George Beckenstein of Digital Media and Social Marketing Strategist recently wrote an interesting post on how business used to be conducted. He noted that anyone you did business with lived in your immediate community. There was no such thing as advertising, marketing channels and brands. You did business with people you knew. It was not an “information economy,” and nothing was mass produced. It was a Trust Economy. In a Trust Economy, your market is your community or network. Trust is mandatory, and influence is king.

Recently, I was at a marketing event where I engaged in a heated discussion about social media with a senior account rep from a local marketing agency. I asked her why they were one of the few agencies not engaged in social media. Her response: “We don’t do social media because there is no ROI.” She also mentioned that it was more appropriate for B2C not B2B. Ironically, we are one of their clients and happen to be B2B, not to mention heavily into social media. —I said social media is not always about ROI — it should be first and foremost about sentiment and driving influence, which could eventually lead to ROI.

This leads me to my blog throw down with Amanda Vega, founder and CEO of Vega Consulting; Mike Abrams, VP of Business Development for TBD Consulting; and Chris Hewitt , senior director of marketing operations at Lumension. Amanda once tweeted to me that whenever her clients come to her about social media, their main driving factor is ROI (return on investment).

Social media by no stretch of the imagination has become an important part of a business’ overall corporate strategy. While many companies may understand the importance of social media, some are misguided in the notion that social media is about directly driving leads and increasing sales. This is understandable given how businesses today face greater economic pressures to perform and show quantifiable metrics to validate their investment. Adding social media to the marketing mix is no exception.

Figuring out ROI on social media continues to be a hotly debated topic. I am a firm believer that social media is a critical asset to a company in terms of building a brand, monitoring customer attitudes, gathering ongoing business intelligence and growing your influence. However, using social media to drive sales shouldn’t be the main focus of engaging in the first place. It’s nice to get those results, but we need to set the right priorities when it comes to using social networking tools. In a world where businesses no longer have control over what people are saying about their brand, products or services, social media gives us the opportunity to quietly monitor and listen to the conversations. If we choose, we can even engage with the broader community and participate in conversations around our brands in hopes of providing a positive brand experience. Why? More than being focused on driving sales as the main motivator, influence is king. Influence drives trust. Trust can lead to powerful Word of Mouth. Powerful WOM could lead to sales and deeper engagement.

There is no question that social media can be a dynamic tool. However, an organization cannot be successful in social media without building brand awareness and engagement first. Without establishing this all-important foundation, one cannot be successful in social media or drive sales. The whole point of social media is the ability to participate in a conversation that’s taking place around your brand or your industry. A company cannot build a social media strategy simply to drive sales without first building trust within its community. This takes a lot of effort in building sentiment, not to mention a lot of time. Once you’ve established trust around your brand, then the community will take the next steps to listen to what you have to say, follow your conversations and get to know your brand.

@tdhurst said to me: “Social media is always about sales.” True — most companies want you to justify their investment, but it’s up to the social media experts to educate them on what the purpose of social media is and what the overall objective is for that company. This way, you can better align corporate objectives with social media strategy.

I had the opportunity to listen to @GuyKawasaki at the recent BOLO 2009 event where he demonstrated different levels of social media successes — monitor, watch, sell, support and engage. Companies such as Starbucks use social media to monitor what people are saying about their latest promotion and their brand while others such as Dell and Kogi use social media to sell their goods. Another good example is Comcast, which uses the platform to provide customer support direct. While major brands like Dell and Starbucks may have the luxury to choose what type of engagement they want to have with the community, it’s still about understanding and measuring brand awareness and driving positive brand engagement before pushing promos. If you don’t have these in place, when it comes to driving sales, you’re SOL.

Let’s face it, whether it’s social media, marketing campaigns or PR, if you don’t have brand awareness, brand trust and positive brand engagement to drive influence, your results would be the same — lackluster interest in your company and products. Social media is another medium where you get the privilege to first monitor and listen to the overall sentiment around your brand before you look to integrate other objectives, such as driving sales.

Join the Debate

My colleagues – Amanda, Mike, Chris and I have started a community to openly discuss this throwdown: Social Media Debate.  We welcome your thoughts, comments, and ideas.

LinkedIn has evolved into the largest online business networking platform – totaling 32 million users worldwide.  Prior to the social networking craze, LinkedIn was largely used to connect with past co-workers and trusted colleagues.  Now, however, LinkedIn has extended its capabilities to serve as a brand building platform for professionals looking to network, engage, and communicate with like-minded peers. The surge was accelerated during the recessionary period when laid off workers were looking to locate jobs and hopefully connect with others who could assist in the process.

 Today, LinkedIn continues to grow by adding key features that are essential to not just networking but building a community to share information, discuss and debate, and promote personal and business brand as well as network. However, harnessing the true power of LinkedIn not just to network with your “trusted” and “known” community of friends and colleagues but promoting your brand and thought leadership through LinkedIn.

To gain insight into the use of LinkedIn, build SEO for your profile and blog, as well as launching engaging and meaningful conversations, I spoke with my good friend and colleague Chris Hewitt. He’s not only my trusted friend but someone who truly understands the power of the platform.

In this blog Q&A, I looked at several components – how do you use LinkedIn to build personal brand and network, what are some innovative ways to use LinkedIn to build awareness and some tips and tricks to maximize using LinkedIn. Please read below.

Why is LinkedIn so important for professionals today in building network and personal brand?

Our professional success is largely determined by the recognition of that effort by our colleagues and peers.  Similarly, the growth of our career is supported by the generosity and investment of other professionals.  As a result, we need to nurture those relationships and reciprocate in the growth and development of others.

I believe that it is critical for professionals to be present, be heard, be engaged, and be connected in order to build and sustain success.  The Internet, and advent of Web-based tools, has provided us with a powerful tool in being all those things…often in real-time.  

Currently, LinkedIn is the most popular professional, Web-based social networking tool and, as a result, important.  I think it is important, though, that we are not complacent…another tool might be a better solution; either now (e.g. chi.mp or posterous.com) or in the future.

One important note about companies.  I think LinkedIn has done an excellent job in providing professionals with ability to build an individual brand while also personalizing an organization through the organic enrichment of ‘company’ profiles.  While many marketing/communications people actively monitor/manage their company profiles, any validated user (based on email domain) can contribute to that profile…a great tool for showcasing a supportive, engaged corporate culture.  

What are some innovative ways to use LinkedIn to build personal brand, promote events, and create awareness?

First and foremost, I believe we need to ground our expectations in a type of altruistic philosophy.  We should look at LinkedIn as a tool we can leverage to return real value by sharing our unique value proposition with other professionals (and aspiring professionals).  With this concept driving our actions, we are better positioned to reach our career/business/networking objectives while positively contributing to the larger community.

LinkedIn, itself, has a variety of tools that can be leveraged to create individual and organizational awareness.  

Certainly the ‘answers’ feature is a great way to share your knowledge with the community.  Additionally, where relevant, you can highlight the strengthen and solutions your company provides.  

