As I wrote last week’s post on the MarketingProfs’ B2B Forum, one particular session stood out to me – it was insanely interesting, interactive and valuable. Hosted by Jason Baer (of Convince and Convert fame), the session entailed three actual attendees letting the audience evaluate, analyze and critique their B2B social media efforts – whether it be a corporate blog, a community forum, Twitter, etc. or a combination.

Jason started the session off with an incredibly brief appeal to all B2B marketers to  define what success is, and know your strategy on social media. As he explained, too often the tactics are executed before a company knows what their objective is because someone wants to try Twitter, another wants to add a LinkedIn Group, etc. Even if you’ve been using various social media technologies, he suggested taking a step back to regroup and define the ultimate goal – which then lends itself to measurement and metrics (a major theme of the event).

He also emphasized that social media is not for features and benefits content. It’s to TELL A STORY and add personality (however relaxed or professional) to a brand. The companies most successful with social media have an end goal in mind and aren’t trying to feed data sheets into social networks and on blogs. That’s true for B2B and B2C companies.

I loved this session for many reasons. Mostly, I loved that it took three of my peers – who admittedly did not have the marketing resources (staff or budget) that a Fortune 500 company had – and provided them (and us) with specific, and realistic, suggestions to improve. The majority of them centered around the idea that regardless of whether you “own” all the properties, you need to connect the dots (between your company’s LinkedIn, Twitter, blog, website, etc). When done properly, that can extend each other’s audience and create a cumulative effect. When done poorly, they create an annoying echo chamber that is perceived as corporate spam.

Below are the very tactical, but incredibly valuable, tips/suggestions that I left the session with:

• Every presentation (or podcast or webinar or whitepaper) your company produces can potentially fuel 5-6 blog posts. Make heavy use of content already being created, but keep in mind that the features/function language needs to be pulled out.
• If you have a group contributed blog, include pictures of the authors by each post.
• On your corporate blog, add links to each exec’s LinkedIn profile. Also be sure to add their profiles in your company’s LinkedIn Group page. (Check out this great article by Jason, “22 Ways to Dominate LinkedIn,” for more tips.)
• Use tools to extend your audience beyond the “people in the room” (beyond your blog subscribers, LinkedIn Group members, webinar/tradeshow attendees, etc.):

1. Use slideshare.net to share presentation-based content and then embed in your corporate blog. LinkedIn also has a slideshare app to pull the slides into profiles of execs and the group page. This is a perfect way to extend the reach of tradeshow and webinar presentations.
2. Check out Scribd.com, which is like a “slideshare for documents.” It allows you to embed the cover page of each whitepaper to be downloaded into your blog, and again extends the audience.
3. Make use of tools to incorporate your blog content into LinkedIn profiles (LinkedIn has a blog app that can automate this, too).
4. If you use need to use the whitepapers and webinars as lead generators, just wait a few months before sharing them – and then extend their life and reach.

• Don’t use your corporate Twitter feed as a “link dump.” And if you’re using an automated tool to feed your Twitter, FriendFeed, etc., make sure you’re not spamming the same updates multiple times. Also, recognize that people may be following your brand and multiple employees on Twitter, so be careful that you’re not creating your own “retweeting” echo chamber.
• If you manage a corporate Twitter account, take 15 minutes to brand the background with links to the company’s website.
• If multiple people are involved in the corporate Twitter account, take a look at Cotweet and Hootsuite. They both allow multiple contributors to a single account, and allows staged tweets (here’s a CNET comparison of both).
• Sign up for a bit.ly account to provide shortened URLs across all platforms. It allows you to track/measure how many people followed the link.

The event was great, but this session really made it worthwhile for me. I hope you find the suggestions as helpful as I did.

But now I’m finally getting around to sharing the key themes that resonated with me from sessions on social media, marketing in a recession and measurement. Each session built on one another, and as a result my notes felt more like a Twitter stream than the linear notes I usually take. Subsequently, I wasn’t able to directly attribute each piece of marketing wisdom to a speaker. However, at the end I have provided links to all the sessions and speakers I attended — and definitely recommend you check them out.

