As we work toward making sense of online engagement it’s important we’re able to look to each other for examples of what’s working and what’s not, and speak with each other openly about our strategies and processes for managing our own conversations on the web.

You’ve probably seen a few companies release their own internal engagement guidelines and policies for public consumption in an effort to be candid and transparent about their online interactions. We applaud that openness and feel that kind of process sharing is invaluable to understanding the true potential social media integration holds for businesses.

We’re throwing our hat in the ring this month and offering up our own monitoring and engagement playbook – yes, the one we use within the walls of Radian6 – to give you a taste of what engagement looks like for a company that lives and breathes through the power of the social web.

Because this is our internal playbook, it features processes that lean heavily on the use of our dashboard and Engagement Console, and is also tailored to help us achieve our own goals for social media engagement. Take those couple things into consideration when you’re flipping through the PDF.

Throughout August we’ll be walking down the engagement trail and discussing the nuances of talking and connecting with your online audience on our blog, and we’ll also be discussing the value of framing your engagement initiatives with guidelines and policies to make them scalable and align them with your current company goals and employee practices.

You’ll see us generalizing some of the content in our playbook, as well, and adding some more detail to the engagement picture for you to think through and absorb for your own purposes.

As always, if you’ve got any questions about engagement or about our playbook, please feel free to leave us your thoughts in a comment or email us at community@radian6.com. We’re looking forward to this month in a big way, and hope you come back and join us for the conversations we’ll be having around online engagement.

2010 is speeding by at such a fast pace that we’re thinking it’s time to slow things down around here and get back to basics. The content you’ll be seeing around here in the months to come is going to be a bit more brass tack-ish as we return to the fundamentals of social media listening, measurement, and engagement.

We’re starting the slow-down with June’s eBook, a primer to help get you started with social media listening, measurement, and engagement. We’ve broken down these categories of social media application into listening, measurement, and engagement for your brand, your competitive landscape, and your industry.

As is mentioned in the eBook itself, although we take a corporate angle with the content, the explanations and advice we provide is applicable in agency, non-profit, and higher-ed situations, too. The foundations for doing anything on the social web are the same; it’s at the tactic level that things need switching up.

At the back of the eBook we’ve also provided a grid of content from our archives that you can reference for additional details or perspective at any point in your social media involvement. Just click on through and read up, and let us know if you’ve got any questions about what you’ve read – or what you haven’t read.

And on the Radian6 blog this month we’ll be chatting about reporting, taking on finer points like why there is no one best way to report social media analytics and insights, questions you should be asking to determine which stats to report and how, and the nuances of various departmental reports and reporting methodologies.

Questions for us? Feedback about our eBook? Ideas and suggestions to share with your peers about the practice of reporting and what it entails? Let’s kick things off around here; we’re ready for June and hope you are, too.

Customer Service is a bit of a hot button issue these days. Along with conversations, engagement, and all those other trends, social customer service is receiving its time in the spotlight because, well, there’s real value in integrating more social elements into your customer service model. And by social elements we don’t mean every social technology and online engagement platform you can get your hands on; in many instances, social elements are a shopping-friendly website or a more communicative and helpful call center.

All variety of companies, big and small, have lost their footing with the buying public, because the buying public doesn’t trust brands anymore. People have been pushed upon and are now equipped with the means to find the information they need about products and services without the help of the companies that produce those products and services.

This shifting customer landscape can be difficult to adjust to, and even tougher to weave into your customer service models. How do you change years of engrained processes? How do you convince people that investing time and money into these new strategies, tactics, and tools will pay off?

We’re taking the month of May to help answer those questions for you and give you some support and ideas for why these social pieces can’t be ignored and how to get started incorporating them into your customer service mix.

This month’s ebook focuses on how you can get started creating a more customer-centric culture that appeals to your customer, prospect, and community audiences and gets them turning to you as well as their networks for help making buying decisions.

