Entries in social media (9)

Thursday
Jul082010

How to Use a Social Media Release as a Zen Stepping Stone for Newbies

DateThursday, July 8, 2010 at 3:30PM

 

This post is not for those of you in marketing that have “digital native” clients, namely clients who are comfortable using Facebook, Twitter, blogs, podcasts  - all the well-known components of Brian Solis' well-known Conversation Prism.

But if  you've ever had a PR  client that  absolutely, dead-set  refuses to use social media, read on.

It's only fair to say that many of these types of clients are small startup businesses with few marketing resources. They might be brilliant in their own field and industry, but work within a 1994 PR time machine, believing "hitting the news wires with a press release blast" is the only way to introduce their company and products to the world. Especially prevalent among B2B players, they'll vehemently argue that their audience is not using those channels.

No matter what data you put before them, showing  the presence of their audience on social networks, their industry groups on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, their competitors using social media – they'll have none of it. You present all the well-known ROI stories  (Zappos, Dell, Comcast) including your best data from social media workshops.  All is to no avail.

And what if your recalcitrant client is a newly formed company?  There are no existing online conversations to dive into as no one knows about them.

Sound familiar? We recently acquired such a client.

Like the martial arts master, Pai Mei in the movie Kill Bill 2, this situation had me stroking my (virtual) beard circumspectly.


An Odd Thing Happened on the Way to the Webmaster

As fate would have it, in the days before this client's traditional press release went out, an odd thing happened: Their webmaster disappeared.  Gone missing. Left the building.  What's more,  there was no backdoor to the website, no content management system for easy entry. We had no way to post the press release, much less any of the accompanying materials (graphics, white paper) on their website, even by proper Web 1.0 standards.  All this - and there was an an immovable dead line and a constrained budget to boot.

For a PR type that thrives on digital marketing and social media, I was ready to render  Pai Wei's Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, first to the webmaster and then to myself.

Instead I got clever: Crying Force Majeure, we put up the material on Pitch Engine.

Now Pitch Engine is a fine service. You can put up your own media release, news summary, graphics, downloadable white paper and related links. It does have a lot of those dang social media sharing tools though. And when we did this, some magical things happened.

This post is about that magic. How one client, once dead-set against all forms of social media and social networking came to “see the light”. Their discovery, the revealing of what’s so different and compelling in social media, came on with the same gentle surprise as one’s first experience in encountering a zen rock garden.

Source: Wikipedia's image of Honbo GardenThere are no metrics, no verbal descriptions, no graphs nor data that can capture a zen garden experience. To describe a zen garden to a blind person would be exceedingly difficult. A  person, who is afraid to post a comment on Facebook (and there are still a few out there) is much like the blind man in the zen garden.

It’s only when it is right before your eyes, sensorily perceived, that what distinguishes and defines the zen garden becomes understood. So too we find with social media. Your client has to “be in the experience” to get it. So often we work with clients chomping at the bit for social media, we forget the great leap to "getting it" for those who don't.

 

Social Media Release as a Client Base Camp

Source: Shift CommunicatioinsMind you -  we’ve used social media releases many times in the past and fully appreciate their usefulness from the media's  perspective. By definition, an SMR is a deconstructed version of the press release, a statement of the news facts, infographics and related links. With all the base parts laid out for media pitch-free– SMRs are more accessible, allowing quick reading, evaluation and use. Most importantly, these parts are easily shareable, with obvious buttons linking to Facebook, Twitter, Digg and many other social networking and bookmarking sites.

What we hadn't counted on was the psychological impact, a zen slap in the face so to speak,  on the client. For when our client company visited their own final release set in this social media context, it became immediately visually obvious to them that all was set up for sharing on social networks. It may seem trivial, but for digital non-native clients, establishing the relationship between the company’s news and content and how to share it is not entirely obvious. A social media release bridged the gap for them immediately.


Weaning the Client to become Zen Gardener of their Own News

Now our client wasn't totally lost inside their 1994 time machine: They did have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. But these accounts were sitting fairly idle. 

However, with the social media release in front of them with all its attendant social media sharing buttons, we had a clear gateway for moving the news in front of their industry contacts, trade association professionals and personal contacts.   Aka we had them standing right inside the zen garden.

The rest was all fairly mechanical, the sort of activity going on in every PR agency today. We set up some infrastructure, making sure their existing social media account profiles were complete, had the client join  industry groups on LinkedIn and industry-specific social networks. We showed them how to use Google Alerts to find related conversations to their news topic. Then we did a bit of hands-on social media ettiquette training on listening, focusing on  "soft" approaches, avoiding the sales-y pitch. Of utmost importane was the hands-on training: Via phone coaching or email instructions, we walked them through the mechanics of how to post a status message and attach a link.

 

What the Client Learned 

Extending Presence Directly into Industry Influencers.  Remember, our B2B client started with the view  that there was no point in sending the release onto the social networks. However, as they completed their postings, the commentary that ensured  from each of the social networking environments, whether from the professionals on LinkedIn, the client's  industry peers within their industry social networks and even the more populist views  on Facebook, each rang back different reactions to the release. This all  occurred right before their eyes, with no intermediaries. 

We took them back to the zen garden for their next lesson...

The Zen Garden is Never Finished.  The zen gardener appreciates that the garden is a “living form”.  It may be created once but interacts with changes in the environment which may add to or subtract from the initial desired form. Leaves from a nearby tree are shaken by the wind onto the garden: They are shaped into the garden’s design or removed. Tending, sculpting and constant editing to remove or augment are the ways of a fine zen gardener.

So too with social media. In the pre Web 2.0 days, traditional “PR campaigns” were defined by exact start and stop dates as though the initial creators were the owners of the message. It was a very Ptolemeic view of the universe, where the originator attempted to become the center of everyone’s attention.

But a  press release released in a social media context is simply the beginning of the conversation. How often do we find an interesting news post, only to find that the comments from readers were just, if not more, valuable than the original post?

Like branches and leaves fallen into a garden, the comments, both positive and negative, stick to and become part of the news release. Here the client learned that the reader comments became an invaluable source of information about the preconceptions surrounding their topic. They learned the only way to correct misperceptions as well as acknowlege insights unforeseen was to actively engage, continue the conversation publicly. As the zen garden is never truly finished, a social media release is just a conversation starter.

