We’ve got some more exciting news as the Radian6 community team continues to grow. This time, we’re more than delighted to welcome Katie Morse as Radian6′s newest community manager.

If you’ve interacted with Katie at all – you can find her on Twitter at @misskatiemo – you know she’s nothing short of fiercely energetic and smart. She’s spent the last several years in communications and marketing roles in the telco industry and most recently with Ripple6, so she’s well versed in the world of online communications. She’s also an avid music lover and has long participated in music communities across the web, and her blog offers up some great discussion on the impact that the internet and social web have had on the music industry.

Katie is another example of successful connections through social media; I’m pretty sure she and I met first on Twitter, and over the last couple of years we’ve connected at offline events – from tweetups to conferences – and through other online channels. She’s got some great perspectives about how social media is changing business and communication as we know it.

At Radian6, Katie will be helping us continue to build and serve our online community, with a specific focus on our corporate customers and their needs. She’ll be teaming up with me, Lauren Vargas, and Ali Lee to not only communicate with all of you and help create helpful content, but our entire team will be working together this year to build out a dedicated Radian6 community for our users, and the social media community at large (more news on that in future months).

Katie shared some of her thoughts about joining Radian6 over here, so please drop by and leave her a note of support. And please join me in welcoming Katie to the Radian6 team. We’re delighted to have her aboard. Exciting times ahead!

If you’re not already familar with what Kiva.org is up to, start by checking out their work.

Their mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.  In short, donors to Kiva make microloans in smaller dollar amounts to emerging entrepreneurs around the world. Donations help individuals gain financial independence and support their families, and Kiva works with existing microloan institutions to help find qualified entrepreneurs and get the money to the right spots.

The entrepreneurs pay back the money as their business gets established, and then donors can relend that money to someone else. Pretty cool, huh? Learn more on their website, and read some of their amazing stories.

Radian6 is working with Kiva to help them tap the potential of the social media world through listening, engagement, and measuring their efforts. And we want to share not only how they’re working with us, but how they’re working with the social media at large, including the campaigns they put together for this year’s Chase Community Giving contest. We’ll be joined by Chelsa Bocci, Kiva’s Director of Community Marketing, and Lisa Shah from the Community Outreach Team.

So, join us for our next live Twebinar on Thursday, February 4th at 2:00 PM EST. No pre-registration is necessary and it’s totally free. Bring your questions. And if you’ve never been to a Twebinar before…

So… what is a Twebinar?

A Twebinar is a mashup between a live podcast/audio broadcast and Twitter as the backchannel for discussion.

How Can I Participate?

Join us by logging in with your Twitter account on Thursday, Feb 4th (no preregistration is required) or listen to the audio on our Engaged Brand BlogTalkRadio channel.

Since we’ll be using Twitter, just tweet us your questions with a #radian6 hashtag, include a “?” and we’ll be sure to see them. We’ve built the Twebinar interface so you can see all the tweets and discussion at a glance, listen to the broadcast, and submit your questions as we chat.

Twebinar Tips:

• Once the Twebinar has started, log in and you should hear music or the live broadcast. If you don’t hear the audio right away, please refresh your browser.
• If you login before the Twebinar starts, refresh your browser once the Twebinar begins and the BlogTalkRadio (BTR) interface will show up and start playing.
• To ask a question, type it in to Twitter using the #radian6 hashtag and end it with a “?”. We’ll see it.
• Your hosts for this episode will be @ambercadabra and @davidalston. Feel free to send them advance questions on Twitter if you like. We’ll also have @vargasl on hand to help gather and answer your questions during the broadcast.
• If you’d prefer to listen to the audio without the Twebinar interface, you can do so at our BlogTalkRadio channel.
• The full broadcast of the event will be posted on our blog shortly after the event is over, or you can always listen to the archive on BTR.
• Any other questions, leave them here in the comments or ask us on Twitter and we’ll do our best.

So, don’t forget to mark your calendars and join us next Thursday for a chat with the fine folks at Kiva.org. I can’t wait to listen and learn, so hope you’ll join us for the chat. See you then!

It is easy to get wrapped up in all the things we want to achieve big-picture in social media. Often times, to succeed in getting buy-in for turning your social media campaign into a viable program and integrated into the business, you have to score some small wins to give senior leadership and those on the front lines a warm and fuzzy feeling.

When getting started in social media, you cannot dismiss and ignore an organization’s fears about social media engagement. Social media success is dependant upon a drastic change in corporate culture’s thinking and execution process. Already we have addressed five out of eight steps as defined by leading change management thinker, John Kotter – increasing the level of urgency, building the guiding team, establishing a relevant vision, communicating for buy-in and empowering action.

Now that urgency has been established, a team in place to lead, a relevant vision is established to guide the way, you are communicating for buy-in, and have empowered action, how do you find and create short-term wins?

1. Set and Communicate Measurable Objectives: First and foremost, set SMART objectives with the purpose of enabling control of your social media strategy, motivate workforce to achieve common goal and provide an agreed upon, consistent focus for all functions of the organization. SMART objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Ensure you have communicated these objectives to your entire organization. Think long-term goal, but don’t forget to include short-term wins that will get the ball rolling to securing social media as an integrated business function.
2. Establish Progress Reports: Stop the naysayers in their tracks, by informing your team, department and organization the status of your measurable objectives. Give those easy wins the limelight they deserve!
3. Build Momentum: Demonstrate how people are fulfilling the vision and resistance to change will begin to subside. Avoid focusing on only the stats of the objectives in the progress reports, but share the feel-good stories and relationship-building that is occurring.

In my previous life, my employer pumped up the workforce with the slogan, “Think Big, Act Small.” While I used to think that was hokey, I realized that it was the short-term wins that created the warm and fuzzy results that opened up new doors of opportunity and minds within senior leadership.

How are you finding, creating and communicating short-term wins? Please share your lessons learned.

Please join David Alston, VP Marketing & Community at Radian6, as he talks about how to engage in social media. He’ll tell you what to listen for, what to say when you engage, and how to measure your efforts.

Date: January 28th, 2010
Time: 2 pm EST
Register Now!

