Social media spans the whole gamut from marketing, PR, support, product management and sales through the entire organization. Social Media became the new way for higher integration with the market. It offers marketing departments a whole new opportunity to interact with the entire organization.

CIO or CMO?

In many of the larger organizations the CIO (Chief Information Officer) is busy taking care of network infrastructure, computing power, security, ERP systems and much more. And so it is actually the CMO who is weaving the network for the market interaction model that has just expanded like the big bang over the universe of a business. In other words the new CMO will gain significantly more influence and watch the business as a whole – no longer just from a promotional perspective.

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Only people who care stand up and argue, defend, fight or otherwise make their position very clear. Interesting enough – the more disappointing a situation gets, the louder the conversation and the bigger the impact for a brand. An age old saying goes: "The worst thing to be talked about – is not to be talked about". A few companies are actually learning from the show business how this all works.
 

Scandals and disappointments – strategic tools

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Microsoft is working on an internal research project exploring a new social network: SOCL.

It appears that the software giant is game to reinvent itself and create a social media solution. While Microsoft still has the money – the question is whether or not they can change their culture from a self centric technology super shop to a community thinking global network. If Socl will ever be launched is still a question. But the billion dollar investment in technology such as Azure needs to find a consumer – and if it is just Microsoft. The 8 Billion acquisition of Skype still needs some justification. But consider a merger of 600 Million Skype users with a Socl type social network and a billion dollar hosting farm – it actually has at least a theoretic chance.

(Image by Sueddeutsche Zeitung)

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Yes you heard it right, and yes, it's me who said it: Social Media Experts. The bad word in social media. Why do I say so?

Joe doe Social Media Consultant hates the word. Why? Because he is not an expert but rather a situation driven self made social media consultant.

Social Media Has Grown Up

The argument "Social media is growing so fast no person can keep up with the speed" is approximately 5 years old. My first interaction on LinkedIn was in 2003 that is 8 years ago. And if we didn't learn anything in 8 years – heck we should just not discuss the topic in the first place.

It's true there are new and better tools coming in every week. But seriously if all there is are how to use tools, you talk to the wrong people. And if we, at least many of us, didn't become an expert in what we are doing, there are no experts at all. Social media, social interactions, social dynamics, behavior whatever cool term you pick from the word cloud isn't just trivial. But neuroscience, physics, brain research… isn't either.

No more social media rock stars

Here is one of the biggest obstacles for executive teams: While there are thousands and thousands of social media rock stars, social media hippies or whatever you want to call it, it is very hard to find social media expertise – hence no experts. And those who are – are terribly busy.

Putting up a fan page, sending out scheduled tweets from a robot pretending to be a brand pretending to be social is not social media but old style push marketing brute forced onto a new media hoping it works because so many say so. And indeed you don't need an expert to do that. Any average Joe social media consultant whether here in the US or one of the people in the Philippines who do that for $5 an hour can take over those jobs. Impact? None, ROI 'hehhh"? Benefits for the company and even the customer: zero.

Executives need experts not hippies

Consider this: You are a CEO of a company with 5,000 employees and your "social media strategist" is rambling about a fan page, more tweets, listen to your customers and all that old blah blah blah. What will you do? Nothing – and that is actually a wise decision. The next step: You ask your team to come up with some ideas. They will want to get some external expertise. Again rambling about fan pages, tweeting and adding value to the conversation is the same blah blah blah – just on the next lower level.

Social Media Experts need to be able to re-assess a market from a holistic point of view considering the conversations of the customers – but think of some Millions of customers spread all over the planet. They needs to consider business partner integration, those people who actually "own" the customer relationships. And of course the company's own teams from executive to clerk and back. Those experts will need to develop a true strategy – not a list of cool tactical measures but a strategic model with a strategic objective, a well balanced benefits model for both company and market, resource planning, financial planning, ROI and so forth that will be the base for any consecutive action programs. The social media tools are at best a secondary side effect. Strategic models methods and frameworks are the heart and the core of a social engagement that can be introduced to 5,000 employees who in turn collaborate with maybe 50,000 partners and say 1 Million or more customers. You need to be an expert in that field to be able to construct, plan and execute such a social media strategy that will be carefully interwoven into a multi Billion $ business plan.

More executives than you may think are ready to take the challenge from a rapidly evolving society and its inherent changes in the way to do business – most consultants are not.