The client's newly found discovery of participating in online communities built a voracious appetite for more interaction. But even we were surprised with the client's quick realisation that...

Walled Gardens are Archaic.  Once the client began experiencing the value of commenting and open discussion, they were extremely disappointed with those news outlets that did not support commenting. One social networking community we interacted with did not support outbound links. On noticing this, the client exclaimed to the community manager, “How Old School!”  (It turns out nothing is more annoying to those who recently took down a wall, then to discover someone else's wall.)

Summary? For clients still immersed in a Web 1.0 world, a press release in a social context  turns out to provide a familiar “comfort zone” to trigger social media introductions on their own. 


Four Lessons  for PR and Social Media Sherpas

We've introduced and grown social media use for many clients on a larger, more sophisticated scale. However, taking a client from a zero baseline was extraordinary in re-learning a few lessons ourselves. 

  1. Establish the Guiding, Not Forefront Role of Public Relations. A social media release, coupled with real-time social media training, allows you to get your clients discovering their own voice as well as handling commenters'  inquiries directly. You are merely the sherpa guide into social media. All the tools you need are embedded in the social media release. Give your clients the option to use the research tools you use yourself to find conversations.  Above all, resist the temptation to do the ghost-writing for them.


  2. Disintermediate the Media as Sole Reputation Holder. One of the happy results for a such clients is that they are weaned from the uni-dimensional view that a press release is measured solely by millions of impressions or equivalent advertising dollars. Instead, they realise it’s the start of potentially valuable conversations with not only press, but colleagues and potential customers directly. Voila! In one step, you have connected PR into their CRM strategy – one of the most valuable assets of socially based news promotion is revealed.


  3. Demonstrate Live the new “Inside-Out Branding”.  Trapped inside a traditional Web 1.0 perspective, it’s often hard to shake out of a client’s head that it isn’t just about what people say about them on their own website, or on high-profile news sites, that truly matters. However, when the client experiences first-hand that they have personally ignited conversations about their brand on remote social networking sites, places where their audience and futures customers are, they “get it” immediately.


  4. Our last and strangest lesson? It took a failure from the web team, an emergency, to get our client’s permission to post a social media release on a remote satellite website. Now while I can’t recommend this as a "planned strategy" by itself (due to the obvious lack of SEO and web site traffic benfits associated with a  press release), oddly enough, the exercise proved to demonstrate a number of social media benefits that would otherwise have  remained quite abstract to the client. Message to us? Leverage change from steadfast patterns to make more beneficial disruptive change.

Did we trick our client into using social media?  Oh, maybe just a little. ;-)  But we're looking forward to greater social media activities with this delighted client -- now that the big hurdle has been removed.  And with a new webmaster.

Do you have special tricks to assist a client in jumping the gap?

 

 

AuthorLisa Thorell | CommentPost a Comment |
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Tuesday
Mar092010

Five Schema-Busting Slides for Moving CEOs Beyond Search to Social

DateTuesday, March 9, 2010 at 2:25PM

 

As Valeria Maltoni (@ConversationAge) put it so well in a recent post describing the increasing adoption of social media "marketers are finally putting their money where our conversation has been -- integrating social with their activities".

Even so, as a marketing consultant to smaller companies, I am approached by client firms that are still resistant to the "sea change" in the air. Frankly, some are still operating with 2007 market data (and schemas) in their heads. So it is I find myself called into executive strategy briefings and staff meetings and given a short time slot to plead the case for adopting social media.

Perhaps you know the drill?  Fifteen "make it or break it" minutes to stand and present, survive a firing line of questions and, hopefully, actually survive long enough to open the door to discussing the company's own social media strategy. Catch: There's not enough time to show the Social Media Revolution video.

What I've found works very well in such situations is to have an opening set of market research slides, "schema-busting" slides I call them, which set a big picture marketing context, highlighting that our former Google-centric view of the online universe of the past decade is changing.

Yes- I refer to the ROI of Dell's social media use, Zappos, the brilliant customer service case studies of Comcast, the product innovation crowdsourcing by Starbucks, the even more brilliant crowdsourcing experiment by NetFlix  and many others. However, too often, there can be a NIMI (Not-in-My-Industry) attitude that raises objections. So I launch usually with a more macro view of recent significant data. The sole purpose of these schema busters is to establish that significant changes are underfoot which require an alteration of the current marketing strategy, a realization of that "Ignore at your own peril" moment.

After all, why else would I be advocating a marketing strategy change?

Lately, I've had good results using the following slides.

 

Slide 1.

Social Media Sites are now among some off the top web properties. Dramatic changes have taken place since 2007.

Compete data | Erik Qualman's Socialnomics slideshare

There's no sense in being taken down on the first serve. As they say, begin on an unassailable point. Starting off with  Compete, Quantcast or Nielsen data -  authoritative market and web researchers - does just that. So I start by borrowing this slide from Erik Qualman's Socialnomics slideshare which shows Compete data to show that social media has changed significantly the top visited places on the net - places where people are sharing photos, product recommendations and links to articles with friends and colleagues. (Perhaps not the best time to point out that  'adultfriendfinder' will soon be replaced by Chatroullete though.)

This simple slide forces the conclusion " Dang, major tectonic shifts  have happened since 2007." More importantly, it forces the question," Maybe we should revisit our strategy?"

 

Slide 2.

People online now spend 7 hours per month "friendcasting".

This is more time than spent on search engines Google & Yahoo, as well as MSN and YouTube combined.

In a sense there's nothing really shattering about the data actually as it reinforces what we've always known, Word of Mouth is the most powerful recommendation driver.

You can make a similar point by referencing Compete's latest data in terms of "attentional time" market share, shown  in a more visual format.

Slide 3.

Facebook Commands More "Attentional time" Market Share than Google or YahooSource: MarketingCharts, Feb 2010

What's cool about these last two slides is that they now set the stage for you to raise the question: Would you like your company to be part of this 7 hour per month conversation, one which is rising in attentional market share? Be part of the shared photos? The shared articles? The product reviews and recommendations?


Slide 4

Facebook is Besting Google in Driving Traffic to the main portal sites.