As always, we hope you use this content as a creative engine to help spark ideas for ways these social philosophies can be put to use in the context of your business. And if you’ve got questions that live under the umbrella of social customer service and relationship management, let us know! We’re here to help.

Up until recently, social media use for business has lived mostly in marketing and communications departments. Given the context of social media – online applications and platforms that allow people to connect and socialize with one another – it’s not surprising it’s lived in those departments that are founded upon tenets of clear and powerful communication.

But marketing, communications, PR, all those heavily communication-oriented pieces of the business puzzle aren’t the only places within an organization where social tools and processes can live. Customer service, sales, and product development are just a few of the additional possibilities.

The implications of socializing an enterprise – of infusing online social platforms and the principles of relationship building, collaboration, engagement, and meeting people on their own turf – are huge and vastly important to consider as the landscape of modern business continues to shift and progress at break-neck speed.

To help demystify and break down what it means to socialize your business we’ve created an ebook from Radian6 community manager Lauren Vargas’s eight-step change management series on our blog. In this ebook, we give you basic steps to:

• Foster a sense of urgency within your organization to see the value of social media outside of its typical marketing uses;
• Build a strong team of people within your organization to lead the change and integration process;
• Create a vision for socialization that is clear and aligns with the goals of your organization’s business plan;
• Communicate with your C-Suite in a way that helps them understand the goals you’re working toward to integrate social tools and methods throughout your organization;
• Empower teams throughout your business to take action;
• Find and share short-term wins that keep people motivated and feeling good about the change that’s happening;
• Remain persistent without losing sight of your goals;
• And make the changes you’ve worked hard to instill stick for the long term.

Throughout April, we’ll be discussing on our blog what it takes to socialize a business, and exactly how that socialization will affect both internal processes and external perceptions and the bottom line. Have questions for us about change management or integrating social media? Please let us know!

By now, you’re probably neck deep in your social media initiatives. You’ve set some great goals for your programs and you’re ready to get started taking a look at how they’re impacting your overall business plan. Do we see any increase in leads because of our social media presence? Have we improved brand awareness and loyalty? Have our customer support costs been affected by our social media efforts?

If you’re asking yourself these questions, it’s great you stopped by, because we’re talking social media measurement, metrics, and analysis all throughout March. We’ve started by putting together a downloadable ebook – adapted from our Director of Community Amber Naslund’s blog series – to help you dive into the practice of social media measurement.

In this ebook, you’ll find step-by-step processes and explanations for establishing metrics that help you track the attention and reach of your social media programs; the lead generation, sales, and conversions that might be happening because of your social media efforts; and the cost savings you might be seeing because you’ve integrated social media into your business processes.

We gave you some great starting points for measuring the impact and engagement of your community, too, in our February ebook , and we’ll be tackling this topic in more detail on our blog this month.

The most important thing to remember about measurement – and what we emphasize wholeheartedly here at Radian6 – is that you have to have set goals and measurable objectives in place to make sense of the data you’re tracking. Without goals and objectives, without context, your data lives by itself and relates to nothing you’re doing.

It’s also important to track only the metrics that align with your goals. Harnessing all the information out there would be time consuming and confusing, and it would make nearly impossible to tie back that data to your goals and plans.

Our goal this month is to get you more comfortable with the concepts and processes behind social media measurement. There is no one way to measure, but we plan on addressing your questions and concerns to get you thinking about how you can identify and define the best metrics for your specific social media efforts and get started measuring.

Have any specific questions you want us to answer? Give us a shout and let us know what’s on your mind. And stop by when you can to see if we’ve addressed your concerns. We’re here to help.

In January you got all your social media resolutions in place, right? From convincing your executive suite that social media is a valuable investment to improving your social media monitoring plan, we covered all sorts of bases to help get you organized and ready to tackle 2010.

