications training!)

Undoubtedly, there are more activities than the 8 listed here. What else does your organization do to successfully navigate the sometimes tricky tributaries of social media channels?

Your company’s first step with social media?

Listening.

(Listening is also known as “social media monitoring.)

And 90 days from now, guess what? You’ll still be listening! Still monitoring.

A year from now? Still listening!

Oh, you’ll be doing more than just listening in a year — maybe you’ll be interacting and energizing, too! But ongoing listening is at the very heart of your corporate communication strategy.

In fact, your first 30 days of organized social media monitoring should lead the way for developing a much tighter, stronger, and effective organizational communication strategy.

When I work with companies on developing social media strategy and communication policies, I recommend that the company listen first for 30 days. By this, I mean that someone in each business unit (HR, Customer Service, Engineering, Manufacturing, Marketing, Finance, etc.) needs to first learn the basic how-to’s of monitoring internet chatter — and then set about to the task of listening for at least 30 days.

After these structured 30 days, we can meet again to discuss what we’ve been learning. By listening first and noting comments and trends along the way, an organization is in a better position to map communication strategy and policy.

I’ve only recently used the term — “listen until it hurts…and beyond”. While the first 30 days of organized, strategic listening can enormously expand organizational learning about customers and markets — what if the company listens for 30 days and only hears good news — or no news?

Keep listening.

Listen until it hurts…and beyond.

After 30 days, one of the questions I ask is, “What have you been hearing online about your brand that you don’t like?”

Often, I’ll hear about a well-intentioned employee who is responding inelegantly to customers and prospects in social media channels. That can be painful — but this pain helps a company uncover key policy points — who are the company spokespeople? What is an appropriate tone and image for responding in social media channels?

I might also hear about a chronic online brand complainer — noisy, irritating, negative. How do we deal with online brand haters?

But I also might hear clients say, “Nothing. We haven’t heard anything bad. So we’re good.”

Hey — keep listening!

Listen until it hurts…and beyond.

PS — How your organization responds to negativity can be a defining moment for your brand. Watch for the pain. Be vigilant. Pain is not a nice friend, but pain can be your very good and helpful friend!

When almost everyone has a video cell phone, sometimes the CEO gets caught doing something in public that needs some explaining!

Or, perhaps your brand fans are rolling out product videos and tagging them with your name. Or maybe brand haters are showcasing your product in strange ways…

Try searching for your company name, CEO’s name, and product names at video.google.com.

You’ll get more than YouTube results – video.google.com delivers videos that may be posted on 100’s of sites you never heard of in your life.

PS — what if no one has posted a single video about your company (or your social media expert!) on the entire internet? Highly unlikely! But if you don’t have at least one video about your company somewhere online — face it.  You’ve got no buzz!

Go out and get yourself some online video buzz today!

So. Are you a Twitter artist?

Twitter is a new medium. No question.

And like any medium, people can use it to create art and build community.

photo credit: Torley
What’s up with this image?
Think 1922, Paul Klee.

It’s no coincidence that Twitter came to be in an era of economic uncertainty.

Many use this simple new tool to build a community around ideas and emotions. They’re reaching out to others. They’re expressing themselves. They’re creating new social groups.

These people are the Twitter Artists.

When centralized mass media outlets cherry-pick stories to tell us how others are feeling, we are often led to believe these outlier feelings are mainstream and normal.

But when we read first-person narratives of the life that occurs in between the big stories, we tend to see a more finely nuanced portrait.

Twitter artists provide this nuance. Tweet by tweet, they create a portrait. Their perspectives provide a balance.

Are you a Twitter artist? Or do you know someone who is? Who are they?

(I really want to know! Please comment…)

Here is this week’s most oft-asked question:

“In social media, how do you separate your personal life from your professional life?”

photo credit: Kelly Hau Photography

The questioners explain that they thought LinkedIn was professional and FaceBook was personal — but now that people are using FaceBook for professional reasons — what is one to do? (And what about separating Twitter accounts: one for personal, one for professional?)