Based on data from Compete, Feb 2010

Compete Inc. and their director of online media and search Jessica Ong ignited a powder keg in revealing this data during a late February interview with the San Francisco Chronicle,

I say "powder keg" as this data ignited considerable reaction from within the SEO community. So be advised, Search and SEO aficionados within your audience may also take issue, especially as that group commands the lion's share of the digital marketing spend today. (It may help with any tumult here to say, to those who dispute that Google competes with Facebook and Twitter that more recently Google lists both as competitors in their latest 10-K report. )

 

Slide 5.

Social Networking is Passing Search in Driving Referral Traffic

Source: Compete January 2010

I first saw this slide just days ago during an enlightening presentation by Gigya CEO, David Yovanno at Gigya's "Social is The Next Search" webinar. While I've not actually used this slide yet, I will as it really delivers the coup de grace. In fact, if you only have one slide to show - this is it.

That social sharing is outdistancing search in referral traffic was pointed out earlier in a prescient blog post by ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick. He wrote

What would it mean if social networking over-took search in terms of sheer visits online? It would mark a sea-change on the internet. No longer would our dominant use of the web be seeking out web-pages built by HTML web-masters! Now we would all be publishing tiny little updates that perhaps only our friends and family care about. We'd be subscribing, more than we ever did by RSS, to syndicated updates from organizations of interest, large and small.

There's no doubt: there's an increasing intersection between search and social sharing. But perhaps it isn't that people are changing the way they search,  so much as their friends are changing the way they find things. One of the more important questions you can open up at this point: Is the digital marketing spend allocation for social media vs search adjusted to these new market realities?

So there you have it: Five slides that can all be understood in five minutes. (Isn't it odd that we have to unroll the past conceptions, bust the old 2007 mental schemas, in order to see the best way to meet the future?)

What slides do you find work best to open the door to deeper social media discussions?

 

Postscript: My title notwithstanding, I am not advocating a wholesale revision of the search vs social media budgets planned. Just saying: The relative sizes may not be in line with the most recent 4-6 month marketing data.

 

AuthorLisa Thorell | Comments Off |
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Monday
Oct122009

Small Businesses & Social Media: Many Missing in Action?

DateMonday, October 12, 2009 at 2:54PM

 

A recent Reuters release, Small business, social media not mixing caught my eye. The release highlighted a survey of small businesses conducted by Citibank Small Business with the somewhat surprising finding:

Three-quarters of small businesses say they have not found sites such Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn helpful for generating business leads or expanding business in the past year.”

On the face of it, this seems to fly in the face of several studies showing the tremendous impact of social media. Three studies, using online marketing tools used often by small business, come to mind:

1. Paid search

A recent study published by GroupM Search and comScore. showed that consumer’s exposed to a brand’s social media when combined with  paid search programs are 2.8 times more likely to search for the brand’s products when compared to users who only saw paid seach.

2. Blogs

 A HubSpot study of 795 small–to-medium sized businesses that blog found that the average “blogging” small company  gets 55%  more visitors.  Although not addressed in that study, considering that Twitter is micro-blogging,  one would expect it to raise a small business’ web traffic as well.  And certainly  some reports  (eg. O'Reilly's  “Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales”  indicate that it does.

3. Email Marketing

A study by Silverpop, found that combining social networking with email as well can be very powerful. Looking at email marketing reach of emails which included links to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter,  the study found

....shared emails evaluated for the study delivered an average increase in reach of 24.3 percent (based on original emails delivered), and this figure is expected to increase exponentially once sharing becomes mainstream.



Small Biz SocialMedia Wunderkin are Outliers?

 

You don’t have to go very deep into the social bookmarking sites, to find many fine super-list collections of small business case studies describing spectacular results from social media. Some of the better known include:

52Teas, an online tea e-tail site

CPA for Small Business

Coffee Grounds, a Houston coffee shop

 Kogi Taco Truck

Or check out Jason’s Fall’s recent roundup of small business case studies . 

Are these well-known small business case studies startling exceptions?  Are they the cherry-picked, well-trained poster children of the Marketing Elite, selling their Social Media Kool-Aid?

Well - as all technology bubbles are prone to encompass a greater sphere of influence than reality can measure, so too with small businesses and social media.

 

Why Would a Small Business Not be Benefiting from Social Media?

Why would small businesses report  finding little business advantage to using social media, given the remarkably positive results of the above studies?

Certainly, my own experience  with small companies is that they often do not have the resources to blog, Twitter or set up multiple presences on social networks. This in itself is no profound or new insight. The  HubSpot study mentioned that  a considerable number of the small businesses they sampled do NOT blog (nearly half of their total sample, or 736 companies, did not ).  But cultivating a blog is a well-known social media tactic for fully using Twitter and other social networks as a distribution mechanism. (Okay- now we are starting to get somewhere in understanding this...)

Many Small Businesses are Actually Living in Web 1.5

Following this line of thought, there are two simple explanations for the disparity:  First, in line with the fact that only 50% are blogging, many small businesses have unfortunately, not caught up with even the first generation of Web 2.0 tools to leverage the newer social networks and social media tools. 

Many Small Businesses do not understand Social Media integrates with All the Assets within their Current Online Marketing Strategy.

Second, and I believe more important, it may be that many small businesses are not  properly integrating their social media use into their other online marketing activities.

If there is anything we are learning about social media tools and social networks, it’s that they are  not stand-alone devices.  Rather, they are best used when combined in concert with other online marketing  tools and , certainly, when integrated into an overall online marketing strategy.  As the paid search and Silverpop email studies demonstrated well, the effectiveness of these well-known online tools is magnified by their co-use with social media.

Perhaps, stepping quietly and timidly into these tools, many small businesses are not aware of the synergies inherent to social media use:  Social bookmarking, blogging, participation and co-linking across multiple social networks are well-known to exert a compounding effect on a company's brand.

Are small businesses failing at the strategy level, i.e. not setting a social marketing plan in place?  Or are they failing at the tactical execution level, i.e. not integrating their online marketing tools properly?

They Can't Listen when They Aren't There

The answer may lie in the other intriguing statistic uncovered by the CitiBank study, namely,

86% [ of small businesses surveyed] said they have not used social networking sites for information or business advice.

 Wow! There's part of our answer.

If  the small company executives can’t find their way to the experts, surely, they cannot find good guidance to proper use of the technology, including the large cultural shift we are learning is part of the social media experience.

 A very self-fulfilling prophesy indeed!

Your thoughts?  (I'd  especially love to hear from you small businesses that have ventured into social media.)