However, in the last year or so, I have seen a troubling (and dramatic) increase in self-serving dialogue through LinkedIn Answers.  Users are clearly posting questions to draw attention to their message, company, etc and other users are answering to feed their ’social competitiveness’ (my idea that a lot of our social networking is driven by our innate desire for higher social status).

So, to me, the innovative is not in the tools but leveraging those tools into concepts.  For example, use LinkedIn as a platform for showcasing your evolving professional concepts and keep your content fresh.  For example, let’s say you had a new marketing concept that you are excited about; one that really showcases your experience/creativity/innovation.  You could use LinkedIn as a platform to create a personal marketing campaign and share your thoughts:

• Write a blog post and attach it to your profile.
• Create a mini-series of LinkedIn status message that change on a scheduled basis.
• Relevantly update your experience to showcase how you used (or could have used) this concept.
• Create a presentation in Google (upload to Slideshare) and post on your profile.
• Develop some type of ‘take away’ material that viewers of your profile can download (Box.net).

You could also create polls and questions (where relevant and valued-added) to drive your message.  The key to this concept is that you regularly (I know…easier typed than done) change out your LinkedIn ‘conceptual campaigns’.  Changing out these concepts once a month would be a powerful statement of your personal brand (not to mention your ability to execute).

SEO is very important today. What are some tips and tricks to make your LinkedIn profile more SEO friendly?

Your LinkedIn profile is likely not going to carry enough search engine equity to compete against other websites for general keyword concepts (e.g. ‘real estate professional’, ‘Experienced MSCE’, etc.).  So, you should rather focus your energy on personal characteristics combined with key concepts, skills, or experience.  For example, if you regularly speak on a particular topic and any special phrases (e.g. ‘Your Ness’  as seen in ‘You, Me, and Dupree’).  Also, if you have a branded product, service, or concept you should include the relevant text in your tagline, summary, specialties, and experience.

In order to generate greater search engine visibility for your LinkedIn profile, focus on ‘inbound links’ (links to your profile from other websites).  If you want to use your LinkedIn profile as your main online presence (versus a website, blog, etc.), take every opportunity to link to your ‘public profile URL’.  Some examples of linking opportunities are:

• Part of your posted biography (events, speaking engagements, etc.)
• Press releases
• Social networking websites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
• Attached to your comments on blogs, articles, etc.

Lastly, and in my opinion most importantly, is what actions you want visitors to take after finding your profile.  Focus on engaging visitors (especially search-generated visitors) to your profile and driving them to a particular action.

Examples:

Job Seeker (visibility/candidacy) 

• Change your status to reflect a concept relevant to the organization you are seeking an interview or position (e.g. industry article, thought, etc.).
• Create a relevant blog post that details a unique, differentiating strength/idea that would be too long for an interview or resume.
• Post a copy of your resume or other supporting document (via LinkedIn Applications) that could be downloaded (note: make sure that document prominently displays your contact information)

Product/Solution Provider (awareness)

• Customize your website link, use action-oriented hyperlink text and drive them to your website.
• Post relevant documents using LinkedIn Applications.
• Tie in relevant blog posts and links to your website.

Why should marketers today care about LinkedIn?

The LinkedIn community organically generates high quality and well-qualified audiences that we, as marketers, would love to reach with our messages.  Additionally, there are enough explicit and implicit profiling attributes to segment various audiences (e.g. industry, company size, region, skills, etc.).  As a result, LinkedIn presents the opportunity to engage highly targeted audiences.

While we wipe the dollar signs from our eyes, we have to be thoughtful in our approach to these LinkedIn audiences.  Our tendency is to ‘blast’ the rich LinkedIn community with our concept/message/offer.  However, we need to focus on content and actions that authentically create dialogue.  Share our knowledge and resources and allow opportunities to grow naturally from that dialog.

With the sophisticated SPAM filtering built into today’s email systems and software, I believe social media SPAM is going to be the next digit intrusion; just look at the number of multi-level marketers on Twitter generating empty content (and all following one another).

Key steps to getting started:

My advice is to build and grow your presence under the guidance of a personal brand strategy:

• Who are you?
• What have you accomplished?
• Where are you going?
• What’s your unique brand position?

Don’t start by building another resume…create a dynamic, engaging presence.  Your experience should be coupled to concepts not tasks, duties, and responsibilities.  In developing your personal brand strategy, ask others to help define your unique characteristics and provide guidance for your message. 

While it may be tempting, don’t count connections…build meaningful connections within your network.  You will want to be able to make connections to people within your network.  

My personal connection philosophy:
If you can’t happily and meaningfully introduce a person at a cocktail party or networking event, they should not be a connection.  

Also be authentic with your connections.  Did you work with someone previously but had issues with their work/performance/approach?  Do not connect with them…your personal brand equity is also tied to the people you trust to be within your network. 

One special consideration for job seekers…always preserve your brand, even when the search isn’t going well.  It is far too easy to type, post, and hurt what you have been building.  Your profile is a statement of your personal brand and needs to be carefully protected.

Should you promote your personal blog versus company website?

Your profile allows for the use of multiple links; use them to identify what it is your linking to and why:

• Use your profile to promote yourself, your skills, and accomplishments.
• User the descriptive sections of experience to highlight relevant experience as well as company objectives (e.g. 100 word company description).
• Use a company profile to promote your brand, messaging, and positioning.
  • Encourage the members of the company to enrich the profile.

How should you integrate other social networking sites to LinkedIn and why?

Yes…however, where it is relevant (okay, you may now move the needle from my broken record of ‘relevance’) and where it is targeted.  The inclusive of Blogs and applications like Slideshare/Box.net/Google Docs is a great way to tie together various concepts to form a better picture of your professional profile.  Similarly, you can post your LinkedIn profile/badge across your other social networking properties to engage visitors.  For example, use your LinkedIn profile as your biography and focus your energy on maintaining that content (versus managing multiple biographies).

Lastly, don’t feel that you have to create a hyper socially networked profile that will be the envy of all your Twitter followers.  Be authentic.  If you are an active member and/or passionate about a group, display it on your profile.  If you like to socialize your reading list through LinkedIn, awesome.  The main point is not to make your LinkedIn profile a dizzying blur of social media NASCAR badging.  

To leave with a quote from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby ’This sticker is dangerous and inconvenient, but I do love Fig Newtons.’

In a recent post by Tech Crunch titled, “The Last has Fallen: The Embargo is Dead,” the tech publication announced that it is killing one of the most sacrosanct of journalism practices — the honoring of PR embargoes. And it’s not just Tech Crunch; it’s other high-profile publications like the Wall Street Journal. This comes after several publications have broken with the tradition of honoring the embargo and have published news prior to the set date/time.

According to Bay Newser, the reason why more publications are not upholding PR embargoes is PR agencies. As they face mounting pressures to show ROI, they’re spamming every news outlet on their target list to get as much coverage as they can. The problem is they’re doing this without a clear strategy.  Every PR professional should know by now that sending out a blind e-mail with the news announcement and the embargo date doesn’t really help earn you quality coverage or increase the volume of coverage.