The answer: Think in terms of your “personal brand.”

What is your brand personality? Quick! Name your three personal brand attributes. Don’t know what they are? Find your personal brand attributes with an easy exercise! In branding exercises, we know that “your brand is what people say it is.” Find out what your customers, prospects, and markets are saying about you — that’s your personal brand. Balance this with the image you’d like to project to the world.

When you know your personal brand attributes cold, go to FaceBook. (Or LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, your blog, et. al.)

Before you post hastily, ask yourself,

“Is the content I’m about to post consistent with my personal brand attributes?”

If it isn’t, don’t post!

Your brand is what people say it is. You may not like it, but when you participate in social media, you have a personal brand.

Choose to present your brand wisely! Future employers are listening. Your customers are listening. Your prospects are listening.

Represent!

Be yourself!

Be your best self.

Running URLs through a service that shortens their length is a fairly standard practice at Twitter. After all, when you only have 140 characters, you don’t want a lengthy URL address taking up most of your precious, limited space!

At the moment, Twitter uses tinyurl.com to automatically shorten long URLs that you might enter into your Tweet. There are also about a gazillion other free services on the web that let you turn a whale of a URL into minnow. TweetDeck, for example, lets you choose from over a dozen different “URL downsizing” services.

photo credit: scazon

What’s Your Favorite URL Downsizer? My favorite URL downsizer of late is BudUrl. Sure, it creates longer URLs than the popular is.gd. But I love BudUrl for its juicy, mouthwatering metrics. With my BudUrl account, I can track how many people click on my shortened link, from where, and when. When I post a BudUrl, I can check on how many people click on it from Twitter. And because my Twitter posts go directly to FaceBook, I know who clicked on my link from FaceBook. And when.

Better Metrics Lead to Better Writing. Budurl helps me determine which topics are more popular, where, and when. It also gives me insight into which “headline” techniques work better. For example, I may post the same link twice — but with different Tweet lead copy. If I get significantly different clickthrough results, I need to think about which words seem more likely to inspire action. (Hint: many of the old “direct response marketing” copy techniques that work elsewhere in life work well in Twitter. Fancy that.)

Customize your Shortened URL. As I go about my day, I realize that many folks don’t know that you can customize a shortened URL to make it more memorable. Let’s take FaceBook Profile and FaceBook Fan Pages. Those URLs can be doozies!

For example:

Here’s the direct link to my own FaceBook Fan Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Laura-Bergells/20431199713

Who can remember that? Not me! So here’s how I abbreviated it:

http://budurl.com/lbergells
or
http://tinyurl.com/laurabergells

Shorter. Relevant. More Memorable. Better Metrics. What’s not to like? When someone emails me and wants to know my Fan Page link, I can actually remember http://budurl.com/lbergells witout looking it up! And I can put this link on my Profile Page without it looking like a lengthy, sloppy mess!

Watch the video! If you’re the kind of person that likes a demonstration of how this all looks, I posted a quick 2.5 minute “show and tell” video on my FaceBook Fan Page about shortening your FaceBook URL. You can find it here – http://budurl.com/xlongurls

How can you make your LinkedIn Profile a little more friendly for people — and for search engines?

It’s easy.

Don’t use the default “My Website” or “My Blog” when entering the address of your website or blog!

Instead, use “Other” — and type in short and descriptive “anchor text” that tells your audience more precisely where the link is leading them.

Here’s a 1 minute, 12 second video that shows you exactly how to make your profile a little more search engine — and audience friendly.

If the above video isn’t loading fast enough, you can watch it at YouTube.

In the 1960′s and 70′s, Abbie Hoffman was absolutely skilled in getting media attention. In his 1971 publication, Steal This Book, Mr. Hoffman devotes a chapter to getting free or cheap communications.

