This week was a big community management discussion thanks to the third annual Community Manager Appreciation Day on January 23. But we celebrate community management every day given its impact and important role in our enterprise social media strategy.

As with past weeks, we’re highlighting the people who are engaging in social media, creating a human connection with our community (or creating helpful content for them), and embodying a key element of our “Radian6-ness.”

This week we highlight two more Community Managers.

Genevieve Coates, Community Manager

If you’ve met Genevieve, then you know her theme song should be: “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile.” Gen tends to always be smiling, laughing or chuckling at something even when no one else has told a joke. She does have a serious side when it comes to the things she’s most passionate about, mainly her work at Radian6. Starting out on the Professional Services team for Radian6, Gen’s passion for reports, analytics and product development grew. Now as part of the Community Management team, she enjoys helping her colleagues and sharing a few smiles along the way.

In her spare time, Gen spends time in her new house reading, watching sci-fi and singing at the top of her lungs to every Broadway tune in existence. Most recently, she’s been spending her time writing down all of her own observations about life on her personal blog.

Rhiannon Cassin, Marketing & Community, UK

Rhiannon is one of the original and longest standing employees of Radian6 in the UK. She initially joined 6Consulting Ltd (the UK Radian6 partner) in September 2009. Throughout her time with the business, she has performed a variety of roles within the marketing and customer support teams.

Following the Radian6 acquisition of 6Consulting Ltd in March 2011, Rhiannon took responsibility for engaging with the Radian6 UK community and can be found most days responding to tweets and posts on behalf of @Radian6_UK.

Her experience in different teams and with the platform enables Rhiannon to offer expert help to the extended Radian6 community through the Engagement Console. With a background in media, Rhiannon has helped to develop and maintain the Radian6 community in the UK.

Rhiannon is passionate about listening to UK customer platform experiences and responding to their needs, as well as maintaining a good relationship between the platform users in the UK and the Account Executives through social media community management.

What’s your tip for successfully working with a social media community?

Gen: Social is no different than how we work together in every day life. If you really want to succeed in social, it’s to your best advantage to not look at your engagements as a means to an end but as a unique opportunity to get to know your customers and community in a way never possible before. Just spending some time talking and sharing ideas with the people that know your brand the best can give you endless amounts of ideas and information that you can use to improve not only your brand but your products and services.

Rhiannon: Being open, transparent and professional in the social media community has helped develop trust and respect for Radian6 in the UK. Radian6 users know they can tweet and post about the platform and get a quick and honest, but not rushed and panicked, response. Always being thankful to those who have taken the time to engage in the community and share blog posts and positive conversation is a great way to generate lasting connections with other social media users.

You can reach our team at community@radian6.com, or click on Rhiannon’s or Gen’s name for their Twitter handles. To learn more about Community Manager Appreciation Day, read our blog posts here.

As with past weeks, we’re highlighting the people who are engaging in social media, creating a human connection with our community (or creating helpful content for them), and embodying a key element of our “Radian6-ness.”

This week, we put two Community Engagement Specialists in the spotlight.

Zoe Geddes-Soltess, Community Engagement Specialist; Retail, CPG

Zoe joined Radian6 in February of 2011 as a Community Engagement Specialist and hasn’t looked back. With a background in communications, graduating from the University of Calgary with a BA in Communications Studies, Zoe is passionate about writing and finding new ways to connect with people. She previously worked in investor relations and communications at a property management company in Calgary, Alberta until moving to Fredericton, New Brunswick. She has since relocated back out West to be closer to her roots, but is happy to remain an active member of the Radian6 family. You can find Zoe engaging in the social space on topics around social media as it relates to Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail. She also contributes to the Radian6 blogs and collaborates on other Radian6 content, including the recently released ebook, Social Media Strategy for the Retail Industry. Zoe loves to share and converse on a variety of topics, including social media, food, arts and culture, and anything else that she finds interesting or amusing.

Jason Boies, Community Engagement Specialist; Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals

Jason was born and raised in Radian6’s hometown of Fredericton, New Brunswick. A former commercial sales and services rep for a major Direct-To-Home Satellite television company, Jason made the transition into substitute teaching and restaurant serving/bartending after graduating from our own University of New Brunswick, where he completed the Bachelor of Arts Program with a major in Psychology as well as the Bachelor of Education Program with a focus on elementary level education and social studies. Finding the life of a supply teacher a bit too inconsistent, Jason made the transition to the Community Team here at Radian6 this past summer.

An avid film fanatic and pop culture geek always on the lookout for the irony and humor in life, Jason can be found on Twitter where he tweets not only about the healthcare and pharmaceuticals industries, but social media in general as well as film and TV news. He also general interesting articles with a focus often on the funnier side of life.

What’s your tip for successfully working with a social media community?

Zoe: Let your personality shine through and make a genuine effort to get to know other people on a personal level. I share lots of content about social media but sometimes I’ll share links or photos that are just silly or quirky or reflect my personal interests. I also love to chat with people on Twitter about topics of all kinds, whether it’s bantering with my awesome coworkers or discussing a recipe that someone is trying out for the first time. Being true to who you are and taking the time to learn more about your community will help deepen your social media connections and make them more rewarding.

Jason: Keep in mind that you are entering a medium that moves at a ridiculously-fast speed and you need to keep extremely responsive. So while most of the popular platforms are free, it still requires resources and an investment of your time and effort. In the end, it’s worth the investment. Also keep in mind that your organization already likely employs very capable salespeople, so as a Community Manager, try to keep the hard sell of your site/product to a minimum.

You can reach our team at community@radian6.com, or click on Zoe or Jason’s name for their Twitter handles.

There’s an old saying that, “Actions speak louder than words,” and even though social media is mostly based on the words we choose to use, in 2012, don’t let your engagement just be about the words. Take action. Here’s 3 actions to consider when engaging in 2012.

Action #1: Engage with a Purpose

While you should be a resource and an ear when your community has something to say,  you should also have a well thought out reason behind how and why you engage. With so many conversations happening in the social web everyday, make sure that your engagement helps to support your social business objectives.

Action #2: Use Community Feedback

Think about your every day life. There are few things we all dislike more than hearing just words from people when we are expecting action. Listen to what your community is saying, respond appropriately and be sure to apply their feedback whenever possible. Remember, everything you are listening to on the social web is an insider view of what your consumers think, feel and need. Use it to your best advantage.

Action #3: Find New Community Members

Try not to limit yourself to engaging with just those that are well known in your community or to people that you already value. You never know what a new voice could bring to your community or the valuable feedback they could offer. Find ways to continually invite new people into your community so you can engage with new faces.

How will you be engaging more in 2012? How does your engagement support business objectives? What ways do you action the feedback you get from your community? How do you increase the people in your community to engage with?

Want to read some more ideas about having your engagement impact your efforts in 2012? Check out Chapter 3 in this month’s ebook.

As mentioned in last week’s post, community management is an essential element of a successful social media strategy.

This week, we continue to highlight the people who are engaging online and creating a human connection with our community, or creating helpful content for them, and embodying a key element of our “Radian6-ness.”

Amanda Nelson, Community Content Manager

Amanda works to build, grow and engage with the Radian6 social media community, as well as curate and create content for the brand. She is also the main editor of this blog.

Amanda has been in advertising for over eight years for full service and interactive advertising agencies in New York and Connecticut. She has worked on a number of national brands and has awards from advertising clubs, New England associations and financial services organizations.

In addition to blogging and writing, Amanda loves working with nonprofits, and playing with her border collie. She recently worked with her town to raise funds to build a dog park. She is also passionate about the outdoors, her Prius, tap dancing and, most importantly, her upcoming role as a mother (she has a son arriving in April 2012).

Mike Girard, Community Engagement Specialist, Communications and Media

Mike started with Radian6 in March 2011. In addition to engaging with that community, Mike writes about Social TV.

Mike comes to Radian6 from the New Brunswick Liberal Party where he helped develop the party’s social media election strategy and handled internal party communications. Before that Mike was an advisor to two of New Brunswick’s Attorney Generals and the Province’s Minister of Social Development. Mike also spent a number of years working with youth-at-risk at the non-profit organization Moncton Youth Residences, in Moncton, New Brunswick.

How do you work successfully with a social media community?

Amanda: Creating unique and helpful content opens doors for gaining and deepening relationships with your community. By sharing this content, you’re giving your community a resource that will help them in their lives as well as keep them coming back. Content is a form of engaging and the more you listen to your community and adapt your content accordingly, the more valuable it will be.

Mike: Be mindful of what your community is passionate about and always strive to feed that fire. Let your community’s enthusiasm for the topic inspire you and match their energy. Strive to be the person people look to for compelling content and always be open to a conversation. In a communities as big and diverse as the ones within the Communications and Media vertical it can be challenging to find your voice amongst the crowd and that’s ok. Listen to what is important to your community and contribute to the conversations with your own writing and thoughts. Most importantly be patient and grow your community organically, one follower at a time. It’s a marathon not a sprint.

You can reach our team at community@radian6.com, or click on Amanda or Mike’s name for their Twitter handles.

With the growth in companies making social media a priority in all facets of their business, the growing amount of questions of how, what, where, when and why throughout the social realm are stronger than before. As you likely know, social media starts with listening: find out what is being said by your community. If you are looking to make an impact in 2012, enhancing the way you are listening to social conversations could be the ticket.

How Should you Listen?

Look into a paid monitoring system or at least add more free tools to your arsenal so that all the angles are covered.

Where Should you Listen?

Figure out where your community is active whether that’s Twitter, Blogs, Facebook or other media types. Then take this knowledge and allocate your resources appropriately to make sure you’re making the most out of your time.

When Should you Listen?

Don’t just decide on your monitoring hours, take it one step further and decide how you will deal with all the mentions that happen outside of your monitoring hours. Make sure you have the right amount of staff to deal with the volume of social posts.

What Should you Listen for?

You may already be listening for your brand mentions, but if you’d like to go further with it in 2012, listen to your competitor and industry mentions as well. Think outside your brand to find more conversations and information from your community.

Why Should you Listen?

While there are tons of arguments for why brands should listen, decide your own reasons in 2012. It’s not about doing what everyone else is doing, but rather tying it back to realistic business use cases that are important to your organization.

No matter what listening methods you put in place this year, make sure that you take the time to thoroughly think them through. Those methods are important to your organization as a whole.

To find out more about making an impact with listening in 2012, see chapter two of this month’s ebook.

Community management is an important element of a successful social media strategy. It’s all about generating, nurturing and growing a relationship with customers, fans, advocates and your industry at large. A dedicated community team is the liaison from outside to inside and are there to help, answer questions, participate in conversations, and make a human connection.

We make it a very high priority to be part of the communities we serve and contribute to the larger discussion. When I tell people what I do at Radian6, I say that I lead our efforts to engage with, inform and learn from Radian6’s customers and communities.

I’m very lucky to work with one of the most talented and dedicated teams of communicators I’ve ever met. Whether they are engaging online and creating a human connection with our community, or creating helpful content for them, they embody a key element of what we call our “Radian6-ness.”

Each Friday I’ll be highlighting two community members from our team to help you get to know the faces behind our Twitter handle, Facebook page, blog posts and so much more. Today we feature Miss 20 Q’s and the Microbrew Queen.

Melanie Thompson, Community Analyst

During the day Melanie can often be found answering your tweets and posts through the Radian6 Engagement Console. With a background in public relations, she is passionate about writing and discussing social media and the transforming affect it’s having on how businesses and people communicate. Working with great people and having the opportunity to learn new things each day is what keeps Melanie excited about work and so passionate about Radian6.

She calls herself Miss 20 Q’s — always asking questions and digging deeper looking for the root causes and meanings. She likes to ask questions that make people stop and think, and finding the right question to help solve a problem.

Melanie has lived in five Canadian provinces and loves the way social media has allowed her to stay connected to friends and family across the country. In her spare time, Melanie loves to read and write. One way she incorporates the two is by reading DIY/decor blogs and working on and sharing projects of her own. She and her husband are expecting their first child this coming May and are looking forward to the joys of parenthood. Her favorite moments in life are feeling those tiny baby kicks.

Julie Meredith, Financial Services, Community Engagement Specialist

Julie’s social media strategy experience comes from her public relations and marketing background. She has worked with New Brunswick agency Revolution Strategy, where she moderated a government-affiliated tourism micro-site, creating content, editing and also developing social media strategy around various internal initiatives.

Julie has become the face of Radian6’s finance community, creating useful resources for financial services. She helps banks, brokerage services, insurance companies and many other finance companies get started and excel in social media in this heavily regulated industry.

Born and bred in Halifax, Nova Scotia (near a micro-brewery) and after numerous years of travelling and living in the UK, Julie has a keen interest for micro-brewed beer.

How do you work successfully with a social media community?

Melanie: Have fun! When you are having fun people will do the same right along with you. When it’s a joy to do (and it certainly is) the community recognizes this and is drawn in. I think people want to be a part of a fun community.

Julie: For financial services, jumping into social media can be pretty intimidating in such a heavily regulated industry. Just start by listening. When you start listening to your community, you’re already half way there. Your community is already out there discussing you, your competitors and the overall financial industry. Tap into this incredible resource to understand whether the buzz is about loans, insurance, gains or losses.

When you’re ready to start engaging, a strong social media policy is your base for building an effective (and compliant) social media strategy that will strategically support and promote your customer service, public relations and marketing initiatives.

You can reach our team at community@radian6.com, or click on Melanie or Julie’s name for their Twitter handles.

Looking for fresh ideas to add to your 2012 Social Media Plan? We’ve sifted through our most-shared posts from 2011 and compressed them into 30 Ideas.

You’ll learn how to integrate social throughout your entire business, train your employees, find the content sweet spots, listen for business intelligence, delight your fans, handle your detractors, and measure your growing influence.

Want to make 2012 the year you leapfrog ahead in social media? Read on!

This week we’ve shared the crowdsourced results of the question, “What is the biggest social media disrupter of 2011?” Here’s the final installment with more great opinions, ideas and even insights for 2012.

Tom Webster, VP of Strategy, Edison Research

I haven’t written about this much, but I think Google+ will eventually be a big disrupter. For what it’s worth, I’ve posted 15,000 times on Twitter and have 6,500 followers. I’ve posted about 50 times on Google+, yet I seem to have over 3,000 followers, and not as much Twitter duplication as I would have thought. So, something is bubbling up there. Yes, it’s about as much fun as a spreadsheet, but you can’t ignore its tight integration with the rest of the Google suite of apps. It’s also a much more natural place for businesses to stake out a social space (I don’t want a lot of brands and products mucking up my Facebook page) and Google is but an algorithm tweak away from making the +1 a more integral component to social scoring and its importance to search rankings. If that happens, there might just be a Google+ “lock-in” for businesses, or a DOJ case, or both.

