Our pals at Social:IRL are sponsoring another night presentation/Q&A with Jason Falls to commemorate his new book co-authored with Erik Deckers called No Bulls**t Social Media and Spiral16 will be there!

This informal presentation will take place January 31 at 6pm in Wichita, KS at the Junior League of Wichita Headquarters (6402 E 12th, Wichita 67206) and everyone who registers gets a free copy of Jason’s book, which is full of great, no-nonsense advice and practical case studies and examples for how to make social media work for your business.

We interviewed Jason Falls last summer about how to overcome some of the most common hurdles that marketers face when adopting social media for business and he had some great advice about measuring your success:

Measurement is, at least in comparison [to monitoring], passive and reflective. Did we get what we set out to get? You do it before, during and after campaigns or efforts, or in intervals during the calendar with one question in mind: How much closer are we to the goal or goals?

Assigning social media ROI is difficult but it can be done. After reading Jason’s book and seeing him speak recently, Spiral16′s own Robert Madison wrote an insightful post called “7 Things Social Media Can Do For Your Business,” based on some of Jason’s ideas. Check it out here.

Anyway: Robert, Michelle Lamar, and I are planning on heading to Wichita on January 31 to hear Jason speak and interact with Wichita’s social community and we’re pretty excited.

Spiral16 is proud to sponsor this event and we hope to see you there!

Jason Falls: No BS Social Media Marketing
Wichita, KS (Junior League of Wichita Headquarters, 6402 E 12th, Wichita 67206)
January 31, 2012, 6pm-9pm
Registration just $35.00

When starting up a social media account for your company, the most important thing is to match the tool with the goal. Lots of companies have a presence on Twitter, but what are they really getting out of it from a business perspective?

Often times, the overwhelming amount of pitfalls inherent in the Twitter platform may even keep some from ever logging in in the first place. It’s a very specific kind of communication device with its own unique limits and strengths.

(Here at Spiral16, we allow you to measure Twitter separately, away from the rest of social media sites for that same reason.)

Jean-Christophe Barré and Dr. Andreas Schroeter have written a 32-page ebook called  Twitter Business Guide: Communication and Marketing, and its shared below.

This Twitter guide helps you with setting up the account properly, Twitter slang, and tons of communication and marketing tips.

Check it out:

Twitter Business Guide

Thanks to Scott Monty for the tip!

What’s New for Social Media in 2012?

It’s reaching the end of the year and people will be looking to new studies that point the way to trends in social and business for 2012. Two recent studies point the way to some of the trends that companies should watch for in the coming year.

The new report from Pivot is called The State of Social Marketing 2011 – 2012 and it has some interesting findings. Along with The Hudson Group, Pivot surveyed 181 brand managers, agency professionals, and experts to find out how they plan to reach their social consumers in 2012. The results can serve as a benchmark for leaders to assemble their business strategies over the next year.

Pivot asked if respondents had a clear picture of who their social consumer is. According to the report, “an astounding 77% said yes.”

This is interesting because it is all perception on the part of the companies. This means that the majority of these professionals have some sort of web and/or social media monitoring tool and have set up a listening program to figure out what their customers are saying online. That step is absolutely essential. I’d also like to stress how your listening program should cover a wider perspective than simply what is being said on Facebook and Twitter. Organic searches and links from other websites are still driving more traffic to blogs than anything else.

Another one of the best ways to figure out who your social consumers are is simple: Ask them. When the Pivot team explored specifically if respondent organizations asked social consumers what they expect from engagement,  53% said they haven’t really asked. Almost 35% said they had asked, which is a lot different from the 77% who said they had a clear picture of their social consumers. Does that mean 42% of them are involved in web and social media monitoring?

100% of respondents say increased sales is a primary goal for 2012, but there are many other practical applications for social media that also ranked highly.