Without further ado, here’s my Top 10 list from the event (in no particular order):

1. Perspective matters. I’ve attended events focused on “just” communications/PR and always found them to be preaching to the choir. While the event had its fair share of preaching to the choir, there were enough marketing and B2B buyer perspectives represented that added a ton of value. Too often, communications silos itself from marketing and loses sight of the larger, collective goal.
2. There is still a battle over control when it comes to social media. A lot of questions during the sessions highlighted a fear of losing control of the messaging from marketing departments. At the same time, a lot of responses from self-described social media experts took the tone of “the point of Twitter is …” I think they’re trying hard too to dictate the usage the tools when the reality is that the usage depends on the goal – and (gasp) not every campaign is designed to engage directly with a customer.
3. Use social media tools to complement existing marketing/comms/PR campaigns. As Sandy Carter of IBM said, “we don’t have a social media strategy, we have a marketing strategy.” Look at social media tools as new mediums to execute against your strategy. For example: include a link to the blog in banner ads; use Twitter to drive booth traffic; supplement a whitepaper with podcasts, etc.
4. If you pay attention, social media gives you valuable insight. With today’s information overload, everyone agrees that customers and influencers are more savvy and more skeptical – and they can easily detect marketing “hype.” Use videos and blogs and twitter and <insert your customers’ favorite medium> to understand how they want to be marketed to. Listen to the words they use and update your messaging accordingly.
5. 2009 is about doing better with less. As measurement maven Katie Paine told us, “Measuring isn’t always about proving value, it’s about knowing what’s working and what’s not.” Forrester’s Laura Ramos added in one session, “Without understanding your strategy and having measurable goals, social media can easily become ‘purpose-less’ activity.” A quote from Peter Drucker summed it up: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Focus on using measurement to see what works and then dial up/down your mix accordingly (listen, learn and change).
6. Stay true to your company’s goals. Define upfront what success is and how you’ll measure your efforts, including your social media tactics. And don’t confuse popularity with influence. Target your efforts. It’s not necessarily about getting thousands of followers on Twitter, it’s about connecting with people who ultimately influence your sales cycle. Particularly in communications, popularity metrics are an easy out when we don’t have “real” results to report on.
7. Recognize that social media is different. You can’t take traditional content and just “plug” it into social media and be successful. Most presenters also agreed that social media is hard in B2B because you have to find where your customers are, and how (or even if) they want to be engaged.
8. Remember your audience is not necessarily your peers. In several sessions, questions were asked about LinkedIn versus Facebook for marketing efforts. The consensus – from an audience of marketers – was that Facebook had more users and was more fun and was therefore better. But over and over, presenters from B2B companies reminded us that our goal isn’t to get in front of marketers, and many B2B buyers don’t want to be sold to on Facebook. In fact, IBM actually surveyed its SOA customers and found out, hands down, that they preferred to hear about vendors on LinkedIn. They don’t necessarily post and interact with vendors there, but they do join groups and read the Q&As to get informed.
9. Counting is not ROI. Move your metrics framework from the very tactical to being strategic. That’s how to impress the c-suite, but it requires that you can speak in business terms (and if you can’t, focus more on learning about business than social media). Measure business outcomes (market share, share of voice, adoption rate, etc.) not your tactical activity (coverage numbers, leads, downloads, etc.). Realize this means siloed metrics need to feed into broader measurement reports.
10. Don’t be afraid to “fail” once or twice. Time Magazine’s Steve Johnson told us, “Right now, there’s a tolerance of failure [in social media] that we should embrace. Experiment and innovate now.”

Overall, it was great event – one I’d love to attend next year. As promised, here are links to the presentations I listened to, as well as the speakers’ blogs and Twitter feeds:

• All the handouts are available at http://www.marketingprofs.com/events/7/handouts/?adref=ematt528
• Marketing 2.0: Integrating Social Media into Your Marketing Mix with Sandy Carter of IBM (blog, @sandy_carter)
• 2009 Economic Impact on B2B Marketing Budgets & Practices with Carter; Laura Ramos of Forrester (blog, @lauraramos); Roy Young of MarketingProfs (@RoyProfs)
• Day 1 Keynote with Steven Johnson of Time (blog, @stevenbjohnson)
• Make Every Investment Count: The Measure of Marketing with Laura Patterson of VisionEdge Marketing (@LauraVEM)
• Social Media Hot Seat with Jason Baer of Convince & Convert (blog, @jaybaer)
• Tales from the Trenches: How Organizations are Measuring Value in Social Media with Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners (blog, @KDPaine)

However, I don’t think this “Social Media 2.0″ is going to be the press release’s salvation, because it’s still plagued by bad, buzzword-laden writing. For example, take the second sentence of the release, where I think Marketwire is trying to say something about distribution:

Social Media 2.0 advances today’s press release format, offers public relations professionals a multitude of content options, and distributes news in a variety of mediums to distribution channels beyond traditional media distribution networks.