Jim Tobin, President, Ignite Social Media

My biggest disrupter of 2011 is the decline of GroupOn and the clones. It seemed at one point that GroupOn, LivingSocial and the like would take over the world, but social media is much more than social coupons, and building a business is much more than 50% off promotions. Plus the barrier to entry is relatively low (sales force + email list). Social commerce, when it’s mature, will be about group purchasing of real products at very good, but reasonable discounts. And social media marketing will continue to be about finding ways to help your fans market for you.

Christopher S. Penn, Director of Inbound Marketing at WhatCounts

Here’s the disrupter that isn’t a disrupter on the surface: social media ROI. We’ve gone from almost no discussion and search of it to it reaching a fever pitch this year. The increased discussion on the topic means that we’ve left the niche audience crowd and now even the most insulated of executives is demanding not only social participation, but real results.

Michael Brito, SVP, Social Business Planning, Edelman Digital

The social customer has certainly disrupted business. The recent issue with Netflix and Bank Of America proves that the social customer has not only gained influence, but they are forcing business to change the way they operate, communicate and innovate. The difference between Netflix and BofA is pretty simple. BofA listened to the community and decided NOT to increase their prices for debit card usage. Netflix is sticking to their guns despite losing over 800,000 customers and their stock price declining and declining and declining…

Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketing, HubSpot

In 2011 Netflix was the ultimate distrupter. Not for the mistakes they made, but instead for making the hard choice to double down on video stream at the expense of alienating customers in the short-term. Netflix still hasn’t recovered, but they would have died an even slower and more painful death without the risk of disrupting the entire video content market.

Matthew T. Grant, Managing Editor, Marketing Profs

For me, the biggest social disrupter of 2011 was subscription music services like Spotify and MOG (the service I use). As someone who, at one point, was buying several CDs a week and then, later, continuously scouring the web for obscure mp3s, a service that allows me to listen to (almost) anything I want, whenever I want, and even download it to my phone for offline listening was a dream come true. It makes buying CDs, or even tracks from iTunes, seem primitive. When my 12-year old told me the other day he wanted to buy a CD, my first response was, “Why?” The fact that I can give friends immediate access to my playlists and preferences is a social bonus.

Bob Knorpp, host of The BeanCast

Instagram burst onto the scene in October 2010, and over the course of the next twelve months it redefined much of the way that we understand social content sharing. It provided not just a vivid glimpse into the lives of participants, but also an outlet for true artistic expression in which everyone, from novice to expert, could easily grasp and participate. It’s a model to which all social content efforts should pay attention, because it shows us that when we make it easy to express yourself, the Forrester Social Technographics Ladder is turned upside down and we can get widespread participation, rather than just inspiring an elite few.

Lauren Vargas, Community Management Strategist, Aetna

Forget Twitter and Facebook, this year we saw how BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) enabled members of a crowd to separate and come together like a school of fish without becoming disconnected. Influence is a hot topic for social media tool and measurement pundits, but we are only now rediscovering crowd influence and what it means to start and maintain a revolution in this digital world. We have to step up our game to listen across all channels online and offline and map these conversations to our organizations and the right responder.

Thanks to all our contributors! We’ve also received some great disrupters from our community. Keep it coming and share your ideas here.

As I shared in yesterday’s post, I asked a bunch of smart folks what they thought were the biggest social media disrupters of 2011. Here are more answers, still all over the map, and still helping to define the social media zeitgeist of 2011. Consider these answers as hints of where we’re going in 2012. Away we go to installment number two.

Tim Hayden, CMO, 44Doors

2012 will bring us the tipping point for a more ‘human’ way of communicating. Instant Voice Recognition (IVR) tools such as Apple’s Siri, and visual storytelling apps such as Instagram and Path, will all bring change to the way brands and consumers use social media. As mobile becomes more actionable and utilitarian, we will see text-based communication give way to technologies such as these.

David Alston, CMO, Radian6

To me the social disrupter of the year is “+1million.” Two years ago I remember commenting on a year end post about how amazing it was to see the growth in the number of people mentioning ‘social media’ in their Linkedin profile. I think the number had gotten up to 35,000 or so at that point. I just checked it again and it looks like it’s now over 1 million. It truly warms my heart to see this level of awareness and to see the term used in the context of a role within so many enterprises. Because amazingly, it was only four short years ago that if you asked to speak to the person in charge of social media that they would have no idea where to send you or even what you were talking about.

Tim Washer, Actor, Writer, Presbyterian

One of the most sound decisions I made this year was mitigating my losses to only $1.20 to watch “Friends with Benefits.” Yes, my nomination for 2011 disrupter is a vending machine.  But a vending machine that provides me with a more friendly customer experience than I ever received from my neighborhood Blockbuster (which, btw, is now a Supercuts). Redbox excels on two of my favorite of the four P’s – price and place. In the last two years, it has more than doubled the number of kiosks to 33,300, and will soon offer streaming. Blockbuster has dropped from 3,300 locations to 1,500. Never underestimate a strategy based on low price, convenience and robots.

Sean McDonald, SVP and Colony Master, Ant’s Eye View

My #1 social behavior faux pas was Reed Hastings (Netflix) business model communications. A few errors make this my #1: First, bad decision to change the business model that 23 million U.S. Subscribers love and use. I understand the internal business reasons and vision that Reed has shared in past about Netflix does not equal DVDs, but instead entertainment delivered via the net. Second, not reading the tea leaves when first announcing price increases and breaking business into two pieces (no excuse for not monitoring web mentions, comments, sentiment). The web is your immediate market research. Third, an apology that is hollow is not much of an apology. I remain a Netflix subscriber because the company did not split into two services, but I still am raw about Netflix. Does a company have a right to change its business model? Yes, but they also have to live with the consequences: 800,000 subscribers jumped ship and believe it will be harder to grow business when their market cap dropped 77% (2011: high of $305/share to $71/share Dec 20 close). What can Netflix learn for future; consider grandfathering existing customers that enjoy and pay for your services. Remember apologizing is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of humanity. We like to spend our money with humans: people who are real, like me. Only by apologizing can you expect forgiveness.

How do these disrupters affect you and your brand? How do you forsee them playing out in 2012? Share your thoughts and disrupters here and stay tuned for installment number three this week!

Every year is a big year in social media. Upheaval is the status quo. I thought it would be fun to ask a bunch of smart folks what they thought were the biggest social media “disrupters” of 2011. I intentionally kept the question vague. As you’ll see, I got answers that are all over the map, but all help define the social media zeitgeist of 2011 and contain hints of where we’re going in 2012. Here’s the first installment (of three to be shared throughout the week), in no particular order.

(Note: Some of these folks wear ten different hats and have five different jobs and wrote a book and host a podcast and speak and consult, and one may or may not hold the record for consuming the world’s largest pancake. I’ve gone with the simplest descriptor that makes sense.)

Jason Keath, President of SocialFresh

Spotify launched with as much fanfare as a new tech product can in the US. And it showed us what Facebook’s actions could really do. Want the world to know you are listening to the Pokemon soundtrack? No problem. Want to show your boss how much work you are doing by creating and publishing a new music playlist while at work? They’ve got you covered. And if you really hated forgetting about all those amazing 80′s songs you never listen to anymore, don’t worry; if your friends are anything like mine, they will flood your Facebook stream with these wonderful tunes.

Chris Brogan, President, Human Business Works

The biggest disrupter of 2011 has been the Occupy movement, and specifically UC Davis and the pepper spray. A jarring realization that the US as a police state appears to be on the rise, and that social has played a huge part in communicating the experiences people are having during this time.

Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

The biggest social “disrupter” in 2011 for me is Instagram. (Insta-rupt?) Why: You’ve no doubt seen the news that Instagram is the fastest-growing mobile-social network in… well, the history of mobile-social networks!  But what’s most interesting to me (and a key reason for its appeal and growth, I’m convinced) is less about its mobile-first Social-Location-Mobile (SoLoMo) characteristics, but because of the way that stories are part of the fabric of Instagram. In other words, it’s not about SoLoMo… it’s about SoLoMo-Sto’.

Instagram, at its core, allows you to tell stories visually, with a simplicity and immediacy mobile users expect. But at the same time, it adds another layer of elegance and artfulness, and that’s what makes its stories so appealing, and (for me) why it breaks new ground.

Paul Greenberg, CRM and SCRM author, consultant and speaker

The number one social disrupter in 2011 was the use of social channels, particularly Facebook, to propagate the revolutionary activity of Arab Spring. But make no mistake about one thing. The hype around this was ridiculous, crediting Facebook for its success. That is NOT the case. The value of Facebook was that it was able to provide the means to communicate to not only others in the struggles but also the world and was able to capture the support of the world. But it was the people of the varying Arab nations who were responsible for the government changes. Not Facebook. Too many people credited Facebook for it. Again, a channel used to support social change, not to create it.

Shel Holtz, Principal, Holtz Communication + Technology

You can’t talk about disrupters over the past year without looking at the train disaster in China and the impact citizen outrage, expressed over Chinese microblogging site Weibo, had on the government’s response. Officials figured they’d effectively inhibited any backlash by burying the train — reportedly with bodies still aboard. But this and other dimensions of the crisis were openly discussed by an angry public, leading authorities to address the crash more openly than they normally would. Now, China is going to require real names for Weibo accounts, but how long will it take for people to figure out a way around that — or a different system to use? Organizations can take a lesson from this: social media has intensified the notion that information routes around obstacles, and deliberate opacity in the face of a public event just isn’t an option any more.

What do you see as some of the top social media disrupters of 2011? Keep an eye on our blog for more opinions and thoughts throughout the week.

Today’s world has become more connected and more accessible then ever before. Long gone are the days when distance made communications a challenge or struggle. We now live in a world where millions of people carry the Internet in their pocket and staying in touch is as simple as the click of a button. And with this privilege comes the power and the responsibility to help create positive change. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) believes that by working together we can help to eliminate poverty and end hunger, that if we all take one action, we can be a force for change. From this idea their campaign “Take One Action Against Poverty” was born.

The team at the UNDP saw the power and opportunity that social media offered their organization; it was a chance to reach citizens in the over 177 countries and territories. It was a chance to engage citizens, mobilize their supporters and volunteers, and take real steps towards change. Take One Action is a simple concept: if each person were to take one action against poverty, against hunger, against suffering, we could help make a dramatic difference in the lives of so many. The goal was to document these efforts and share them across various social media channels, the hope was that these images would inspire and motivate others.

The results have been remarkable – watch as Silke Von Brockhausen, Social Media Manager for the UNDP, explains the project and how they are using Radian6 to help track their efforts and engage with their supporters around the globe.

And with that, I would like to wish everyone a very happy holidays and as we look towards 2012, consider what is possible for the coming year – what are you capable of achieving this year? What will your one action be? 

Today’s consumers are diligent in their online research when it comes to making purchasing decisions – they ask questions, scour review sites and discussion forums, and see what products their friends recommend before heading to the store or clicking the checkout button. They also openly share their own brand and retail experiences with their social networks, influencing other consumers. These social media conversations have huge benefits for brands and retailers when it comes to engaging with consumers, gaining valuable insight and building relationships in the process.

Collective Bias recognized the benefits of these conversations and created a community to facilitate these connections. Brad Lawless, VP of Communications, and Courtney Velasquez, Director of Community, joined us to share more on how Collective Bias works and what makes its business model so successful in connecting consumers, brands, and retailers through social media.

Cultivating Community

Social Fabric, the Collective Bias community, consists of real-life bloggers who are referred by other members – or invited to join – by the Collective Bias team. Members can participate in various brand-oriented campaigns and share their thoughts on their blogs and other social media platforms. Members can also join various interest groups within Social Fabric, such as Foodies or Healthy Living, ensuring they are approached to participate in campaigns that are most relevant to them and their readership and creating a more targeted approach to word-of-mouth marketing.

The Authentic Experience

As with any social media community, authenticity is crucial when it comes to the success of Collective Bias and Social Fabric. Their 1,600 members are already established bloggers (or “professional content creators” as Brad calls them) who enjoy sharing their interests, opinions, and experiences with like-minded people. The key to the success of Collective Bias campaigns is that their campaigns align closely with the content that Social Fabric members are already sharing and influential about. To read about some of the members of the Social Fabric community, visit the Collective Bias blog.

The Feedback Loop

Collective Bias and its clients rely on the open and honest feedback from the Social Fabric members when it comes to their campaigns. Collective Bias is able to receive real-time feedback from its community members as campaigns are happening, information that they can then pass onto their clients to then assess their strategy and make changes as needed. This focused feedback allows for a quick response from brands and retailers and gives them additional insight into their customers’ needs and expectations.

Brad and Courtney shared one example of a popular retailer campaign launch for a well-known candy brand, demonstrating how feedback from their community members allowed their client to make changes to their campaign to make it even more successful. You can hear that story and more by watching the whole webinar below.

Zoë Geddes-Soltess is a Community Engagement Specialist at Radian6, with a focus on Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail. You can follow her on Twitter at @zodot. Check out some of her other Radian6 posts here.

Before I came on-board at Radian6, I spearheaded a unique holiday campaign for eMail Our Military (eMOM) that used social media to support U.S. troops. eMOM’s “Holiday Love Project” had been using traditional methods like email marketing and radio advertising since its inception in 2001, but our organization didn’t exceed its campaign goals until we brought social media into the mix in 2008.

The Goals

The goals were lofty but we decided to go big or go home. We wanted to increase brand awareness, get registrations up and raise $2500.00 in sponsored care packages. As a small organization, eMOM had never aimed that high before, but we had a thriving online community so we gave it a shot!

Communication and Collaboration

How did social media make a difference? Social media gave eMOM the ability to have real-time communication with their community. As individuals and businesses showed their support, we were able to thank these sponsors immediately through our blog, Facebook page and Twitter account. We were able to discuss our daily progress, collaborate on ideas, bond with our community and share stories around our holiday campaign. It was an experience like no other we had before!

Crowd Sourcing

Social media also gave our organization the opportunity to receive instant feedback and a chance to implement change at will. For example, when our troop supporters wanted to know if their mail had made it to the office, or what our outgoing care packages to service members  would look like, we grabbed our digital cameras, snapped pictures and posted them to the eMOM Flickr account. In addition, we shared the photos and the stories that went along with them across our organization’s social media outposts. This gave our community a way to keep up with what we were doing as it was unfolding and what was going on behind the scenes in our office. Social media gave the eMOM community a way to share their thoughts and opinions on the campaign, directly and immediately with us and it made them feel like they were truly a part of our project. You can use crowd sourcing to tap into your community as well.