As business leaders plan next year’s social marketing programs, 100%, agree on the need to increase sales, but social media programs and campaigns can affect so much more than that. As we have found here at Spiral16, there are all kinds of ways that businesses get value out of social media. Not surprisingly, consumer engagement, lead generation and brand lift are also towards the top of the list. According to Pivot:

Influencing consumer behavior is at just over 60 percent, establishing points of influence at just under 60 percent, and discovering points of relevance shown at 40 percent spotlight how new touchpoints will play a role in driving desirable outcomes and experiences. The overall sense of the responses is a tilt away from “soft” benefits toward harder edged benefits that drive the bottom line. Surprisingly, improving customer service and support was toward the bottom of the list, but it is promising to see that the research does show that businesses are placing it in the upper half of 2012 planning.

My feeling is that one reason customer service ranked so low here is that many of the respondents feel like they are already addressing that concern sufficiently. Customer service is one of the first social marketing applications that active brands can do, especially if they have an active consumer base on Twitter.

Meanwhile, the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs published a popular study on B2B content marketing put out their B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends report, which looks at the specific kinds of content that B2B businesses are creating to attract customers.

Just as they found in last year’s study, “article posting and social media (excluding blogs) are the most popular tactics and are currently used by 79% and 74% of B2B marketers, respectively.” The tactics that are seeing an increased adoption rate this year are:

• Blogs (27% increase)
• White papers (19% increase)
• Videos (27% increase)

B2B businesses are seeing results from all kinds of different social content marketing tactics. Expect this trend to continue into 2012 as more businesses catch on.

It’s no surprise, all signs point upward for social marketing again this year and the studies show that more and more marketers and agencies are figuring out how to find value online. How far are you in your organization?

The social consumers are out there. Have you been able to make gains using social media? The first step in any program should be listening on the web – have you started?

For healthcare companies, monitoring social media and the web is more important than ever. Listening to what people are saying online in the field of healthcare helps focus your business priorities–saving you valuable time and resources.

According to a study by the nonprofit research firm Pew Internet & American Life Project, the third biggest use for the Internet — just behind a general search and checking your email — is searching for online health information.

Spiral16 has been helping health brands, facilities, and service providers understand their social media and web presence online for over four years. Our CEO Tracy Panko and Analytics Manager Aaron Weber recently spoke to a group at the American Marketing Association about online monitoring for healthcare companies, and how listening can inform strategy as well as more efficiently directing resources to their audience.

The research in the presentation shows why online monitoring is extremely valuable for companies in the healthcare sector as well as spotlighting some of the statistics behind the growing consumer demand. The slidedeck of the presentation Social Media Listening and Strategy for Healthcare is below.

1. Understand your digital presence. Gather basic data for setting benchmarks, determine where your audience lives online, and audit your messaging.
2. Apply online data to healthcare initiatives.
3. Decide what to listen for. Emergency Services? Conversation around specializations and services? Community education or events? Doctor reputations or c-suite personalities? Sentiment around your facility, services, or physicians? General conversation around a facility?

Do you know your legal rights when it comes to social media? It’s important to understand where you stand legally with what you share on social networks.

Employers and employees have an interesting relationship with online public information on social media platforms. Some businesses still block social media from work.

According to a recent study, 43 percent of businesses have dealt with “employee misuse of social networks at work” and about one-third have “taken disciplinary action against employees for misusing social networks.” But, it turns out, they have no problem using social media to litigate.

Employers and employees alike must understand that social media posts may be used as evidence in a court of law. Two recent court cases further spell out what online information can be used as evidence against former employees.

From Cobizmag.com:

In Indiana, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a sexual harassment suit on behalf of several employees who claimed emotional distress resulting from the alleged wrongdoing. As part of its defense, the employer sought to discover information from the plaintiffs’ Internet social networking site profiles and other communication from their Facebook and MySpace accounts. The court decided that this information was discoverable by the employer because the plaintiffs already had shared the information with at least one other person through private messages and perhaps a larger number of people through postings.

Similarly, in New York, the court rejected an employee’s assertion that her social media activity was private and could not come out as part of the lawsuit. She had sued her employer claiming discrimination based upon her disability. The employer sought to use her Facebook content as evidence that she was not disabled at all. Rejecting plaintiff’s privacy concerns, the court explained that there is no right to privacy in social media content, adding that when a person chooses to disclose information on a social media site, this act of sharing such information weakens her ability later to claim that information is protected by privacy.