 

 

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AuthorLisa Thorell | Comments Off |
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Monday
Jul062009

What if The Beatles and The Pope Used Twitter on the Same Day?

DateMonday, July 6, 2009 at 8:10PM

Posted on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 10:00 PM EST

Admittedly, that's an absurdist title. But, as I'll show, perhaps not so absurdist given recent postings on Twitter.

Believe me. I am a great fan of Twitter: I'm as ardent an advocate, passionista, social media evangelista as nary can be found in the Southeastern United States. I carefully curate my small Twitter feed. I endeavor to keep a pretty high S/N ratio of information flow. I promote Twitter as a highly-effective low-cost new media channel to clients. Why I don't even attach much credence to recent forecasts that Facebook (through its continuous "Follow Twitter's development path" updates) ultimately prevails over Twitter.

But something, well, specifically four tweets and their associated blog postings, struck me as a bit odd yesterday.

Mind you, not one of these postings alone seen on separate days would capture my extended attention. However, that all of them occurred within the same 24-hour period definitely captured the cross-correlators within my pattern recognition system.

It all started with the subject of a Friendfeed posting yesterday....

What If the Beatles Used Twitter?

This somewhat whimsical blog post of course asserted that The Beatles would have doubled their professional and personal fortune if they had been able to mirror their lives on the Net, much as celebrities MC Hammer [1 Mn+ followers] and @britneyspears [2.28 M followers] do today.

Okay- I'll buy that argument: Twitter access would have made Beatlemania larger than The Sloan Great Wall. (Hint: largest known physical structure in the Universe). Sure.

While still ruminating on that, oddly enough, I encounter a tweet leading me to...

What If the Buddha Used Twitter...

 

A thought-provoking, sometimes profound and definitely charming piece, Soren Gordhamer's article in yesterday's Huffington Post focuses on how the key figure in Buddhism would use Twitter. For instance, he writes...

 

Better than a thousand senseless verses is one that brings the hearer peace. -- The Buddha

The second [approach] is that the quality of our tweets matter much more than the quantity of them. One meaningful tweet a day is much better than posting numerous tweets that do not add value to the world. Of course, what "adds value" can be debated. There are a lot of silly tweets and links to videos that bring smiles to millions of people. Tweets do not have to be serious, but I think the Buddha would say that the real mission of life is not to produce large quantities of anything, including tweets, but it is instead to make a positive impact. One tweet that does that is better than a million that do not.

Yes, I thought, this too all rings true. And in fact Soren's observation is a great palliative against some of the depressing scores some of us get from the Twitter grader/scorer algorithms. To be ranked a "Great Tweeter", many of these programs insist you tweet with the frequency and ferocity of @cnnbrk (CNN Breaking News).

Perhaps Soren's observation even makes us look a bit more sympathetically at the AdAge twitter lashing that some marquis name ad agencies took yesterday --- for not tweeting enough or properly. (With some 8000+ bit.ly click-throughs to the original article link so far, there's clearly a swarm of on-lookers to watch old media get bashed for not being cool enough to fully and quickly enough imbibe their social media juice.)

Here I think: Hmm..Buddha should know. Even at the most conservative estimates, there are some 300 Mn to 1.3 Bn Buddhist followers worldwide. Compare that to Twitter's 10-20 Mn followers (loosely correcting the Comscore estimates against the 60% "Qwitter" factor from the A.C. Nielsen study. (Luckily, Twitter isn't competing with Buddhism for venture capital...)

Some hours later... I stumble upon a tweet from the intellectual Utne Reader, informing me...

Okay- this is getting big. The Beatles.  The Buddha.  The Pope.   How many marquis name co-brandings can be out there in one day alone? (Okay- I'm stretching the papal reference i know...)

What possible other illustrious groups can we associate the brand name Twitter with?

Surely, there are no higher authorities -- after all this is one 24-hour timeframe here, folks.

Well, rock my K.D. Payne sentiment analyzers, folks, if there wasn't one more in the daily queue...

Twitter Suggested for Nobel Prize

 

By the end of the day, no less than the Silicon Valley Business Journal confides that "Twitter Suggested for Nobel Prize". That's right, Mark Pfeile, a former Deputy National Security Advisor for the Bush administration, is apparently nominating Twitter for the Nobel Peace Prize. True enough- with foreign journalists and media thrown out of Iran, Twitter provided oft times the only window to the world to follow the post-election Iranian situation.

As The Christian Monitor put it,  "... in the past month, 140 characters were enough to shine a light on Iranian oppression and elevate Twitter to the level of change agent."

Most remarkably, Twitter's SMS news service included the participation of more technically-inclined Twitterers (eg. John Perry Barlow and the EFF) who aided in getting the news out of Iran via proxy servers. This provided us with a humanity-bonding linkage to news events that the world had not previously experienced before.  (So I hope it's clear: It is not at all my position to dispute that Twitter deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.)

What Then is the Point of All This?

 

My point here is simply that such a 24-hour tweet roundup of Twitter associations with some of the world's mega luminaries has me feeling --well-- just a bit of woozy "story stock" sickness.

It's as though someone were trying to pry my jaws open to swallow a 15-course meal including oysters rockefeller, roast duck, foie gras pate and baked trufled brie en croute - all down my gullet in one swallow. Frankly - it's feeling March 2000-ish (the period immediately preceding the dotcom bomb where new e-commerce stock valuations were running their highest).

Now what's particularly a little uneasy-making is that any one of the these stories has merit. But the gestalt of their conjoint appearance, while not arousing suspicion of a strategic PR initiative, at least makes one think that some of this confabulation is encouraged. Perhaps it provides a "psychic PR bridge" for Twitter investors, a much-needed bridge until the much-awaited hard-nosed monetization model appears.

To me, Twitter is a fabulous technology. But that doesn't mean it needs confabulation.

What do you think?

Is Twitter over-hyped? Do these articles centering on "What if [INSERT FAMOUS NAME HERE] Used Twitter" enlighten or obscure?

 

 

 

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AuthorLisa Thorell | Comments Off |
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Tuesday
May122009

10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media (guest post by Max Gladwell)

DateTuesday, May 12, 2009 at 3:15PM

Note from Lisa: This is a guest post from Max Gladwell, founder of #EcoMonday on Twitter.