I also think there’s some subtle irony to a social media release — designed to reach online users who frequently embed links in their text and know to click on a hyperlink — using the phrase “click here” so many times (Perhaps last night’s Patriots loss has me a little extra snarky).

If you can get beyond the actual release, I do think this is good news for the PR world (assuming they aren’t charging an arm and a leg for it). I’m particularly interested in the assortment of tagging and tracking capabilities. But, as a profession, we still need to work on the quality of our release writing. Otherwise, we’re just putting lipstick — and new distribution — on a very ugly pig.

The piece started out sounding like an early Valentine for Zuckerberg, but then it turned into an uncomfortable — and sometimes painful — interview. I won’t spend much time on his actual performance — it’s safe to say that he’s in desperate need of some media training. Even Lesley Stahl interjected at one point that Zuckerberg has been described as being awkward.

More than his uncomfortable performance, I was really surprised that Facebook/Zuckerberg squandered such a huge opportunity. I flinched each time he was thrown an excellent transition question and he missed it. For example, here are a few key topics that he didn’t insert into the interview:

1. For all it’s hype, Facebook is still the #2 social network behind MySpace. Why would I join Facebook over MySpace? I’ll admit I was waiting (and hoping) for a slam about MySpace’s multiple cameos on Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator” … but they never came. I was expecting to hear Facebook’s value vis-a-vis MySpace, though.
2. No really, why do I want to join Facebook? Early on, Lesley got excited when a former colleague reconnected with her after setting up her profile — which gave him a perfect segue to throw out a dozen other examples of people reconnecting, business people networking, or even someone finding their college sweetheart. Anything beyond Scrabble? Given the demographics of 60 Minutes’ viewers, I was particularly expecting to hear a few reasons why the Gen X and Boomer generations should join. Instead, he talked about Scrabble. Now, I love the Scrabble app just as much as Zuckerberg apparently does. Unfortunately that’s about the only use I’ve found for Facebook so far, and I was waiting for him change that.
3. Can a 23 year old really run a $15 billion company (setting aside that it’s not actually worth that, for a moment)? Lesley brought this up a few times, and Zuckerberg’s three word answers didn’t cut it. Why not point to how quickly the company is growing? Why not talk about him solidifying funding and Microsoft’s investment? Surely there could have been a FEW examples to address this. Why not point to what he’s already accomplished as CEO?
4. Is Zuckerberg really a visionary? This one came up a few times, most notably when he was compared to the Google Gazillionaires. What a great opportunity to talk about where he sees Facebook going, how innovative the company is vs. other hot startups, etc. Yet, we got nothing.
5. Was all the bad publicity wrong about Beacon and Facebook’s ads? With this one, Zuckerberg gave a little answer, but I don’t think “Facebook needs to pay its employees” was the right answer. I’ll grant him that it’s a legitimate reason to start monetizing Facebook’s audience, but he should have given several other, much more compelling, reasons. And then immediately followed those with an explanation about how/why the privacy concerns of Facebook users have been addressed.
6. Why should Facebook employees feel proud about working for him? At any point, Zuckerberg could have talked about how revolutionary/innovative/etc. the company was, but he didn’t. I don’t even remember him smiling when he spoke about the team working for him.
7. What’s next? I wasn’t expecting to hear any product news, but Zuckerberg could have thrown in a few teaser comments to keep me interested in Facebook in the coming months.

As I write this, I wonder how involved Facebook’s PR team was with this opportunity. From my vantage point, either Facebook doesn’t view PR as a strategic component to the company’s success, or Zuckerberg is a classic example of a CEO who thinks he knows PR and won’t take guidance. Or, he needs a new PR team. Regardless, I think the entire Facebook team botched a huge opportunity last night that might not come his way again.

What did you think of the interview?

I was planning to digest the content and then write a few smart posts, but figured I’d share what I took away from the event (my notes might jump a bit).

Panel: New Media, New Influencers & Implications for the PR Profession

This panel had several prominent bloggers – including Paul Gillin and John Cass – presenting case studies from companies they’ve interviewed in the last year about corporate blogging.

Pulling from their examples and the discussion, here’s the list of what seemed to work well for corporate and CEO blogs:

• Allow the blog to reflect the company’s/CEO’s personality
• Focus on building an audience by mixing thought leadership topics with more personal topics (not updates on your children, but rather iTune playlists, the Red Sox vs. Yankees, etc.)
• Interview other industry experts – even competitors if it’s relevant
• Feature an ongoing quiz or survey to maintain traffic
• Update three times a week to improve SEO
• Comment on OTHER blogs to truly engage the audience
• And finally, measure success across several dynamics (traffic, comments, etc.)