Social media is not media; it’s a two-way communication channel for your customers and your community to reach out to you. And, since it is so easy for customers to express their issues, joys and needs, YOU need to be listening. This is an age where customers no longer line up to reach you. You need to reach out to them because they are talking whether you are listening or not.

The social phone is ringing, are you ready to answer?

Give up the Marlboros? Unlikely. Say goodbye to my friends Jose Cuervo and Jack Daniels? Forget about it. Double bacon cheeseburgers? I can’t quit you.* So let’s focus on the resolutions for 2010 that brands/marketers might actually stick to:

Focus

It’s easy to be all over the place with Social Media. You’re tweeting, blogging, updating statuses, uploading photos… Pretty soon you are spread so thin you are no longer making an impact anywhere.  In 2010 don’t worry so much about putting down markers on every new platform or network, instead focus on the two or three that you feel you can really add value to, and derive value from.

Integration

That focus becomes even more powerful when you can integrate your efforts. Facebook connect is a great example of how smart brands are tapping into the massive audiences of Facebook, but still carving out their own niche online. Tools like Tweetdeck can also maximize your impact.  Integration also means making Social Media work with other tools in the marketing arsenal. From printed materials to broadcast to outdoor, Social Media has to support – and be supported by – all parts of the marketing mix.

Innovation

Now’s the time to take a look at the current uses of Social Media and start flipping them. How can Twitter or YouTube be used differently? What sort of new partnerships or ideas can be made better through the use of Social Media? Innovation isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ resolution, either. B2B, small biz, global, services, everyone has different objectives, tools, resources and customers. Being innovative in your niche may be old hat in another, but that doesn’t matter. Change the game you’re playing.

Meaningful Metrics

In 2010 it’s time to put business into Social Media. Topline metrics like number of followers or Facebook fans just isn’t going to get it done. You have to resolve to become more sophisticated with, and yes more demanding of, your Social Media metrics. It’s not likely to be a direct relationship for everyone, but correlations can be identified and some causal extrapolations determined. If your Social Media activities aren’t driving your business then you need to rethink your resource allocation to Social Media.

Resolutions aren’t easy, but the stakes are too high right now not to give this your very best effort. Push through Q1 and Q2 and you’ll start to see the results. From there, sticking to your resolutions will get a whole lot easier.

*FYI – No need to call a doctor, I don’t smoke, drink or eat burgers.

A big thank you to everyone who attended today’s webinar on the Anatomy of Social Media Engagement.  Lauren walked us through a ton of important information on why social media policies are necessary, what types of things they should include and some great ideas on how to write your own.  So make sure you download the webinar to listen to it again or if you missed it the first time. Lauren is a font of social media information so if you aren’t following her on twitter, well what’s stopping you? @vargasl

Some of the take-aways from today’s webinar:

Are social media policies necessary?

YES! Social media policies are incredibly important to establish uniformity within your organization. Your social media policy should reflect who you are as an organization.

Key questions to ask before you begin:

• What is your scope?
• Will your organization encourage social media in the workplace?
• Do you want the workforce to identify themselves with your organization when engaging online?
• How does your organization define appropriate business conduct?
• How will your social media policy align with company culture and values?

Lauren likens a social media policy to the human body and breaks it down into the various parts:

Brain – your brain is working 24/7 whether you are sleeping or awake. Social media is also 24/7, interaction can be taking place any time of the day or night so your policy needs to reflect this.

Spinal cord – nerve cells are constantly sending and receiving messages from all parts of the body. These nerves are similar to the many parts of your organization. Each department may be called upon to interact in social media, to answer questions, address concerns or just reach out to customers.

Movement – body movement should be fluid and seamless, the same way that your social media policy and those on the social media frontlines should work together to create a fluid affinity.

Kidneys – every body needs a good waste management system, a way to dispose of the old to make room for the new. Your social media policy should be a document that evolves and changes as social media evolves and changes.

Liver – one of the main functions of the liver is storing vitamins, aiding digestion and getting rid of poisons. Being open to all types of feedback on your social media policy is an important way to gather nuggets of inspiration that you can store for later and implement when the time comes.

Part II of the Anatomy of Engagement focuses on Rules of Engagement a bit more than policy.

Mouth – taste buds detect a multitude of flavors in the same way that listening will reveal the different sentiments about your organization, brand and industry.

Esophagus – the esophagus is the direct funnel to the stomach. Make sure workflows are in place to funnel issues to the correct individual.

Circulatory system – nutrients flow through the circulatory system to be distributed to various parts of the body. The lessons learned from social media should be distributed to all departments of your organization.

Blood cells – carry nutrition, oxygen and substance to the rest of your body. There are a lot of conversations coming into your organization; a social media policy will help determine how to respond.

Heart – the heart keeps all of the systems working in harmony. Your organization fosters the circulation of new ideas, recycles old ways and pumps out fuel to keep everything ticking.

To check out some of the examples Lauren talks about in the webinar, be sure to open the presentations below and follow the links.

Resources:

The Anatomy of Engagement Guidelines Presentation part I

The Anatomy of Engagement Guidelines Presentation part II

GoToWebinar Anatomy of Engagement Webinar Archive

Radian6 invites you to attend the upcoming webinar, Social Best Practices for Marketing in the Cloud, which features our very own David Alston as one of the speakers.

Date: Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Time: 10am Pacific / 12pm Central / 1pm Eastern
Register Now!

Attend this webinar to learn:

• How to use the Social Technographics® Profiles of business decision-makers to design marketing programs that not only capitalize on emerging social behaviors but also fundamentally change the nature of the marketing relationship between B2B buyers and sellers.
• The P-O-S-T methodology – Why starting with People, Objectives and Strategy first, then moving to Tactics and Technology is the best approach for success.
• The How-To’s of social media monitoring and engaging to build communities, service customers, uncover influencers, and listen for the point of need.
• The best way to decrease unsubscribes and increase sales.

Join us in what should prove to be a very interesting and insightful 1 hour and you might even win some very valuable research from Forrester.