Community Sharing Power

eMOM made it easy for their community to come together and support their campaign. We created buttons and banners that could be shared on websites, blogs and across other social networks. We used widgets that could track the progress of our holiday campaign and we encouraged our community to grab the code and share it. For those who couldn’t contribute financially, we provided alternatives to give everyone a chance to participate in some way. Through social networks like Facebook and Twitter, we were able to connect with like-minded individuals and reach a broader audience. Social media helped us rally our troop supporters and create a buzz that had an amazing ripple effect.

Cost Effective

Like many grassroots, charitable organizations, eMOM was operating on a shoe-string budget. We also relied on a handful of unpaid, but very dedicated volunteers. Because of this, social media was a great option. It allowed us to launch our holiday campaign for a fraction of what it once cost, and harness the power of the social web. By adding social to our campaign, eMail Our Military was able to efficiently and cost-effectively exceed its project goals.

Learn more about making successful social campaigns in our latest eBook, “Four Steps to Integrating Social Media Into Successful Campaigns.”

Have you been a part of an organization that’s successfully implemented social media into its campaigns? Are you including social media as a part of your projects? Tweet us at @radian6 or leave a comment below.

Social media campaigns can be tasty, effectively filling, and a mouth-watering opportunity. In many ways, they’re like bacon. Often referred to as “meat’s candy” or the “gateway meat for vegetarians,” bacon is truly unique. You can cure it, it cooks in itself and can work its way into everything from sandwiches and salads to martinis and desserts. Moreover, the process of making bacon, much like the strategic development of a social media campaign, is an intensive craft that requires skill and dedication.

It is with these similarities that I was inspired to cook up these 30 ways social media campaigns are like bacon.

1. Both require a skilled, dedicated process
2. Both can sizzle
3. They have tasty variety
4. They can be cooked differently by different chefs
5. They are made of many layers
6. Both can nourish your community
7. Both can excite your community
8. Both can make your community hungry for more
9. They can go bad
10. You can under cook them
11. You can overcook them
12. They work well when mixed with other things
13. Both can be the main dish
14. Both may be a side dish
15. They can be extraordinary
16. You can make it yourself
17. You can buy it off-the-shelf
18. Both can be very hot for a period of time
19. They can be enjoyed morning, noon and night
20. You can serve them up multiple ways
21. They can be incubated
22. They can be sliced and diced
23. They thrive on fans or followers
24. You can give it a taste
25. You can share it
26. Both can stick
27. No two are the same
28. They can elicit conversations
29. They can be measured
30. They require monitoring

No matter how you cook it, make sure your social media campaigns are crispy and fresh. Whether you mix it into an existing recipe or make it the main ingredient of your dish, both bacon and social media campaigns can be a way to yield better-tasting results.

How will you cook up your next strategic campaign recipe? What other comparisons would you attribute to social media campaigns? Share your thoughts here!

To learn more about social media campaigns, check out our latest eBook, Four Steps to Integrating Social Media into Successful Campaigns.

Crowdsourcing — tapping into your community for ideas — has been around for centuries before social media, but not every organization is listening.

During college, I spent my summers doing hard manual labor in a greenhouse. All you need to know about this company is that the lock on their employee suggestion box had rusted shut.

By only pretending to listen, they did more than insult their employees. They missed a great chance to make their business better. Are you making the same mistake?

Your community cares about your product — maybe more than you do. After all, you’re being paid to sell it, but they’ve bought and used it. How might their passion and intelligence inspire you?

Crowdsourcing needn’t be a multi-million dollar formal process. At its heart are 4 easy steps.

1. Ask for Input

Many brands never think to ask what their community wants.

Before ING Direct Canada launched THRiVE Chequing in March, CEO Peter Aceto posted a YouTube video inviting clients to preview the product and send him their feedback. 22,000 fans responded with valuable ideas.

Here are some open-ended questions you can pose on Facebook or Twitter right after your finish reading this blog post:

• What do you use our product for? (You might discover application you never dreamed of.)
• What new features do you crave?
• What is one thing you’d change about our product? (Brace yourself — your community might tell you some harsh but ultimately helpful truths.)
• How can we make our product more enjoyable?
• What new products would you love to see?

2. Listen Respectfully

This is not a fake engagement exercise to drive web traffic. Value the feedback.

My Starbucks Idea documents each idea Starbucks receives — including 27,159 for Coffee & Espresso Drinks alone. Visitors can watch the leaderboard or search for ideas. An Ideas in Action section notes whether submissions are Under Review, Reviewed, In the Works, or Launched. (Launched: “Tall Reusable Cold Cup Tumblers!!”).

Starbucks also has prominent bios for Cindy and Sally, team members who listen for ideas and ask questions. Clearly, Cindy and Sally are listening carefully, and Starbucks is better for it.

3. Pick the Best Ideas

By all means follow Starbucks’ example and let your community vote up the best ideas. If an idea gets yawns from your biggest fans, it won’t sell well in the store.

Reserve final judgment for yourself — and state that up front. The mob doesn’t always know best, and it’s susceptible to pranksters and demagogues.

Your community’s ideas can be  brand-new products (like Fluevog’s Open Source Footwear), or improvements to existing product. ING DIRECT, for example, gathered many valuable suggestions for THRiVE Chequing, including increasing the number of free cheques to 50 and allowing hundreds of bill payees.

4. Reward Generously

Don’t blow this chance to show how much you appreciate your fans. This is not the time to be cheap. It might involve writing a check — but appreciation and recognition may mean more to your fans.

The LEGO Cuusoo Beta program will bring fan’s designs into production if they receive over 10,000 pledges of support from the community. Winners receive a royalty payment for every set sold — and the thrill of seeing their idea on store shelves.

Social media has a way of ensuring unusual, lavish rewards get noticed — inspiring even more fans who care enough about your brand to share their ideas.

We’d love to hear your stories. How are you listening for your community’s ideas — or how you plan to do so? Tweet us at @radian6 or leave a comment below.

“Service with a smile,” has long been the mantra of corporate leaders and sales people. Successful businesses add depth and value to their organization by delivering a solid product or service pleasantly. But that limits the beneficiaries to your current client base. “Social media with a smile,” allows your brand to share its passion for its solid product or service (pleasantly) with clients and non-clients alike.

Looking back, I know exactly why my Dad was so passionate about the Rotary Club he belonged to – he met some of his best clients there! Now, that was not his focus for participating. His primary focus was to genuinely be of value and to offer support to the community and to the charities that were important to him. As a result of his earnest efforts, his ideal audience and prospects would seek him out, anticipating the same level of earnest and professional commitment to their needs.

It was “old school” social media. Now with “new social media” the business itself can have a voice and is able to inject its personality and energy to their corporate identity. The brand can now leverage social platforms to genuinely engage prospects, clients, and peers in a broader conversation.

How do you create engaging content that will attract your ideal audience and showcase your business’ passion? Ask yourself the following questions:

1. If you were to just sit and chat with your clients, without applying any sales pressure, what would you talk about? What would they talk about? What would they want to know?
2. When clients contact your customer service team, what are they looking for? What are the most common topics of conversation?

That’s where the value is; talk about that.

To be able to build and grow your business successfully, you need to interact with your community.  Remember “Service 101”. Smile. Be helpful. Add value. The more value you deliver to your community, the more likely it is that your community will be attracted to working with you, to seek you out for products and services.

We used this exact tact recently for a client of ours, with great results. We worked closely with the client to launch a new brand and a new product offering.

1. We utilized an aggressive pay per click campaign to drive buyers to their ecommerce site based on product searches.
2. At the same time, we used social media to create a voice for their brand and add value to the conversation.
3. We created a strong strategy that tied Facebook, Twitter, and blogging together.

The value of this social media strategy became apparent within 4 months. Monitoring their site traffic revealed an important trend, visitors who came to their website by way of the brand, established through social media, were more engaged, stayed on their site longer and converted to buyers more frequently. By giving their brand a voice, and adding value to the conversation, they were able to attract new clients and achieve a very successful ROI.

Still not convinced?  Check out this white paper just published by comScore.  They worked with Starbucks, Bing, and Southwest Airlines to understand the power of “like”.  The numbers are impressive and really support the conversation of being a voice of value.

Utilizing Social Media isn’t hard. Everyone in business and sales is already involved in social media on some level; it’s just new tools. So flash that social media smile and generate some brand buzz!

I’d like to know: What’s the strength of your brand’s voice? How do you bring value to your social media community? What are your “old school” social media techniques?

Guest blogger, Kathy Hokunson, has two decades of experience in sales, account development, client retention and marketing. She is the Vice President of Sales at Site-Seeker and under her direction, the New England territory has become one of Site-Seeker’s strongest, and most promising markets. She was one of the earliest adopters of the business uses of social media, spending her career making the bottom line case for Internet marketing, including social media. Called “The Queen of Business Social Media” in Southern New England, Kathy has worked with numerous clients and was awarded Platinum Club status as a top 10 new business producers and client retention expert. 

If you’re like me, your social media feeds are a massive mashup of news, comments and conversations. But culling through all that social media stuff can reveal findings as monumental as Charlie’s golden ticket to the Chocolate Factory. Social media is a hub of hot topics with some great insights for your business. Shall we explain? Here’s one example.

This Thanksgiving many are cooking up casseroles, but Mashable shared a slightly different and more engaging concoction. A new #LiteraryTurducken hashtag by publishing company Doubelday takes classic novels and turducken to engage followers in a game of combining classic works with the turkey+duck+chicken dish. Not only did it result in pure hilarity with these submissions, but it grabbed the attention of CEOs (including Twitter) and publishers.

What takeaways does this story deliver for your business? Chew on these.

The chicken: To enhance brand perception, go where consumers play and join the fun.
As you listen and understand the social media environment, you’ll start to see various trends. Hashtags, Twitter chats and Facebook games are just a few activities social media consumers use on a sometimes-daily basis. What are your customers and prospects using? Tap into these fun outlets with variations of your own. It shows that you’re interested and engaged with your consumers while demonstrating your brand as a fun, finger-on-the-pulse organization that enjoys spending time with customers.

The duck: Use timely content to create interest around your brand.
There are a few ingredients that led to the tasty outcome of this social program. Besides tapping into a place where consumers go and being a creative, unique idea, it was timely. This generated interest, excitement and a sense of urgency. Consumers may not have realized it, but they wanted to respond quickly to avoid missing out on the holiday fun. Besides, who doesn’t want to talk about food and our favorite reads? When developing your social strategy, consider how time can be on your side.

The turkey: Find new influencers and grab their attention with an engaging concept.
This truly was the icing on the cake. While it’s likely that the goal of this program was to engage consumers, it wound up grabbing the attention of some heavy hitters. If your goal of your social media program includes an infleuencer strategy, consider tactics that are unique and engaging. Influencers like to have fun too! But moreover, they want to engage with, and be part of, the buzzworthy content.

This was a simple, low-cost program that generated quick interest and excitement. While it may be tough to tie it to ROI, I think we can all agree that the buzz and positive vibe is priceless.

What unique social media efforts did you plan in 2011? How have they worked for you? Share your stories here.

Amanda Nelson is a Community Content Manager at Radian6. She is an avid writer, content curator and border collie fanatic. Find her on Twitter at @mileigh13.

In addition to your own content, your community members are a valuable resource when it comes to making your social media presence come alive. Most likely, your fans were talking about you before you even signed up for your social media networks or began thinking about a social media strategy. While you have a wealth of your own content to share, your community can go a long way in making your social media presence vibrant and engaging. They have been doing it for a while, after all!

Here are a few ways you can encourage your community to do the talking for you.

Have an Open Door Policy

Don’t try to lock down the fort. If you don’t allow your fans to post on your wall or tag you in posts, you are missing out on a lot of engaging content. Visit the Facebook page of a brand like Method, discussed in this post, and you will see community members posting feedback, photos and links, asking questions, and sharing other energizing content. Your customers will not only be engaging with you but with one another. People might not always have glowing things to say about you, but take that as an opportunity to engage with them and turn a negative situation into a positive one while learning what areas you can improve in as a brand.

Ask Questions

Remember the old adage your teacher used to tell you? “If you don’t know, ask.” As a brand, questions are an effective way to get your community members talking and gain insight into what’s important to them and their likes and dislikes. It’s also a nice way of showing your community that you are genuinely interested in who they are and what they have to say. You don’t always have to ask questions that are related to your brand. Incorporate outside interests that you know your brand community is passionate about or tie into an upcoming event, holiday, or season. Variety is key.

Provide Incentive

Whether raising funds for a cause near and dear to your brand, or offering your fans a reward, campaigns that provide incentive for taking action are another way to get your community involved when it comes to contributing content. Incorporating multimedia into these campaigns, such as hosting a photo or video contest, is visually engaging and a fun way to liven up your brand pages and encourage your fans to participate. As well, your contributors will appreciate the recognition when you share their great content with the rest of your community.

Encourage Peer-to-Peer Discussion

The only people who know your product better than you are your customers. Provide a forum for your customers to ask questions and share feedback with one another. You can always jump in when the need arises, but don’t be afraid to let your community take the reins. Letting your customers know that you trust them to speak on behalf of your brand will make them feel valued, and their interactions will give you insight into what your customers think about your brand and determine some common issues or points of need.

These are just a few ways to get your brand community talking. Are you currently incorporating any of the above suggestions into your own social media strategy? What other ways do you encourage your community to contribute content?

Zoë Geddes-Soltess is a Community Engagement Specialist at Radian6, with a focus on Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail. You can follow her on Twitter at @zodot.

One of the challenges of working in such a fast-moving industry as social media monitoring is growing quickly enough to keep up. But as they say, that’s a good problem to have. I’m happy to welcome two new members to the Radian6 Community Team, Bart Byl and Shannon Johnson.

Bart is a content strategist who comes to us from Vancouver agency Domain7, where he consulted with retail, education, finance and B2B clients to plan online content that supported their business goals and met the needs of their community.

Bart has already jumped in feet first to help make Radian6’s online resources even more useful for our community, and will be producing eBooks, blogs, webinars, case studies and other content to empower you to engage your own communities.

Bart lives outside of Vancouver, BC with his wife and two young children, and will soon be relocating to Fredericton. You can find him on Twitter at @bartrand.

Shannon Johnson comes to Radian6 from Sitewire, a full service digital agency based in Tempe, AZ, where she served as the lead social media strategist and analyst. Along with devising scalable social media programs for clients in the healthcare, retail and non-profit industries, she kept the agency and its clients abreast of the latest industry news; re-imagined agency social media service offerings (including social media monitoring and reporting); and kept her feet wet in social media measurement, community management, editorial planning and content calendar creation.

As a seasoned Radian6 user, Shannon understands the technology and processes around monitoring, escalation and response, but also has a bird’s eye view of what it really takes to create community around a brand. She’ll be working with the Community Team to create educational content related to the social media space, as well as engaging with our communities online. She’ll be one of the faces behind @Radian6, and you can also find her on Twitter at @shannopop.