And now that you’ve got your feet on the ground, we’re taking on community building. The Radian6 community management team has put together a comprehensive ebook this month about building, managing and sustaining brand communities. In this ebook, Amber Naslund and Lauren Vargas have covered:

• What makes up a community;
• How you make the case for community to your internal teams;
• What sorts of resources you’ll need to build out, maintain, and grow your community;
• What roles you’ll need to hire for and what attributes and expertise you’ll need to keep an eye out for – and avoid – when hiring for those roles;
• Best practices for building a thriving community;
• How to measure the impact of your community;
• And looking toward the future at a mature community model

If you’re ready to address the idea of building a community within your organization, download this PDF and let us know what you think, and be sure to take a look at the additional resources around here to get a better feel for what community is all about.

We’ll be talking about all things community throughout February, so stop by when you can and share your successes, concerns, and comments with us. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

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.

If you’re exploring how social media fits into a business context, you’ll need several strategies to build a strong case for it, and this month, we’re going to help you lay the foundations.

If social media is new to your business, we’ve got some ideas for framing out the first conversation you should have about social media. From laying a groundwork for social media understanding to broaching some of the key topics and questions like strategy, resources, and how to measure social media, we’ve got some succinct conversation starters to get you in the door.

To help keep the discussion focused, build your conversations with your team, your clients, or management around three key principles of social media: listening, engaging, and measuring.

Making the case for listening might start with seeing how your own company is faring on the web, but sound listening strategy goes well beyond brand monitoring. Learn how to mine the social web for critical business intelligence, understand how and where your strongest advocates are participating in social media, and discover how prospects identify themselves through social channels.

When you’re ready to make the leap to participation in social media, it’s important to consider all the important aspects to engagement. We’ve got a quick discussion guide for you for The Why and How of Social Media Participation that talks about some of the most consistent culture elements of social media and social networks, and why participation can hold for your business.

And to be sure you’ve planned ahead, check out Part 1 of the Anatomy of Engagement Guidelines that’ll walk you through considerations for drafting social media policies and guidelines in your organization. Part 2 takes you through the important pieces of guiding social media participation inside your company, including thoughts about what to moderate and how to manage information flow.

If you’re in a company where regulatory issues are in play, or you’re accustomed to legal review of communication materials, you’ll want to check out this ebook on Fostering Social Media Success with Your Legal Team, with ideas on how to bring you or your clients’ corporate counsel into the discussion about social media participation. The tough critics matter, too.

No conversation about justifying social media would be complete without a chat around measurement, so we’ve started the discussion here with Why Measurement Makes the Case, including some ideas for demonstrating the impact of your efforts. But never fear; if more discussion on measurement, ROI, and the new world of new media metrics has you hungry for more, we’ve got you covered. Stay tuned for a future month of The Engaged Brand dedicated to all things social media measurement.

This month is full of resources and ideas for how to get your company or client conversation started around social media. What else would you add? What ideas and approaches have been successful for you? Let us know, and happy reading.

How Do I Know I’m Ready For This?

There are a number of factors you need to take into consideration when planning a social media strategy. Some of them are operational, like the resources you have available, both in terms of people and dollars. Social media is sometimes less expensive in terms of capital outlay, but it requires long term dedication and plenty of human resources in order for it to be sustainable. You’ll also want to consider what aspects of your business will be affected or impacted by social media, outside of just marketing and PR. Perhaps customer service or sales should be involved, or even product management or HR. If you’re in regulated industries, legal and compliance will need a seat in the discussion too.

Social media is a much a cultural shift as an operational one for many businesses, too. As you lead these strategies, you’ll want to have open discussions internally about fears and perceived risks of social media, the appetite your company has for opening up communication, and how you might need to work on internal communication and processes to make it fly.

Need a hand thinking these things through? We’ve put together a Social Media Readiness Assessment for you that can help you with the questions you need to be asking as you get started.

What Should my Priorities Be?

First and foremost, a listening strategy is the foundation for any social media program. If you aren’t already monitoring the landscape for your brand in social media, that’s where you’ll want to start. Check out some of the materials in our Foundations of Listening and Engagement library for tips and advice about what to listen for and why.