Today, of course, much of our social media is free or cheap: but many squander its social potential.

photo credit: Kevin Krejci

An iPhone, for example, is widely used by many young men in America. The iPhone can be used to spread critical messages, as well as organize and mobilize thousands of young people to fight social injustice. But today, one of the most popular iPhone apps is the iFart, a tool that makes noises of gastronomic distress.

Now that we have free media, how well are we using it to meet today’s valuable social objectives? If you know someone who’s doing little more than iFarting with their powerful communication tools, let’s take a paragraph from Steal This Book.

In one tiny paragraph, Hoffman outlines how to use the press conference for effective publicity. The paragraph, in its entirety, is in italics below. I broke up the paragraph with free images from Flickr, for your viewing enjoyment. The information is as valid today as it was over thirty-six years ago. Read on:

Everything about a successful press conference must be dramatic, from the announcements and phone calls to the statements themselves. Nothing creates a worse image than four or five men in business suits sitting behind a table and talking in a calm manner at a fashionable hotel. Constantly seek to have every detail of the press conference differ in style as well as content from the conferences of people in power.

photo credit: Andrew Feinberg

Make use of music and visual effects.

photo credit: Tiago Zaniratti

Don’t stiffen up before the press. Make the statement as short and to the point as possible. Don’t read from notes, look directly into the camera.

photo credit: ProgressOhio

The usual television spot is one minute and twenty seconds. The cameras start buzzing on your opening statement and often run out of film before you finish. So make it brief and action packed.

photo credit: Giant Ideas

The question period should be even more dramatic. Use the questioner’s first name when answering a question. This adds an air of informality and networks are more apt to use an answer directed personally to one of their newsmen.

photo credit: Menlo School

Express your emotional feelings. Be funny, get angry, be sad or ecstatic. If you cannot convey that you are deeply excited or troubled or outraged about what you are saying, how do you expect it of others who are watching a little image box in their living room?

photo credit: Lauren Murphy

Remember, you are advertising a new way of life to people. Watch TV commercials. See how they are able to convey everything they need to be effective in such a short time and limited space.

photo credit: Caveman 92223

At the same tune you’re mocking the shit they are pushing, steal their techniques.

photo credit: David Masters

In 2009, you will appreciate learning stealthy ways to get free and cheap stuff in America. And in the age of social media, you can definitely use free tips from an undisputed publicity master.

In what other ways is Hoffman’s Steal This Book relevant and helpful for your social media revolution?

I loathe the term “social media expert.” Social media is still in its infancy: who among us can claim to be an expert?

The most anyone can claim at this point is to be a practitioner. Or an enthusiastic student. Or an anthropologist engaged in cultural immersion.

As budgets for ineffective traditional ad campaigns get slashed, many companies are turning to social media as a productive, bootstrapping, grassroots approach to building buzz for their businesses. However, this will leave many ad agencies and PR firms in the breadline –  or scrambling to figure out how they can sell their “social media expertise” to clients.

photo credit: Kamal H.

The problem: often, businesses have more social media expertise than the ad agencies who are doing the pitching!

In 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert is a Carpet Bagger, authors Geoff Livingston and Beth Harte give you 25 reasons to smile while nodding your head knowingly. The authors provide winning gems like:

• First recommendation is to blog
• Will ghostwrite blog posts and other social content for you
• Suggests publishing promotional copy as social content

What other signs can you spot? While these 25 ways are definite lulus, there are other “tells” that the agency pitching you on a “social media” program is a big fat fraud. I brainstormed a few of my own signs of agency desparation, all gleaned from personal experience:

• Has gorgeous Flash portfolio website and a blogspot hosted blog — with the last post in 2006.
• Interrupts frequently while you’re describing your audience, products, and business goals.
• Google the name of the proposed “social media expert”. See less than 1,000 results.
• Recommends that employees and agency reps “seed” forums and review sites with positive mentions.
• Extreme overuse of the words campaign, strategy, and brand in the pitch.

What other signs lead you to suspect that you might be talking to a bogus social media expert?

And what lulus have you heard in agency pitches?