Not only do Bart and Shannon have the skills and experience to join the Community Team, but they also survived a grueling Google+ Hangout interview, with the entire Community Team lobbing half-baked witticisms and cryptic comments at them. If that didn’t scare them away, I know they’ll be just fine.

David B. Thomas is Director of Community and Social Strategy at Radian6. He’s also a dad, a home cook, a music nerd and tech geek, and co-author of The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business. Follow him on Twitter at @davidbthomas.

Working within the Consumer Packaged Goods industry you have an interesting relationship with your customers, because they don’t necessarily shop at a store that exclusively sells your product. Luckily, you’ve got the social web to help you discover online conversations and interact with your biggest fans.

Get Started

We’re Here to Help

How you interact with your customers on the social web shapes their perception of your products and people. Maintaining a strong presence online lets customers know that even though they might not be able to interact with you in store, they have a forum for getting any questions and concerns addressed. Whether you’re already frequently interacting online, or looking to get started with social listening, Radian6 has a service that caters to your needs.

Provide the Best Social Customer Care

Social media monitoring is invaluable for closing the loop in the customer care cycle. An effective social listening strategy will help you answer customer questions, and address any concerns before they become a problem. Our integration with salesforce.com services’ ensures that you can discover and reach out to, those who are discussing your brand online. You can also create cases to solve all customer problems within an easy to track stream.

Monitor Industry Trends

While social listening can show you what your customers think about your brand, it’s also invaluable for learning more about industry trends. Perhaps you’re in the business of designing athletic clothes – you can use the social web to monitor discussions on popular colours, styles and materials. Online discoveries help you learn what your customers are looking for, and whether or not your competitors are providing them with this service or product.

Build an Online Community

You’re already gathering a fan base online; why not work collaboratively with them to ensure you’re offering the best products and experiences? Online communities are the ideal location to test drive new promotions and customer reward programs. These devoted followers will help you understand consumer perceptions on your loyalty programs, and give you additional insight into why they’re choosing you over everyone else. Once you’ve created your community you’ll be in the position to uncover who your biggest brand ambassadors are. We call them Influencers, and thanks to our partnership with Radian6 Insights providers you’ll be able to learn even more about your influencer’s reach and following with Klout.

Manage Crisis Situations

The social web is a dynamic space, providing users the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings all while engaging with others. In an ideal world you’d never be faced with a crisis situation, however, when you do encounter a bump in the road it’s important to have a plan in place. Use the social web to manage customer feedback on any product recalls, ensuring that consumers are getting all the information they need from a trusted, reliable source – you.

Contact Us

Retail consumers love to spend time online. They’re becoming increasingly proactive, using the social web to discuss their latest in-store experiences, and whether or not they’re happy with your latest product offerings. With more and more shopping options becoming available, it’s up to organizations to line up for their customers, not the other way around.

Contact Us

We’re Here to Help

If you’re already online – perfect. You’re more than likely in touch with your consumers’ wants and needs and are always striving to improve their experiences with your brand. We can help you enhance your social customer care, and create online communities that will foster the growth of your company. Not online, but looking to get involved? We can help you out with that, too. No matter your current engagement level, Radian6 has a service that caters to your needs.

Provide the Best Social Customer Care

Social media monitoring is invaluable for closing the loop in the customer care cycle. Effective listening will help you identify the first murmurs of discontent, allowing you to reach out before the situation escalates. Our integration with salesforce.com services ensures that not only can you discover, and reach out to, those who are discussing your brand online, but you can also create cases to solve customer problems within an easy-to-track stream.

Build a Brand Conscious Community

Your consumers are already discussing your brand online – why not take the leap and create a real sense of community surrounding your presence on the social web? GNC understood the value of online communities by continuously reaching out to their consumers in order to effectively handle any comments or concerns. Online communities are also the ideal location to test drive new promotions and customer reward programs. You’re already gathering a fan base online; why not work collaboratively with them to ensure you’re offering the best products and experiences?

Monitor Competitor Activity

Social listening isn’t only important for understanding conversations surrounding your brand, it’s also beneficial for uncovering what consumers are saying about your competition. Interested in learning about the in-store experience being provided by a rival retailer? Maybe you’d like to find out more about customer perceptions surrounding a competitor’s online rewards system. Social media monitoring can help you uncover these stories and more, giving you a competitive edge.

Enhance Your Reporting

Whether you’ve got your social media monitoring strategy firmly in place, or you’re just diving in, it’s always important to understand the health of your brand. One of the best ways to keep your fingers on the pulse is through clear, concise reporting. The Radian6 Summary Dashboard helps you dive deep into customer conversations, allowing you to not only display your most relevant data, but to also share it with other team members.

Get Started

I was putting together a presentation yesterday on how social media has changed business communications and included the five most tweeted moments. I did this to illustrate how social media has woven itself into the fabric of society at many levels. Business communicators need to care about this because their prospects and customers live in this world where Twitter is a communication tool used by many. Each of these moments also provide some lessons for developing social media strategy.

Here are the five most Tweetable Moments, starting with least to most tweeted, based on data released by Twitter. It’s measured as tweets per second (tps), with a brief strategy takeaway for marketers for each. And you’ll likely be surprised by the most-tweeted moment.

5. Death of Steve Jobs – 6,049 tps (October 5, 2011)
Strategy Takeaway: This is the highest ranking technology moment, and it is a human story about one of the most innovative business leaders. It shows that Twitter users have transcended well beyond the technology-focused, early adopters and that stories that resonate are larger than products and companies. Consider adding a human element to your brand to create a connection with your community.

4. New Year’s Eve 2011 – 6,939 tps (December 31, 2010)
Strategy Takeaway: This is a large global event and very mainstream. People like feeling a part of a big event, so if you can tie social media efforts to holidays or local celebrations in an organic way, you can provide some visibility.

3. Brazil Eliminated from Copa America – 7,166 tps (July 17, 2011)
Strategy Takeaway: Soccer (or football) is the world’s most popular sport and Brazil is one of the biggest names in international soccer. Their rabid fans show their support in a loss, but this volume was likely based on the unbelievability of it. Keep an eye out for big stories that don’t go the way of expectations. Controversy also drives more engagement, so if you’re an advocate of the opposing side, consider sharing that point of view.

2. Japan Beats US in Women’s World Cup – 7,196 tps (July 17, 2011)
Strategy Takeaway: This happened the same day as the Brazil event, but it was even bigger. This was an underdog story with a huge human element. It wasn’t just that Japan beat the favored US women’s team, but they were carrying a whole nation on their back following the devastating earthquake. Underdog, sports, unexpected outcome and humanitarian story are a powerful combination. Incorporate storytelling into your social media approach and share your experiences to intrigue your audience.

1. Beyonce Baby Bump on Video Music Awards – 8,868 tps (August 28, 2011)
Strategy Takeaway: When singer Beyonce revealed that she was pregnant on MTV’s Video Music Awards show, Twitter went crazy. There are lots of takeaways about television, music and demographics, but here’s the biggest one: It’s about the second and third screens. Keep in mind that this was almost 9,000 tweets per second. That means when Beyonce revealed her baby bump, people tweeted. Immediately. They didn’t have to go to the other room and log on to a computer. They did it from their laptop, smartphone or tablet while watching TV. People always have their devices and can always respond and engage. Businesses need to understand that their customers are always looking at their phones and compelling information can connect at times you might not expect.

Business communicators need to watch for societal trends that are much larger than their companies and industries. Not only are your customers part of the larger world (even global in this case), but they are telling you how they participate in social media by their actions.

Are there other takeaways from the most tweetable moments? Have their been other big moments that helped you learn about engaging and interacting with your customers?

Jeffrey L. Cohen is a social strategist at Radian6 and the coauthor of the forthcoming The B2B Social Media Book. You can follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.

November may mean Thanksgiving to some, snow to others and Movember to some others but in addition to all of those things, to us, it also means content. This month, we’re climbing the staircase to social media success with our latest eBook, 4 Steps to Creating Successful Content in a Social Media Community.

So what are these steps? How steep are they and how quickly can you get to the top? Let’s start the climb.

Step 1: Build a Content Strategy

Time to do some upfront thinking. Why are you creating this content? Who is it for? Is it going to help your audience (and executives) sleep well at night? These big picture questions will help set the stage for your content approach. And the answers will help shape your big idea, or what you’re writing about. 

Step 2: Go Beyond Text

It’s not always about press releases, blogs and white papers. While these are great to have, the opportunities for content are as massive as the infamous Rocky stairs. Consider podcasts, video and infographics where the use of audio and/or visuals can enhance your community’s experience with your content. Webinars can demonstrate your story in an interactive presentation format and they’ve even proven to bring in key business decision-makers.

Step 3: Organize and Share Content with your Community

With our strategy and content tactics underway, it’s time to organize. When are we running our blog posts? How often are you uploading videos to YouTube? As you put your calendar into play, you can promote it using social media channels. After all, social media is a conversation hub. And with so many options ranging from Google+ to Slideshare, and Facebook to Linkedin, your message can be catered to each outlet to maximize your appeal.

Step 4: Build Community Relationships through Content

This is the learning step. As you share your great content with your community, they will begin sharing back in the form of feedback. This is where an open ear and an open mind can help enhance your brand. As you listen to the feedback, whether it’s online surveys or tweets, consider how applying these changes can positively impact your business. It will also please your community to know you’re implementing their ideas.

We mustn’t forget a key piece to this story – search. As Aaron shared in yesterday’s post, social strategy and search can work together to enhance your digital plan. Content and search can, and should, be friends as well. Using key terms in your copy and tagging your posts and videos will help your community find your content in the first place.

Ready for more? Check out the eBook.

What other steps would you add to this journey? How has content benefited your business? Share your content stories here!

Amanda Nelson is a Community Content Manager at Radian6. She is an avid writer, content curator and border collie fanatic. Find her on Twitter at @mileigh13.

Ready for your content to spread throughout social media? This month’s ebook, Four Steps to Creating Content for a Social Media Community, combines content, strategy and community to showcase the steps, best practices and tactical approaches to making meaningful and sharable content.

This will enable you to build and enhance relationships and empower your community to converse and share your content. Ultimately, this content experience could turn prospects into customers that stick around.

The 2011 World Series had conversations that extended past the ball fields and into the social web. This Radian6 infographic looks at conversations across multiple social media channels to provide the top conversation topics, hashtags, player buzz and more. Who generated more conversations – the Rangers or the Cardinals? Which players scored a home run when it came to social media buzz?

We’ve got the details in this exciting infographic.

Click to View Full Size

Jumping into social media can be intimidating for Financial Services, but you don’t need to let the challenges of compliance and regulations hold you back from getting out there. There are many ways you can use social media within the growing financial community. Starting your social media journey is a lot easier than you think. Let’s highlight some of the first steps to follow when you are just getting started.

Policy, Policy, Policy

• Developing a strong social media policy is your first step in becoming social in the regulated financial industry.  Your policy should address what information is suitable to share and how company engagement is recorded and archived.
• Decide who will be responsible for your social media initiatives and educate them. Make sure those involved in your social media efforts have a firm handle on compliance as it relates to the financial industry, and your policy has strict but clear engagement guidelines that are accessible to everyone.

Do your Homework

• Your community is already out there discussing you, your competitors and the overall financial industry, now it’s up to you to tap into this incredible resource to understand whether the buzz is about loans, insurance, gains or losses.
• Learn the media types (blogs, twitter, mainstream news) that your community uses and how they interact. Take a look at what hot button industry terms they use the most like “investments”, “equities” or “brokers”.
  • Now that we understand the social financial landscape and the audience we’re reaching, listening is the next step.
  • By actively listening to your community you will unearth the topics most frequently being discussed by your industry leaders. This will point you in the right direction when you’re ready to share content and connect with your community.

Listen up

Listening is half the battle, especially in an industry that has regulations to consider. Once you have a strong social media policy and strategy in place, actively listening to your community will help you understand the lucrative opportunities social can bring you.

Have you started your social media journey? What is your community saying about you and the Financial Services industry? What regulations are stopping you from listening?

Julie Meredith is a Community Engagement Specialist at Radian6. She blogs about beer, films and social strategy as it relates to Finance. You can follow her on Twitter at @julie_meredith.

A few weeks ago, I came across a blog post by Fast Company that caught my interest. It was an excerpt from The Method Method, a book by the cofounders of Method, Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry. Method, a popular brand of household and personal care products, has a large social media presence and a loyal fan following, with over 52,000 Facebook fans and over 11,000 Twitter followers at last count. The Fast Company post talked about the ways Eric, Adam and their team have built Method into a successful belief brand by generating a story and philosophy around their company that relates to their customers. Their success story counters the assumption that consumers don’t want to engage in social media with brands selling products considered to be low-interest (such as laundry detergent and toilet bowl cleaner) and proves that any company can build a strong social media community around their brand, provided they go about it the right way.

Let Your Customers Know Who You Are

Be open and honest when it comes to who you are and what you stand for as a brand. Method shares the story behind their brand and their mission statement on their website and front and center on their Facebook and Twitter pages. They also have a blog dedicated to topics around social responsibility, sustainability, green living, tips and ideas, Method products, and events, as well as the lighter side of life at Method. Being upfront about their identity and beliefs provides common ground for their customers to relate to the Method brand and creates a connection on a deeper level.

Provide Your Customers with Engaging Content

Once you’ve captured the interest of your customers by sharing your story, you need to provide quality content to keep them engaged. Method has a community devoted to People Against Dirty, where people can sign up to proclaim their love of clean and connect with like-minded individuals. Members are also rewarded with extra perks, such as discounts and product previews. The unique and brilliant aspect is, the community isn’t only about Method products and you don’t have to be a Method customer to join. This approach is a great way for brands to engage with current customers while connecting with others who might become customers down the road.

Method also does a fantastic job of posting content on their Facebook page and responding to questions and comments. They leave their wall open for anyone to post or tag them in mentions instead of locking it down, and as a result, their Facebook stream is filled with posts from Method fans, which makes it even more interesting to read and engage with.

Think Outside the Box

Method’s story shows us that brand engagement is about more than selling products – it is about establishing connections and building a passionate community that connects you with your consumers on a personal level. Having an excellent product that your customers are interested in is an important first step, but you need to think outside the proverbial box when it comes to brand engagement.

First, tell your story. What inspires you as a company? Who are the people behind your brand? What are your goals and aspirations? Then listen to your customers and get to know them. What are they interested in? What are their values and priorities? And how can you use that insight to provide your community with content that they will engage with?

If you’re looking for inspiration, here are some other notable examples of belief brands who have built up successful online communities:

• Honest Tea
• Life is Good
• Three Avocados
• TOMS

Now we’d love to hear from you. Do you currently engage with any brands that are traditionally considered low-interest? Why or why not?