Once you’ve got listening down, you’ll want to consider some of the other aspects of a social media strategy. If you’re a small or medium business, start by checking out our e-book on Getting a Foothold in Social Media. Even if you’re a big business just getting started, we’ll guide you through a few of the fundamentals of listening (including some ideas for free tools), building a social media presence, and measuring your efforts.  Need some more specific guidance on how to use some of the more popular social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and blogs? Read up on the Social Media Starter Kit.

And if information overload has a hold on you, have a look at this slide deck on Social Media Time Management and this companion ebook for some tips on resource allocation, and how to avoid splintering your attention across too many channels.

What Am I Aiming For?

As you begin establishing your social media presence, it’s good to have an idea of what a mature social media organization looks like. From passive listening through initial engagement, all the way through contributions and content marketing within your established community, our CEO has a whitepaper that outlines the Yellow Brick Road to Social Media Maturity, and what each step entails.

It’s important to understand your aspirations as a social business in order to gauge, measure, and adjust your approach along the way. Even if you start with baby steps, keep in mind where you’re headed so that each effort you undertake can build upon the last and move you toward those goals.

What other questions are on your mind about how to get started in social media? If we can help, fill out the “Need More” form below and let us know!

What am I listening for?

When you’re first starting out, there are a few key areas where you’ll want to put your ear to the ground:

Your Brand
Listening for conversation around your brand is often the logical first step for many businesses. You want to get a handle on what people are saying, where they’re saying it, and what the context is. Listening around your brand can help you understand if your messages are sticking, or whether there’s a disconnect between your company presentation and your community’s perception. From emerging customer service issues to kudos for a job well done, the social web is teeming with insights about your business.

Worried that no one’s talking about you yet? That’s okay. We’ve got some ideas for you about Listening When No One’s Talking in this PDF.

Your Competitors
Don’t underestimate what you can learn by listening to competitive buzz, too. See if you’re ahead of the social media game, behind the curve, or somewhere in the middle. Competitive insights can also clue you in to rumors and insights about their business moves, how their customers and prospects perceive them, and identify unmet needs of the crowds. Benchmarking your competition on the social web can help you clarify how your social strategy should emerge and evolve, too.

Your Industry
Whether the social web is buzzing about your brand or not, there’s lots to be gained by keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry. Spot emerging trends and topics of interest to help you drive content creation or product and service ideas. Know who the key players are, and get early insights into the new voices in the industry. Hear what people have to say about what they need from businesses like you, and use their input to shape your outreach, engagement, and future business strategy.

For more insight into which conversations to listen for across all of these topics, check out our Top 10 Reasons to Listen and Another 10 Reasons To Listen PDFs. Download them, share them with your team, and use them as a launchpad for your listening strategy. Or if you’re getting ready to make a presentation to your colleagues or clients, have a look at this handy slide deck of The Top 20 Reasons to Listen all in one place (and use the PDFs as your talking points).

Ready, Set… Engage

Engagement is the next step on the social media road, and many companies are wondering just where to get started. What do I say? Who do I say it to? Once you’ve established a solid listening strategy, you’ll know where the conversations are taking place online, and you’ll know what they’re about. Need some tips on what to say when you get there and how to respond to the conversations you uncover? Check out this PDF on our Engaging your Community.

If it’s early for your brand in social media, maybe you need to find some ways to join the dialogue happening in your industry. Perhaps you’ve got some conversation going on, but you’d really like to better connect the conversation to your sales process the “right” way. We’ve got some ideas there, too.

We call it Listening At the Point of Need, and it’s all about understanding how context, intent, and expressed need in social media become opportunities for you.  It’s a new way of looking at sales in a web 2.0 world, where timing is everything, and the most valuable currencies are trust and relevance. Check out this whitepaper to help you better understand how to use smart listening to find and engage prospects across the social web.

What else can we help you understand or discuss about listening and engagement? Send us an email to community@radian6.com and let us know what’s on your mind, or send us a message on the quick form below. And stay tuned this month for more blog posts, videos, webinars and sharable content about listening and engagement on the social web.