Thanks to those of you who joined us for our twebinar with Josh Reynolds, Head of Sun Microsystem’s North American MidMarket Initiative. Josh shared all kinds of great info with us today…  from some of the surprises they found when they started listening to who makes up Sun’s online community to what kind of content their community responds to best. Be sure to download the podcast if you didn’t get the chance to attend.

Josh also shared some of Sun’s challenges and successes while using social media.

Challenges:

• Finding the right technical people within the organization to get involved in Sun’s online community engagement
• Finding the right balance of content that appeals to the readership and doesn’t over-promote while still creating leads

Successes:

• Social media has helped them reach an incremental market/ audience that wasn’t being reached through traditional means
• Being able to respond to negative comments and turn the situation around

Be sure to follow Josh on twitter @JoshRey and check out his personal blog – http://convergence-sm.com on the convergence of traditional marketing and social media.

Thanks so much for listening and participating today. Check out some of the questions and great tweets below:

Thanks to everyone who joined us for today’s Engaged Brand Twebinar with Lisa and Chelsa from Kiva.org!

Kiva.org is a website that lets people lend money to entrepreneurs around the world who need loans. Individual loans can be as small as $25 and will be combined with other micro-loans to make up the total loan for the entrepreneur. Kiva is raising about $1 million in loans every 9 days.

If you missed out on today’s twebinar where they shared some of their social media strategies, be sure to download the Kiva podcast now.

Since Kiva is a non-profit organization they have a limited marketing budget. One of the ways they are able to make that budget stretch as far as possible is to engage with their community. Recently they were involved in the Chase Community Giving contest where they won $25,000 to help them continue on with their cause.

In order to win the contest they needed to get votes. And the way they got votes was by asking their community for help through social media.

Some of their social media strategies for the contest:

• Used their newsletter to ask for votes;
• Added small ads about the contest to their website;
• Lenders received a message to please vote within their Thank You for Your Loan letter;
• Posted contest info on their blog;
• Encouraged staff members to spread the word through their own personal online communities;
• Twitter – in addition to tweeting about the contest, they also sent personal DMs to some of their followers who had large followings (influencers) and asked them to spread the word;
• FaceBook – they created an event on FaceBook, plus they reached out to their sub-groups to share the information on how to vote;
• LinkedIn – sent out an announcement to all of their followers;
• Recruited other bloggers to share the word on the contest;
• Posted to their community, KivaFriends.org;
• And they approached their top 50 lending teams on Kiva.org.

Their biggest learnings while using social media are to sit back and listen to your community and engage with them in their conversations. Plus, don’t be afraid to experiment. Just put yourself out there and start out small in one area until you get a feel for it.

If you want to keep up with Kiva and see what they are doing next, be sure to follow them on Twitter @Kiva

Thanks again for listening and asking some great questions. To hear the answers to the questions below, be sure to listen to the podcast.

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

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

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:

Thanks to all of you who joined us for today’s Engaged Brand Twebinar with Edward Boches, the Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer at Mullen. We really enjoy it when you come prepared with questions and boy were you guys prepared today.

Edward has such a passion for social media. It was evident in all aspects of our conversation. His enthusiasm and expansive knowledge on the topic is definitely worth a second listen. So be sure to download the Mullen podcast.

I put together some of the highlights from today’s Twebinar but, seriously, there were so many awesome insights you really should listen to the podcast.

Some of Edward’s tremendous take-aways on Social Media:

• The cool thing about social media is that you can do a lot of things quickly, learn from them and then do something else.
• Counting fans and followers is a vapid metric. The quality of your followers is much more important than quantity.
• One word-of-mouth recommendation is worth more than 200 TV ads.
• People are turning to their social friends for recommendations.

Why should you get involved in Social Media?

• If you don’t you will be obsolete so fast
• It is the most exciting, inspirational, creative source of media. It is a revolution. It gives you more access to thinkers and new ways to expand your tribe

The 25 tactic when using Social Media:

• 25% of the time, talk about yourself or promote yourself.
• 25% of the time, promote content created by your followers.
• 25% of the time, identify and share links that will be useful to your community.
• 25% of the time, engage in dialog, answer questions and interact with your community.

If you take that approach people will spread your content, share things back with you, say nice things about you and share word-of-mouth.

Current Trends:

• Consumers want to participate, not just watch.
• People’s relationship with media is way more complex than it used to be, eg Obama’s inauguration.
• There are so many choices and options that people no longer have the same shared experience like they did when there were only 3 TV channels. People want to be connected to as individuals. Brands should customize their approach and invite communities to participate.

What is next for Social Media?

• In 1 or 2 years we won’t be using the word Social Media, everything will be Social.
• CrowdSourcing: Invite co-creation for everything you do. Your community will create content.

If we didn’t get to your question today, make sure you follow @edwardboches on Twitter. You can connect with him directly and see what he’s up to next. And be sure to check out his new blog TheNextGreatGeneration.com, it’s written entirely by Gen-Y 18-25 year olds who will share their thoughts on life, love and everything in between.

Thanks again for listening and participating. Here are a couple of the cool tweets that took place during the Twebinar:

Thanks to everyone who joined our Webinar today on Getting a Foothold in Social Media. Lauren made an in-depth presentation on the 7 Steps to Getting Started in Social Media.