You read that right: There is no right to privacy in social media content. Yikes.

You may be asking at this point whether that includes private messages and the like. That’s a good question. With all of the controversy over privacy settings on Facebook, you would think that things meant for small or private audiences should be protected under the law. Otherwise, what’s the point of worrying about what is private and what is not?

The Secured Communications Act may hold the answer, although it was enacted in 1986. According to Daliah Saper of Saper Law Offices in Chicago, “A posting may be private if it is on a password protected site, or the poster has high security settings that prevent outside users from viewing the site.”

So what is the final answer? How much of what you post online can be used as evidence in a court of law? How about “all“? An Indiana federal court recently had this ruling:

In a situation where the employer sought access to its employee’s entire body of social networking activity on Facebook and MySpace to seek evidence about the employee’s emotional distress claim … The court determined all of the employee’s social networking activity must be turned over to the employer including any profiles, postings, or messages, status updates, wall comments, causes joined, groups joined, activity streams, and blog entries that reveal, refer, or relate to any emotion, feeling, or mental state.

As complete as this list is, notice is doesn’t include “private messages.”

In Saper’s excellent Slideshare presentation Legal Implications of Social Media, however, she points to a case where an Appeals court said that “an employer’s secret monitoring of a password-protected website could be a violation of the federal Stored Communications Act.

What do you think? Is everything you share on a social network up for grabs? Should the courts allow private messages to be mined for evidence?

— More Social Media Legal Resources —

National Center for State Courts’ Social Media and the Courts Resource Guide.

RocketLawyer podcast: Legally Easy Episode 29 — Facebook, Twitter, and the Laws of Social Media

Here’s an embed of Saper’s presentation:

** Special thanks to Mike Burns and Dawn Dawson from Social Media Club of Kansas City for starting this discussion in the SMCKC Facebook group.

I’ve been doing PR and marketing for 15 years and there’s one thing I learned real quick:

The easier you can lay out the pertinent information about your product or service, the more likely you’ll get coverage.

Simple as that. Nobody has time, and that includes you. Why not make it simpler for everybody?

Here are two quick tips to get you more press coverage:

Fact sheets can be repurposed into one-sheet media overviews easy peasy.

1) Re-Purpose Fact Sheet into Media Overview One-Sheet

I found that with tech and biotech clients I was able to significantly increase my press coverage when I used a media overview one sheet in my press kit.  You already have this info all pulled together on your company Fact Sheet that you have in PDF format!

Take the info that you already have on the FactSheet.pdf and re-purpose this info on Media Overview page. It seems redundant to do this, but it makes sense for three reasons:

• It’s good for SEO–the basic company fact info is on the web, which can be crawled, versus on a pdf one sheet, where it can’t be.
• Having an easy-to-find, easy-to-read “overview” helps spoon-feed reporters, directing them to the areas of the website they need to visit first.
• If you simply added the Media Overview sheet to your current ‘news’ section, as the first page under the ‘news’ category, I think you would find the small effort would be worth it.

2) Pitch Engine

I love Pitch Engine. I want to marry it.  It’s an amazing but very inexpensive way to boost brand awareness and give reporters a multimedia view of your company.  Unlike traditional wire services, PitchEngine enables users to openly create and share their own content, while including images, videos and attachments at no cost.  The service is WAY inexpensive, when compared to the price of a single press release and allows you to create social and search optimized content that is consumer-facing – like digital flyers, press releases – including video, pictures, and links — all on one page.

Facts on Pitch Engine
(They should really hire me because I talk up the company so much.) But I love the fact that it’s only $39 per month for unlimited pitches and I’ve found that once I begin using Pitch Engine for a brand, these pitches are picked up more by the media, the media interact more with the brand on Twitter and Facebook, and Pitch Engine pitches come up on the first page in Google.

Here’s a pitch we did on Pitch Engine for Spiral16 before I worked here full time.  I used to work for the agency that handled the Spiral16 marketing and I fell in love with the tool since I’m such a data geek. This is a great example of how you can mix images and video in a Pitch Engine release.

How do I integrate social media into my company efficiently? It’s a question everybody needs to answer. Yesterday was a day to ponder this intensely.