Zoë Geddes-Soltess is a Community Engagement Specialist at Radian6, with a focus on Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail. You can follow her on Twitter at @zodot.

This Use Case for the Software Industry discusses how organizations are gaining competitive knowledge, amplifying their supporters and building a community around their brand by leveraging the power of social media.

Financial Services Frequently Asked Questions

It’s important that we have the power to monitor which members of our staff are communicating with customers over the social web – do you have team management restrictions in place?
We know security is of the utmost importance in the Financial Services industry, and that you don’t want just anyone responding to your clients online. Our Engagement Console allows you to enable internal administration with our Superuser feature, giving you the power to manage permissions and create a locked-down experience for all users.

The Finance industry faces regulations for online interactions – is social media monitoring still for us?
There isn’t a single industry or organization that can’t find some benefit in monitoring the social web. Whether you’re actively engaging with your audience, or monitoring behind the scenes, there’s something to be gained from listening to online conversations.

One important component of any great social media listening program is the implementation of a strong social media strategy. These strategies are important for filling your employees in on what can and cannot be said on the social web, and other measures that can protect the privacy of your customers. For more information on building a social media strategy, check out our social strategy blog here.

We’re not entirely comfortable engaging on the social web – are there other things we can do to get involved?
Just because you’re not ready to engage directly with your fans online doesn’t mean exploring the social web isn’t a good option for your company. Being an active participant means you have access to a forum for sharing positive stories about the difference your organization is making in your community, or even the field of banking as a whole. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet, you might feel more comfortable engaging with your audience. When you do, we’ll be here to help with that, too.

We’re interested in social media monitoring, but not sure we have the staffing resources available. Is there anything you can suggest to help with this?
It can be daunting to set out on a social listening adventure. Whether you’re unsure of what to monitor, or you’re just not sure if you have the resources to hire a new team member, our Professional Services team is here to help. They’ll aid you in setting the platform up, and can analyse and report back on your data so that you’re always in the loop on your conversations. It’s as easy as that.

Now that we’ve located our brand conversations, is there any way to learn more about the people who are sharing their stories?
In a word – yes. Radian6 is pleased to present Insights, a platform designed to take your social monitoring a step further on the social web. Insights helps you dive deeper into your data, providing information on demographics including age, sex and location. Insights provides real time, ongoing social intelligence, meaning you get the results you need, when you need them.

Have more questions about our platform? Check out our comprehensive FAQ over here. Or, get in touch with our support team.

Get Started

From a Financial Services perspective, social media monitoring is a tough nut to crack. You’re faced with potentially uncharted territory, including contending with many regulations. Maybe you have limited experience with the social web, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to start. With a good social listening plan in place, you’ll be well on your way to interacting with your clients, and implementing product improvements based on the conversations you’ve heard.

Contact Us

We’re Here to Help

Discussions about your company on the social web are an everyday occurrence. Consumers are talking about their latest interactions with your employees and banking products. Dive into their conversations to uncover ways to serve them better, and interact with your clients like never before. We’re helping you bring the social back into your everyday dealings.

Explore Social Listening

Radian6 understands the rules and regulations surrounding the Finance industry’s participation in social media. We recognize that you might hesitate in getting involved with the social web, as you’re unsure about what engagement looks like, including what you can discuss online. One of the best ways to familiarize your organization with social media is through listening – hearing what your customers are saying about you and your services. Once you’re listening in on the conversations, you’ll have a better understanding of thoughts and feelings surrounding your brand.

Track your Campaigns

You’ve just launched a campaign to attract new customers and you’re interested in seeing what kind of buzz it’s generating. That’s the perfect opportunity to flex your social media monitoring muscle. Track the peaks and valleys of the conversation, getting an in-depth look at what is making your audience pipe up, or quiet down. Armed with this data you’ll have a solid understanding of what’s working in your marketing efforts, and what could use a tune up.

Monitor your Competitors

Once you’ve uncovered what’s being said about your organization, it’s time to tune into what’s being said about your competitors and the Finance industry as whole. Are your rivals engaging with their customers online? Maybe they’re rolling out a new campaign, or sales package. With social listening, you’ll have the ability to gather competitive intelligence with a few clicks of your mouse.

Create a Community

The social web is a great place to create a community surrounding your brand. Think of it as an online town hall, a forum for likeminded people to gather and share their thoughts and experiences. These get-togethers are the perfect place to test drive your latest ideas, and see how your clients feel about their banking services. Want more information on online community building? Our case study from ING Direct highlights how they were able to create a community of engaged users online.

Get Started

It’s been said that content is king. If content is king, then dare I say that community is queen.

Whatever your brand, chances are you have a thriving community. So, when you think about your community, do you think primarily about clients or consumers? Brand advocates and influencers? What about the people who have yet to try your product or service, those who are still on the fence and not quite ready to commit? Do you consider them a part of your community? If you don’t, you should. Depending on your brand, your community can be made up of clients, consumers, fans and those interested in learning more about what you have to offer. Don’t just spend time focusing on your brand’s influencers. Every member of your community is important and plays a vital role in the health and prosperity of your business.

Where Does Community Live

You community doesn’t have to, and probably won’t, reside solely on your website or blog. Your community can be, and most likely is, spread far and wide across various social networks. Sure your community will be on website and blog but they can also be in social spaces like Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, forums and even your mailing list and newsletter. Your community members want to connect – not just with you but with each other. Therefore, give them a place to congregate, cooperate and communicate collectively.

Community is Powerful

Your community members are an important part of your business. They can share experiences, learn from one another, instruct and inform. It’s not unusual to see community members offering advice or assistance before a brand has an opportunity to respond. It’s also pretty exciting to see a strong community of loyal members come to the defense of a brand (Maker’s Mark ambassadors are a great example of this), but that’s what community is all about. During good times and the not-so-good times, if you take care of your community, your community will take care of you.  Your community is powerful. Chris Brogan says this about community “It’s not static. It’s not single-minded. It’s not an unending resource. It’s not self-sustaining. It’s not orderly.” You have to nurture your community. Give more than you take (free content, covering topics your community is interested in, is a great start) Ask questions, let them ask questions, listen and take the time to get to know the people in your community.

Community is Ever Evolving

Your community will change. There will be times when your community members are more active and times when they’re not. These relationships will have an ebb and flow . Your connection to the members of your community will evolve.  Just as you encouraged and cultivated the growth of your community, you must also be open enough to accept some of the changes you will experience within your community. Rachel Happe, Principal at The Community Roundtable, says “The ability to support the waning of a relationship is just as important as the ability to support the growth of one. Why? If you make it comfortable for someone to leave you behind as they move forward, you make it comfortable for them to re-engage you later.” It’s a natural part of relationships so it makes sense that it will be a natural part of your relationship with your community members as well.

Do you think community is queen? How in-tune are you with your community? Has your community changed over time? Let us know, in the comments below.

Trish Forant is a Community Manager at Radian6. She blogs about social media, sunny South Florida and her ever-growing menagerie. Connect with her on Twitter at @Dayngr.

Jason Falls, co-author of ‘No Bullsh*t Social Media’, discusses stories behind the book and the lessons learned from companies’ social media success and failures, that can be applied to any business.

Play

Dreamforce was packed with amazing people and when we saw our good friend Chris James, Social Media Director at GNC, we were thrilled to have a quick conversation. If you remember him from our webinar, case study or blog, he had a great story to tell about the connection social media has created between GNC and their customer community. The world’s largest vitamin and supplement retailer is devoted exclusively to helping its customers live healthy and meet their fitness goals. With the help of a strong social strategy, they built a community of customers, thought leaders and fitness professionals. The results have been truly inspirational with true stories from around the world.

The response to our webinar with Chris was great and we keep getting more follow-up questions from the community. So with a few of these questions in our back pocket, we set up the video camera from the second floor of the Cloud Expo and got to it.

Chris, what does “community” mean to GNC?

You talk about engaging on social networks. Would you elaborate on the choice GNC made to use existing social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) vs creating your own?

What makes you excited about community?

This came up a bit during the webinar. How do you balance promotion and engagement as a brand?

So would you say you plan for promotional opportunities and listen for engagement opportunities?

Any last thoughts on what you heard from the webinar? Any questions you want to address?

Chris, thank you for taking the time at Dreamforce to chat with us once again. We enjoy hearing and sharing your story.

Have you been inspired by your social media community? In what ways? What can you do to deepen and grow your community?

Melanie Thompson is a Community Analyst at Radian6. She listens, engages and measures conversations on a daily basis. Find her on Twitter at @MelanieAThomp.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the United Nations’ global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. The UNDP is on the ground in over 170 countries and territories, working on solutions to global and national development challenges. This means the UNDP has a huge network of supporters and influencers but that can make it challenging to stay connected with all of these people. Trying to share information and encourage support, with such a diverse and wide spread network is a challenge that many organizations face. The UNDP decided to take their conversations online and use the social web to encourage engagement.

Social media has given the team a chance to share information, engage with supporters and help spread awareness. International Women’s Day is a very important day for the UNDP, and it was the perfect opportunity for them to explore and better understand their online community. The results were very impressive, and gave them a great deal of really interesting data to review. From this data the UNDP was able to identify over 17,000 activists on Twitter and answer questions from around the globe. Proving that the social web really is a powerful tool for social change.

Read more about the UNDP story in this case study. And join us on Thursday, September 22nd at 2pm ET when we will be speaking with Sebastian Majewski from the UNDP as he explains how they have used the power of the social web to effect change and expand their network. Register here.

It is awesome that I have the chance to attend Dreamforce 11, the world’s largest tech conference with 45,000 registered attendees, with my new Radian6 colleagues. But what has been even more amazing is watching the Salesforce.com and Radian6 Community teams in action.

At this conference, we keep hearing about the importance of incorporating Radian6′s social DNA into Salesforce.com. This is the first step in Salesforce.com becoming a social enterprise, so they can help their customers create a roadmap to do the same. And while many people think of Radian6 as a social media monitoring platform, the community engagement functionality of it is pretty critical to social media success.

Watching our onsite team practice what we preach is a sight to be seen. I sat in the social media command center, overlooking the trade show floor, while Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff gave his keynote address. In addition to the in-person attendees, it was estimated that 35,000 people were watching this event streaming online. Radian6 mentions started popping up throughout the keynote, but once the Radian6 demo started, the community team’s dashboards were flooded with mentions. The calm and professional way our team dealt with this event got me thinking how their approach to this real-time event applies to any large marketing event.

Common Understanding of the Goal

With any marketing campaign, especially one that involves a significant number of tactics, it’s important that everyone work toward the same goal. In this Radian6 example, the high volume of chatter did not change how the Community team approached any single post. All engagement had a consistent company voice. The job was not solely to move things along as quickly as possible. These are the types of things that can get cloudy if you don’t understand both the tactic goals and the strategic goals, and how they relate.

Preparation Cannot Be Underestimated

With most situations that marketing teams encounter, even ones of huge importance like a being part of trade show keynote or a product launch, there is plenty of time to prepare. Plans are written with strategy, goals, tactics, and metrics of success included. The one category that is frequently left out of these plans is the process. What are the roles of each team member during the launch? Do other company members have roles? Is the sales team ready to respond to their customers? Are there any messages or links that can be written or collected beforehand?

Our Community team is familiar with a series of steps to take with every online mention. The macros, a set of tasks that can be accomplished with one click, are already set up and are second nature to them. This makes a high pressure situation easier. They do what they know, but faster and more often. Their experience and preparation allows them to scale their speed without a loss in quality. Anything that can be done ahead of time that makes it easier to approach the event is worth considering.

Ongoing Communication is Critical

As communicators, we understand that communication is key to accomplishing anything. If you don’t tell your customers or online followers about your new products or services, how are they going to know about them? The same is true within a marketing team. Communicate the goals at the start, so everyone is pulling in the same direction. Communicate throughout the organization, so everyone is informed. Keep the lines of communication open throughout the campaign or event and constantly review what is going on, in case changes need to be made. Communicating lets you iterate faster to make sure you meet your objectives.

This was one place where our Community team really demonstrated their star quality. Everyone had their roles and were keeping up. Things got busier and there were questions between team members offering to help. And not just once, but every few minutes. You got that one? Everything still okay?

Everyone is on the Same Team

The above example from our Community team would not have gone as smoothly if they did not work as a team. They are called a team and they act like a team. Do whatever it takes for your marketing group to feel like a team. Every group has natural leaders and natural followers, but the sense that they are working towards a common goal and succeeding as a team goes a long way to getting them to act that way.

While this is a real-time example where everything is happening fast, the next time you have to create a marketing plan, think about these ideas so you can improve both your execution and your results.

What are some pointers you recommend during a high-volume moment for your brand? Is this worked into your strategy? Share your thoughts!

Social media metrics do not have to be complicated even if it is still a bit controversial. You are already doing many forms of measurement with your traditional media projects. Where social media is involved, you know that measurement is constantly evolving as existing platforms change and new ones enter the social space. Regardless of the changes that may come your way, one thing will continue to remain the same – if you keep an eye on your data it will help you understand the results.

Though the specific numbers are quite important, they aren’t as important as the trends you’ll find over quarters, months and years – therefore, if you want to start collecting this data and recording this information, you have got to start now. Looking at how these numbers develop over time will provide you with beneficial insights on to what is working within your social media strategy and what is not. The best way to begin doing this is by really getting to know who is interacting and engaging on your site, among other things.

Last week we shared some ideas on how you can begin measuring your relationships. Now let’s think about how you can make it as easy as possible for your clients, consumers and community members to interact and engage with you, and why that might be important – then you can begin to collect the data you need and kickstart your measurement campaign.

Consumers are becoming more and more social media savvy. Make sure your brand acknowledges that by making visits to your site or blog as user friendly as possible. Consider offering interactive components, like the ability to share content across social media platforms. If your community can interact with their friends and connections across the social web in places like Facebook and LinkedIn, they’re going to want to have the same capability when interacting with your brand as well. If they have the option to receive coupons, discounts and rewards for becoming a fan, then they are going to come to expect the same from your slice of social real estate.

Janrain Study - Consumer Reactions SSI

With that being said, consider social sign-in (SSI). A social sign-in option allows users to sign in on a platform using their profiles from Facebook, Google, Twitter or other social websites – think Facebook Open Graph, Twitter OAuth, OpenID etc.  Because we’re focusing on metrics, it’s no longer just about listening. If you are looking for measurement based on your relationships with your community and making data collection easier so you get the right information, then SSI seems to be where we’re headed.

A recent study by Janrain and Blue Research indicates that three in four consumers avoid creating new user accounts. 66% of consumers believe social sign-in should be offered and only 25% of users are inclined to hand over their information when asked to register at a brand’s website.