 On the flip side, news publications are also facing pressure to publish the news first — especially when it comes to major announcements. As my colleague Stephanie Conner with Active Voice would say, the embargo was put in place to combat that so companies can get their news placements across more channels and keep reporters interested — you’re leveling the playing field.

My take is this: It’s really nobody’s fault. It’s just another sign of the times. Now companies are using other mediums, such as blogs and Twitter, to create momentum and buzz around their company or product announcement prior to releasing it via traditional news wires.

I’ve been in the technology space for quite some time and have witnessed firsthand how things have changed. Not only in terms of embargoes, but the types of news that capture a writer’s attention as well. In 2004 when I started at Lumension, then PatchLink, it was all about product news. Our news coverage relied on our products and their new capabilities and enhancements. Since 2007, I’ve seen a slow shift with fewer journalists covering product-specific news.

You also have to remember news is global, making embargoes seem a bit outdated. Don’t get me wrong – there are journalists who still honor the embargo – especially in the UK marketing. While they might honor this old tradition, the news will hit the U.S. first before it gets to the UK or other global markets.

Whether or not you like it, things are changing fast. I don’t believe embargoes are dead, but they are going by the wayside, slowly but surely. Whether you have an embargo in place or not, the quality of the content, strategy and, most importantly, the content, is what will get you maximum results. This is where I remind PR professionals that they need to adapt and evolve. A couple of things to keep in mind as you see more and more publications say NO to embargoes:

• Determine your news and angle for the release
• Identify your target audience, and prioritize your target list.
• Communicate with journalists to gauge what their expectations of an embargo.
• Never just pitch a product unless you’re Google or Apple. Whether you have an embargo or not, the chance of you getting coverage is greatly dependent on the angle of the news.
• Get a customer or analyst to back up your story.
• Get multi-media rich. Use video or written blogs, podcasts and whitepapers. This way, you have a multi-level message.
• Drive a poll. Use a Twtpoll or LinkedIn poll to gauge the community’s take on the product/pain/challenges and create your own news hook prior to the launch.
• Consider product slideshows. Do a five- to seven-slide PowerPoint slideshow with strong graphics that publications can run.

We recently launched our Lumension® Risk Manager. It’s a Compliance and IT Risk Management Solution to help simplify compliance complexities and help reduce overall total cost of ownership. The old-school thinking would have been to just write up a news release and send it out under an embargo to our target list. While we were focused on the product, I developed a strategy around creating content that showed how our product addresses issues that businesses face today. Here’s what we did:

• Pre-buzz building exercise that included a blog series:
  • Blog Q&A with two leading industry analysts on key challenges and how the market demands were shifting
  • Blog Q&A with a customer who was testing the product.
  • Twtpoll – Run a poll on Twtpoll and LinkedIn and use the results as a news hook
  • Whitepaper – developed a whitepaper titled “5 Ways to Reduce Your Audit Tax Burden”
  • Video – interviewed our company experts on this topic about these issues

By having rich content available prior to the launch and an integrated approach with other marketing tactics, we created buzz around this product launch, and we included the multi-media links within the release. We earned 15 total pieces of standalone coverage and two pieces of product news coverage. A majority of our coverage centered on key issues and trends and how our product really helps solved those issues.

I leave you with this quote by Ted Levitt: “Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.”

Make a difference. Don’t be a sitting duck. Leverage innovative thinking and spark a new approach to driving coverage.

According to a blog called Simple Zesty, there are 10 industries that will be revolutionized by social media – print media, politics, television, hospitality, sports, music, recruitment, advertising, PR, and shopping. With the availability of Web 2.0 tools such as YouTube, Twitter, etc. the power to create, publish and syndicate content no longer resides to only the news publication and journalists.  Today, we have the capability to custom create and communicate our own editorial content to influence the way the online community digests and disseminates information in real time. Prior to Web 2.0 adoption, consumers had to wait to get information on the latest news and information from your print and broadcast news. Now, we, the masses, have become writers and content creators from all walks of life, spreading information in real time. People are becoming social journalists in their own right to publish photos and stories from their points of view. For instance, real time terrorism was captured on Twitter by the actual users trapped inside the hotel that was bombed by terrorists in 2008, which catapulted Twitter to new heights.

The revolution in Iran – some of the most riveting and thrilling reporting was done via Twitter by a university student in Tehran who goes by the moniker Tehran Bureau. So what does this say about the changing landscape of the news media? Will social media change the way journalists adopt, connect, engage, and disseminate information to the rest of the world? Will this change affect the way PR/Communications and marketing pros connect and communicate with the media? One reporter, Del Jones (http://twitter.com/jonesdel) of USA TODAYwhom I’ve been following closely on Twitter, is one clear example of someone who gets it and understands how to harness the power of social media to look at the emerging trends and ride the way with the rest of us. Through social media, he engages, connects and collaborates with his online community.  He is someone who is authentic and transparent in his approach to social media (two key traits I admire most). In this blog Q&A, I ask Del about how he came to embrace social media and some key tips on ways for us PR professionals to approach reporters via social media platforms.

What prompted you to join the social media craze?  

I’m sure my high school class would have voted me the least likely to succeed in social media (had they had any clue).  I still don’t use Facebook or LinkedIn, although I’m registered on both. I was a complete Twitter skeptic, but I have a counter-intuitive streak in me. Twitter was growing and I needed to know why. So, when I had some time on my furlough (yes, three weeks of unpaid leave), I decided to devote 1-2 hours to figure it all out (ha ha). Months later, I’m still trying to figure the thing out, but I’m hooked to the point that my editor would probably fire me if I didn’t have so many followers (so please don’t unfollow me). I’ve also threatened to reveal personal information about him on Twitter if he fires me, so the social media craze is really all about having your own printing press should revenge become absolutely necessary. 

How is Web 2.0 changing the media landscape? Is that a good thing or bad thing?

I’m a free market person, so if people find value in reading anything, then it’s good. The only thing I object to is the wholesale plagiarism that goes on. Blogs will cut and paste entire stories I’ve written, never bothering to link back to USA TODAY. If they want to help USA TODAY pay my salary, then maybe they can steal my intellectual property (yeah, I know intellectual in my is a stretch, but you know what I mean).

How should journalists approach Web 2.0 and how transparent can they be?

This is a touchy point. I push it far more than most journalists, most who will still seem to think they are above it all and won’t post anything that isn’t a link or some boring factoid. I’ve been called into the boss’ office for going too far. They didn’t like it when I started giving out free online subscriptions to USA TODAY to my special followers (the joke being that the dot-com site is free to all). I’ve always been a believer in the “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission” model. When it comes to Twitter, it’s always easy to dial it back but I’ll continue to push the envelope. If I don’t tweet for a month, it will be because my 401K went down even more and I really need my job.

Many USA TODAY reporters are afraid of getting on Twitter. They have been made gun shy by the reader comments below our stories on the Web page, which are full of venom. I find the culture on Twitter to be the opposite of people who bend over backwards to be nice.

Are policies different for journalists than corporations?

From what I’ve read, USA TODAY is actually very liberal in its policies compared to most. It amazes me that media outlets that are built on the first amendment are the first to take it away from their reporters. Shame.