Do you ever have one of those days when you get so much information that you’re not sure your brain can hold it all anymore?

Jeremiah Owyang laid out a research-based plan for companies to achieve 'escape velocity' and scale social media for business success.

I had one of those days at the SocialIRL Social Business Summit, featuring Altimeter Group‘s Jeremiah Owyang and Kansas City’s best and brightest social media adopters sitting together in one room at the KCI Embassy Suites.

For anyone interested in organizing their company from the ground up to exist as a social organization, Jeremiah provided some of the most pragmatic, in-depth recommendations I’ve seen on the subject. This was not a touchy-feely, pat-ourselves-on-the-back social media conference. This was a hands-on workshop featuring research from Owyang, Christine Tran, and others at the Altimeter Group, organized in a way that takes you step by step through the process.

Through this extensive and ongoing research into what’s happening in the social media world for businesses, Jeremiah has identified trends, best practices, metrics (KPIs), downsides, upsides, case study examples — and ultimately — recommendations for any company who wants to innovate in the space.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably already know that embracing social media and having a comprehensive digital strategy is essential for companies these days. Like Forrester said, it’s Adapt or Perish. But rarely do you see a comprehensive plan laid out for businesses like we did yesterday.

In fact, it was waaaaaaaaaaaay too much information to share in one blog post here. Alas, I have tried.

Justin Meyer from KCI was one of the many attendees who participated in the interactive Social Business Summit workshop yesterday afternoon.

Where Are We Now?
- Most social media programs have existed less than 3 years
- 77% of social media programs are novice or intermediate
- ROI measurements are the top internal priority for companies using social media

Getting Ready Internally
- There are 5 organizational models for socializing your business: Decentralized, centralized, hub and spoke, multiple hub and spoke, and holistic. Most are centralized or hub and spoke. Hub and spoke is a good one to shoot for because it is scalable. Get out of the decentralized model ASAP!
- You want to be able to move from fragmentation and decentralization to coordination where business units can deploy social media content on their own.
- Draft a social media policy. (Here are some examples: Intel, Cisco)
- Average budgets for social media: Novices – $66,000, Intermediate companies – $1,002,000, Advanced – $1,364,000
- Put together a crises response plan and a social media triage (similar to the US Air Force triage)
- Educate employees with best practice sharing, encourage participation in conferences, memberships in professional clubs.
- Research. Find a web monitoring platform that suits your objectives. Conduct a brand audit, run competitive analysis, identify customer pain points, and map socialgraphics. (May I suggest that Spiral16 is excellent in this capacity?)
- Get this data to your execs, stakeholders, and community management team. (Each group will need data specific to their group–here’s Jeremiah’s ROI Pyramid.)

Owyang's ROI Pyramid shows what types of social data need to disseminated where in your company (link above).

Five Goals Will Help Define Your Strategy – How many apply to you?
- Listen and learn with free and paid monitoring tools. (Don’t just search your brand/product. Get creative. Search customer pain points, your executives, negative terms, and competitors.)
- Start a dialogue. Engage with your customers. (Examples: Southwest, AARP, Red Cross)
- Turn customers into advocates/brand ambassadors. This can be scalable. Tap into your social graph and ask them to share. (Examples: Edible Arrangements, ElevenMoms)
- Support your customers directly, or by facilitating peer-to-peer support using social technologies. (Examples: HyattConcierge,Twelpforce)
- Advanced companies can take risks and innovate. This is the hardest to do – improve products and services based on info you get in social, but make sure to set realistic expectations (Examples: Dewmocracy, TurboTax InnerCircle, My Starbucks Idea)

I haven’t even gone into SocialCRM or “gamification,” which Owyang insists is the next big thing in social. Whew!

Scott Gulbransen from Applebee's, Julie Weeks from Boulevard, Justin Gardner from AMC Theatres shared insight on how their companies are using social media successfully.

The Panels, featuring leaders in the biggest locally-based companies, were very informative too. Here are some nuggets:

@julieweeks said that even though @Boulevard_Beer can’t sell beer directly to customers, when she calculates social ROI, beer sales are absolutely a factor.