Featured speakers:

David Alston, VP of Marketing and Community, Radian6
Laura Ramos, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Jon Miller, VP of Marketing, Marketo

January is the time for fresh starts, new plans and great intentions – a time when we resolve to be our best self and set in motion the tactics to achieve it. A healthy, balanced lifestyle – with a renewed focus to lose weight, get in shape, become trim, sleek, slim and fit – is often at the top of the list.That’s exactly what makes this a busy time of year for Beachbody, a company that started almost 12 years ago, specializing in DVD-home fitness programs featuring online support; fitness gear and supplements. Among the best selling programs are P90X, 10 Minute Trainer, Turbo Jam and Slim in 6; brands which may be familiar through TV infomercials.

Beachbody owner Carl Daikeler recognized early on, the potential of infomercials to sell fitness. When he was just 24-years-old, he helped build the first infomercial network in the US viewed by 50 percent of all TV households in the country. In the mid 1990’s, he helped build an affiliate network of more than 100 radio and TV stations to promote fitness products. Now social media figures into the business plan. He has a blog where he discusses business ideas and customer success stories. It’s one of 4 featured on the website, with fitness advisors and trainers penning the other blogs.

How Fit is the Social Web?

Beachbody, including trainers and several product brands, is active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. While these are new initiatives, Facebook fans for the P90X brand have reached 30,000. There’s also a blogger outreach program where fitness and mommy bloggers are offered a free fitness program and asked to blog honestly about the experience.

Social Media is part of Beachbody’s strategy to proactively connect with customers and passively to gauge its online reputation. Beachbody monitors mentions and conversations on the social web for most of its product brands. In fact, before it was anybody’s job to listen, a motivated employee was monitoring and took the initiative to alert the Customer Service VP what was being said to enable a response. That employee now has the only job in the company with ‘social media’ in the title! Pierre Abraham is the Social Media Specialist and at that earliest point, he was listening for disgruntled customers. Now he uses Radian6 to sort through and prioritize 26,000 mentions per month (and they’re all positive he says!).

Most mentions are about P90X – a favorite among celebrities like actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher; singer Sheryl Crowe and professional athletes including Philadelphia Eagles football kicker David Akers. He started using P90X after a disappointing 2007 season to regain his strength and flexibility. Akers went on to break an NFL record for consecutive field goals in 2009. But that’s not the NFL record that would have earned his charitable Foundation $1Million dollars from Beachbody (the 2008 Beachbody challenge Akers accepted was to break the NFL record of a 64-yard field goal during a game). While that NFL achievement still eludes him, Akers is on his game and has been selected to play in the Pro Bowl January 31^st.

Listening Creates Opportunity:

It’s not just actors and athletes. Beachbody Social Media Specialist Pierre Abraham is always on the look out for influencers, one of the top reasons to listen. Recently the CTO of networking systems giant Cisco, Padmasree Warrior, mentioned on Twitter (@Padmasree) that she suspected Santa would give her P90X for Christmas instead of chocolates! Pierre quickly saw that she has more than a million followers. He jumped at the opportunity to respond with a word of encouragement. She jovially reciprocated the connection @Beachbody creating the opportunity for her 1,377,537 followers to see the P90X brand, experience the personal outreach, hear the message and learn that Beachbody is listening.

The Radian6 platform enables Pierre to track these connections over time and measure the success of word-of-mouth on the web – whether that’s tracking a rise in mentions after launching a new ad campaign, a new product or seeing if a new contest builds attention and excitement. One of the strengths Pierre sites is the ability to save data so he can graph and analyze trends. He also likes the convenience of having one platform to easily track ten brands across the social web instead of using several tools then aggregating results manually.

Social media monitoring is just beginning at Beachbody, but its capability to help inform business strategy has already begun to take shape – and with this company – whether you measure results in 10 minutes or 90-day workouts, 2010 is already shaping up to be a good year!

Do you know what elements to include in your social media policy and why you need to include them?

Do you understand the significance of those elements or how the policy fits into your social media strategy?

Do you know how to integrate those policies once you have them in place?

Please join Lauren Vargas as she walks you through the anatomy of a social media policy and other supporting documents you’ll need to have on hand as you embark on your journey into the social media frontier.

Date: Thursday, January 21^st

Time: 2 pm EST

Register now for this Free Webinar

Space is Limited. So don’t miss out!

The organization has an incredible opportunity with the integration of social media, to reevaluate old policies and controlling behaviors. By removing obstacles and encouraging smart participation in social media, your organization’s social media plan could be realized because of the power of the people within your organization and their influence in the community.

When getting started in social media, you cannot dismiss and ignore an organization’s fears about social media engagement. Social media success is dependant upon a drastic change in corporate culture’s thinking and execution process. Already we have addressed four out of eight steps as defined by leading change management thinker, John Kotter – increasing the level of urgency, building the guiding team, establishing a relevant vision and communicating for buy-in.

Now that urgency has been established, a team in place to lead, a relevant vision is established to guide the way, and you are communicating for buy-in, so how do you empower action?

1. Set Expectations: It is vital to provide clear guidelines for engagement and disclosure, so that all employees can represent themselves and the company clearly and professionally. By allowing your workforce to do what they do best and act as your representative, your organization can gain valuable social capital, credibility, and opportunity.
2. Give Constructive Feedback: Your ultimate goal throughout these steps for successful change, is for the people of your organization to act on your vision. You don’t want to hamper their success by scolding them about mistakes they make along the way. Let’s be realistic. Mistakes are how we learn and should be prepared for when they do happen. Having clear guidelines in place will lessen these instances, but also by giving constructive feedback and remaining positive will encourage future behavior promoting ideal interaction.
3. Relay Experiences: Shout out all experiences from the mountain top! Share stories and feedback throughout the entire company to spur change and believability in your organization’s vision.

How are you empowering action within your organization? What has worked and what has not? Please share your lessons learned. Stay tuned for the remainder of change management steps and tips every Monday through this month and February!

Thanks to everyone who attended our webinar yesterday and if you missed out please feel free to download it now and listen to it at your leisure.

If you follow Amber within the realm of Social Media, you already know that she lives and breathes social media all day, every day. And since she works in this field of overwhelming information, she has learned how to manage her social media time.  For those of you that don’t know Amber, you should follow her @AmberCadabra and get to know her better.