It’s an important factor for brands. Study participants stated that they’d be more likely to return to a brand’s site that offers social sign-in. They spend larger dollar amounts with brands that use SSI and they have more favorable views toward the SSI-enabled brands.

Your brand needs to stand out from the competition. You need your community to stay involved and share, interact and engage and really feel they’re receiving a personalized experience when they visit you on the web.  The best way to offer a customized experience is to get to know them, to build and solidify those relationships. Through social sign-in, you can collect the information you need, to analyze your data and measure where you’re at and where you want to be.

Do you think how you collect your data makes a difference? Are you using social sign-in and if so, how? Do you make it as easy as possible for your community to share your information? Let us know by sharing your thoughts below.

Enter the exciting new world of Radian6.com. We’ve changed up the look, added newer features and functions and brought to life the community within the social enterprise. All the while keeping you, our site users, in mind as we created a functional space to easily navigate to your chosen destination. But what does that all mean? In the spirit of efficiency, here’s what we did, in a nutshell-type blog post.

Choose your route quickly and easily with a reorganized top menu navigation. There’s a synopsis as you rollover the menu so you understand where you’re going before you get there.

We get right to the point. In the new How We Help section, we break down how Radian6 supports the core areas of listening, measuring, engaging, discovering and more.

All our content is neatly packaged into a new Free Resources library. Now you can easily keep up with the blogs, webinars, videos, presentations, white papers and eBooks that we generate and distribute.

Find the right training classes for your needs. Training courses are organized by user needs so you can choose your area of focus with ease.

There’s even more ways to share our content with additional social sharing options. Located in a floating bar on each page (and within our blogs posts and free resources pages) you’ll be able to post on multiple social platforms. Get that Google Plus account ready!

That’s the whirlwind tour but we encourage you to take the self-guided version and peruse the site. We’re always looking for feedback. And if you find a bug on our site, email our webmaster anytime. So, what do you think?

Chris James, Director of Social Media for GNC, joined Sarah Carver for a healthy, half-hour, kitchen table-style Q&A session on the brand’s social media successes. That kitchen was brimming with questions from listeners and it soon became a forum of topics ranging from community to strategy insights to the selection of social media platforms.

GNC’s social strategy has a number of goals including a productive net increase in discussion and questions, having a two-way dialog with their community, and monitoring conversations and questions. But moreover, it’s all about getting their community started on their health and wellness journey with GNC being a part of that exploration. And that drills down to each individual. Community members encompass celebrities, athletes, moms and more. They sometimes include dogs. The idea is to turn detractors into brand ambassadors as GNC partners with individuals on their journey, no matter their mindset. “Social media success equals customer success,” says Chris.

But how does a brand get started? While anyone can create a social media program, having a plan in place upfront is the best way to stand out. This infrastructure is built on listening.

• Listen to customers
• Listen to industry
• Listen to detractors and ambassadors

By listening, you will get a sense of what the community is saying and how and where they’re saying it. This sets the stage for your plan. “We’ll change our plans to address customer pain points,” says Chris. In GNC’s case, while the larger share of voice lived on Twitter and Facebook from a medium perspective, blogs and forums housed the bulk of the customer conversations. The brand needed to be there. As Chris noted, “We are closely listening and engaging as part of our business practice.”

Once the plan launched and the community formed, the individual stories began to unfold. There were stories about weight loss, about beating a triathlon time and moms getting healthy. “It validated that what we’re doing is making an impact.” The brand was sure to engage with the community for better information, customer service and to be an outlet for customers 24/7. “The service doesn’t end when the stores close,” says Chris.

For GNC, social media is weaved into the fabric of their brand. Chis hopes that soon, this practice will not be called “social media” but it will just be doing business the right way.

We thank Chris for his time and to the listeners for their great participation. Don’t worry if you missed it – here’s a recording of the webinar. While we didn’t get to all the questions during the session, Chris was kind enough to take all additional questions and answer them right here. Take a look and if you have any thoughts, feel free to comment!

Ricardo Betancourt: Could you tell us how did you choose the social media websites to be part of? Why Facebook, why Twitter, or other?
[Chris James] The truth is, we went where the party is already happening. Our Facebook & Twitter properties pre-dated me coming to GNC but it was really about following the pack at first. Then, once we used Radian6 to ID other properties (forum & blogs) where people were talking about us, we began to slowly work our way into those conversations.

Kyle Spittler: Are athlete & celebrity community paid or earned endorsements? Examples?
[Chris James] Yes and no. GNC and our vendors have paid endorsers we work with. Others are people we admire or have mentioned us on Twitter or are somehow connected to health, wellness or sports.

@Auctionzip: Do you use the GNC name or ‘twitter account’ or fb profile when answering questions on these niche forums?
[Chris James] We try and keep our branded properties consistent with “@GNCLiveWell” but when we engage elsewhere we like to represent the brand as individuals to enhance our credibility on their site and not come off as spammy.

@donaldbjackson: Have you considered creating a dedicated GNC community forum? Why or why not? When is it appropriate for a co. to consider?
[Chris James] Yes but we are moving away from that strategy based on our successes with Facebook and Twitter. A branded community is only worth it if you have the resources to a) drive customers there and b) keep the conversation on the site fresh day in and day out. Otherwise, consider a corporate blog or avoid it altogether and leverage Facebook, Twitter or some other hot website where your customers spend time.

@donaldbjackson: Which parts of Radian6 service do you use most? Do you supplement with other services? Which?
[Chris James] We use all of it AND we use point solutions for various platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. The vendors or tools you use should reflect the goals of your social media strategy. There isn’t one single template or toolset to get you there.

@donaldbjackson: Can you talk explicitly about how you tie together social media and customer service? Is this handled all by one department?
[Chris James] No, it’s a shared task currently with Marketing being the ones out there and mixing it up every day and we escalate more serious issues to our phone reps on an as needed basis. At some point next year, the reps will also use Radian6 to proactively assist customers with issues.

Jim King: The word “community” is used so much now. What does community mean?
[Chris James] Pretty simple. It just means a group of people with common interests. I can ID at least 5 “communities” of customers we want to target. The challenging thing is that they are all over the place online. I wish there was one site or place they hung out but by nature that’s not likely so we try and go to as many of those sites as possible or influence people in those communities to speak on our behalf.

Vince Tobias: Have you had any unprecedented experience in your community? Say in an attempt to regain customer confidence, the company gave an exception for this one customer. It then created a trend or mindset for other customers to follow suit because this one customer shared his experience in social media. How did you react or what could you recommend to avoid such unwanted incident.
[Chris James] We haven’t but I’ve seen it happen in prior roles at Dell and AMD. The fact is, they will share their experience no matter what. The only thing you can even attempt to do is mitigate how far their opinion spreads. If your brand is out there actively engaged and helpful, a bad incident is less likely to become a “group think” problem than you can’t control. The only way to know what issues are out there or need to be addressed is if you listen first.

Nigel Linnane: Do GNC customers ever ask/wonder how you have picked up on their conversations. you have not started?
[Chris James] A small few. Most get that Twitter, for example, is not private. We draw the line though and don’t respond to specific Facebook posts that did not happen on our page. That would be creepy. It’s a semantic difference but people who share on Facebook expect their conversation to be private even when their privacy settings have it showing to the whole world.

Ghazwan Almoazen: How much do you promote GNC in your posts?
[Chris James] We are actually heavily promotional because we are a retailer and people expect to get deals thrown at them but we try to be conversational as much as possible. At brands I have worked for in the past, it was very much the opposite. I guess it depends on your business and what your customers expect from you. The more likely you are to be personal and conversational, the more likely they will trust what you say. The more you are a shill for your brand & bottom line, the more likely they are to ignore you. Somewhere in the vast middle ground is the balance.

Ricardo Betancourt: How can you measure the social media impact?
[Chris James] That all depends on what we want to “impact.” Sales? Well that’s tough if we doing anything else besides giving them a coupon code. Awareness? Site Traffic? Conversion? Social marketing is capable of achieving a lot of different business objectives but you have to know how your customers use social media before you can know how to market to them and what you will be measuring success against. It’s not a shortcut to revenue or lower costs, but when utilized properly can absolutely help drive those numbers.

Rosemary  Cafasso: How do you define “listening” — does that include the analytics?
[Chris James] I make a distinction between listening and analytics. Listening is the active act of qualitatively assessing what is being said about your brand or products. Quantitative analytics almost always follow a qualitative assessment and are necessary to judge magnitude of conversation or results from a conversation. However, analytics usually come at the end of something and are a reactive process. Listening is active and can even be a proactive process.

Kyle Spittler: What are GNCs specific measures of success in Social Media (likes/shares/clicks/etc.)? Do these vary based on project/campaign?
[Chris James] Yes, they vary based on what the goal of the social activity is and on the measure outcomes available to us. Facebook engagement consists on impressions, likes, clicks, unlikes and page views. The relevant measure needs to be matched up with the goal: maximizing message reach, driving additional customer attachment, driving .com traffic, unsubscribe rate, etc.

Kyle Spittler: Do you find there is enough social media volume to justify being out there?
[Chris James] Absolutely. Good example is in Twitter. We have 75k followers and get mentioned a few thousand times per month. The amount of times just our brand (not our Twitter account) gets mentioned on the web is 10 times greater. Shortage of conversation is not a challenge in the health & wellness industry.

Joel Kelly: Can you talk more specifically about monitoring and your plan for it? Do you have specific teams handling monitoring, or is it a shared role among people in each department?
[Chris James] We have some sharing of the burden across groups but only specific people are authorized to respond on behalf of the brand they must undergo training to have that privilege. We intend to expand that program outside of HQ and into the stores eventually, allowing associates, managers and franchisees to be a part of the conversation.

Keith Huddleston: With Brand in mind how do address customers who are creating negative feedback or legal allegations?
[Chris James] It depends on the nature of content. In many cases, we simply report it to legal or if there is something we can do we escalate it to Customer Service. A response is only made if we feel it can help resolve the situation. Otherwise, we hold our tongues. We have guidelines in place that help determine the best course of action.

@donaldbjackson: I’m looking for case studies on starting communities. Any you can recommend?
[Chris James] Dell and Microsoft have many case studies. Tech has done online communities well over 20 years.

The lines dividing social customer service and community engagement are often blurred. In many respects providing customer service online is a form of engagement but there are some distinct differences and both have their own set of etiquette and guidelines. Some organizations have chosen to very distinctly separate the two forms of corporate social media by individuals and teams while others, often smaller companies with less resources opt for a social savvy individual undertaking a variety of online engagement. While there is no set formula for either there are general distinctions between the two, specifically concerning etiquette, around when to reach out and how.

First and foremost, at a top level, community could be summarized as an initiative that takes time, attention and constant reinforcement and nurturing. Customer service at its essence is addressing and resolving a problem, transactional, and as such has a definite end or conclusion. While paths may, and likely will cross, objectives differ.

Timing vs. Nurturing

A service or product problem expressed online is blatantly within the realm of customer service and should be addressed as a priority by the customer service team. Being both a customer and someone who on occasion addresses complaints online, time (and as little as possible) is of the essence. Any given issue may require extended time to address properly, however, initial contact and acknowledgement of it should be as close to instantaneous as possible (no pressure!). And, in order to avoid any unnecessary delay this should be resolved by the customer service department, either directly online or offline if it is regarding confidential information or requires further attention.

However, the community team has a role to play. If a customer is complaining online, community teams should be aware of who they are, and why they are upset. This information can help inform a future community content strategy. Moreover in some cases where the person is an influencer or someone known to the community team there is no reason why they should not reach out to this person to gain a greater insight into their concerns in order to gain some quality feedback.

Polar opposite to ‘the complaint’, ‘the promoter’ sits almost exclusively within the realm of community. While a promoter might well encounter a service issue, at which point customer service can jump in, ensuring that there is a relationship with the fans and brand advocates is something that is very far removed from transactional and needs to be nurtured. Promoters are not simply just advocates but often experts in their own right who can add immense value, from sharing your content to guest posts on your blog and inputting in product/ brand development. Very much the opposite of ‘touch and go’ these relationships can be integral to a businesses’ success.

Prioritizing

How, when and where you reach out will be intrinsically different when approaching a service based enquiry as opposed to a mention or industry conversation, as may be the case when acting as a community manager. Speed will be key if there is a complaint whereas content will trump speed on the community front. The value add of community is not necessarily being the first (although it can be nice) it’s quality content and encouraging and furthering the conversation. Community managers can be much broader in their outreach specifically with regards to the industry conversation and as such should approach relevant conversations with a critical and analytical hat. Their aim is to further the industry conversation and perhaps see beyond the horizon as it currently presents itself. As such the ways in which community managers vs. online customer service representatives prioritize is worlds apart and rightfully should be.

Worlds not Universes Apart

While the way these two roles reach out online and the types of conversations they engage in differs, there is ample room for collaboration. The content produced by the community team should add value internally and externally. Likewise community managers may come across service issues either directly or indirectly and as such need to be well aware of support processes, and work to feed through any such content to the relevant teams. As mentioned earlier, smaller organizations may find one and the other in the same person however there should be a clear and differing process regarding how the various conversations are categorized and subsequently followed up and engaged with. Both online customer service and community engagement are pivotal and can benefit hugely from one another. Therefore, it isn’t necessary to prioritize one function over the other, but rather to prioritize the individual pieces of conversation.

What do you think? Can community and customer service work in tandem with each other? If not, why not? Do you agree that the two areas have fundamental differences? Please leave your comments below.

The great potential of the digital world is that we can build and maintain relationships with more people, more efficiently. The general thought is that those good at relationship building in the real world are also good at relationship building online and vise versa. However, the mechanisms of online relationships are different than real world social mechanisms and that does results in different social cues. Some individuals are better adept at understanding the cues in one environment than in the other so relationship-building skills in one environment does not necessarily translate to the other. Online, I call these cues digital body language.

We are all familiar with face-to-face social cues:

• Eye contact
• Smiles, frowns, quizzical looks, passive facial expressions
• Leaning in or out, straight or slumped
• Type of handshake
• Where someone sits or stands in relation to you

What are the social cues online?

• Silence, especially after you respond to them directly in a comment thread or on Twitter
• How quickly someone replies to a direct request (this is obviously influenced by many things but over time you can get a sense of how important others feel it is to respond to you)
• How often someone replies to a post/update that is not specifically directed at them
• Reciprocation of follows or acceptance of friend requests in various networks
• Placement of others on public Twitter lists or blog rolls
• Mentions of others in blog posts, discussion referrals, or status updates

These cues are critical to understand if you want to effectively build relationships. Positive cues tell you that you can escalate and develop the relationship further. Negative cues tell you that you should step back, assess, and rethink your approach or expectations if the relationship is important to you.