1. Get Educated.
2. Listen.
3. Find Your Personality.
4. Define Success.
5. Participate.
6. Measure, Measure, Measure.
7. Don’t be Afraid to Fail.

But don’t worry if you missed out. We’ve got it all right here for you to download. Or if you prefer you can just view the eBook.

Also, thanks to those of you who sent in some thought-provoking questions. If any of you want to listen to the answers again they are recorded at the end of the Webinar.

Thanks to everyone for the great turnout at our Engaged Brand Twebinar today with Chuck Hemann from Dix & Eaton. The audience participation was so awesome; we had plenty of great, thought-provoking questions for our speed round.

Chuck shared so much fantastic information it was hard to keep up. He started with his brilliantly simple 4 step process for a Social Media campaign:

1. Listen
2. Create a strategy based on what you learned from listening
3. Engage the community
4. Measure the response

He said that “If you don’t listen and benchmark to begin with, it’s hard to measure the success of your Social Media program.”

He also shared the list of blogs he keeps in his RSS feed. Plus, he had some great nuggets of wisdom, such as “Engage people where they live, not where you live.” And “The conversation about you and your brand are going to be happening whether you participate or not.”

To hear more great nuggets from Chuck please download the Dix & Eaton podcast from BlogTalkRadio. And be sure to follow Chuck on Twitter at @chuckhemann so you don’t miss out on anything new he might have to say.

Thank you all for listening and participating. Here’s a few of the interesting tweets that occurred during the Twebinar:

TWEET FROM: LZONE
Like @chuckhemann, I agree that SM works best when it becomes a part of a company’s culture and doesn’t just reside in one dept. #radian6

TWEET FROM: CSLEDZIK
@lzone @alexiaharris Makes sense to start slow as Chuck said. Even listening ahead of time can help you be proactive. #radian6

TWEET FROM: ALEXIAHARRIS
@chuckhemann I read the blogs you suggested. I guess I’m on track #radian6

TWEET FROM: SONNYGILL
Ding ding. @chuckhemann touches on shaping corporate culture to be ready for SM within the business #radian6

TWEET FROM: GOKTGO
“The corporate culture has 2 b ready 4 social media…they have 2 b willing 2 collaborate w customers more than just push products” #radian6

______________________________________________________________________________

EDIT: We thought we’d add Chuck’s great list of social media blogs for all of those who’d like to check them out.

Aaron Strout: http://blog.stroutmeister.com/
Amber Naslund: http://altitudebranding.com/
Dave Fleet: http://davefleet.com/
David Griner: http://www.thesocialpath.com/
David Mullen: http://www.davidwmullen.com/
Don Bartholomew: http://metricsman.wordpress.com/
Geoff Livingston: http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/
Jason Falls: http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/
Katie Paine: http://kdpaine.blogs.com/
Olivier Blanchard: http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/
Radian6: http://www.radian6.com/blog/

Thanks to everyone who joined us for today’s Engaged Brand Twebinar with Kodak.

The positive response was outstanding and we really appreciate Tom Hoehn and Jenny Cisney sharing their insight into Social Media and the way it can make business better. There were so many great take-aways from the Twebinar that if you missed it or want to listen to it again please download the Kodak podcast.

Be sure to check out more fabulous Social Media Tips from Kodak where they talk about everything from the landscape of Social Media to some of the current Social Media myths to some of their personal Social Media tactics. There is so much great info in there that you’ll want to read it more than once.

And don’t forget to follow Tom – @TomHoehn and Jenny – @KodakCB on Twitter for any new tidbits they might be sharing or to ask any additional questions we could not get to during the Twebinar.

Thank you for listening and participating!

If you’ve ever interacted with Shel Israel on Twitter, you know he’s as genuine and approachable as anyone. So it’s fitting that his latest book, Twitterville, is full of stories of the bustling microblog community, how it’s impacting businesses large and small, and all the characters that are part of it.

Shel talks specifically about why Twitter is particularly applicable in the business world, and how its small-town feel with millions of conversations makes geographic limitations less significant than ever before, but the connections between people even more powerful.

Please join us tomorrow, September 9th at 2:00 PM (EST) for a lively, fun conversation with Shel about his book and some of the stories in it. And of course, we’ll be on our nifty Twebinar platform so that Twitter itself can play a big part in the conversation. We’ll be taking your questions, too, so if you have something to ask Shel, be sure to bring it along.

The Twebinar format, if you haven’t been before, is a mashup between a live podcast/audio broadcast and Twitter as the backchannel for discussion. We’ll be using the hashtag #radian6 and picking up your questions along the way. 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.

A few Twebinar tips for the uninitiated:

* When you log in, you should hear music or the live broadcast. If you don’t hear the audio right away, refresh your browser.
* To ask a question, simply 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, so you can send questions in advance 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.
* We’ll post the full broadcast after the event on our blog, and 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.

Head to the Twebinars site to log in and join the discussion (don’t worry, we never see your login credentials; Twitter keeps those). We can’t wait to chat with Shel, and hope you’ll bring along all of your stories and questions about Twitter’s impact on business.

Update: Download the archived broadcast here if you missed it!