Amber gets tons of questions relating to social media:

• Where do I start?
• What tools should I use?
• How do I prioritize?
• What can I automate?

Her Social Media Time Management Webinar answers all of those questions for you. To pique your interest I’ll give you a quick overview.

The first part of her answer is “Get Organized”. Setting your social media goals will help to determine the amount of time you need to spend in social media.

Being involved in social media means using listening tools, engaging & participating, and measuring & analyzing. So how can you do all of this? Well, how long have you been in the social media space?

Amber’s Social Media Maturity Model gives you time suggestions based on where you are in your social media journey. If you are in the passive stage, you will spend the majority of your time just listening. However, if you are in the engaged phase you will need to listen, initiate, respond and measure. Referring to the Social Media Maturity Model will give you a good idea of how you should be breaking down your social media time.

9 Strategies to Find Time for ALL of Your Social Media Tasks:

1. Manage Disruptions – pick 3 things you must do today and don’t move off of them until they are done




2. Information Overload – stop trying to be everywhere and read everything. It’s ok to delete emails and unsubscribe from blogs you don’t read.




3. Leverage Tools – there are tons of helpful tools out there and Amber shares the ones that she uses. The important thing to remember though is do NOT automate your interactions. The purpose of leveraging tools is to automate tasks that can be automated which will create the time to be genuine when you participate in social media.




4. Annotate and Share – tagging, favoriting and bookmarking on sites like Delicious are great ways for you to create a reference for yourself and others and a content base for your community.




5. When Templates are OK – the key here is not to automate responses but to use templates to help answer recurring questions. Personalizing the template is extremely important.




6. Simple Task Management – delete the clutter and capture the tasks you need to do. Then put all of your tasks in a simple task management system.




7. Communication and Expectations – make sure you communicate your limitations and your expectations of others. It’s ok to say that you don’t know the answer and direct them to someone who does or to say that it will take you a few days to complete a task.




8. Routines – schedule times to do your tasks. It is ok to turn off email and your phone to get things done.




9. Unplugging – be with your friends and family. Spend time at offline events. You need downtime.

A  20 minute Q & A follows at the end of the webinar where Amber goes into a bit more detail on some of the tools that she uses and answers some great questions.

Resources:

Social Media Time Management Presentation

Social Media Time Management eBook

Social Media Starter Kit

GoToMeeting Social Media Time Management Webinar Archive

The Radian6 team is so delighted to welcome our newest member, Teresa Basich, as content marketing manager.

I met Teresa on Twitter several months ago (yep, Twitter), and was immediately connected to her wit, humor, and love for music. Then a little digging led me to her blog and her outstanding, thoughtful writing, and we struck up plenty of conversations from that point forward.

Teresa comes to us with a solid background in marketing, communications, writing, and project management, but the last year has seen her throwing herself headfirst into social media to learn everything she can learn. She has a keen grasp of the industry, the intersection of social media and business, and the importance of community in the growth of an organization. Plus, she’s got a tenacious, positive attitude that is always refreshing.

As our content marketing manager, Teresa will be putting all of those skills to work and helping us continue to deliver great content on the Radian6 blog, valuable web events, informational and helpful stuff all over the Radian6 website, and more. We’re more that certain to keep her busy, and you’re sure to see her out there in the community learning about how the content we build can help integrate better social media monitoring, measurement, and engagement into your business. Read her thoughts on her move to Radian6 here.

I couldn’t be more thrilled to have Teresa on the team. Please connect with her on Twitter and say hello, and join us in welcoming her to Radian6!

So you’ve decided social media is a useful way to connect with your customers and spread the word about your business? Cool for you. Now how are you going to convince the CXOs that it’s not just a waste of time?

I’d suggest you don’t start with “We HAVE to have a Facebook page” as your opening comments. Especially not if your reason for saying it is because a consultant or friend told you so, because everybody has one or your competitor is there and you’re not.

Often they’re held back by just plain ignorance about social media. They’ve made some assumptions based on the fact that their teenage kids are into social media networks and relate everything to that. Sometimes they’ve heard a few failure stories and relate them to all areas of social media. You need to show them the value and they may simply turn around. So do some deep searches and get your data together before you pitch it.

It’s also important to think about the person you’re talking to. What are their pain points and what will make it easier for them to get their job done? Will what you want to do add to their workload? Then you’d better have a way to show them the up-side.

Try to look at this through the eyes of the person you’re talking to. Find out what their beliefs and interests are from the company perspective and also from a personal one. Who do they admire? What are their aspirations personally and for the company? Can you find good cases that exemplify success at the same goals and also support what you want to do? You never know, you might find some even better than your original plans.

Where did they come from?

Each department of an organization has different needs that can be served through social media. If your CXO worked their way up through one of these, start here and speak to their core expertise.

PR and Marketing

PR and Marketing wage epic battles over who is going to “own” your social media efforts. It’s not impossible to get them to agree if you can divvy up the work and show them all that they will have their say and get to have a hand in influencing the way your company is perceived.

After all, messaging is their job and they’ve worked very hard to carefully craft your image, respond to questions and put a good face on things. They’re not going to be able to control what is said about you out there. That’s a given. But—and this is important—they can’t do that NOW either. People are probably out there right now sending mixed messages about you and your company, and if somebody isn’t listening and correcting misinformation, it becomes true as far as the public is concerned. After all, they read it on a blog, it MUST be true!

Show your PR and marketing team that you’ll be making their jobs easier and more fun to boot. Show them the report you get from those first searches and listening tools so they know what’s out there. Make sure they have a big part in the corporate social media policy development and that they are well versed in any of the tools you want used for the campaign.

Set them up with good PR tools and social media press releases and show them how it will streamline their workflow. Explain how you plan to measure the success of what you’re doing, and make sure those metrics suit their needs too.

Sales

A good salesperson understands that building a referral network is key to getting leads. They also get that referrals don’t always follow a logical route. One of the connections in their referral network maybe in a completely unrelated industry, but a connection of that connection’s connection is a decision maker for a prospective client.