How does this change in terms of engagement for PR and marketing professionals when it comes to connecting and building relationships with the media?

It’s been very good for me. I get a few pitches on Twitter, which I ignore as I do pitches on email (unless, of course, I’m interested). However, it has allowed me to put forward a human face to PR people, who before Twitter, thought I lived in a dungeon. It’s nice not to always feel mean. I like to compare Twitter to the Lion’s Club Luncheon of old. Business types would show up. They all wanted to sell something to everyone, but nobody did any selling at the luncheon. Rather, they just got to know each other so that selling could be accomplished sometime down the road. Twitter greases the wheels.

Is social media/networking hindering or helping the media community?

Helping those who are good at employing it. 

When it comes to pitching, what are your key recommendations for PR/marketing professionals?

Pitch away. There is no formula. Most pitches I don’t like and there are a few I like a lot. Then, there is a huge amount that I don’t like much but have something to it. I hang on to a lot of emails until I figure out an angle that I’m interested in pursuing. PR people sometimes get an email from me a year later after they send a pitch. I prefer email pitches because I have developed a system for saving the emails I want so that I can find them down the road. I rarely respond to them, however, because I don’t like to get into a long discussion about why I don’t like their story pitch. It’s a question I really can’t answer. It’s my gut instinct.

Jones makes a great point that social media is changing the way even journalists communicate and connect with people. From my point of view, I can’t say whether all journalists should adopt the social media tools to connect with people, but I do believe that just like with anything, only by listening to what people are saying can journalists really understand what we’re looking to hear and learn from them. Just like the “push” tactic of marketing and PR has changed the way we communicate with our audience, it too has changed the way journalists disseminate news to their audience.  Vice versa…PR and marketing pros need to understand how social media is changing the news media landscape. We must embrace this shift and learn how to connect with them in new ways in order to reach and connect with them.  

A few tips on how to connect and approach reporters and analysts on Twitter:

• Research your target audience – trade and business reporters as well as analysts
• Follow them on Twitter and their blogs consistently
• Engage – follow their content on Twitter and their blogs and comment if relevant
• Participate – keep an ongoing dialogue with them even if they don’t follow you.
• Provide feedback and input using traditional tactics - provide news that would be relevant to them and the stories they cover.  Write compelling news pitches that could add value to their current or future stories and learn what they are working on so you can contribute.
• Link it – as Del mentioned, if you have a blog, look at their stories and write a post that references or links back to their blog or story and post it on Twitter
• NEVER blindly pitch a reporter on Twitter (unless you have a good relationship with them)

Another good read by Mashable: Social Journalism: Past, Present and the Future.

Do you agree? Let me know what you think.

Source

Forgive me…for I have sinned…I haven’t blogged for quite some time but given my recent journey, I’m going to ask for forgiveness and hope that this blog post makes up for it.  In my last post, I covered the first part of the CEO blog: Good for the Executive Brand and Thought Leadership with Guy Kawasaki, where he outlined some interesting points around this topic and whether CEO generated blogs truly garnered value versus the time and effort a CEO has to dedicate to his/her blog.  When asked the question whether CEOs should have an external blog, Kawasaki said, “It’s hard to provide a definitive answer to this because there are several key factors at play. First, is the company publicly traded? If it is, then the CEO must be very careful to limit the information in the blog—so much so, that the blog may be rendered boring. Second, can the CEO write well? If not, is she or he willing to use a ghost writer? Third, does the CEO truly have something significant to say? This is a ‘duhism,’ but not enough CEOs as themselves this question.” 

In a world where social media is revolutionizing the way we communicate, connect, and collaboate, more people are begging the question: “Should CEOs blog?”  Better question would be: “Can your CEO blog well?” It’s definitely an untapped opportunity for CEOs to get in on the action if their passion and time permit.  As Del Jones (@jonesdel) puts it in one of his interviews in USA Today, it’s about risk and readability. Further, it’s about the transparency of the blog. With that said, is it more beneficial for CEOs to stick to internal blogging for the sake of enhancing communications with their internal audience – the employees?  This question takes me to my second installment of the CEO blog series and why CEOs should stick to internal blogging.

I took this question to my colleague and good friend  Chris Hewitt who used to run his own marketing firm. He is also the author of his personal blog called What Does Marketing Really Do?  He’s makes a good argument as to why CEOs are better off having an internal blog to reach their employees and boost communications with their constituents. Read below:

Do you think CEOs should or shouldn’t blog and why?

Absolutely. I believe that CEOs should most definitely share their voice through blogs.  However, where to blog is the real question for me; I believe that CEOs should strictly create internal blogs for employees of their companies and not blog for the general public.  

While I understand that a CEO is the public face of an organization, I believe that there are plenty of other outlets for CEOs to meet those demands.  If a CEO is going to blog, that valuable time is better spent on topics that can motivate, inform, and organize the members within their organization.

How important is it for CEOs to blog? 
Continuing with my concept on internal blogging, I believe that it is critical for a CEO to embrace blogging as one of the developing concepts for communicating with their people.  

A CEO could use blogging as a method for supporting and encouraging dialogue with the members of their organization.  The asynchronous communication vehicle allows employees to read and respond to the CEO and vice versa…regardless of work schedule, time zone, or geography. 

Additionally, it is important for the CEO to share their thoughts…not simply rely on the talents of a ghostwriter.  Whether it is a video, audio, or written blog, the experience has to be honest and authentic – transparent straight from the CEO’s mouth.

Should you get other senior management to blog? Why or why not? 

Senior management should follow the spirit of internal blogging that is presented by the CEO.  Additionally, the roles of senior managers may demand externally blogging to reach targeted audiences.  Leverage this group to reach outside the company and reserve the blogging of the CEO as exclusive content for employees.

Do you think blogging by a CEO has a positive or negative impact to their overall brand? 

Based on my ‘internal’ blogging concept, I would say that CEO blogging has tremendous value with the ability to influence and affect the value of an organization’s brand.  Discussing core organizational and strategic concepts through a CEO blog – and encouraging open dialogue around those concepts can enforce brand positioning.  As employees (and their interactions outside of the company) are a powerful reflection on a brand, a CEO blog can directly affect that outcome through engagement and dialogue.

What other ways can it benefit the Company and it’s overall business objective?

Many internal communications are structured ‘releases’ thoughtfully created by teams of people. A CEO blog can create a meaningful dialogue among all people within the organization, especially large enterprises where employees can be many levels-removed from the CEO.  A personal voice to a message and an invitation for feedback could positively affect employee satisfaction and motivation.

Top 5 dos and don’ts for senior management and CEOs when it comes to blogging?

Do 

• Authentically share insight and information 
• Encourage and support feedback 
• Respond and participate in the dialogue on an ongoing basis 
• Invest the time in thoughtfully reflecting on blog topics (especially difficult or sensitive topics) 
• Continually return value through content; take responsibility for developing readership (spend some time with your blog analytics)

Don’t

• Assume you know what subjects are the most relevant; ask for ideas on blog concepts 
• Overly ‘market’ the message 
• Let someone else be your voice 
• Feel the need to make every presentation formal 
• Ignore your organizational culture; know your audience

Can bad blogging kill your brand? Any examples?