That said, in order to measure success, you need to have an early consensus on the blog’s goal. Then, make sure you’re measuring the relevant factors. For example:

• If the goal is career advancement, measure levels of recognition
• If the goal is to build a community, track the level of engagement with comments, guest posts and feedback sections
• If the goal is to drive sales, track leads and $$$
• If the goal is thought leadership, track the increase in press interviews, speaking invitations, etc.

Presentation: The Blogging Power Continuum (Joseph Carrabis)

This presentation fascinated me because it was based on a project that took super smart brain scientists (my terminology for them), threw in some quantum physics (or something equally technical) and then applied that science to analyze a subset of the blogosphere. In all seriousness, Joseph talked about a research project he’s conducting that takes a very scientific approach to measuring conversation across multiple aspects in the blogosphere (he even claims that they called the last presidential election). As an experiment, his team looked at the current presidential candidates’ blogs, including comment strings, and then mapped which ones were driving conversations and which ones were following conversations.

Out of that research, Joseph shared the following advice (some we already knew – but now it’s backed by fact):

• What is power about in the blogosphere? Respect.
• The most flexible communicators have the most “power” in the blogosphere because they can explain ideas to the masses and therefore have broader reach.
• How do you gain power in the blogosphere? You gamble:
  • Give credit where it is due
  • Admit your mistakes
  • Manage your discussion (think of your audience as clients)
  • Be honest
  • Lead the discussion
  • Explain everything
• How do you share power (and you must share power to maintain it … “give a little to keep a lot”)
  • Recognize other’s authority and experience
  • Accept chastisement graciously
  • Never argue (not to be confused with discussion. As Joseph said, “Inquiry, discussion and explanation come from differences.”)
  • Be willing to learn
  • Encourage the discussion
  • Never cover

Panels: Award Winning Case Studies

Several panelists shared case studies of social media in action, including a first hand account of the Coke/Mentos video. A lot of this was consumer-focused and interesting, but one comment really caught my attention (I don’t remember who said it): “Embracing social media and traditional outreach together creates a ‘PR Loop Effect’ that ultimately compounds the effect/result.”

Presentation: Social Media Global Trends

Shel Israel gave the closing presentation which shared highlights from a global survey on social media he conducted with SAP. It was a great presentation and he posted the report in a few sections on his blog, which is definitely worth the read. Below are the seven lessons Shel shared with us.

1. Social media is kids’ stuff
2. Social networks is the killer app
3. Culture matters. Language matters.
4. Measurement is improving, but it’s still unclear what to measure.
5. The geek-to-suit gap is shortening. Kids overtaking geeks.
6. Lose control to gain influence.
7. The world is not yet flat, but it is getting hillier.

Shel’s closed the presentation by sharing his thoughts on the study and his predictions. The most notable for me was his advice to “watch the kids – they’ll lead you in the right direction.”

• I think I might want to (eventually) work for a consumer company. With lots of money. Several All of the coolest social media case studies I heard came from consumer companies.
• The “holy grail” of social media — whether it be social networks, blogs, video, etc. — is to move from B2B marketing/communications to C2C communications, where your brand advocates are carrying the message. This theme popped up a few times, and one attendee commented that using the “C2C” description to his execs resonated more quickly than social media did (who doesn’t love a good acronym, right?).
• One panelist from Fox Interactive Media talked about the “momentum effect” of social media. Here are two articles talking about the study back in April. They’re geared toward consumers and advertising, but it includes some great stats that could be helpful selling social media internally.
• Content continues to be king. But in the world of social media and consumer generated content (read: content overload) it needs to be more than simply relevant and interesting — it needs to add value to the community.
• Authenticity, authenticity, authenticity.
• And finally, don’t engage a community and then abandon them (I feel like I’ve broken this rule lately).

And now, I’m off to soak the feet :)

A few news sites confirmed the rumor with “un-named” sources, but did anyone see ValleyWag’s confirmation post? They happened to notice that key PR contacts at both companies had friended each other on Facebook. Clearly, ValleyWag made a (not so) huge leap of faith, but as we embrace more social technologies, this is something for us all to keep in mind: the scoop oriented media (read: bloggers) may be watching the company you keep.

Rohit’s presentation resonated with me because I agree – it’s not necessarily about transparency in communications, it’s about authenticity – in everything you we do.