Per Rob Reed, the web strategist and voice behind Max Gladwell, this post is part of a grand social media experiment to publish the first collective, simultaneous guest blog post from Max Gladwell. Rob's goal is for this article to be published simultaneously on 100 blogs, thus inspiring 100 simultaneous conversations from various points of view.

 

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they’ll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.

What’s most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it.

For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good. Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list.

Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It’s also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you’d like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

3510970897 1e71f53fee m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization Social Actions aggregates “opportunities to make a difference from over 50 online platforms” through its unique API. It recently held the Change the Web Challenge contest in order to inspire the most innovative applications for that API. The Social Actions Interactive Map won the $5,000 first prize. The result is a virtual tour of the world through the lens of social action. “People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak — all over the world. To capture the context of the where, this project uses sophisticated techniques to extract location information from full text paragraphs.” You can also join the Social Actions Community, which is powered by Ning…which now boasts more than one million individual social networks.

3511782550 e3a4f6715f m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to Twitter. The micro-blogging sensation was featured on our first two lists (a three-tweet), and it’s certain to be a fixture. From Tweetsgiving, the virtual Thanksgiving feast, to the Twestival, which organized 202 off-line events around the world to benefit charity: water, it’s become the de facto tool for organizing and taking action. Tweet Congress won the SXSW activism award, and celebrity Tweeps Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose Tweeted their two million followers about ending malaria. Max Gladwell recently initiated the #EcoMonday follow meme as a way to connect and organize the Green Twittersphere.

 

3510970955 e9abc77e79 m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media3. Visit White House 2.0: Inside of its first 100 days, the Obama administration has managed to set the historic benchmark for government transparency and accountability. The President’s virtual town hall meeting used WhiteHouse.gov to crowdsource questions from his 300 million constituents, complete with voting to determine the ones he’d have to answer. All told, 97,937 people submitted 103,978 questions and cast 1,782,650 votes. The White House continues to raise the bar with its official Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter channels. In so doing President Obama is not just setting the standard for state and local government in the U.S. He’s establishing the world standard. The Obama administration is spreading democracy not by force but through example. Because you don’t have to be an American citizen to be a friend or follower of White House 2.0.

3511782420 3e86500d1c m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media4. Claim your Zumbox: What happens when all mail can be sent and delivered online to any street address in a paperless form? That’s the big question for Zumbox, which has created an online mail system with a digital mailbox for every U.S. street address. And while the answer to that question remains to be seen, it promises to be as liberating as it is disruptive. A key quality for Zumbox is that it’s closed system much like that of Facebook, only instead of true identity it’s true address. This will enable people to better connect with their communities including their neighbors, local businesses, and the mayor’s office. The primary agent of change, though, might not be that this uses street addresses but that it enables direct and potentially viral feedback, which is a virtue that e-mail and the USPS do not offer. The first methods are to request exclusive paperless delivery and to block a sender, but others are certain to evolve such as real-time commenting and ways to share mail with friends, family, and colleagues. Welcome to Mail 2.0. (Disclosure: Zumbox is a client of Rob Reed, the founder of Max Gladwell.)

3511782298 aecb6a094e m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media5. Host a Social Media Event: This is the year of the social media event. No meaningful gathering of people is complete without an interactive online audience, especially when it’s so easy and cost effective to pull off. Essential tools include a broadband connection, laptop, video camera, projector, and screen. Add people and a purpose, such as entrepreneurship. Promote it through social media channels, and you have a social media event. A recent example in the green world is the Evolution of Green, which was hosted by Creative Citizen, a green wiki community. It celebrated the launch of a new Web property, EcoMatters, while also establishing a new Twitter tag. By posing the question, “How can we go from green hype to green habit?” and including the #GreenQ hashtag, it sparked a conversation between attendees and the Twittersphere in real time. Thus was born a new mechanism for getting answers to green questions via Twitter.

3511782346 d39787b982 m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media6. Travel the World: More than anyone else, Tim O’Reilly knows the potential for social media to change the world. In his opening keynote at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo, he called for a new ethic in which we do more with less and create more value than we capture. This provided the context for SalaamGarage founder Amanda Koster, whose presentation followed O’Reilly’s. The idea is that social media has enabled each of us to have an audience. Whether through Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or a personal blog, each of us can have influence and reach. What’s more, it can be used for good. SalaamGarage coordinates trips for citizen journalists (that means you) to places like India and Vietnam in conjunction with non-government organizations like Seattle-based Peace Trees. The destination is the story, as these humanitarian journalists report on the people they meet and discoveries they make. Their words, images, and video are posted to the social web to gain exposure and because these stories just need to be told.

3510970933 4215de025b m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media7. Build It on Drupal: You may not have noticed, but the open-source Drupal content management system (CMS) has quickly become the dominant player on the social web. While we still prefer WordPress as a strict blogging application, Drupal has emerged as the go-to platform for building scalable, community-driven Web sites. It powers Recovery.gov, a key part of President Obama’s commitment to transparency and accountability. PopRule uses it as a social news platform for politics. And Drupal will soon become the platform for Causecast, a site where “media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.” This is especially significant because Causecast CEO Ryan Scott is transitioning the site off of Ruby on Rails because Drupal has proved more efficient, user friendly, and cost effective. (Disclosure: Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed is co-founder of PopRule.)


3511782362 0de2746b66 m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media8. Green Your iPhone: Looking for an organic diner within biking distance that has a three-star green rating? There’s a app for that. It’s called 3rd Whale, and you can download it for free. (Except that the star rating is actually a whale rating.) Complete with Facebook Connect, this iPhone app locates green products and businesses in 30 major North American cities. It uses the iPhone’s dial function to select a category (food), sub-category (restaurants), and distance (walking, biking, or driving). In Santa Monica, this might give you Swingers diner for its selection of veggie and vegan fare. You could then get directions from your current location using the iPhone’s built-in Google map, rate your experience on the three-whale scale, and write up a quick review. 3rd Whale recently released a new feature that integrates green-living tips, which can show how much energy or waste you’ll save by taking a given action.