A good salesperson also gets how important it is to nurture the relationships with their connections with frequent conversations and other support.

Social media is an ideal way to nurture a large amount of connections and not only become the “go-to guy” within that network, but to support the people in the network by introducing them to each other and helping them promote their own products and services.

Once the sales staff understands this, they’re going to see the value of social networking. All you’ll need to do is get them the right tools and they’ll be in.

If they still need a little convincing, find out who is in their referral network now. Show them who in their network is already using social media and who their competition is talking to. If the business space is fairly focused, there are going to be some crossovers in the networks and your salesperson will easily see opportunities she is missing. Help her find the tools and the networks she wants to be participating on, show her how to research for appropriate connections and she’s on her way to social media success.

IT Dept

One of the biggest pain points for the technology officer is when people come in with new hardware and software demands that will take up IT’s time to support and maintain. Another huge pain point your CTO and her IT department have to deal with is the corporate culture of ignoring IT in the decision process.

Common complaints I hear:

• It takes IT too long to vet the options
• They always want to use something else
• They won’t support our decisions
• IT doesn’t have the budget or bandwidth to deal with more
• They will shoot us down before we get started

As a web developer and a consultant, I encourage you to include your CTO in your decision making process. You might not know if other departments are considering a similar issue and solution. You might not know that IT has been carefully watching the networks and tools available and evaluating their options already. Give them a little credit and bring them in early to avoid having your own pain points later on in the process. Clearly define your goals, make lists of the tools you think you want to use (if you can do that easily), and then work with your IT department to find solutions you can all live with. Help IT see they don’t have to build a new monumental project and you’re not bringing dangerous software into their network.

Bottom line you need to use social media to prove that it works. Use your social media skills and listening tools to find the cases and data to back up what you want to do. When you’re ready to go to the CXO you’ll have a much tighter plan that you would if you just decided to “dive in and give it a go”. Much better odds of a success story of your own too!

We are very excited about the response received so far about the Radian6 Higher Ed Trial Program for the Spring 2010 semester! Though Session 1 candidates have already been selected and are in the middle of their trial program access now, faculty members (on behalf of their undergraduate classes) and graduate students can still apply to use the Radian6 platform for four weeks at no cost for the next three available sessions.

Each Radian6 Higher Education Trial Program session is for a period of thirty days only. To be considered as a candidate for this trial program, you must be a faculty member representing one undergraduate class or a graduate student currently enrolled in an accredited college/university. Each candidate will receive a training webinar. A webinar is mandatory before having access to the platform. We host them live via web conference, and they’re super easy. They take about 30 minutes, and are designed to help answer your questions and give you a solid walk-through of our platform. Up to two additional hours of training will be be given to each candidate throughout the trial session to assist with their area of research.

Currently, we are only accepting three candidates (two undergraduate classes and one graduate student) per session throughout the Spring 2010 semester. The submission deadline for Session 2 is 22 January. Candidates will be notified of selection 24 January. If you are not immediately selected, we will keep your information handy for the next month’s selection.

Please email the following information to Lauren Vargas at lauren.vargas@radian6.com:

First Name:
Last Name:
College/University:
City, State, Country:
Work Phone:
Email Address:

If a student, what is your class standing?:

• Freshman
• Sophomore
• Junior
• Senior
• Graduate Study

If a faculty member, what are your research specialties or teaching interests using the Radian6 platform?

If a graduate student, what are your research specialties using the Radian6 platform?

Please select trial session of interest in order of preference:

• Session 2: 1-26 February
• Session 3: 1 March – 2 April
• Session 4: 5-30 April

Along the way, we will share our findings and feedback with you about how students are experiencing and using the platform. So, apply today to become a part of the trial program or please pass along to educators and other relevant college/university programs.

We don’t need to tell you that you need to be listening in social media, right? But perhaps you need a bit of help building out a listening program that’s sustainable, actionable, and actually helps you meet your business needs. Here’s a set of steps to take and questions to answer to round out your listening notions into a strategy you can execute on.

1. Decide On Focus Areas.

• Are you listening just for your brand specifically?
• What specific keywords and phrases are most important to you, and why?
• What are your assumptions and expectations for what social media monitoring can help you learn or do?
• Do you need to do competitive or industry analysis as well at this point?
• What areas of the business can benefit most from understanding commentary and conversation on the social web?
• Do you have particular initiatives or campaigns that you will track independently?

2. Articulate Your Goals & Measurements.

• What are you hoping to accomplish with your social media monitoring program? Be specific, i.e. “we want to identify emerging customer service issues in social media and route them to our offline channels.”
• By when?
• What do you know now as a baseline or status quo in that area?
• What constitutes success or forward progress toward your goal(s)?
• What measurements can you track and measure to illustrate progress?
• How do they relate to things you’re measuring in other business areas like customer service, marketing, product development?

3. Consider Resources

• Who is going to be doing the social media monitoring?
• What kind of training will they need? Tools?
• Do you have front-line people dedicated to listening efforts, or are you working it into various job descriptions?
• If you’re breaking it out into different roles, which topics/areas is each person responsible for monitoring?
• How many hours can you dedicate to listening efforts per week? Per month?
• What level of time and effort spent will indicate to you that you need more or fewer resources?

4.  Map Information Flow

• Who needs to know what you’re finding through your social media monitoring?
• How will you document your listening and monitoring procedures and workflow?
• How will you get the listening insights to the appropriate team members?
• What are you expecting other team members to do with that information once they have it?
• How will you allow them to provide feedback to refine your listening efforts?

5. Illustrate Results & Next Steps

• What key information will you report? When should the first report happen after you start your listening program?
• To whom?
• How often?
• Who will review the results and be responsible for drawing conclusions based on the analysis?
• How will you dictate action steps based on the results?

You probably have your own subtleties and specifics as you map out your listening strategy, but the point is to have a solid roadmap that tells you what you want from listening, how you’ll deploy the people and tools to make it happen, and how you’ll gather and act on the information you find.