I definitely think that bad blogging can damage, if not kill, a brand.  Written communication, because of the general thoughtfulness and preparation, can be so powerful…especially when drawing out emotive responses.  The following are some examples of conceptual mistakes that can result in a ‘bad’ external blog:

• Is not consistent with the brand positioning, customer approach, or messaging.
• Ignores the needs, motivations, interests, or concerns of customers.
• Introduces an important or potentially divisive topics without thoughtfulness or context.
• Abuses trust, loyalty, or commitment of customers and readers.

Although not technically a blog, we can learn a lot from the recent controversy surrounding John Mackey’s (CEO of Wholefoods) comments regarding healthcare reform.  Regardless of your opinion on the subject, John’s comments were strong enough, on a highly volatile topic, to powerfully divide an audience.  Coupled with John’s influence as CEO of Wholefoods, the message collaterally affected customers, employees, and the business…forcing a burden that can affect those relationships.

Which CEO blogger do you admire most and why?

From an external blog perspective, I really like the authentic and consistently relevant writings of Jason Fried (founder of 37Signals – Web-based software).  As a small business entrepreneur, Jason is close to his business, his customers, and the evolving trends in the Web 2.0 marketplace.  The innovative approach he uses to drive his business is shared with readers; creating dialog and discussion from value-added content.  

In closing, here are my final thoughts – regardless of whether your CEO blogs internally or externally, it’s no small feat. Doing it well and blogging on a consistent basis can take great amount of time and effort. If properly executed, a CEO corporate blog can wield tremendous value to the brand and thought leadership. The question is, what’s the right platform for the CEO and what’s the overall objective.  To round things off, having a CEO internal blog can be a powerful tool for any company when it comes to bridging and building strong employee communication – especially when most people are, as Chris puts it, “many levels removed from the CEO” but the key to maintaining a successful blog is doing it well, being authentic, and being consistent…some of the key ingredients to a corporate blog.  Look for my next installment of the CEO Blog Series on whether CEOs should stick to other simple tools such as Twitter.

  

“When I come to the end of the road

And the sun has set for me

Source

Seth Godin recently wrote a blog post titled: Beware of the CEO blog. He writes:

“It’s apparently the newest thing. I just got off the phone with one CEO who’s itching to start, and read an email from another who just did.

Here’s the problem. Blogs work when they are based on:
Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness and
Controversy

(maybe Utility if you want six).

 Does this sound like a CEO to you?

Short and sweet, folks: If you can’t be at least four of the five things listed above, please don’t bother. People have a choice (4.5 million choices, in fact) and nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there’s something in it for them.”

This kind of statement is warranted given the role and demands of a CEO and it’s clear that a lot of CEO blogs are for the most part ghost written by someone in the marketing department or a third party ghost writer. Let’s face it: most CEOs don’t have the time nor patience to write  blog posts on a consistent basis. While the demand for more CEOs and senior executives to join and engage in the online conversation, they have greater pressures at hand: growing the business, meeting or exceeding profitability for their shareholders and managing the overall business goals and objectives for the company. There are some exceptions to the rule – a few high profile CEOs who have been blogging for an extended period of time, most notable among them, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com and Guy Kawasaki, founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures, among many others.  These CEOs among others are utilizing Web 2.0 technologies, social networking, and social media to push their agenda, educate the market, and use their blogs as a platform to highlight industry trends, challenges, and bring insight by combining personal experience and industry expertise. Why? Simply put, they understand the need to adopt new ways of communicating with the online communities beyond their internal groups such as employees and shareholders.   

My personal experience with launching our own blog and our CEO’s blog brings me to this topic. I believe that executives down to employees should take a top down approach when it comes to blogging and if a company decides to take this on, it needs to be implemented with the right strategy and plan in place.  Our CEO Pat Clawson is a great example of how he leverages the blogging platform to communicate a clear message on the industry trends and challenges but how certain issues impact the market as a whole.  It’s not just about engaging but educating as well.  Here is an example of what not to do in a CEO blog in a CEO blog – McAfee CEO David DeWalt’s blog of using the platform to promote the company and its products and services.  People aren’t interested in coming to your blog to read more about your company and your products, they want to learn and gain insight into your expertise and knowledge about what’s going on in the industry and how it will be impacted.  While this isn’t the worst example of a bad CEO blog, this is just one to demonstrate some common mistakes CEOs make when it comes to blogging.

Getting back to the point, out of curiosity I took this question to several CEOs and executives who are active on  Twitter and blogging and posed the question: Should CEOs blog? Why or why not? This blog is to shed some light for those who are looking to start or already have established a blog, what are some of the dos and don’ts?  This will be a rolling series to provide different perspectives on this topic – first of which begins with my Q&A with Guy Kawaski who was named as one of the top CEO bloggers to provide his perspective. At the end of this series, I will provide an outline of key steps to achieving a successful CEO blog and dos and don’ts.

Q&A with Guy Kawasaki:

Do you think CEOs should or shouldn’t blog and why?

It’s hard to provide a definitive answer to this because there are several key factors at play. First, is the company publicly traded? If it is, then the CEO must be very careful to limit the information in the blog—so much so, that the blog may be rendered boring. Second, can the CEO write well? If not, is she or he willing to use a ghost writer? Third, does the CEO truly have something significant to say? This is a “duhism,” but not enough CEOs as themselves this question.

How important is it for CEOs to blog?

On a scale of 1-10 where 10 = “you’ll get fired if you don’t do this,” blogging is about a 4 or 5. Fundamentally, a CEO is paid to lead, and that’s what she or he should focus on. Blogging can be an aspect of leading (specifically, communicating), but it is by no means to that end. It’s not an end in itself.

Should you get other senior management to blog? Why or why not?

The same questions apply to the CEO as senior management.

Do you think blogging by a CEO has a positive or negative impact to their overall brand?

The best case is that the CEO’s blog is mildly interesting. The worst case is that the CEO’s blog is deadly boring. The worst case is much more likely. What the CEO should truly do is ensure the creation of great product or services so that OTHER people blog about the company.

What other ways can it benefit the Company and its overall business objective?

CEOs should focus Twitter versus a blog.  What CEOs should do is tweet, not blog. Or have a ghost tweet as her or him. Blogging requires a carefully crafted, legally and HR cleared essay that shows intelligence and insight on at least a weekly basis. Good luck. Tweeting requires a good link to something that the CEO (or ghost) finds interesting. These tweets should point to articles, blogs, etc that the CEO thinks his or her audience would find interesting. This is a lot easier to do and a lot safer too.

Top 5 dos and don’ts for senior management and CEOs when it comes to blogging?

Sponsor a company blog as opposed to a blog or blogs tied to specific people because the overall purpose is to communicate with the company’s customers, provide tips and tech support, and engender loyalty. Good examples of this type of blog are here..

Can bad blogging kill your brand? Any examples?

Kawasaki says: “If blogging killed your brand, you had a pretty weak brand already, and it probably deserved to die.”