3510970833 cb57221988 m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media9. Unite the World Through Video: Matt’s dancing around the world video inspired many to tears. Today, more than 20 million people have viewed his YouTube masterpiece, where he performs a kooky dance with the citizens of planet earth. The most recent example of this approach is Playing for Change, which connects the world through song. The project started in Santa Monica with a street performance of the classic Stand By Me and expanded to New Orleans, New Mexico, France, Brazil, Italy, Venezuela, South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands. The project was superbly executed via social media, complete with a YouTube channel, MySpace, Facebook, and Blog. It’s received tremendous mainstream media exposure and also benefits a foundation of the same name.

3510971003 fb095231da m 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media10. Rate a Company: The conversation about corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes place across the social web on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube, but a central hub for this information and opinion is still to be determined. SocialYell seeks to address this by building an online community around the CSR conversation, where users can submit reviews of companies together with nonprofit organizations and even public figures like Michelle Obama. The major topics are the Environment, Health, Social Equity, Consumer Advocacy, and Charity. The reviews are voted and commented on by the community in a Reddit-like fashion with both up (Yell) and down (shhh) voting. The site is relatively new and still gaining traction, but there’s no question that a resource like this is needed to shine a bright light on CSR and and other related issues.

11. Publish a collective, simultaneous blog post on a universal topic: As Nigel Tufnel might say, this list goes to eleven. Let the #10Ways conversation begin…

Final note: This is Max Gladwell’s third list of “10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media.” The first was posted a year ago today on Sustainablog.org, and the sequel followed five months later. If a single headline can capture the Max Gladwell raison d’etre, this is it.

 

Postscript: Want a 12th way? A great way to go green and join the social media revolution is to check out Contxts, a text message replacement for business cards that only requires you have a text-messaging mobile phone.  Read  what LifeHacker wrote about it.


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Thursday
Apr232009

Poll: What is the biggest barrier to integrating social media into your business?

DateThursday, April 23, 2009 at 9:11AM

There's no doubt: Social Media use is on the rise...a frenetic rise. According to ReadWriteWeb, a new report about Enterprise adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, by Awareness, Inc., shows that employers are increasingly allowing staff to use social media applications in working hours. Awareness puts the figure at 69 percent of businesses in 2008, up from 37 percent last year.

Facebook users now number over 200 million. Twitter usage is growing in excess of 1000% month to month.

Yet many companies are holding back. What are your company's concerns? ROI? Risk of legal exposure? HR resources to own the responsibility? Tell us what you think by taking our quick poll below. (You'll be shown the cumulative results gathered so far.)

 

(Poll closes June 30, 2009)

Resources

You may also be interested in reading our Emerging Case Studies on Twitter and Participatory Marketing.

Or check out Chris Brogan's Delicious bookmarks on Social Media Case Studies.

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Saturday
Mar142009

Twelve Fab Twitter Reads for Newbies

DateSaturday, March 14, 2009 at 8:45AM

Okay, for the past couple of weeks now, I've done a bit of scrambling, poking, stumbling and head plants around on Twitter. While still cracking the egg to emerge to the next stage, I thought other new Twitterers would find some of these sites useful. (Note these are ordered in rough order of approachability.)   Source

1. TwitterTips Beginner's Guide: 10 Quick & Easy Steps to getting started. There's no faster way to get up and running than via this well-crafted guide. Daily following of @TwitterTips and @Twitips is highly recommended.

 

2. Ten Twitter Tips to Get you to the Top

Far beyond mastery ofthe mechanicals (commands and syntax), the tricky part for many is understanding how Twitter rewards openness, honesty and transparency. NerdwithSwag.com's worthy posting helps move you into the right twittertude to "get this", avoiding some embarassing gaffs.

 

3. TwipTips: Top Ten Niche Twitter User Lists

Updated regularly, this list covers the top ten people all Twitter beginners should be following as well as those in various niches, from finance to journalism to gardening.

 

4. Learning or Teaching Twitter Yourself: A Teacher's Guide

Who better to learn Twitter from than teachers?

 

5. Renegade ProBlog's Twitter Training Videos

I'm not into MLM like these folks, but if you are seeking a moderate pace and a free training video that leads you mouseclick by mouseclick, this is it.

 

6. Craving a Book on Twitter?

Check out pre-ordering Twitter for Dummies by Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen and Leslie Poston. (According to Amazon's website, it'ns not due out until Augusut 2009).

 

7. Ten Twitter Tools that Help you Work Smarter

Twitip's exceedingly popular and updated reference covers everything from ping.fm (broadcasting your tweets to other social networks like Facebook, MySpace, etc.) to Twittertools (integrating your tweets into your WordPress blog) to Tweetburner (see how popular your tweets are) to Quitter (helping you undestand when and why people stop following you.)

 

8. Twitter Fan Wiki

A comprehensive list of twitter apps, covering PC and Mac desktops to web apps.

 

9. TechCrunch's Top 21 Twitter Applications (according to Compete)

Want to know which particular apps are catching on? Based on data from Compete, TechCrunch tracked the top 21.

 

10. Tweetstats: Top Ten Twitter Applications of the Day

Hungry for more frequent updates? With an estimated 10-15 new Twitter apps being put out to market per day, you might want to check Tweetstats close-to-realtime watch where you can find the identities of the most popular apps as well as new and lesser known ones.

 

 

For recommended reading that speaks more to the fabric of Twitter, exploring some of its unique qualities and why it's addictive...

 

 

 

 

Source

 

11. Does Social Media Make Us Better, Happier, Nicer People?       From Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Pete Cashmore of Mashable, these two articles consider how Twitter and other social media tools are changing the way we act..

 

12. PR 2.0: In the Statusphere, A.D.D. Creates Opportunities for Collaboration and Education

Brian Solis' article will move you up a few log units on the Twitter learning curve, capturing most eloquently the essence of good Twitter usage.

It's the art of curation. Producing and posting updates that people find invigorating, insightful, entertaining, and enriching is how you build a meaningful foundation for which people to follow, admire, and trust you. You are a beacon for all that moves you.

Remember, the secret to attracting comments, likes or stimulating retweets is not governed by a formula, but instead by the intent and nature of sharing something worthy of response

The article goes on to explore Twitter in relation to other social media environments and tools like Google Search, giving new users some glimmer of what might happen next.

 

Please feel free to comment on any critical resources for Newbies I might have missed.