Good relationships require equality of interest from both parties and it is critical to match the other person’s interest level – too little attention and they back away, too much and they feel stalked. All too often we try to build good relationships too quickly, peppering people with information and communication long before they have ever shown any reciprocal interest. But constant contact, if unsolicited, turns from neutral to harassment to stalking very quickly. No one likes to feel trapped into a relationship in which they have no interest and we have laws both online and off to prevent this in the most drastic circumstances.

The lesson for social media and community managers working to build relationships is this: Start slowly, gauge interest levels from digital body language, and move forward together with the other party. A relationship takes initiative on the part of two parties and it is impossible to force. The hard truth is that not everyone that you want to have a relationship with will want one with you. Use your time to invest in those people that do want to move forward together.

Rachel Happe is a Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable, a peer network for social media, community, and social business leaders. She has over fifteen years of experience working with emerging technologies including enterprise social networking, e-commerce, and enterprise software applications. Rachel has served as a product executive at Mzinga, Bitpass, & IDe, and as IDC’s first analyst covering social technologies.

Radian6 Adds: Stay tuned later this month for a yet another – different – take on digital body language!

You spy each other across a crowded twitter chat and it’s magic right from the start. There, in your Twitter feed is the brand that you’ve been dying to talk to. You check your twitter handle, make sure it’s looking just right, then head their way to tell them a thing or two about yourself. It’s a good relationship, you laugh, share some smiles and talk about what’s really important to you. Then it feels like they are growing distant. They never tweet anymore and you feel like they’re checking out all those new follow fridays. It may seem like the perfect time to air all of your grievances toward that brand out of frustration, but keep in mind that even a brand has a person behind that corporate logo. As brand ambassadors many social media managers, community managers and employees often struggle with wanting to be there for their clients while trying to deal with frustration sometimes directed their way. Even corporate logos have a heart and sometimes building a positive social media experience for all is much like the foundations of a good relationship. Today, let’s do a little couples therapy on the brand-consumer relationship to talk about what’s needed to make the relationship a success.

Getting to Know Each Other
When you are first starting to get to know someone you need to go on a few dates and learn their habits. As a corporate brand we need to make sure that we are trying to connect to people on a one to one level, asking them those initial questions. There are some great articles out there about how we can accomplish this by humanizing our brand and growing that relationship. If you need some places to check out, give a read to Brian Solis, Jay Baer, or Jason Falls.

As a consumer, we need to be up front and honest about what we expect. If you expect answers within 10 minutes, then tell your brand that. It’s that information that the people behind the brand logo can use to adjust their social strategy to your needs. In return, we brands need to answer back with honesty so that all the cards are on the table and no one feels like there’s a hidden motive in the tweets.

Build the Respect
Once you’ve gotten to know each other, before you start building to that next level you need to be able to respect each other. Respect is a two-way street. Brands need to respect their consumers’ needs just like consumers need to respect that their brands are trying to work for them. If we completed the honesty phase well, we probably have a strong basis for how each other likes to be treated. Take that knowledge and grow with it, by adding the please & thank you’s, giving a heads up when there are issues and appreciating the time each puts into the conversations.

Live in the Trust
Trust is something that can’t be earned overnight. There is no formula or smiley avatar that will ever make someone trust you right away. It takes time and hard work. If as brands we’ve taken the time to understand our consumers and we respect their voices and opinions we’ll be on the right path towards trusting that they are going to be there for us when other people ask what they think of us. As consumers, by respecting what our brands can and cannot do for us we’re going to be able to trust in them when we have issues or ideas that we want to be heard. Once you are in the trust phase it’s less about the “If” someone will respond and more about the “When”. It’s less about the “If” your issue will be fixed and more about the “How”. Once we’re at this phase we all need to work hard to keep getting to know each other, respecting each other and going deeper with that brand-consumer trust.

Enjoy the Experience
One of the best parts of a relationship built on respect and trust is getting to enjoy the benefits it brings. Once you’ve taken the time to get to know each other, take a step back and enjoy the experience of communicating. Brands, ask your main advocates who you trust to participate in special programs. Get their feedback, and experience what open communication can bring. Consumers, go to your brands and voice those new ideas and opinions. Help them to further understand your experience so that they can see things from your eyes.

By trusting and respecting your brand and consumers, you’re bound to build a long term relationship that won’t be broken down easily. Just get out there and remember that behind every avatar, consumer or brand, is a living breathing person with a heart ready to share social media experience.

What ways are you engaging with your brand? How are you respecting each other on a day to day basis? What does it take for you as a consumer to trust a brand?

You may have learnt everything you know about social etiquette in pre-school, but we likely didn’t all attend the same pre-school.  In fact, the geographical location of said pre-school would have had a huge impact on what we learned and what we now classify as ‘proper’ and ‘acceptable’ or ‘inappropriate’ behaviours. Manners and social norms alike differ greatly based on the communities, the countries and the environments we were brought up in. It may be as simple as tonality, or it may be as far reaching as overall body language, for example a thumbs up.

The world is becoming a much smaller place and a greater number of people will live and work in other places then the ones in which they grew up and subsequently became accustomed to. We speak of ‘culture shock’ in some cases and while globalization may mean that we have become more exposed to differing customs and the shock is subdued, there will still be a period of adaption.  There will be a need on our part to feel out the various norms and adapt accordingly and the same is true of the social web in general, but particularly for those that are engaging on a global scale and across various industries, something which Cindy King writes about extensively.

Subtleties can be OBVIOUS

The reality is that we may not be confrontational, or there may not be an issue at hand, but rather simple miscommunication based on our own framework of how we convey an idea and interact, can mislead others. As such it is likely that there may be sociological factors at play for certain communication mishaps rather than an actual differing of opinions. In addition to this the social web as we discussed earlier this month, means that we are communicating without verbal clues. Sarcasm may be lost entirely and any pointers will go unnoticed behind a screen.

Beyond the online world this will also impact our day to day. We’ve all had emails in the past that we may have thought of as antagonistic. PERHAPS SOMEONE EVEN USED CAPS LOCK IN THIS EMAIL which to you may have conveyed an air of urgency which you didn’t appreciate when perhaps they were simply trying to draw your attention to something in order to be helpful. All of these factors weigh heavily in social etiquette because the way we perceive something will inform the way in which we approach it and eventually reach out or respond to it. Having lived in many countries it’s become apparent to me that in these cases an exercise in caution is key. The benefit of the doubt can be hugely helpful and in most cases ensure that issues don’t arise where there shouldn’t be any to begin with.

DON’T stick to your guns

While we may be entirely engrossed in our online lives, this means picking up the phone. It means taking a non-confrontational approach in response to someone who might come across as being confrontational and it means understanding that there may be other issues at play than what you think. What social networks are popular and how you engage on them will be starkly different from country to country as Brian Solis covered a while ago but more to the point, behaviors will differ. Some societies may be centered around collaboration,  whereby lending a helping hand even if you weren’t invited to will be well received, while in other more individualistic societies it might be denoted as intrusive. The reality is that navigating social media is not always straightforward at the best of times, and this gets enhanced when a sole individual or team is engaging across multiple countries. A measured approach, openness and adaptability can go a long way in helping you tread with caution, learn as you navigate and take on the necessary approaches to be successful across cultures, industries and the web.

We’d love to hear from you. What have your experiences been in communicating across social networks and across cultures? Have you had to adapt your approach?

This post was co-authored by Community Analyst Melanie Thompson

To swear or not to swear? It’s an interesting debate that many of us may have with ourselves when it comes to our professional and personal voices. We heard from @RedheadWriting earlier about how swearing can be beneficial if your brand fits the mold, if your brand is cheeky and straddles that side of the road, but we also wanted to share how swearing can have a negative impact.

Negative Connotation
As children we are taught how “bad” it is to swear, a feeling that we oftentimes pull through into adulthood. That’s why many times we feel jarred when we hear someone shoot out a profanity in frustration, it’s upsetting because we’re taught that it’s taboo. Even if we don’t necessarily have a problem with swearing, it often perks our ears.  If we get this upset in person when we hear these strong words, why do we accept them in the social space? Should we be accepting them in the social space? In a space that is very focused on being short and concise with responses to the point where context can be misconstrued, why are we adding to that by incorporating language that naturally brings a sense of urgency, frustration and often times anger?

Brand: Impact
If you were meeting with a customer face to face, or on the phone, how would you feel dropping a swear word in front of them. Comfortable? Like you crossed a line? For most brands, swearing in a corporate business structure is unacceptable and would probably lose more clients than gain. Like we’ve said many times, always be yourself in the social space which means that if swearing to your clients isn’t readily accepted in the boardroom, you probably steer clear from the corporate handle.

Employees: Being the Potty Mouth
In the age of employees being the brand, the impact of an employee using a swear word can have as much impact as the corporate handle. Put yourself in your client’s shoes, if this person is who they are supposed to engage with and their feed is filled with profane language, they may not be as interested in engaging in a professional conversation with them. Be upfront with your employees and be clear as to what you accept and don’t accept in their personal twitter feeds. At Radian6, we recommend people keep their language friendly and clear of words with negative connotation or harsh swear words. This is to ensure they can benefit from a welcoming, engaging side of social media. If a mistake happens, and since we’re all human we know they’re bound to, don’t hide from it. Apologize for the profanity or misuse use of language. People always appreciate when you are willing to accept your mistakes and learn from them.

Clients: Would you swear in the lobby?
We know that as a consumer or client there are times when we all get frustrated with a product or service, but before we start spouting the harsh language stop and think. Ask yourself, “Would I walk in to the crowded lobby of this company’s office and say this out loud?” The social space does give us an amazing arena to voice our opinion but at the same time, don’t forget that not all those accounts are spammers or bots and the majority are connected to real life people who are reading your posts and reacting to them. They are often not the person that you are having frustration with. If you wouldn’t say that in front of the smiling face at the desk, then why is it alright to do from behind a computer screen? Also, back to the employee side of things, make sure your employees aren’t sending loaded tweets to other companies that you wouldn’t want out there. Brand to brand relationship can be damaged by a few rogue tweets written in haste.

What if I DO swear often?
Maybe you are thinking to yourself, “But I would say that in person!” Swearing is part of my personality. Remember that the social web is forever. Those profanities will be there during future job interviews and for your children to see. Would you also tattoo them to yourself? Or wear a t-shirt with them on it for a job interview? When we say something, it’s out there and although we can’t take it back, we also don’t have to wear it around all the time, the same is not true for the social web. What might be beneficial in times of stress and anger could have negative consequences in the future. Keep this in mind.

Of course the choice is yours, how you interpret and display your personal brand is different for everyone. What works for some may not work for others and vice versa. What do you think? Where do you fall on the swearing spectrum?

Merriam-Webster tells us that the definition of diplomacy is “skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility”, and that the definition of diplomatic is “employing tact and conciliation especially in situations of stress”. By now I’m sure that a couple of fellow community managers out there will be nodding their heads, it sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Diplomacy is a skill that you typically employ on a daily basis, especially at work, but for those navigating and curating a community and social content it has all the more relevancy because you will be dealing with promoters and detractors alike.

Diplomacy is not something that you are born with, in most cases, nor is it something that is the same across cultures, countries or communities. Actions you take including how you speak, when you speak and why you speak all feed into diplomacy and yet it is something that you learn with time especially when engaging in social media. We were not born community managers. Moreover as the face of our brand we’ve had to realize that there is a fine line between being helpful and being intrusive, between being encouraging and overbearing, and being trustworthy and just well connected. So why is diplomacy so important, specifically when engaging online and within your community?

Tact is Everything

Diplomacy is important because it exhibits a certain level of respect, understanding and problem solving that is so crucial when you operate online in the public domain. More importantly as a community manager you will be seen wearing many hats and engaging at various levels. In many cases acting diplomatically is a gut instinct, a personal barometer of when something is appropriate and when it isn’t. But it’s a trained bar, and with training comes learning, both from your personal experiences and that which you gain on the job engaging and conversing with stakeholders day in and day out. In a hyper connected industry like that of social media, you need to be quick to learn the ropes because your community will be equally fast to tell you, either directly or indirectly that actually what you’ve done is wrong.

Now, when they do tell you that you have done something wrong, that your approach was inappropriate or that actually they rather you just back off, don’t lash out online. Why, because if you’re professional, you wouldn’t do that offline either. It’s about identifying the problem, the root cause and finding a solution. Acknowledge the issue and don’t ignore it. In social, community managers are there not just to encourage, guide and participate in discussion, they are the face of the organization – you ARE the organization – so acknowledgement is the first step to resolution or turning a detractor into a promoter. In most cases acknowledgement and identifying the root cause will lead to resolution. However, when this isn’t the case make sure you provide an explanation, not a blanket statement, as to why you are not able to assist. Diplomacy is eloquent and articulate problem solving.

Diplomatically Boring

One thing which diplomacy is not, and shouldn’t be, is bland and void of personality. Add some flavour to your profile and how you approach and speak to those around you. Be creative in how you solve problems and source solutions. Trust that you’ll be remembered that way and you might even make a friend. You’ll be well thought of and as a result approached whenever an issue arises, and your brand will thank you for it. Moreover, you can count on being singled out for going the extra mile, again, your brand will thank you for it. Community management is a relatively new role, but what we’ve learned can be summarized as (though not exclusively): diplomacy is key to social media engagement and part and parcel of that is to think before you respond, ask yourself whether you are being constructive and always wonder: would I stand behind what I have just said if my grandmother/boss/colleague read this?

What is diplomacy to you? How have you exercised your diplomatic muscles online? We’re always keen to learn and hear others’ experiences so please share!

It’s a bitter cold December evening and you’ve been called in for the night shift to help monitor for customer issues. A few months ago your company added in a social media component to your organization. There was a week long training course and instruction on the social media side of things, which up to this point had generally meant having another window opened up on your computer screen. Half-way through the night you read a tweet that you know needs to be escalated and responded to by  someone. Now who is that someone? You think back to the first meeting you had 3 months ago, after the chocolate chip muffin before the pizza was the part where they talked about who should respond. It’s 3 a.m. and all you can remember is chocolate and pepperoni.

Probably one of the biggest fears of anyone who’s out to train their internal team on how to use social media both for work and personal experience, is making sure they retain everything you teach them. All the best training in the world will mean nothing if you haven’t built out a place for your internal teams to refer back to that valuable information. Just like asking questions is a necessity, so is having a place to store the answers. By providing your team with self serve options to reference the material they’ve learned, you’ll be ensuring that there’s always a knowledge base for them to turn to.

How do you build this information?
Start from Day 1 of your training and make sure you are recording all the information that you provide to employees. Also make sure you are recording all the questions they ask and the answer you give them. Here’s a few suggestions for formats:

Written: Nothing is more simple than writing out all the information you have gone over.

Slide Decks: For those that are a little more graphically inclined, building out slide decks is a great way to document the information in a user friendly visual format.