President Barack Obama sets a great example on how he uses social working and Web 2.0 technologies to educate and forward his agenda. He is considered an Internet marketing maven who has used platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace to market his message across to millions of individuals.

First and foremost, I believe CEOs should ask themselves whether they have the right ideas, content, and dedication to create and share their content/message with the world. Second, what is the overall objective?  As Godin mentioned in his blog, there are key components to launching and maintaining a successful blog that others will want to read and follow. If you don’t meet the criteria, then it might not be your cup of tea. But rest assure, if it’s not you, the CEO blogging, be sure to get your company behind a corporate blog to create a competitive advantage.

While it sounds like a “me too” approach, the way we communicate has significantly changed. My belief is that CEOs should definitely blog and every company should have a blog because it’s not about the return on investment (ROI), but about the return on influence within your industry. By adding your voice through a blog, you’re putting a face to the company and humanizing your brand, not to mention elevating your thought leadership. And, if you don’t have the time to blog, get a ghost writer to meet with you on a weekly basis, brainstorm on some key topics, and voice your opinion and why people should care. While the option of using a ghostwriter might not be ideal, as long as they can take YOUR message to your blog, it’s a step forward in moving the needle and getting your company front and center in the market. The article on cbsnews.com Why Most CEOs Who Blog – Blog Badly sums it up nicely: keep your posts short, clear, educational and most of all, compelling. Don’t become the poster child for “Why CEOs shouldn’t blog” but take a leadership role and drive a message that can change the market perception, interests the readers (journalists, buyers, bloggers, etc.).

My blog: How to Achieve Return on Influence Through Corporate Blogs

David Meerman Scott: The Future of PR: should your CEO blog?

Jeremiah Owyang: The Many Challenges of a CEO Blog

Guy Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web.  Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. You can read completed coverage of blogging at http://blogging.alltop.com/.

Be on the lookout for Part II in Should CEOs blog. This one takes the perspective on why CEOs should stick to internal blogging with Chris Hewitt.

7 Things Every CEO Should Know About IS_Blog_Image

David Meerman Scott once said that an ebook was the “hip and stylish younger sister to the nerdy whitepaper”… it lends a hip to content and message you’re trying to communicate to your audience.  As part of our thought leadership campaign, we launched an ebook titled 7 Things Every CEO Should Know About Information Security and the success was tremendous.

Below is an interview I did with Stephanie Tilton (@StephanieTilton) with Savvy B2B Marketing on successful tips and key steps to launching an ebook to elevate your thought leadership, brand and company profile as well as enhancing SEO.  See below:

Post originally appeared on Savvy B2B Marketing www.savvyb2bmarketing.com.

Q. What prompted Lumension to produce an eBook in addition to white papers?

A. B2B marketers have traditionally used white papers to share content. While they’ve been effective for lead-generation purposes, white papers tend to be heavy on content, many times replete with marketing jargon and industry terms.

Web 2.0 prompts us to “open up our kimonos” in terms of how we produce, publish, and syndicate content. Given that content is king, today’s marketers must think like publishers and produce compelling, thought-provoking content. Then they need to leverage tools such as eBooks to generate interest and make the ideas go viral and easy to syndicate.

At Lumension, we wanted to focus on thought leadership as a way to elevate our brand. But we didn’t want to just produce and sit on that content. We wanted to syndicate it to influential bloggers and journalists, as well as to prospects, with the hope that it would go viral.

White papers don’t typically go viral because they sit behind a registration page. My boss, C. Edward Brice, recommended the eBook concept as a way to make it more interactive, content-rich, and viral. Before getting started, we turned to David Meerman Scott, one of the best thought leaders in this space in terms of how to create content and make it go viral. David boiled eBook best practices down to three things: make it easy to read, make it informative, and make it educational.

Lumension is always trying to be on the cutting edge in terms of how we market our content. We decided to publish an eBook since no one in the industry is doing it. The result was 7 Things Every CEO Should Know about Information Security (http://www.lumension.com/landing.spring?contentId=142632).

Q. What do you think of David Meerman Scott’s statement in The New Rules of Viral Marketing (http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/documents/Viral_Marketing.pdf) that the eBook is the “stylish younger sister to the nerdy white paper”?

A. In my opinion, the eBook is the new white paper – it lends a hip air to content. If you properly adopt the guidelines for eBooks, you’ll end up with a stylish piece that’s easy to read and navigate. An eBook should include sophisticated graphics and multimedia links, and be structured for easy digestion, such as by liberally using bullets, callouts, and share buttons. The structure of an eBook makes it much easier to share. These days, everyone is on the Web, sharing information via various tools and communities. You’re much more likely to see an eBook passed around than a white paper. That’s largely because people can access it freely, without providing any information in exchange.

Q. How did the process for developing and promoting your eBook differ from promoting and producing a white paper?

A. First of all, the writing style is completely different. It has nothing to do with marketing or industry jargon. Again, you want to make it simple to read and understand. As far as production, you want to make it a one-stop shop for all related resources.

A writer interviewed our Chairman and CEO Pat Clawson to gather the key points. We also interviewed influential analysts such as John Pescatore of Gartner, Inc. as well as C-level customers to get their perspective on gaps that exist today when it comes to information security. Then we worked with our creative director and a marketing agency – Spark Design (http://www.sparkdesign.com/) – to produce the eBook itself. The agency helped us structure the eBook and embed rich multimedia, with links to video interviews. Within each chapter, you can click on various links that take you to interactive features that give you a better sense of our CEO. We worked with a local videographer to shoot the video of our CEO, and then we uploaded it to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/LumensionSecurity) in time for our eBook launch.

Having said that, it’s not necessary to go through an agency. There are plenty of online tools that enable you to format an eBook. If you’re on a budget, you can get it formatted for free at ChangeThis (http://www.changethis.com/).

As far as promotion goes – you can’t think about it as a one-time hit. eBook content can live and get shared for a long time. When you’re pushing out an eBook, you need to be committed to making others aware of it. That means you need to support a variety of activities on the outreach side.

We took a three-pronged approach to promotion. First, we gathered key stakeholders to come to a consensus on the marketing plan and how we’d measure success. Because we wouldn’t require registration, we decided to measure success based on the number of downloads from the microsite as well as the number of video views on YouTube.

Next, our corporate communications group sent out advance copies of the eBook to key analysts and media contacts so they could preview and write about it, and provide feedback. We also reached out to industry bloggers and social media leaders like David Meerman Scott and asked for their feedback.

We had our CEO talk to a local CEO/CFO group as well as TechConnect on why CEOs needed to get on the ball and get involved in Information Security. We also gave out USB sticks with the eBook on them at all major security and CEO events. Plus, we had our creative director design a button for easy, on-demand download, which we added to our homepage and email signatures. We also added the button to Ed Brice’s blog (http://marketinggimbal.typepad.com/) and most Lumension employees with LinkedIn accounts added it to their profiles.