@jpgardner spent a long time listening in the digital space first to research for @AMCTheaters, then jumped in with both feet. One recent success: an influential movie-blogger contest for AMC Stubs.

@sdgully said that @Applebees goal is bringing ‘neighborhood’ to life in the digital space and is very proud of their Honor a Veteran program.

Jake Jacobson from @garmin said that social media is a great opportunity for direct engagement, and although the math is fuzzy, the sales funnel can be tied to ROI.

One challenge for @jginkc at @Sprint is trying to profile an engageable customer vs. one that can’t be reached, but sometimes knowing they are listening is enough.

@zenaweist has been successful in helping @HRBlock move social media into compliance, product, customer service – not just marketing. Both she and @jginkc stressed the importance of making sure you go where your customers are, even outside of Facebook and Twitter.

Congratulations to Ben Smith and Jeremiah for putting on such an information-intensive and helpful day of learning. I’m sure I am not the only one leaving with tons of actionable advice and ideas!

Digital strategist Jeff Bunch, who was sitting right in front of me, also blogged about the event. Check it out here: Social:IRL Social Business Summit with Jeremiah Owyang quite the event

Are you trying to figure out how to make sure your social media program is integrated into the business strategy of your company? Are you having trouble scaling social media across multiple departments?

Jeremiah Owyang, partner of customer strategy at Altimeter Group, will be providing some valuable insight in a series of customized, hands-on workshop sessions on Tuesday April 26, at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Kansas City. The event is Social IRL‘s Social Business Summit, and I couldn’t be more excited to attend. (You can too — it’s not too late!)

I’ve seen Jeremiah speak before and his knowledge is very deep and his advice is practical and helpful.

From Social IRL:

This event offers a truly unique opportunity for anyone serious about implementing social media for their business or clients, to go well beyond the typical conference keynote and actually spend a full day learning from Jeremiah in an interactive hands on workshop.

The event will have a strong focus on strategy and research, and of taking a business-objectives-first approach to achieving and executing scalable social programs. Jeremiah will lead us through sessions that present a framework, include hands on workshops, group collaboration, and interactive Q&A.

Owyang has published a lot of helpful information on his Web Strategist blog recently as well that I’m sure will be covered (if you want to prepare), including a Program Plan for Developing a Social Media Learning Program at Your Company.

This slideshow above about Prioritizing Your Social Strategy Efforts for Scale is especially interesting because it helps companies get away from being tied to the uncoordinated and fragmented “social media help desk” and can help your social media program grow and soar.

It offers five steps to formalize how your social business program will be organized. Check out the presentation for more.

Anyway, I’ll be at the Social Business Summit on Tuesday, along with attendees from at least 10 states to listen, participate, and learn. Will you?

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions should be on your must read list. Enchantment is one of the best books that I’ve read in a long time because it reveals why being honest, trustworthy, and nice can be rewarding in many ways.

Enchantment is definitely a must-read for anyone interested in social media engagement.

From how to launch a product or idea to using technology to enchant others, the book offers simple tips in snack-size portions.

The “golden rule” of treating other people as we want to be treated ourselves is a thread you’ll find throughout Enchantment. Author Guy Kawasaki lays out in very concrete terms why an altruistic approach is an effective way to do business.

Kawasaki is the former chief evangelist of Apple Computer, co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. According to  Kawasaki:

“When you enchant people, your goal is not to make money from them or get them to do what you want, but to fill them with great delight.”

Two of the key ingredients of being enchanting are that you must be likeable and be trustworthy. Unless you’re likeable, it’s extremely difficult for people to trust you. If you deserve and gain the genuine trust of others, you can do great things. Kawasaki tells you all the stuff your grandfather or mom always told you: Be nice, treat others like you’d like to be treated.

This book is great guide for how to take your idea, concept or product and present it so other people will see your point of view. If you want to enchant, you must offer something that matters to other people. Once again, Kawasaki’s advice is based on common sense, but this basic idea is often forgotten!

Enchantment is a positive, upbeat book on personal interaction. If you interact with people, this book is for you.

You can buy Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions at Amazon.com.