What have you learned from your listening efforts? Share your insights with us in the comments.

image by judepics

Change cannot be defined and shouted out in the confines of a board room. Successful change must be communicated in a clear, concise way to capture the minds and hearts of the entire organization. When getting started in social media, you cannot dismiss and ignore an organization’s fears about social media engagement. Social media success is dependant upon a drastic change in corporate culture’s thinking and execution process. Already we have addressed three out of eight steps as defined by leading change management thinker, John Kotter – increasing the level of urgency, building the guiding team, and establishing a relevant vision.

Now that urgency has been established, a team in place to lead, and a relevant vision is established to guide the way, how do you communicate the vision for buy-in?

1. Keep it simple – Speak the language of your organization…no, not the acronym or business lingo. Think of water cooler and coffee break discussions. Communicate concisely and establish an emotional bond by explaining how their buy-in will address their concerns and anxieties.
2. Cut through the clutter – In the same vein as keeping it clear and concise, communicate the vision in channels outside of the norm to help generate excitement. Go beyond the memos and form emails and find ways to incorporate their feedback. We are talking about social media integration, so consider how to incorporate these new tools within your organization first. Give your folks the warm and fuzzy of internal dialogue before opening up to external communities.
3. Sell solutions – Be wary of selling the tools you will be using to implement change because these tools will evolve. Sell the solutions and how these new principles and change of thought processes will aid their workflow and align with their business goals.

What has successfully worked for your organization to create buy-in? What hasn’t worked?

Stay tuned for the remainder of change management steps and tips every Monday through this month and February!

The beginning of a new year is a great time to evaluate old processes and come up with better and more efficient ways to do things. This year, resolve to make the most of your time.

Please join Amber Naslund, the Director of Community at Radian6, for a free Webinar as she leads us through 9 Time Management Strategies for Social Media.

Date: Thursday, January 14, 2010
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm EST
Sign-up: 9 Time Management Strategies for Social Media

Join this webinar and learn to:

• Manage disruptions
• Control information overload
• Leverage tools
• Use time-saving templates
• Wrangle task management
• And More!

Space is limited! So sign up today. You don’t want to miss out when Amber tells you how to set up a listening plan so you can spend time where it is the most valuable to you. Or to review your goals so that you can figure out if you are actually getting what you want out of social media.

In the last 12 months, social media clearly moved from the wings to the main stage. Obama got himself elected thanks to YouTube and Twitter. Ashton, Oprah, Lance and Ellen “legitimized” the latter with their pursuit of a million followers each. And despite its obvious envy at the growth and success of new digital platforms, old media made social media the front-page story on a weekly basis.

But 2010 looks like the year social media could actually start to play the leading role. Consider Pepsi. After 23 consecutive years of advertising on the Superbowl Pepsi has made a statement that the broadcast media event of the year just doesn’t matter as much as it once did. Instead the soft drink behemoth will launch an effort that funnels $20 million into community projects spearheaded by consumers trying to “refresh” the future.

Pepsi plans to solicit worthy causes from its community, crowdsource decisions for which ones to support, and fund them with between $5000 and $250,000 grants. Presumably Pepsi will build awareness, encourage conversation, listen and engage via a platform that unites its website, its Twitter feed, and its Facebook fan page.  Not to mention all the online content generated by the program’s participants.

In case it’s not obvious, this isn’t about bailing on the Superbowl.  It’s about embracing social media and understanding that when it comes to brands and products, customers now depend on each other to connect, share, learn and discover.

The trends couldn’t be more obvious. We all want to participate, if not by actually creating our own content, then certainly by commenting and sharing links.

We have new and complex media habits. (Remember the CNN/Facebook Inauguration?) Were we watching? Or creating, sharing and connecting?  Were we leaning back?  Or leaning in?

We’re tired of doing business with faceless brands. (Think Tony Hsieh of Zappos.) What better venue than social media for a brand to act like a person – honest, open, transparent, accessible? Look what Dominos just did after its huge fiasco earlier in the year.

The list of reasons to wholeheartedly embrace social media is long.  Tracking conversation on blogs and Twitter lowers your cost of research. Converting your site to include a blog and generating helpful content improves your organic search, especially with Google’s new emphasis on real time results. Developing relationships with bloggers and influencers in addition to the traditional press enhances word-of-mouth. The practice of crowdsourcing, even if it doesn’t yield a great idea, offers you invaluable customer insight. And finally, according to Ben Kunz, director of strategic planning at Media Associates, done right, social media makes financial sense. Even when you’re using old media metrics. Ben’s analysis of Pepsi’s investment predicts 200 million impressions, more than twice what its Superbowl buy would yield.

But the real reason to embrace social media is this. Your customers are there now, waiting for you. And the sooner you show up with the right kind of content and contribution the sooner you’ll reap the rewards.

Will 2010 become the year of social media for you and your clients?

About Edward Boches

Edward is the Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer at Mullen, a modern advertising agency based in Boston. He also writes about new ways to engage, inspire and motivate consumers at Creativity Unbound. Be sure to follow his musings and insight @edwardboches on Twitter.

Thanks to all of you Xbox fans out there who joined our hilarious and informative chat with McKenzie Eakin and Jerry Kansky during today’s Engaged Brand Twebinar. McKenzie is the Community Program Manager with Xbox LIVE Service and Jerry is a Social Support Analyst from the Xbox Elite Tweet Fleet.

Their Twitter handles give you a peek into their personalities. McKenzie aka @machetebetty is a former WOW player who came to work today with her mother’s bull whip (you’ll have to listen to the Twebinar to find out why and Jerry aka @jerrymoneta plays in a band called Moneta based in Seattle which he shamelessly plugs at the end of the Twebinar.

It wasn’t all fun and games talking to the Xbox crew today though. There was some really great information on why using Twitter as a means to connect with gamers has been such a positive experience for them.

Xbox has struggled with customer service perception in the past so they decided to start a 4 week pilot program called the Elite Tweet Fleet. They had 3 objectives:

1. To give support a human face
2. To proactively reach out to gamers
3. To educate a vocal community

The pilot project was a raving success and customer satisfaction levels were through the roof. The amount of positive reinforcement from the people they have supported has been immense. People are so pleased at the instant nature of support that they get with the Elite Tweet Fleet that they share their positive experience with others (the way that Tweeters do).