Finally, we created a dedicated landing page/microsite that made it possible to track the viral component. We shared the link with analysts, our channel partners, prospects, and customers – essentially every touch point. All our employees included the link in their email signatures. We also included the link in Cindy Kim’s blog (http://cindykimblog.wordpress.com/). We also sent out dedicated emails from the corporate marketing side promoting the eBook and included a link to it in our monthly nurturing newsletter. Plus, we distributed a social media press release that talked about the challenges CEOs face amid the security threat landscape and introduced the eBook. We even included the video of our CEO at the end of the press release (http://www.prweb.com/releases/information/security/prweb1252324.htm).

Q. Has the response been different than what you’ve experienced with your white papers?

A. Since launching the eBook, it’s been downloaded over 7,000 times, and the CEO video on YouTube has been viewed more than 5,000 times. We’ve heard positive responses across the board, from the media, analysts, prospects and customers. It’s important to remember that our goal was not lead generation. It was not about selling our products or pushing marketing messages. We are using this platform to elevate and build brand awareness by educating. Having said that, we can figure out the source of downloads through the links in the eBook. By providing a dedicated link on our landing page, we can pull the analytics from our Omniture analytics tool to see how many times the eBook was viewed and downloaded.

One thing to note – eBook content should not include marketing promotions or sell the company or its products. The eBook is really about delivering premium content to educate around a key issue. This helps to validate your company’s expertise and thought leadership.

Q. How has the response impacted your future marketing plans?

A. To date, we’ve published only white papers. But going forward, we’ll publish a balance of white papers and eBooks. For lead generation, we will continue producing white papers. These will likely be for technical topics and to drive the nurturing process. Having said that, eBooks don’t have to be limited to thought leadership topics. Even if the topic is technical, an eBook makes it easier to digest. Plus you can embed links to so much other valuable content. I recommend all B2B marketers migrate to eBooks.

Q. What can other B2B marketers learn from your experience producing and promoting your eBook?

A. When putting a process in place, think beyond the eBook. You can share your content across multiple channels, such as byline articles, blog posts, videos repurposed on YouTube, etc. Whether you produce a white paper or an eBook, think about how you can syndicate it, share it across communities, and encourage peer-to-peer sharing.

Today’s marketers need to collaborate with thought leaders to create and promote great content. By teaming with leaders, you can take advantage of the power of two – those folks will tweet and blog about your content.

Q. Can you give us a sneak peek of your next eBook?

A. We’re working on another thought leadership piece about the evolving security landscape. Specifically, we will be getting large enterprises as well as small and medium businesses to consider how their security blueprint needs to change to deal with cybercriminals. It will be 10-15 pages long, and include links to video and a cartoon “skit”, which is like storytelling via a cartoon instead of a live person. To get an idea of what that’s like, check out Powerhouse PR (http://www.powerhouseanimation.com/PR/POWERHOUSE_PR.html). I’ll be tweeting about the new eBook as soon as it’s out the door, so be sure to watch for it!

The advent of social media and the social web is challenging many public relations and marketing professionals to understand, incorporate and participate in these new channels to be effective in their roles. Businesses looking to adopt these new tools as a way to engage, monitor and grow their influence are facing the same struggle. In a recent blog post, titled “The State of PR, Marketing and Communications: You Are the Future,” Brian Solis writes, “It is this element of fundamental transparency of Social Media combined with its sheer expansiveness and overwhelming potential that is both alarming and inspiring PR professionals everywhere. At the minimum, it’s sparking new dialogue, questions, education, innovation, and also forcing the renaissance of the aging business of PR itself.”

For this blog post, I spoke with David Meerman Scott, thought leader and pioneer in this arena and author of many books such as The New Rules of Marketing & PR, a BusinessWeek bestseller being published in 24 languages, and his new book World Wide Rave among others, to discuss the changing face of PR/marketing and how it’s forcing PR/marketing professionals to “unlearn what they have learned” to remain relevant. In this interview, we take a look at the past, the present and the future of PR/marketing and what professionals need to do to stay ahead and maintain their competitive edge.

There is a lot of noise around social media. How has the introduction of social media changed the face of PR and marketing?

Well, prior to the Web, we as PR and marketing professionals had three ways to reach people — to buy ads, beg the media to write about us or hire salespeople to bug people by knocking on doors. Social media has provided us with an opportunity to publish our own information and earn attention rather than buying, begging or bugging people. It is illustrative of what’s changed because with the advent of social media and the web, anyone can publish online to reach and be seen by millions of people through Twitter, YouTube, etc. It’s evolutionary in terms of how we communicate today and what it means for PR, marketing and sales professionals.

How should PR and marketing pros evolve?

The most important thing for us (I include myself in that) is to have an understanding that we have to unlearn what we have already learned in order to be successful in the world of social media. For a long time the success of advertisers was predicated on how well they were able to buy attention or make TV commercials. Further, the success of PR professionals has been based on how they can convince the media to write about their clients. Neither of these things is about creating original content. The traditional ways of doing things involved buying, begging and bugging. That approach has changed. What marketers and PR people need to understand is that while their skills are still valuable, they need to evolve their approach and their techniques, or they won’t be successful. What it really comes down to is what can they create themselves or for their clients using new ways to reach a broader audience. Today’s strategy involves a completely different skill set. Rather than thinking like a traditional PR person, you have to think like a publisher — you’re not just working to buy attention or to get a reporter to write about your client. Today’s approach is fundamentally different.

I do believe that PR agencies are still needed today for their traditional skills of media relations. I don’t think social media makes the skills of PR people go away. There will be room for people in the PR industry to work with media to craft stories on their clients’ behalf. However, we have a tremendous opportunity to influence people in other ways beyond the traditional approach. For example, if you look at PRSA’s definition of public relations, and I’m paraphrasing here, it’s about how an organization deals with its public. There is no mention of media relations. However, a lot of PR people believe their job is only media relations, solely to generate ink from third parties. We now have an opportunity to influence and reach the public using new tools, and this is great news for all PR people because we never had that option before. To reach people directly, we had to go through the media. Now you have more choices. You can help your company or your clients reach their publics in different ways through YouTube, Twitter, chat rooms, Flickr, blogs, etc. by publishing different yet compelling information.

What do you see as common pitfalls of today’s marketing/PR pros?

Getting back to my point earlier, the pitfalls for PR pros are that they’ve become very skilled at crafting a story idea that somebody else will write about and broadcast, skilled at working with others to say something on their behalf or their clients’. If that’s all you do, you’re going to miss out on a tremendous opportunity to create content for yourself. The pitfall is that you really do have to unlearn the skills that you have learned to successfully engage in the social media sphere.

For instance, I get pitched every day from other PR people to write about their stuff. I almost never do — maybe one or two times a year when somebody sends me traditional pitches or press releases. However, if somebody tweets something or sends me a link to a blog post that I find interesting, that gets my attention, and I often write about it on my blog or tweet about it. I’ve written about a lot of companies but I’m not going to write based on a traditional press pitch. PR pros need to think differently to be successful. I believe they need to be forward-thinking PR professionals who can seize the opportunity and guide their company or their clients that are struggling with social media on the new ways of publishing and communicating.

