Flicker Credit: Phi1317

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with my friends Chad Parizman and Lynsay Caylor to a class of very bright full-time MBA students at the University of Tennessee. Our topic was social media monetization, although we certainly talked more broadly then that in our time with the class. I enjoyed hearing their questions, and learning more about the challenges that Chad faces at Scripps and Lynsay at Pilot.

The most striking thing to me about the class were their answers to a few questions Chad asked about their social involvement.

How many of you have updated your Facebook status in the last week? 80%

How many of you have updated Twitter in the last few hours? 45%

How many of you only have a Twitter account to study it? 60%

How many of you use LinkedIn? 65%

(The room was also about 75% PC and 25% Apple)

I found these answers very interesting, particularly the LinkedIn stat. Facebook and Twitter stats are pretty consistent with what I’ve experienced, but I was very surprised that there were students who were not on LinkedIn. I don’t consider it to be the end all be all, but there are MBA students who have had jobs and are going back to school to further their career. Blew my mind that they weren’t on LinkedIn. The opposite take away  is that LinkedIn isn’t a go to for these smart saavy students, so either it doesn’t present a value proposition to them OR they are unclear how to make best use of it.  This will be an interesting one to watch.

I closed with the following advice “79% of the Fortune 100 currently uses social media in one form or another. Most of you expect to get jobs in the Fortune 500 and once hired they will expect you as a younger MBA to know social media. You don’t need to love every service, but you do need to use them and understand their application to business.”

I hope they jumped on and started experimenting. If you had a final statement, what would you have shared?

[UPDATE] eMarketer today launched some statistics on job sites used by HR professionals as well as the following quote, “The most helpful tools for career advancement were professional networks such as LinkedIn as well as best-practice communities, each named by about two-thirds of HR executives.”

The Social Media Bubble Part 2 of 3 from Hive Awards on Vimeo.

In a two weeks I’m going to be joining a few friends on the stage at Social Fresh Nashville.  It will be great to see @jasonfalls @djwaldow @genochurch @katadhin @waynesutton @GregCangialosi and meet some new friends from Home Depot, Radian6, Newell Rubbermaid and Southwest Airlines at Social Fresh aka @sofresh conference in Nashville, TN on January 11, 2010.

After being an attendee at the original Social Fresh in Charlotte, I’m excited to be able to speak at round two.  I found the first conference an action packed few days – while the conference is actually one day, the pre-party and post-party are things I wouldn’t miss – and when you show up, come find me and say hello.

Here’s a bit on what’ s being presented:

• The ROI Of Community
• Social Media In The Music Industry
• Corporate Blogging Is Your Social Media Home Base
• B2B Innovation In Social Media
• Real Twitter Results
• Word of Mouth Marketing form the Bottom Up
• Moving The Needle: Social Media For Your Bottom Line

That’s all I’ll say as Jason Falls has already written up a great post about the conference on his site.  If you’re an organization that is looking to learn more, this is a great opportunity to dip your feet into the social media and at $315 a ticket, it’s quite reasonable.  There will be great minds covering almost all the bases you’ll need from start to finish.  You can register for the event using this link to the Social Fresh registration site. (Disclosure: As a speaker, I am an affiliate of the conference and get a commission on any sales made from the link. Non-affiliate link register here.)

PS if you can’t make Nashville and you’re in the Tampa, FL area then you’ll want to be on board for the next Social Fresh on Feb. 8.

So register, show up in Nashville and I’ll see you there.

Last night I attended the Winter Panel put on by Social Media Club – Knoxville which was focused on social media liability, ethics and policy.  The featured panelists were Erin Donovan of WBIR, legal and marketing consultant Jeremy Floyd and Chad Parizman of Scripps Networks who did a great job representing a few perspectives on social media, and entertaining the crowd with funny quips. The evening covered a broad range of topics from the local liability story of The Pizza Kitchen (link to News Sent) to understanding the line where policy ends and ethics begin. If you missed the event checkout the tweets about the evening #smcknox.

One thing that wasn’t covered in depth that I wanted to shed some light on is the difference between policy and guidelines. Often the term “social media policy” is used to cover a document that is both policy and guidelines but they are very different documents and serve very different roles.  Moving forward in this post I’ll use the terms policy and guidelines to represent different pieces of that social media policy document.

When we talk about policy, we’re really talking about a document that is going to largely drafted by legal and HR professionals. It’s essentially about what employee’s SHOULDN’T do.While a very important piece of the puzzle if you’re a in marketing role this part of the document will seem very dry.  This document will detail who can can be a spokesperson for the brand utilizing these channels, what other policies they must adhere to in this sphere and the repercussions for not following the policy.  This document will read like a legal contract because, well it is.  Ultimately the role of part of the document is to protect the company, also known as CYA.