Jerry told us that the most important thing for people to remember in a Business Model of Twitter Support is that “absolutely every single tweet that is talking about your business is important.” Twitter is a unique way to create a connection with customers and the Tweet Fleet takes advantage of that fact.

Download the Xbox podcast to listen to more of the Elite Tweet Fleet’s learning’s and to hear some of their plans for the future. You’ll know it’s going to be a fun chat when McKenzie starts off by saying that “everything is more fun when it rhymes”, e.g. the Elite Tweet Fleet.

Thanks to everyone who came and listened to today’s Twebinar and for the multitude of questions. If you need some Xbox support, give them a shout @xboxsupport and if you just need some giggles follow Jerry and McKenzie. As always, there were some fun tweets that took place during the Twebinar:

Did you hear about Microsoft’s Xbox Elite Tweet Fleet? You can today.

Join Radian6 Community Director Amber Naslund with Marketing & Community VP David Alston in a Twebinar Today at 2 P.M. EST to meet the people behind the Xbox Elite Tweet Fleet team.

Tune in to Today’s Twebinar at:

• http://twebinars.radian6.com/ or
• http://www.blogtalkradio.com/theengagedbrand

The Elite Tweet Fleet makes customer support “social” using Twitter @Xboxsupport. What’s the benefit to Xbox players? Tune-in, Find out and Join the Conversation Today.

To tweet your comments and questions, use #Radian6 and include a “?”.

_________________________________________________________

Next Thursday’s Tune-in is all about YOU: Getting Organized and Managing Your Social Media Presence in 2010.

Amber will reveal 9 Guiding Principles to help Make Time Work for You.

Join Amber’s Free Webinar & Learn to:

• manage disruptions
• control information overload
• leverage tools
• use time saving templates
• wrangle task management
• & more!

That’s next Thursday, January 14th 2 p.m. EST

_________________________________________________________

Tune-in the 3rd Thursday in January. It’s all about Protecting and Empowering Your Organization by Creating Social Media Engagement Guidelines.

Learn the “Anatomy of Engagement” – in this Free Community Webinar presented by Radian6 Community Manager Lauren Vargas with Amber Naslund.

Space is Limited. So don’t miss out!

Thursday, January 21st at 2 p.m. EST

Get Engaged! We’re Listening. Tune-in Thursdays with Radian6.

If social media is on  your to-do list this year, no doubt you’ve been doing a whole ton of reading and research on the topic, and what it means for business.  And if you’ve done that, you’ve likely run across someone saying that one of the keys to successful social media participation is to share and be helpful.

But…how? What does that mean?

Your communication strategy for your business to date has probably included elements of public relations and media relations, advertising, direct response marketing, and more traditional marketing vehicles like collateral development, online presence/website, etc. All of those still have their place, and they typically lead with the brand and your desired messages.

But social media is characterized in part by creating and sharing content that helps educate, inform, or entertain your customers and prospects online. By contrast, this content leads with the helpful or fun parts that can contribute something of value to your audience, and the brand and “messages” are present in the background, if at all. The goal is not an overt brand impression, but a touchpoint of shared interest between the business and the customer they serve.

So, here are 10 ways to create or share helpful content in social media that you might try as you’re getting started this year.

1. Start a Delicious.com account, and bookmark interesting or informative articles and case studies for your industry. Share that link at the bottom of your outgoing email signature, or feature it on your website.

2. Link liberally to blogs and articles other than your own in your posts, to give your readers lots of other great resources to visit (and don’t worry that they’re going to defect to the competition if you do that. If your product or service is great, they’ll be back).

3. Use your Twitter account to share one of your posts or promotional pieces once for every 10 times you share someone else’s. Tweet videos, blog posts, articles, or news stories that highlight trends or progressive work in your broader industry. Yep, that includes sharing stories that don’t talk about you at all.

4. Write an e-book every quarter for your customers, answering some of their pressing business questions (and letting your logo on the page be the only promotion of your company in the document). For example, if you’re an accounting firm, write an ebook to help a small business set up their books at the beginning of the year.

5. Create a video interview series at the trade shows and conferences you attend. Do two-minute interviews with experts in your field, all answering some of the burning questions your customers have about their personal or professional needs.

6. Use your Facebook page to share the spotlight with the people that pay your bills. If you’re a household goods company, ask your customers to share their top tips for getting organized after the holiday season. If you’re a bakery, let your patrons upload photos of their beautiful (or disastrous!) holiday desserts.

7. Get a BlogTalkRadio account, and do a weekly or monthly podcast showcasing case studies from your customers about how they successfully solved a business problem, and all the learnings they had along the way. (Hint: don’t turn it into an infomercial for your product or service. Let them tell the story their way.) Make the archive easy to find, and share it in your newsletter regularly.

8. If you’re a B2B company that blogs, put together a post, e-book, or video series teaching your business customers how to set up and start their own blog, and help them find some others in the industry to check out, too.

9. If your team members speak at industry events or seminars, put the presentations on a company Slideshare page, and offer them for download. Be sure and use your other communication tools – including email, print collateral, and social networks – to let people know what’s there.

10. Do you do live events for your customers, like golf outings? Do you sponsor and participate in local charity events? Take lots of pictures, and put them on a corporate Flickr page (under Creative Commons license if you can) or your Facebook page. Feature them in your collateral and communications, and link to the images. Be sure to tag people in the pictures, too. Folks love finding themselves in pictures.

What would you add? What defines “helpful” content to you, and how would you encourage businesses to use content to connect with their customers and prospects? Love to hear your comments.

image by

The start of any year can be overwhelming. Between personal and professional resolutions, you and your organization may be feeling the pressure of change. However, change for the sake of change is not healthy or productive. Evaluating why you want to resolve to do something different can mean the difference between a year of success to forgetting the resolution even existed come the beginning of February.

Breaking change management into steps can help us keep our resolve, press forward with the satisfaction of progress not perfection and establish an integrated social media strategy. To get you started on this path, we created a twelve step program to help tackle a potential organization goal of putting your community first and actively engaging in healthy online dialog. These steps require only that you and your organization be willing and honest with yourselves and your community.