 

Related posts

Twitter: On Emerging Business Case Studies & Participatory Marketing

Skittles Skuttles Static Web Marketing

 

 

 

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Tuesday
Mar032009

Skittles Skuttles Static Web Marketing

DateTuesday, March 3, 2009 at 11:03AM

 

Wordlet of 100 tweets from Skittles.com, March 3, 2009

Taking a clue from twitter.zappos.com, and a March 2008 Modernista campaign, on Thursday, Mars Snackfood, maker of Skittles candy, redefined its home page, skittles.com, to contain the ongoing chatter of any Twitter remark containing the word "Skittles" in it.

Heralded as a bold high-risk marketing move, the Skittles website now has minimal company-controlled branding messages (too little say some), focusing on user-created contents of the Twitters and video posters.

Designed to appeal to its mostly teenage audience, the marketing results are shaking up the online advertising world. As described in today's WSJ piece,

The Skittles.com site doesn't usually generate much traffic. In January, Skittles.com attracted 20,000 unique U.S. visitors, according to comScore.

However, as the initial data from Buzzmetrics published in WSJ shows, the initial market results are phenomenal.

Adage.comhas pointed out this morning that Skittle's Facebook site is cooking with new friends, some 582,604 as of 11 am today. By noon (the posting of this article), Skittle's Facebook friends numbered 584,886, in other words, up more than 2000 in roughly an hour or so.

To quote Freddie Laker from today's AdAge article,

The reality is, Skittles has done this completely right. This solution was quick to produce, leverages existing communities that have great interest in the product and creates a platform that further engages the consumer. I would recommend any brand with minimal budget and the right kind of audience drop the brand sites they currently have, which I'm guessing aren't terribly effective.

For companies targetting a young demographic target and a minimal budget, the Skittles campaign is worthy of study.

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Wednesday
Feb252009

Twitter: On Emerging Business Case Studies & Participatory Marketing

DateWednesday, February 25, 2009 at 5:39PM

Posted 2.25.08. What's hotter than genome dating, celebrity sitings or cool nanotech muppet videos from UC Berkeley? It's Twitter, the latest social media tool redefining the marketing landscape. In case you haven't read CNN. the WSJ or NY Times lately, Twitter is a "social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other user's updates (known as "tweets"), text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length". (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

A brand building network? A public relations device? A market research tool? Twitter is all of these.

Inspired by Sarah Milstein's recent article in O'Reilly's Radar compiling business case studies backing Twitter's application to real business, I set out to find not only what hard-nosed data existed, but also under what conditions it seemed to be working.

To start, if you're dubious on the value of Web 2.0 tools as the preferred new platform for corporate communication, you might want to check out the McKinsey Quarterly's Six New Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work. (Perhaps even more telling, check out how much time McKinsey itself is spending on Twitter...). You might also note that as of Feb 20th, the Obama administration put out an OMB announcement mandating the use of RSS feeds to report the uses of the money by takers. (Much cheaper than a SOX implementation, but more on this later....) And as to Twitter, an indicator of its rich green field opportunity is the estimated 10-15 Twitter apps that are put on the shelf daily.

So what data exists that Twitter is having a significant effect on conventional business metrics- items like revenue, web traffic and brand-building measures? Where do we see results and how is that happening? What are the mechanisms? Does Twitter per se achieve results or isn't it interacting with pre-existing core assets of the company?

Case Study 1.  Dell Computer's $1 Million in Twitter-associated Revenue

What first caught people's attention was a Fall 2008 announcement by Dell's Bob Pearson, VP of Communities and Conversations,  that the company credits Twitter sales alerts with over $1 Mn in incremental revenue. Dell's Twitter followers receive messages when discounted products are at the company's Home Outlet Store where they can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others. Beyond coupons, Dell also credits that they have successfully identified and acted upon customer concerns up to three weeks earlier than previously, thanks to blog and social media commentary.

For a full discussion of Dell's social media strategy, check out  Forrester Research's interview, where we found this nice video interview.

Case Study 2  Twitter.Zappos.Com: When Every Employee Becomes a Customer Service Rep

Perhaps one of the most superb busness uses of Twitter is exemplified by Zappos, the Amazonian style e-commerce company stocking over 3 million shoes, handbags, clothing item and accessories from over 1100 brands.

The 24-year old CEO Tony Hsieh, not only twitters himself (with some 140,500 followers), but has encouraged its Zappos' employees to twitter, as can be seen on their twitter.zappos.com web page.

 

Zappos now claims it is twittering with over 9 million customers, or 3% of the U.S. population. The company;s efforts with social media networking before the public eye, including blogs, Zappos.TV, Facebook and Twitter have resulted in over $1 Bn in sales, 75% of which are from repeat customers.

 

Now it shouldn't be surprising that a CEO who sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for $270 Mn should grasp the importance of driving web traffic through well-placed self-linking in public conversations. A web page like twitter.zappos.com is worthy of study as the "secret sauce": It drives inbound links, its employees create a good deal of internal web links -- all magnets for search engine activity, in particular, raising Google Page Rank.

But as much as Zappos spectacular results have surely been enabled by Twitter, it should be pointed out that Zappos, like Dell, is delivering on some mighty good customer service offers in those tweets. The company offers free shipping both ways, has a 365-day return policy nad supports a call center that's always open. Then there's outrageously wonderful benefit that Zappos randomly bestows free upgrades to customers.

So those believing that Twitter per se is a magic technology bullet are over-simplifying: Twitter can clearly magnify great customer service, but the offers, the compelling content, still need to be there to fully experience the full magnification of this great new social lens.

Will large companies get the ramifications of Tony Hsieh's battle cry "Customer service is a branding opportunity?" The twitter.zappos.com page is a mash-up: It's not only a customer service forum, it's a public relations, branding and search engine attraction platform. Companies that continue to view these functions as separate corporate silos aren't going to "get it".

For companies new to Twitter, it's time well spent to view Tony Hsieh's slideware show on exposing your company as much as possible with Web 2.0 tools. (Inspired? Zappo's Quick Start Guide provides a highly approachable description of how to begin.