A lot of times when I’m on a speaking circuit, people ask me to show them how to do this. I get asked constantly by companies and executives for suggestions on how they can incorporate social media into their overall strategy. What I say to them is to check out PR agencies and marketing and ad firms to see if those firms have the skills to put it together. The truth is not many can. A lot of PR/marketing or ad firms will create a tab on social media that links to poor Twitter updates to show that they’re doing social media. I tell those companies looking for help to find the PR/marketing/ad firms and find out how active they are in social media. Find out if they do YouTube videos, whether they are active on Twitter, blogs, chat rooms, etc. and that will be your guide in terms of whether that agency can help you. If they’re not active, there is no way they will be successful in helping clients do social media. There are agencies that are terrific with social media, and I encourage organizations to work with those firms to get their social media efforts going. The good news is that anyone who wants to become adept at this can.

What are some common misconceptions about social media?

I think the main thing here is that people make it out to be too much about the technology and not enough about the content itself. The second major thing is that people need to be thinking not about themselves or their ego, their clients or their products — but think about the people they’re trying to reach. What are the problems they’re trying to help solve? People who are steeped in traditions will automatically create social media based on what they know. To do social media successfully, you need to put away the thought that you have to talk about your products, company, services, etc. but start thinking about valuable information you can create and publish to help solve people’s problems. 

What top three pieces of advice would you give to PR/marketing pros looking to stay ahead?

    •       First and foremost, unlearn what you have learned,

    •       Second, participate. You have to participate yourself. You can’t bill yourself as an

            expert unless you’re doing it yourself.

    •      Third, do it now. Don’t wait, analyze or pontificate. Get it going.

What are your thoughts on ROI — investment versus influence?

I believe they’re not mutually exclusive. Traditional ROI seems to apply to certain things in marketing. I believe it’s because executives are fearful of social media, and that’s why they hold people who want to implement social media accountable to measurements that other parts of the organization are not being held accountable for. What’s the ROI of putting a new coat of paint on the building? What’s the ROI of the CEO making a trip to California? We don’t calculate ROI in other parts of the business but hold ROI to social media. It might not necessarily be ROI in terms of the traditional MBA approach, but there are tons of ways to measure social media — where you are on the search engines, measure what people are saying, etc. There are all sorts of things that can be measured and how it impacts the brand and influence of your company or your client’s company.

What’s your next big project?

I am working on a New Rules of Social Media series of books, and we’re going to be doing three titles a year featuring different authors. The books will include details of different aspects of social media. The first book will be coming out in October of this year: Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the co-founders of HubSpot.

For more information on David Meerman Scott, visit http://www.webinknow.com/.

Source

Wired magazine once argued “that fresh, genuine voices have been drowned out by a ‘tsunami of paid bilge’, that blogs attract too many comments from net lowlife, and that the action has moved elsewhere.” Is there any truth in the notion that blogs are dead? I disagree. While it may seem like a “me too” approach nowadays when it comes to blogs (let’s face it just about everyone – your mom, grandmother, sister, priest, etc., has a blog), they’re alive and well. A blog can be very effective for companies in achieving ROI (return of influence, not investment) for your brand and thought leadership as well as building stronger relationships with your customers, garnering coverage, and connecting with the online communities at large. I’ll give it to you from an insider’s perspective – a real world success story on how we’re winning with this strategy.

We launched our corporate blog The Optimal Security back in January, not as a “me too” but for a couple of reasons:

• To establish a voice for the company,
• To create a dialogue with our audience, customers and partners
• To humanize our brand and bring transparency,
• To build awareness around the industry we represent and are passionate about,
• And, to educate the market on key industry trends and challenges

To kick things off, we gathered our key stakeholders to strategize and started by asking ourselves why, how, and whether we had the right resources to start a blog. But first, we monitored and listened to industry blogs, analyzed competitors’ blogs, and started the initial framework. IBM was a good place to start in terms of understanding their use of its blog as a sounding platform and their social computing policies.

To get started, we did the following and this is what I would recommend:

• To Blog or Not to Blog – understand your objectives and why you want to start a blog. Make sure this is something that you are passionate about and will support on an ongoing basis because it’s a commitment.  You can’t just divorce your blog.
• Establish a blog team – recruit key experts and executives (including your CEO) to sit on the blogging team to provide expertise and insight in several different categories.  For us, we have our CEO blog called Pat’s Corner (where he blogs on emerging trends, topics, and thought leadership), Security Insight (for breaking news), and more solution specific areas (that focus on challenges and trends).
• Define a Blogging Process – outline an editorial process and educate the bloggers on how the process works.  Someone needs to own it and make sure the content is approved before each blog gets posted so it’s within your company standards and message. 
• Educate Your Bloggers – once you have a process and strategy in place, hold a team meeting to go over the process and how it all works.
• Write Rich, Compelling Content – content is king and as my boss @cedwardbrice (http://marketinggimbal) says think like a publisher and create and publish good content.  This rule is the rule you should live and die by.  If you don’t have powerful content that people will want to read about, you’re doomed for failure.
• Establish a Blog Team Email Alias – by having this email alias, it simplifies the communication process and keeps them in the know of what’s going on.   Also, as part of the process, PR and marketing should be tightly integrated with this overall process.  PR/Corp Comm should be constantly alerting the blog team on breaking news, industry trends, and key topics that should be covered in your blog posts. This gets me to my next point.
• Blogs are Breaking News (as David Meerman Scott puts it) – integrate corporate blog with your Rapid Response outreach.   If you have outside agency, involve your PR team to educate them on the process , who your blog team members are and what they will be blogging about.  This is what we do with our team at Lois Paul and Partners.  When there is breaking news, a lot of times PR firms will push out a commentary. Take a two-pronged approach – blog about it, educate on the issue, define any mitigating steps, and push it out. You will be surprised at how the reporters respond. Some sample links of media coverage  as a result of blog outreach are below.  Trade pub reporters look to our blog as a go to resource.
• Integrate Across Social Media Channels – leverage all your social media channels and promote it via Twitter, have your PR teams retweet it, have your employees spread the word via their SM channels, etc.  Reach across as many channels as possible to get the word out.  Leverage LinkedIn, a very powerful tool, to start a discussion around your blog topic. Great way to get the word out but also gauge different perspectives from the community.
• Pimp Out Your Blog (again, David Meerman Scott’s terms) – keep the blog design simple and easy to navigate.  Include key things like About Your Company, Blogger Profiles, Categories, RSS feed, Tags, Other Favorite Blogs, and social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube Channel, etc. if your company has those channels available, promote it. Register with Technorati and link it from your blog.
• Add to the Discussion (as David Meerman Scott puts it) – engage and link it.  Consistently monitor other influential blogs and provide comments and link it back to your blog if it’s relevant. Also, monitor comments on your blog and address it immediately.
• Monitor and Analyze – constantly monitor share of voice on Bloglines, IceRocket, and Google Blog Search, etc. Monitor coverage and make sure you communicate this to your bloggers and your company to help build the momentum and educate your executives and employees on the power of your corporate blog.

Seth Godin said it best when he said: “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t.” Don’t just push out your screaming marketing messages.  Make it interesting, compelling, educational, and thought provoking.  Engage with your audience and write about what they want to read about.

Now, do you think blogs are dead? You be the judge.  Tell me what you think?