If you accept that businesses are around to make money, you must also accept that there will, necessarily, be limitations on how open a company can/should be. That means that sometimes, this “transparency” isn’t always the right choice for companies – particularly when discussing future plans of the company.

However, I believe it is very possible for executives to be authentic while still maintaining a competitive edge and protecting proprietary information. In the end, it’s all about adding a lot more “human factor” and removing the corporate speak — which ultimately helps build trusting relationships with employees, shareholders, customers and partners, and even the media. All this is done by simply allowing a spokesperson to be honest and forthcoming (without disclosing company secrets).

To me, the most interesting take away from this online discussion is a reminder that as PR evolves, it leaves a bumpy road for agencies. We all understand (well, we’re starting to understand) the boundaries of PR engaging with the blogosphere. Open, honest, etc. But as far as PR agencies go, I think we’re only beginning to agree on where the boundaries are. As blogs become more mainstream, more and more PR people will be required to build relationships with bloggers. Already, agencies are starting to promote relationships with bloggers as prominently as relationships with the media and analysts.

But, here’s the catch: Traditionally, PR agencies took great strides to NOT act as company spokespeople (I remember a few times I was cited in stories, and I’ll tell you my clients weren’t happy). The rules of engagement have changed, though, and many bloggers prefer public comments over private emails. At what point is it okay for an agency PR rep to respond? Is it considered on a client-by-client basis?

AND, when the PR rep isn’t pushing a client agenda, does it make sense for them to post comments on blogs? I think so, but I was also on the agency side and I’ll admit, having junior staff publicly exposed like that scared the hell out of me. Yet, to only have senior folks comment kills the relationship building. I certainly don’t think it can be a free for all, with PR people openly commenting on blogs to promote their clients. I’m also not convinced that encouraging a PR person to post comments related to their clients is really how to go about building a relationship in the first place (I actually think that’s exactly what not to do, but others disagree).

At the same time, I wonder if it makes sense for agencies to begin developing content experts who can engage industry bloggers in thoughtful debate, publicly? Or is that counter productive to thought leadership campaigns with their clients? And at what point, as an agency, do you open your most junior staff up to public scrutiny, and where do you shield them? I don’t have a solution to offer here, and my gut tells me a lot of agencies are grappling with these very topics internally. I’m sure their clients also have opinions (probably 30 of them), which complicates the topic even more. And then, of course, the bloggers (both independent and media) probably have another set of opinions. It would be a facisnating round table discussion, that’s for sure! What about you? Where do you think the boundary is (or should be)?

As Lois points out, “It’s wonderful that the media are on Facebook. It is a good way for conversations to take place and that would be a benefit for CEOs who are open to really building and maintaining a strong relationship with influencers.”

The Internet flattened the world, and PR people now need to build relationships around the country and the world, often virtually. That makes a platform like Facebook’s is very compelling, and is why, I believe, so many in the PR and media circles have embraced the social networking phenom. And I agree with a lot of the potential benefits of executives joining the interaction circles on Facebook.

But, something is still holding me back from joining. Actually, several things are (in no particular order):

• It’s a huge time suck. And an even worse perception killer. I can justify the need to network with media, but I could easily burn several hours a week on the site. That in turn could fuel a perception that I’m the one always on Facebook, which would rank me just above the YouTube watcher on the perceived productivity scale.
• My friends are on the site. And sometimes, it’s just too easy to be distracted.
• Did I mention my friends are there? Merging my personal and business networks isn’t something I’m quite ready to do. Granted, I socialize with people in my business world outside of work. And it’s possible (even likely) that I could run into a friend at a professional networking event. But I’m still not ready to introduce my professional contacts to my college roommate or my mother [Facebook just announced friend grouping, which may help address this]
• And finally, no matter what people say, Facebook is not set up for professional networking, at least not to me. For example, right next to your picture is your marital status and orientation. It’s subtle, but riddle me this — when was the last time your introduction at an in-person networking event started out with “Hi, my name is John. I’m a straight married man” or “Hi, I’m Heather and yes, I’m single”? The intro alone sets the tone for informal socializing. It’s fitting for friends and great for college kids, but awkward (or creepy) for executives. If Facebook really plans to cross over into the business world, subtleties like that need to be adjusted.

Even with my concerns, I still believe there are several very compelling arguments for where and how Facebook can complement an existing program. But until I come to terms with whether or not I should join, and whether or not I should encourage my execs to join, I’ll continue to be an interested observer (and will continue looking for a better solution, which I think I’ve found … more on that in a few weeks).

What about you? Is anyone else holding out? Or do you think I’m letting the Facebook parade pass me by?