The part of the document you most often see in social media circles is what I’m going to call guidelines.  This is what you see from IBM, Intel, etc. It will be drafted by the team responsible for the message (marketing or PR).  It’s essentially about what employee’s SHOULD do. This policy needs to be written in professional but human voice. When I think about writing this part of the document, I’ve found it easiest to put myself in the shoes of an enthusiastic young employee.  That employee will be very familiar with how to use technology to communicate but given that they’ve had limited work experience they won’t know the rules of the road, either for your company or just in general.  So it needs to answer questions like, “what can I say?” and “how can I say it?” and present the rules of engagement as your company defines them.  For example it’s best practice that all employee’s who self-designate as an employee of your company on their digital space(s) blog, twitter, facebook, podcast, etc to also include a disclaimer that all thoughts “are theirs and do not represent my employer or clients”.   It’s also a great idea to define some of those things in the guidelines that you don’t want them to do, but still in that human voice that employees can understand.  I’ve pulled an example below from the IBM Social Computing Guidelines, most employees may not think about the topic it covers but it certainlu happens all the time.

Don’t pick fights. When you see misrepresentations made about IBM by media, analysts or by other bloggers, you may certainly use your blog—or join someone else’svto point that out. Always do so with respect, stick to the facts and identify your appropriate affiliation to IBM. Also, if you speak about a competitor, you must make sure that what you say is factual and that it does not disparage the competitor. Avoid unnecessary or unproductive arguments. Brawls may earn traffic, but nobody wins in the end. Don’t try to settle scores or goad competitors or others into inflammatory debates. Here and in other areas of public discussion, make sure that what you are saying is factually correct.

Another good idea is to post a basic guideline on what to talk about.  For example my friend David Thomas works in social media at SAS, never heard of SAS? That’s because they are a business software company, purely a b2b.  They have a HUGE customer base and every employee doesn’t know every client they serve.  Which isn’t a problem normally but it can be.

Consider the following hypothetical situation employee A ends up in a hotel that she thinks treats her poorly, she does what a lot of us would do starts tweeting about that bad experience at company A.  But the kicker is the she has no idea that company A has been a client of her company for five years and they are currently in the process of signing an extension to that contract, and they aren’t too happy that the employee of the company they are signing a large contract with is talking negatively about them publicly.  So what does SAS do?  They just have the guideline that if you’ve chosen to affiliate with the company online you shouldn’t speak out negatively about other people or companies because for them, the risk isn’t worth it (see part of their policy below). That doesn’t mean every company should have that guideline, but it’s something to consider depending on your business.

SAS employees are polite, courteous, honorable people who don’t say bad things about other people or other companies, even if they are our competitors. Remember, if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it online.

Social media policies are hot topics, just don’t forget that the policy and the guidelines need to work in tadem to be the killer policy!

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments what you think about policy – or if you’ve done some drafting what you think is import to have in each policy.

Image by doug88888

David Armano makes a three predictions for 2010 on social media and business.

1. Scale

2. Integration

3. Policy

I think he’s right on for 2 and 3.  I’d add an additional prediction – that social networking sites and tools will begin to add offerings that appeal to business.  I’m not talking about CoTweet ramping up it’s twitter tool, while it’s a good product.  I’m talking about product design BY the sites themselves.  Sites building out tools and frameworks that not only support businesses but invite them.  Let me be clear, I’m not sharing insider information, I just know what I think would help us and other companies like us.

Most social sites are designed for the individual and rightfully so as relationships are what create and grow these sites.  But now that organizations are starting to join the fray – their needs, our need are different.  Take for example any national retail company in any vertical.  Walmart, Best Buy, Ruby Tuesday, P.F. Chang’s, Moe’s, etc. the list goes on and on.  The commonality with all these organizations is that they are national, if not international companies, but ultimately serve customers locally.

Each of those customers cared for locally visits a store, where there may be 10-10,000 locations and those local stores together create the global brand.  The tension is that social sites know how to serve the local – they are even set up for that in most cases (i.e. requiring a geographic area) but they haven’t quite figured out the global range yet. Global brands need the ability to set parameters to maintain control while allowing for local flexibility.

I’d also add that this need “could” be filled by third party developers if the platform API’s allow deep enough access.

Exciting to see how this plays out.