Follow these steps at your own pace. Since there are twelve, you could resolve to conquer one step per month! No matter how you decide to initiate these steps, our team will be here giving you the support and resources needed to maintain your resolve.

Twelve Step Program for Community Engagement

The following steps are clear cut directions for your organization to practice continuously to foster healthy online relationships and place community first. For a more detailed approach to tackling these twelve steps, please view and download the eBook.

1. We admitted our organization was powerless over the social web – that our conversations had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than our organization could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our organization’s will and our social outposts over to the care of the community as we understood our community.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our organization and brand.
5. Admitted to the community, and to our entire organization the exact nature of our organization’s past behavior.
6. Were entirely ready to have the community remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked the community to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all communities our organization displeased, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would further irritate them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when our organization was wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through social media engagement to improve our conscious contact with the the community as we understood our community, asking only for knowledge of the community’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had an intellectual awakening as the result of these steps, our organization tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

*This version of the 12 steps is an adaptation from the original 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the program inspired by Communicators Anonymous to reposition the communications industry.

Are you up for the challenge? Already tackling these steps? Please share how you will or already are implementing these steps to promote healthy change in your organization.

Remember….this is YOUR year to make social media success a reality!

Want to start the year off right? Get up to speed and exceed? Over the past few days of devouring blogs, it’s inspiring to discover the one themeword or three words people are choosing as guideposts to drive their priorities throughout 2010.

Examples include: Achieve, Courage, Attuned, Connect, Stretch, Adventure, Transition, Kings, Reward. You’ve got the idea – and I could add one: “Now”. Have you chosen yours?

Whether you choose a theme or not, this is the place to learn and engage – where you’ll find encouragement to make the most of your time as you move toward making this your best year yet, to accelerate your knowledge in social media and to discover and express your true voice.

You’ll find helpful resources:

• on The Engaged Brand section of Radian6
• through weekly Web events
• on our Blog

The Engaged Brand:

This month’s theme is “This is the Year! Social Media Resolutions”.  If you only read one book, view one multi-media presentation; or participate in one online chat, check out this handy resource for suggestions. “Take One” is like a tempting box of chocolates that you can take home and sample, savoring each choice, one at a time.

Are you planning on Hiring or Getting Hired in Social Media? Is your social media job description up to date? Community Director Amber Naslund points out the Do’s and Don’ts of Hiring for Social Media roles and reveals tips on how to reinvent yourself for the emerging social media job market.

Business is in a time of transition. A power-shift is underway where the consumer has as much voice as a brand. If you intend on being a change agent to help your business traverse the bridge to social media integration, Community Manager Lauren Vargas has created an e-book that will guide you and your organization throughout 2010 in 12 clear steps. She outlines the stages that will help a brand transition from a single voice – to one that encompasses and enables community participation in the life of a brand. But the first step is always recognition – so if your organization is ready to recognize the social web is community-owned, then you’re ready for this amazing 12-step program.

Mark your calendars and Join the Thursday Conversations on the Web:

Preparing an organization to embrace social media can be tricky. Guidelines are good. Join Lauren in a webinar Thursday January 21^st at 2 p.m. EST to get the full picture. She’ll dissect the Anatomy of Engagement so you’ll be prepared to engage and empower your whole organization.

Do you wonder where you’ll find the time to participate daily in social media, how you can avoid information over-load and be successful managing your social presence with limited time? Be sure you tune into Amber’s webinar Thursday January 14^th at 2 EST. You’ll walk away renewed with tips to help you reclaim a precious resource – Time – how to make it work for you, not against you.

This Thursday, January 7^th at 2 pm EST, join Amber with Marketing and Community VP David Alston for a Twebinar. Discover what Microsoft is doing to engage in social media through a new model that harnesses the power of a community on Twitter to educate and enable Xbox users to help each other. It’s a pilot project that worked so well, it became real.

On the Blog:

This is the year social media becomes real even for the largest companies. Friday is the day we get to enjoy the opinions of Guest Bloggers and this week, the astute social media thinker Edward Boches reveals timely evidence that social media is not on the fringes, it’s now impacting mainstream media big time!

Speaking of media, this is awards season on TV leading up to the Oscars and our big time Media guy, Rob Begg (Director of Business Development for Media) will keep us up to date on the celebrity buzz on the social web, showcasing our cool Radian6 Listening platform, to reveal which celebrities are attracting the greatest attention.

And stay tuned for Lauren’s Social Media Change Management series that continues next Monday; one tip per week to ensure ‘change’ becomes an experience that’s effective and positive.

So it’s quite a month, here at Radian6. We’ve arranged a tasty buffet of snacks, meaty mains and sweets to prepare you for the journey ahead – to make 2010 your best year yet for social media learning and engagement. Hop on. It will be quite a ride!

2009 whipped by in a flash, and you heard all the crazy buzz about social media. You read the stories and heard the buzz, watched the status updates fly by on Twitter and Facebook, and heard that social media is changing the landscape of how marketing and communications impacts business.

But maybe you haven’t started yet. You’ve listened carefully, and you’ve decided that 2010 is the year you’re going to get started implementing social media in your organization.

If you still need a few resources to help get you on the right track, we’ve got a few choices from our bookshelves and media libraries to get you started. Take a look and Take One (or a few) to add to your arsenal.

Already in the trenches? Maybe this is the year that you’re going to do a little more, dig a little deeper, and move your social media efforts deeper into your business.

We’ve visited a few topics in our past couple of months, like how to listen better and deeper, how to get started with some social media strategies, or how to build a business case for social media inside your organization.

This month, perhaps you need to do a bit of reflection on how social media fits into your organization. Lauren Vargas has written you a 12-step program to not only help you put community first, but consider how social media will plug into your business as you’re mapping out your 2010 efforts.

And if you’re getting serious about social, that might include putting some dedicated human resources toward making it happen. Check out some ideas about hiring and getting hired for social media roles.

This month on the blog, we’ll be talking about all sorts of other social media resolutions: better measurement, better engagement, better integration. What are you resolving to do with your social media initiatives in 2010? We want to hear from you.