It’s a common problem: You’ve been tasked with creating an online video for your company. The thing is, you have very little in the way of budget and you think the term “key lighting” refers to the mini-flashlight on your car keys.

Luckily, the Kansas City 2011 Business Communicators Summit is here for you.

Are you wondering how to deal with crisis management in the rich new-media world? Are you curious how to produce good quality online videos for your company? Has one of your employees Twitter accounts caused you more trouble than they are worth?

Last week,  at the National World War I Museum at the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, KC/IABC‘s conference answered those questions and many more.

Dealing with social media crises, questionable business ethics, and producing great company videos for online distribution are common issues in today’s workplace. I’ll present some more helpful highlights from the day-long event here. (Friday’s blog was about how to get blog traffic and keep readership.)

Avoid shooting interviews outdoors – You must have control of your light and audio.

Making Online Video for Your Company With A Small Budget

The class on basic tips in creating online video was presented by Darren Mark and Kevin Schwarzenberger from Scenic Road Productions, and they did a fantastic job of giving you a tip-to-tail snapshot of DIY business video.

Darren and Kevin recommended Flip, Nikon, and Canon as brands with consumer-grade cameras that shoot good video. An optical zoom is always better then a digital zoom, and something with audio and iris controls is a plus. Storage is a big problem, so get an external hard drive so your video doesn’t take over the rest of the data on your computer!

Tips for Shooting Interviews

1. Blank walls are ugly – Go for something with depth of field in the background.
2. Avoid shooting interviews outdoors – You must have control of your light and audio.
3. Never shoot in front of a window – Rather, have the window shine light on their face.

Tips for Shooting Non-Interviews

1. Shooting outdoors is great for everything else because video can look more polished with outdoor light.
2. The tripod is your best friend – Don’t pan if you can avoid it and keep the shot level.
3. If you must use handheld, don’t use the in-camera zoom – Just move closer to the subject, keeping your elbows against your body for better balance.

The Unpaid Journalists of the Future – When Bloggers Attack

Kelly McBride calls the Fifth Estate an “opportunity and a threat.”

Have you had a run-in with a member of the media who blogs from his parent’s basement and caused you a big headache? Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute gave a very interesting lecture about the rise of what she is calling the “Fifth Estate.” She called these online firestarters an “opportunity and a threat.”

Bloggers and new media members who see themselves as outside of the mainstream or official media can be considered members of the Fifth Estate. When United broke someone’s guitar and didn’t solve one man’s problem, 10 million people found out about it.

Kelly offered a couple of helpful dos and don’ts if you or your company becomes a target:

Don’t be defensive.
Don’t ignore it.
Don’t fight it with spin or misinformation.
Do respond immediately.
Do apologize and/or admit error.
Do it personally and publicly.

What To Do When Business Waters Get Murky

Have you ever had that little voice in the back of your head tell you something’s not right? Eric Morgenstern of Morningstar Communications hosted a great breakout session about business ethics called Your Professional GPS: Navigating the Twists and Turns of Business Ethics.

The shoreline of ethics is constantly shifting and Eric’s overall rule about that situation (in analogy format, of course) is “When walking on the edge of the ethical ocean, don’t let your knees get wet.”

Good advice from Eric Morgenstern: "When walking on the edge of the ethical ocean, don't let your knees get wet."

The session was very interactive and full of practical situations and sharing, but the one part of the conversation that probably applies to most companies right now is the rise of social media and what that means for employees. Here’s a rule for all employees of a company to remember:

Don’t Be An Idiot: Everyone Adheres to the Code of Conduct

Whether its laid out in specific writing or not, chances are that if you say something that violates your company’s code of conduct rules — you know, that little piece of paper you signed when you got hired and never fully read — you can be fired. It’s as simple as that.

Companies that deal in social media at all should have something built into their codes and those that don’t probably still have the legal precedents to fire you.

Always remember that you are representing your company, especially if you are a business communicator. It’s really just a simple case of thinking before you write something on any social media account or personal blog you may have.

Also, don’t forget that employers are now using social media as a screening device. So you better think twice before posting your profanity-laced diatribe about Lady Gaga’s new song.