After I presented at the SMC- Greenville meeting I was approached by a college student and asked an interesting question, “what’s the best background to get into a social media job?”  at the time, I mentioned that my background was business and marketing, so I could speak to that but not social media in general.  I decided to tweet the question since I knew I’d get quite the mixture of answers. Here are a few responses, each with a different viewpoint – technology entrepreneur, marketing consultant and in house technologist.  (All who are worth a follow by the way).

from @jpatrickhunt trial by fire. on the job training. offer your services for nothing and dive in. learn and adapt. you will be assimilated.

from @jfloyd journalism, photography, video production, advertising, english, web design…what does Seth call it…a multipationalist?

from @BJ_Emerson Great question, may depend on the needs of the org. My opinion: Don’t skimp on the tech skills, be good at relationships.

I expected the answers to be all over and I wasn’t disappointed.  So where does this leave us?  Ultimately while a background in in PR or marketing has an upside, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I don’t think it really matters for hiring.  To be clear, one should have some manner of understanding of the basics of communication and if the job has a strategy component you’ll need to understand the social landscape.  But what matters the most is that you be customer focused. Which may seem to be a no brainer to some of you, however it’s not to everyone.  Customer focused means thinking of yourself as the advocate of the people your organization exists to serve.  So you are approaching problems with the mindset of it you were the end user.

This is important because at the end of the day, social media is about people.  It’s a set of tools that are allowing customers the ability to connect with and give feedback to their friends and the public – and we as organizations have the ability to be part of that exchange.  To learn and respond and share. If you want to work in social media, you’ll be well on your way if you can be that voice of the customer.

Updated: Slides embedded below and on SlideShare

I’m heading out to Greenville, SC to this weekend at the invitation of Trey Pennington to speak to the great members of  Social Media Club – Greenville on Monday morning (Facbook Event link) about Social Media in the Enterprise.  I’m going to cover the why, the how and the what about social media at Ruby Tuesday, Inc.  If you’ve wondered about how large companies think about and use social media – this will be a great chance to hear more about it.

I’ve got the honor of following the great panel from last month – (watch the video captured by Bobby Rettew).

Spike Jones of Brains on Fire
Olivier Blanchard of The Brand Builder
Jeff Elder from the Charlotte Observer
Top Chef’s Celebrity Chef Michael Parise

The deets – Monday, October 12, 2009

When:

8am-9am

Where:

Skyline Exhibits & Designs
346 Feaster Road
Greenville, SC 29615-6130 (Google Map)

Other:

Facebook Event Details

Register:

To preregister for the event, please go to http://smcgreenville20091012.eventbrite.com/
Preregistration: $6.75+ eventbrite fee | At-the-door: $10.00

If you’re coming – make sure you stop by and say hello.  I’ll also be around until mid-day if you want to connect but can’t make the morning meeting.  Shoot me an email at gavinrb (at) gmail (dot) com

UPDATED: 10/14/09 with new information about groups.

I developed this comparison (download) of Ning and Facebook for an internal discussion, but figured I’d share it since there didn’t seem to be much on the Internet in terms of a direct breakdown.

As an overview, Ning is a site that easily allows the creation of free private social networks.

This feature means sites are created around topics and groups. e.g. Knoxville Social Media Association is a group I’m a member of and we use a Ning site to organize around our topic.  It includes tools that allow the creation of events, blog posts, forums, and discussion, and it’s scope is very focused.  It’s also private – so if you’re not a member of that group, you can’t see the content.  In short, Ning sites operate around the TOPIC.

Facebook on the other hand is also a private social networking site, and members can join groups, pages, etc.  e.g. Knoxville Social Media Association also maintains a facebook page as a public outpost.  That public profile also has forums, and discussion, but those can’t be limited to specific people.  They are public. Additionally, facebook is primarily about me, my friends, my interests, so it exists as an ecosystem (or platform) and its focus is broad. In short, facebook operates aroud the PERSON.

Before we get too much further I want to cover one thing that the graphic above doesn’t – which is Facebook groups.  This is a feature on Facebook where you can create small private groups around a topic.  They can be open (public) or closed (private) but they do have a member limit and aren’t specifically suited to broad engagement across a topic.  They also receive less visibility on the Facebook platform. UPDATE: All Facebook reports that Facebook is switching groups over to a layout similar to the public pages.  I guess we’ll start to groups move away, and pages will have a private and public setting.

Analysis

One upside to Facebook is that there is a chance that a large amount of people already have accounts (300+ million)  thus lowering the barrier to entry and the level of adoption.  The upside to Ning is that user accounts can be maintained and kept current with group your membership roster, including the removal of accounts via CSV file upload. For dues paying membership organizations this can be important.