Zappos - National Society of Leadership and Success - 1-27-09
View more presentations from zappos. (tags: zappos eo)

Case Study 3   Early Twitter Advertisers Get Subscriber Count Windfall

Another great example of the new green field opportunities offered by Twitter was described in a recent LA Times piece covering the impact of Twitter's new "suggested users" feature. To help new users get started, Twitter began offering this feature, a link list of showcased websites and personalities. Putting aside the fact that this new feature did arouse some protestations, the latent power of Twitter advertising was revealed in the traffic counts of the beneficiary companies. Per TwitterCounter, TechCrunch, already one of the internet's most popular tech blogs, jumped from 41,000 to 111,000 Twitter followers in one month while the Guardian's technology page jumped from 4000 followers to 66,000. (It's doubled this already.) According to the LA Times piece, @GuardianTech added new users at a pace 300% faster than the previous two weeks and The New York Times Twitter account increased its subscriber base by a factor of six - to 145,000.

Case Study 4: Gary Vaynerchuk: Personality + Wine + Web 2.0 Tools = Twitter Force

Following on the Dell-Zappos theme that it takes more than a social media tool per se to make a good business use of it, let's look at Gary Vaynerchuk and Wine LibraryTV.

First, it's important to realise that well before the advent of Twitter, Vaynerchuk had already brought up his family's wine business from $4.5 Mn in sales to $45 Mn. Today, Veynerchuk hosts 38,000 followers. More significantly, he is beginning to monetize his Twitter and other social media use, striking a deal with Revision 3 whih is producing 3 minute segments of Wine LibraryTV.

While Gary's Keynotes  ar well worthy of watching to understand his approach, his Feb 19 video post really captures best who he is and attitude toward traditional media and new media. (Do watch it: he video comments back to Twitter posters.)

What are the operating rules that have made Wine LibraryTV such a social media phenom? Even though this is a near one-man show, there are 4 rules that Vaynerchuk goes by that we believe translate up to corporate use of Twitter. (Most of these have been abstracted from Gary's videos. He's writing a book on social media, in case i did'nt quite get these right..)

Rule 1. Use the Social Media Tools, All the Tools.

Arriving at Tumblr-driven GaryVayNerChuk.com, it's clear what's part of the secret sauce accompanying Vaynerchuk's wine. There's just a plethora of social media tools, applications and widgets here. Seemingly, every bit as much as Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion or Scobleizer, both of whom make a business of social media per se.

Rule 2. Offer "Free-mium". Pour It On Generously.

In one of his keynote addresses, Gary explains that he's a great believer in "free-mium", namely, giving away stuff for free. But what stuff? The viral hook that keeps Gary's followers hooked is sure, the guy knows tons about wine and enthusiastically shares it, but he's also a great source of tracking and knowing about the latest social media tools. In other words, if you follow Gary, you know where the new hot channel and tools are - whether it's Twitter, Tumblr or probably something new next week.

Rule 3. Be Completely Transparent.

Observing Wine LibraryTV, one is struck by the intense blend and merging of personality, product and media. This stems from Vaynerchuk's philosophy of imbuing his brand DNA into his products and services. After all, the product idea came from you - it's your inner child. Twitter and web video just expose your inner child publicly. Transparency, and with that comes authenticity and honesty, is part of the juice behind people's attraction to these tools. And part of being transparent means you let the rough edges show. When Gary's Cork'd  blog got hacked, he was open about it, getting interviewed in TechCrunch's coverage of the story. And in the end, he ends up looking all the more human for it.

(Sidenote: It is also the transparency factor that drove the Obama administration's use of RSS feeds as a mandate to taking stimulus money. If everybody can watch the Stimulus Money RSS channel, we all know where the money's going.)

Rule 4. "Don't Listen to Anybody, Listen to Everybody" (Gary Vaynerchuk)

There areat least two meanings behind this great quote. First and obvous, it's clear that savvy business people do watch what people are twittering about their company. In fact, there's probably no faster way to convert executive management to Twitter than to take them to seach.twitter.com and type in the company name.

Second meaning. It's impossible (especially if your real business is selling wine or shoes) to stay up on all the social media tools real-time, but if you've added value to your followers, among those "followers" are "leaders", people who have tools, insights and news relevant to your business to share with you. This is the true genius of Twitter business use: Even the smallest of compaies can have 10,000 low-overhead marketing and customer service evangelists.

Other Great Examples?

There are many other profoundly great examples of Twitter use contributing to real business results.

  • Ushering in a new era of fundraising, Pistachio Consulting's combined use of Twitter and micro-lending to raise $25,000 for a nonprofit called charity:water URL. In four day, @wellwishes had raised $5000 among its Twitter followers. It also earned Pistachio and Laura Fitton a mention on HuffPo.
  • Combining Twitter with a contest, domain registrar NameCheap raised web traffic 10% in December, resulting in a 20% increase in sold domain registrations.
  • Then there's a host of small business case studies emerging.

 

Take Away Lessons

Lesson 1. Judging from Dell and Zappos, there's good support for the first of six factors identified inMcKinsey's Six Factors Behind Using Web 2.0, namely, "The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top". Executive management not only sets precedent for behavior, it provides best practice examples of how to use the tools with customer, the public and others.

Lesson 2. The Dell and Zappos case studies also support McKinsey's factor, "What's in the Workflow Gets Used". These organizations have embedded Twitter use into their customer service operations with compelling results.

Lesson 3. Effective use of participatory technology leverages not just "cognitive surplus" or the untapped potential from employees, but from customers and partners as well. Wine LibraryTV's deal with Revision 3 as well as "free-ium" cool tool trading with outsiders illustrates this well.

Lesson 4. Companies with great brands adopt the latest brand-expanding technologies early. This is perhaps the greatest lession of the Twitter business success stories: It is no longer sufficient to have a great brand inside your industry, companies have to be seen as technology leaders, specifically adopting the latest brand communication channels. And today that channel is Twitter.

Ironically, a great number of highly sophisticated tech companies must be realizing at this point that the marketing benefits of Web 2.0 are being best leveraged by a shoe company and an alcoholic beverages supplier.

In the end, the trick to social media tools is no trick at all: Twitter just happens to be the latest green field marketing channel. There are many more new social media channels to come. As Gary V might say, you have to be ready to sample them, swirl and savor them in your mouth (perhaps biting a few rocks and pebbles along the way), and then spit the whole thing out with a ferocious force.

For companies that can't ascend to recognizing that marketing has become 360 degrees of mass participation? To paraphrase Francis Fukayama from "Are We Approaching the End of History?", there's the danger of being "still in history", the equivalent of being left behind after the Rapture, where everyone else will have already transcended to a celestial "participatory marketing" plane.

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