I wonder – if you are a social media consultant – are you able to help a CEO like mentioned above to get their strategy developed and embraced in their organization?

Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS
(my social presence)

Virtual events offer huge advantages over physical events

Here are a series of tips to consider when attending an event as exhibitor.

Conversations

In a way virtual events are no different than your day to day conversations in Twitter, Facebook or any of the other social networks and communities. The only difference – it happens during a few hours with people you may have usually no access to. Continue Reading →

You heard it a million times: "Engage your customer". And you didn't really – didn't you? Simply because it is very complex if you look at your team of 1,000 employees. Engagement is actually a pretty complex process when you look under the hood. Blasting out some email shots and posting a 50 feet declaration of love on time square isn't cheap but it wasn't complicated. 

Now how would one engage a team of 1,000? Continue Reading →

G+ is not a FB killer but seriously hurts Twitter

It looks like Twitter is now paying a price for sloppy technology, ignoring it's long time advocates and lack of innovation. The "uncomfort" of Tweepl is growing rapidly. Robert Scoble just posted his view why "Twitter is boring" 

Twitter revolutionized the way we communicate by giving us a platform for most instant information sharing across the world. Twitter revolutionized the way we articulate our thoughts by forcing us to *focus* our thoughts and squeeze them into 140 character and we all not only learned to do so but *really* appreciate the fast communication.
Twitter revolutionized the way we connect with people by simply follow others without protocol.

All of the above made it one way or the other, either by using the schema or by behavioral adjustment (we use 140isch charcters and try to stay short) into most social networks. But as the old saying goes: "Good enough is not good enough". Innovation never stops and Twitter is in a serious situation.

In other words, Twitter has hurt itself

1. Listening
   Twitter has still no real good relationship with its users – in particular the long time advocates. "Listen to your customer" is not known to Twitter – maybe because we are not a "customer". Twitter: So start building a relationship and build it quickly.
2. Technology
   The technology fails almost daily. And the worst thing, it's part of the strategy. An undisclosed source told me once that the enormous talk about the technology break down is helpful and spreads the word about Twitter – well maybe it is a boomerang? Twitter: Fix your technology and fix is quickly
3. User Interface
   The retro Web 1.0 UI may have been "interesting" and some people like it. But I guess more people like the rich UI of a Google+. Twitter: Make your UI more pleasant and do that quickly.
4. User Behavior Management
   Well – it is a bad user behavior to automatically post stuff on Twitter. And I even un-followed friends because of it. Twitter is a social anarchy where everything is possible – as long as you have an account. Some people however pissed Twitter off and then you loose your account with no warning and sometimes not even an idea why (I speak from experience) I know they try hard to get the discrepancy between automatism and conversation – but showing the number of quadro gazillion followers and making it indirectly a goal is just bad behavior. Twitter: Hire a sociologist or start listening to the more experienced social media students – you have about 10,000 top notch people in your ecosystem.
5. Connection Structure & Search
   There is no way to professionally structure connections. Lists are a boring and clumsy mechanism. Sorting and finding the right connections in your own TwitterVerse is basically non existent. More so you may search people and you know they are there and Twitter won't find them. Something that is wanted since 2007 and was never really fixed. Search for older Tweets and you may or may not find them. Twitter: rearchitect your lists and make it easy for people to categorize and tag their friends.
6. Technology Backend
   You may experience that all of a sudden you need your old password to get – well because the whole TwitterVerse is not very clean and sometimes old data just show up, old profile pictures and so forth. Clearly it isn't easy to build a robust network that is holding up to 100-200 Million users – but with over $200 Million in funding they should be able to do better than that :) Twitter: Hire a few real PROs and get your architecture fixed.

Why is it more serious than it looks like on the surface?

The number of users may still grow, the number of tweets may still grow. But the number of tweets that are read by humans is rapidly declining. The number of auto connections is rapidly increasing. The number of "blasts" and advertising is growing out of proportion. In other words the theoretic interaction volume may still grow – but the human interaction is moving elsewhere. I still do "tweets" because it is easy to hit the tweet button – but I do most of the "conversations" elsewhere :(

It would be a pity if we'd loose Twitter – but things are moving fast and Twitter needs to respond even faster. Let's hope that they get it and get it right. Twitter was a major and very important milestone in the social web development.

Axel

http://xeesm.com/AxelS

I'm sure you can do better than copy (for a second time [Orkut]) what's already out there. Think Innovation.