One of the dangers of using a public network like Facebook is that material that is not intended to be public facing will be accessible.  This information may not be trade secrets, but could be something as simple as a discussion on social media policy where the public sharing of information could be counter productive to an open discussion of the topic.

Ning allows all the great benefits of Facebook (including additional custom tools) and wraps them in a fully private system that assures private membership and provides a location for authentic dialogue. Facebook certainly wins the battle on the installed user base and the public’s familiarity  with the site.

Facebook and Ning certainly serve different purposes and can be used interchangeably with success. Ultimately, either site will require users – so understanding their behavior within your goals will be important.  A lot of people check into Facebook every day and will get a reminder of your content.  If you go with Ning, is your content enough incentive to bring them to your site?

I’m interested to hear what you think.  Please share any great examples of Facebook or Ning usage in the comments and I’ll be happy to update the post with your links.  Also, if you’ve used a site not included here – please share your experience.

I’m here in Charlotte, NC for the freshness that is Social Fresh aka @sofresh #sofresh

David Armano is keynoting aka @armano and Olivier Blanchard @thebrandbuilder is covering Social Media ROI and Spike Jones @spikejones of Brains on Fire @brainsonfire is talking about…something awesome, so it’s safe to say they are bringing it as well as reps from  Best Buy, Rubbermaid and IBM.

I’ll tweet during, but following the hashtag #sofresh will get you lots of great content too.

(EDIT: props to Andy for quickly replying to my email with a bigger and better logo)

Thanks to Andy Sernovitz (Blog | Twitter)  and GasPedal – the Social Media Business Council they do these awesome video case studies on social media in the enterprise.  They’ve been a great resource to learn more about what other large companies are doing in social and how they are using it.  If you’re like me and just getting into social for a bigger company – watch some of these videos!

Because I’d like to continue to learn and engage with the folk from brands like Dell, SAP, Wells Fargo,  Intuit, Microsoft,  GE, Nokia, Tyson, Coca-Cola, Johnson and Johnson, Home Depot, Mayo Clinic, Molson, P&G, Cisco, Walmart, Intel and UPS I’ve gone through and pulled the names and twitter accounts for each of the speakers (that I could find).  In most cases they are either responsible for strategy or implementation of social media at their enterprise – either way they are great examples of companies (and individuals) who are doing it well.

Follow them and learn -  I know I am.

Btw – this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of all social/emerging media professionals at the enterprise level.  I’d check out Jeremiah’s list here – and his blog is THE resource for the business of social/emerging media.

List is in no discernible order.

Lionel Menchaca, Dell
http://twitter.com/LionelatDell

Mark Yolton, SAP
http://twitter.com/MarkYolton

Joel Nathanson, Wells Fargo
http://twitter.com/joeliospeaks

Kira Wampler, Intuit
http://twitter.com/Kirasw

Nestor Portillo, Microsoft
http://twitter.com/nportillo

Megan Parker, General Electric
http://twitter.com/megparker
http://twitter.com/GE_Reports

Molly Schonthal, Nokia
http://twitter.com/mollstar

Ed Nicholson, Tyson Foods
http://twitter.com/ederdn

Adam Brown, Coca-Cola
http://twitter.com/adamcb

Marc Monseau, Johnson & Johnson
http://twitter.com/MDMonseau
http://twitter.com/JNJComm

Nick Ayres, The Home Depot
http://twitter.com/nickjayres

Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic
http://twitter.com/LeeAase

Stan Joosten, Procter & Gamble
http://twitter.com/sjoosten

Adam Moffat, Molson
http://twitter.com/molsonmoffat

John Earnhardt, Cisco Systems
http://twitter.com/john_earnhardt
http://twitter.com/ciscosystems

Jeanette Gibson, Cisco Systems
http://twitter.com/JeanetteG

Ken Kaplan, Intel
http://twitter.com/kenekaplan

Debbie Curtis-Magley, UPS
http://twitter.com/DebCM

John Andrews, Walmart
http://twitter.com/Katadhin

Accounts not located:

Hilary Weber, Kaiser Permanente
Jessica Fredrickson, Suraya Bliss

Lindsay Lebresco, Graco

Commander Ron LaBrec, US Coast Guard

Susan Wassel, Sharpie

Lizzie Schreier, Allstate

Paula Drum, H&R BlockJosh Karpf, PepsiCo
David Witt, General Mills

Larry Blumenthal, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Sean Gannon, General Electric

Rhonda Lowry, Turner Broadcasting System