May I make a suggestion for your social media engagement? I personally don't believe Google+ will have a great impact other than some noise in the next few weeks. Your other social network Google Orkut was not a bad product either – but it was from the wrong company. Social networking is not only about a technology, algorithms, features and a few announcements – it is about people and people behind the people. And Larry, Google has NEVER been a people company.

So how you can change that?

First, your search engine is over 10 years old – it's OLD! Yes you made some improvements on "algorithms", you improved search "technology" and other scientific stuff – but you never improved the HUMAN SEARCH EXPERIENCE.

Start being social where you are already a leader: At your very own search engine.

Build a Social Search Engine

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Jorge Purgly is the undisputed No.1 in Xeesm visits. What makes him the No.1?

Here are a few things that really matter – it's all about 'xee and be xeen':

1) Don't be a social couch potato

And please don't say "I have no time" – that's like saying "I have no time for my customers, partners, vendors, friends and other people who are important to you". Xeesm visits are a reflection of the engagement in the social web. The more active you are the more likely you get visited – assuming you share your Xeesm all the time.

Your Xeesm IS NOT ABOUT YOU – it is about making it easy for others to get to know you – even for your closest friends it is much easier to click than to search! Yes, they know you well, they even know your Twitter handle by heart – yet it is easier to click than to type it in! Be xeen ;)

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Kelly Chan posted a good article about SEO on Facebook pages on Social Media & Technology

Here is the essence:

Choose Your Facebook Page Name Carefully

Choosing your Facebook page name should not take much more effort than remembering the name of your business. While some blog authors get kitschy and creative with blog titles, your Facebook name should reflect the heart and soul of your brand. Not only could spammy words in your title be penalized by Google, but your customers will also be turned off by an obtrusive Facebook page name. Your page name is critical in helping you find new customers, which works by including who are you and what you do. Likely, both are included in the name of your company already. Keep it simple, but keep it real, and make sure you choose your name carefully — because you can only change it if you have amassed fewer than 100 fans.

Choose your vanity URL carefully. Facebook now features the ability for Facebook page owners to choose a custom URL (also known as a username) once you have amassed over 25 fans (or “likes”). Claiming your username ASAP is critical in not only maintaining brand reputation, but is another way for potential customers to find you in search. Don’t load your vanity URL with unrelated keywords, but expanding on the title of your brand with a few very short related keywords about your business can help grab related search traffic. Don’t abuse this feature, however, as Facebook can revoke or reclaim a username at any time. This URL can only be changed once, so make sure you get it right the first time (changing it is a process that will hurt your SEO, by the way).

Use the Info Tab

A big chunk of your Facebook Page SEO lies within the Info tab on your page. The Info tab has fields that contain important descriptive metadata that can be caputured in search. In the Info tab you can provide a keyword rich company description and link back to your blog or main Web site, if you have one, as well as other social networks your brand may use. Make sure you include as much detail as possible in the fields related to the category you choose — which is why it’s important to pick the category for the page that is most related to your brand. Google sees this tab as an entirely seperate “page” from your wall, so it’s a great place to load up on keywords that you want to be searched for. You can also use it to help with local SEO by including your company’s address and phone number.

Post Links to Your Web Site or Blog on Your Page Wall

Status updates are a powerful way to place links back to your company’s Web site or blog near the top of your Page CSS structure, which can boost your search rankings. Google also positively factors in links to relevant sites as part of its algorithm, yet unrelated links can hurt your SEO. When you post links, make sure you don’t just type in the URL as part of the status update, and use the “Attach Link” feature. Facebook will then pull in the title, body, and image — as a thumbnail — from your blog or Web site, as well as a summary of text from your blog or Web site. This keyword-dense update can especially boost your SEO if it’s near the top of your Facebook page wall.

Link Back to Your Facebook Page

Google’s algorithm factors inbound and outbound links to your Facebook page, so make sure you have inbound links to your page, too. Easy ways to accomplish this include using the Facebook “like” button on your brand’s blog. When a fan or customer “likes” a blog post, an update will be posted on their wall that they like the post, which automatically includes a link back to your Facebook page from their Facebook profile. Using Facebook’s commenting platform also drives similar traffic and backlinks to your Facebook page, as any time someone comments on your blog, it will be noted on their Facebook profile with a link back to both the blog and your Facebook page.

Read the full post here