Audio/Video: We’ve had enough Youtube celebrities lately to know that creating an audio/video file is pretty straight forward. Sing a Social Media Saturday song and you’ll be all set.

Where do I keep all this?
Almost as important as creating the information for your training course, is finding a place to store it that is accessible to everyone.

Content Management Systems (CMS): These programs can host all of your information and let you decide who sees what and when. Give this post from Social Media Examinar about How to Create your own social networking community a read and see if they are what you are looking for.
Community Platforms: These platforms can help to build out an internal community of information. Use them to store your internal training documentation and even have employees grow their knowledge base by asking/responding to each other’s questions. Give Forrester’s Community platform report a read and decide from there.
Shared Documents: If you’re not ready to go the full system route, try using your own special sauce mix of document hosting services. Most have free and paid options and you can limit security settings so your documents aren’t public. Examples include but aren’t limited to: Google Docs, Scribd, Slideshare.

How to stay up to date?
Information is ever changing and we’re sure your internal training will continue to evolve over time, so it’s important to make sure you’re communicating this new information to everyone. Why not try a couple of these methods:

Quarterly On Site Meetings: Working online via email and phone is great and cost effective, but sometimes nothing helps to keep communication lines open and training fresh in everyone’s minds than a good ole’ fashioned day of meetings. If you can, schedule some face to face time on a quarterly basis to keep everyone in the loop.

Monthly Webinars: Internal webinars are a great way to do a quick 1 hour refresher and update on any of your social media policy changes. Compare web conferencing software and find one that works for you.

Weekly Email Updates: We all have email, we all use it everyday. While another email in our inboxes doesn’t sound inviting, keeping it short and to the point with just the important changes like “Don’t discuss product X online” can help to de-mystify the week to week.

Daily Instant Message/Email Questions: Keep the communication lines up by having a variety of ways to communicate. During your initial training make sure to identify who people should contact AND how! Try different messaging clients like Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo or Skype to keep things rolling through out the day.

No matter how you choose to store, share and update your training information, the important thing is just doing it so that your employees continually know where to go and don’t get caught dreaming of chocolate and pepperoni at 3 a.m.

What formats are you planning on using for your training documentation? Where do you store your internal training information? Will you be having quarterly/monthly/weekly training updates?

“The best community managers are like a good party host mixed with a fine restaurant host.” Author/blogger Chris Brogan

Community managers are sort of like tonsils. No one quite knows the role they play in your day to day health, but we know they’re important and we don’t rip them out at the first sign of a sore throat anymore. Ok, we’re having a little fun here (community managers are notoriously good humoured – fact). It’s also fact that if you Google “Community Manager” you will find a never ending number of definitions and descriptions for who they are and what they do.

Author Chris Brogan nailed it with his quote above. Party = personal. Restaurant = business. He breaks it down like this – a great party host is the glue that connects, the person who warmly welcomes their guests and makes sure they’re having an amazing time. When the party’s over, said host sends them safely off into the night with a smile and a wave. The restaurant host does much of the same, but since their guests are paying customers, they have a couple of added responsibilities. They must keep an eye on the kitchen to ensure valued guests are getting what they ordered, how they ordered it, and in a timely fashion. Plus, they have to be ready to roll up their sleeves and pitch in with the rest of the staff (waiters, bar staff, busboys) for the greater good of the restaurant. As Brogan says, community managers need “…both skill sets in equal space.”

At Social 2011, we are bringing some of the best community managers together to talk about what they do and how they do it in even greater depth. Rachel Happe, Principal & founder of The Community Roundtable; Jennifer Hughes, Social Listening Manager at Ant’s Eye View; D.J. Waldow, Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory; and Pierre Abraham, Social Media Producer with Beachbody will be digging into how the social web has helped create and define the role of community as an important part of connecting with customers and building business. They are also going to examine how the role of the community manager is evolving, and how you can change up a business strategy to include social media and community.

Whether your goal is retention, awareness, acquisition, or all three, one thing is for certain – your community manager/community team will be a vitally important piece of your social media strategy puzzle.

Do you have anything you would like to add? Do you agree that community managers are key? If not, tell us why. And let us know if you have any questions or comments for our crack team of panelists. As always, we value your feedback.

D.J Waldow muses on all things social at www.socialbutterflyguy.com. Rachel Happe’s thoughts on same can be found here www.thesocialorganization.com. And Jennifer Hughes writes about social media listening on the Ant’s Eye View web site.

eROI has been building successful online communities for six years, and the community they built for Wacom Technologies is no exception. With a multi-phase approach, eROI was able to build a thriving brand community that meets the needs of community members, fosters community engagement, and provides valuable customer feedback to the company.

The Red Cross’ involvement in social media seems to be a natural progression for a non-profit centered around outreach and community, and the unprecedented response from people on the organization’s multiple social media channels after the quake in Haiti is proof the Red Cross is doing something very right on the social web.

At Radian6, we’re often asked about how we’ve built our community team, what purpose it serves, and how we manage our tasks and workflow to do all of the listening, engagement, and content creation that’s part of our gig.

In this new series for the month of April, we’re going to look at how we’ve built and structured our team in hopes that, by using our experiences as our own case study of sorts, you’ll get a few ideas of your own for the role that community can play in your business, or how your existing roles can evolve a bit inside the world of social media.

Today, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this whole community thing in the first place.

Community Mindset

We actually built our community team before we started adding more “traditional” marketing roles to our team. In many ways, community and marketing really go hand in hand for us, so we started building the team based on what we needed to do to support our customers and community, and represent our company and brand to the outside world.

To us, our community is comprised of:

• Radian6 customers
• Our prospective customers, who are businesses and agencies learning to integrate social media
• The larger social media community

Everything we do is about delivering a platform that helps companies and agencies listen and measure their social media efforts, and engage with their customers. So our vested interest is in helping them tackle those topics for business, and understand how Radian6 can help when appropriate.

Our community and our customers are the lifeblood of our business, so our company is built with that in mind. And our community team is really the day-to-day reflection of the mindset that all of our folks really embrace, from sales to development to our technical support and executive team.

As a group, our community team represents a number of things: some customer support, a bit of sales stewardship, content creation and subject matter expertise, promotion and support of our brand and platform, and bridging between our internal teams, external community, and all the pieces in between.

Our Purpose

We’ll get a little more in depth later this month about how our team is actually structured and what our roles and responsibilities are. But generally speaking, our team is built to deliver these things on an ongoing basis:

• Listening and monitoring on behalf of our own brand, and developing protocol around that
• Listening and monitoring for larger industry discussions in key areas of interest, like social media, social CRM, content marketing, etc
• Engaging with our community online for all of the above conversations, which for us is mostly via blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and our own site.
• Measuring the impact of our efforts
• Helping our internal teams with social media subject matter expertise when needed
• Shepherding external publicity efforts for our company and products,  like strategic public relations initiatives and contributing content to other sites and publications
• Creating content that helps educate our teams and our customers on key social media topics as they impact business
• Representing Radian6 in person at industry events, as speakers, sponsors, participants, or all of the above
• Supporting our prospect relationships, customer accounts, and partner relationships

Goals

Our goals are actually rather simple and straightforward. And yes, we have some measurable factors set against many of these for our own internal purposes, and you should do the same. More broadly speaking, though, a few of our goals are to:

• Build a purposeful, engaged audience around relevant content that illustrates business benefits of social media monitoring, engagement, and measurement
• Actively engage discussions of Radian6 around the social web to provide presence, accessibility, and awareness for our brand
• Participate thoughtfully in related industry discussions and events, both online and in person,  in order to contribute our expertise and invest in our larger community
• Act as a resource for internal teams for social media subject matter expertise
• Establish a Radian6 user community online to support active customers and their ongoing needs
• Develop our own benchmarks for community impact metrics, accountability, and engagement protocols & guidelines
• Gather and steward active feedback from our communities to continually drive development of Radian6 capabilities

There are more and some additional layers to the above, but overall, it’s about supporting our users, stewarding our brand, and participating in the online discussions that represent the interest of both our company and our customers.

This Year

As 2010 continues to roll by, we’ve got some key initiatives going on around our community efforts as well. They’re all built on the needs of our communities, both internal and external, and we’re excited to take them on. Just a few examples to get you brain turning:

• We’re going to build both an internal community portal for sharing knowledge and resources among our teams, and and external community to help support the needs of our customers to connect with us and one another.
• Our team is refining and building our own “listening grid”, our method for integrating listening and engagement into our own business workflow, and helping our customers outline models for doing the same.
• We’re working with our training team to develop social media-specific curriculum to help deepen knowledge for all of our community members, including our own teams
• We’re building programs like our Higher Ed and charitable initiatives to give back to communities and sectors that we think can benefit from access to Radian6, and the knowledge of our teams
• Continually building and tweaking our arsenal of content to address the needs and interests of our customers and prospects, and help them continue to understand the larger social media landscape as it relates to business applications.

And much like your business, our goals and objectives are flexible as we adapt to the needs of the market, and the goals of our company overall. It’s our job to adapt our role and function within the company to support the bigger organization goals.

What Else?

In the next post a week from today, we’ll talk specifically about the people that make up the community team, and how we’ve allocated roles and responsibilities. In subsequent weeks, we’ll chat a bit about our process, workflow, and operations among the team (including a realistic look at some of the challenges), and then finally a bit about how we assess and measure the impact of our efforts overall.

We’re structured differently than lots of companies, but perhaps there are some ideas you can take away for your own business. What can we help you understand about a community-driven model like ours? Please sound off in the comments!

Man, what a topic! Measuring the impact of your community on your business can sometimes be a tricky beast to tame. Each community is different, and each business may have a different purpose for measuring their community.  Before you can truly begin to measure the impact of your community, a few items need to be defined and agreed upon by your internal stakeholders.

Define Community Success

Defining what your definition of community success means is the first step in measuring your community impact. How you measure community impact largely depends on how you want to define what a “successful” community means for your business. For some, having a large community is important, while others may see a small but tight-knit community as the most valuable to their business. Some communities will come together around support and training topics, while others may center themselves around your philanthropic and local community projects. The definitions of success for these communities may vary greatly, so it’s important to have a solid definition of what you consider to be a successful community.

Combining Metrics

Chances are, there are metrics and KPIs in place across all departments of your business. Metrics like leads generated, sales closed, support calls answered, inquiries received, and number of website visitors within a set timeframe are all commonly-measured metrics, and ones that can be used to help measure your community impact. In our support and training case, support calls answered or tickets opened/closed may be two metrics that you can include to give a bigger picture of how your community is impacting your business. For our philanthropic community, inquiries received and website visitor metrics may be more appropriate to include in your measurement reports.

Benchmarking

Before you go wild and crazy with measuring community impact, define the metrics you’ll use and set benchmarks for each of those metrics.  Look at the metrics you’re going to tie in from your current measurement practices, and then look at the metrics that you’ll be introducing as new success metrics for your community.  Three big measurement areas are; cost savings, leads, conversions and sales, and awareness, attention and reach. We cover these in our March eBook in case you’d like to dig deeper.

Once you have your metrics defined, set your benchmarks and make sure everyone on your team is clear what they are. Start measuring your community impact from there.

Set SMART Goals

SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely goals are hands-down the best, yet often hardest, to set. For each metric you want to measure, look at your benchmark and come up with SMART goals which you will use to measure against as time progresses. Are you looking for a 5% increase in inquiries received that reference your community and philanthropic projects throughout the year? Perhaps you’re looking to reduce call center costs by enabling your customers to reach out online, or help each other by sharing learnings and solutions to commonly-occurring questions or problems. Whatever your goals are, make sure they have parameters and timelines.

Tying it all Together

So far you’ve created your definition of what a successful community looks like to your business, discovered which departments your community impacts, looked at how they currently measure success, lined up your measurement plan to tie in with those metrics, set a base level through benchmarking, and created SMART community goals.

Great, now what?

Put your measurement plan into action. Take time, whether it’s weekly or monthly, to sit aside and review both your metrics and goals, as well as the metrics your business already measures.

If your community ties in closely with your customer service department, look at how many cases opened/closed took place within the time period you’re measuring.  Did your community come to the rescue of a fellow member and help them solve something with minimal/no involvement from your customer support team? If so, look at what the value of a customer support rep is for an hour, or a day, and show how much money your community just helped you save.

If part of your successful community includes lead generation, look at how many leads generated are directly attributed to your community. Did a member recommend you to a colleague? Are there notes in your CRM indicating the source of a lead? Do you have these segmented and tracked in your monitoring solution? Did any leads that came from your community close this month? Leads generated and sales closed are wonderful numbers to show how your community is helping to grow your business.

When measuring your community impact it’s important to tie together your existing metrics and measurement practices with the ones you’re establishing that focus exclusively on your community. The goal is to get a big picture of how your community ties in with your business and helps you achieve your goals, NOT to show how great your community is in a silo.

There are many ways of measuring community impact, and this blog post doesn’t cover them all! Share your stories in the comments.

**In the spirit of community, David Alston and Teresa Basich collaborated on this post. Enjoy!

In many ways, a healthy relationship between your brand and its community parallels that of a healthy relationship between two people. Both relationships rest on simple tenets like respect, and both should be celebrated whenever possible. When thinking about the connection you’ve built with your community and its members, remember these 10 truths of a healthy relationship to keep your community feeling loved and appreciated.

1. Remember to say ‘Thank you’ – People generally enjoy saying or doing nice things for others and tend to do it without expecting to be thanked for it. However, we all know how great it makes us feel when we are recognized for our efforts. When your community says something nice about you, it’s always a wonderful idea to say ‘thank you’.
2. Celebrate their successes – This is the age-old principle of thinking of others before yourself. If you do so, then you will probably notice the great things members of your community are accomplishing. Congratulate them and share their successes with others whenever you can.
3. Be a good listener – This is probably some advice we all received at least once from a parent in our lives. Like Stephen R. Covey points out in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Great relationships are also built on the idea of give and then, perhaps, get. Invest in your community by listening and understanding their needs.
4. Ask for their opinion – There probably isn’t a person alive who doesn’t like being asked for their opinion. Collaboration on a project almost always produces a better end result. Social media has given brands an amazingly simple and effective way to engage with those who have thoughts and ideas about them and their products and services. Remember to ask your community for its opinion.
5. Don’t forget about the little things – Sometimes it is the smallest of gestures that can mean the most to someone. Focusing on the little things that matter can show a person that they are indeed worth your time. When approaching relationships from a long-term frame of mind, it is very possible to make the time along the way for those important details without getting overwhelmed by the idea. Look out for the little touches to help each community member.
6. Be patient – In any relationship, making things work means working through the occasional misunderstanding or frustration with one another. Life is not supposed to be simple; if it were, it wouldn’t be all that exciting. It’s important that you take a step back and look at every challenge from the other’s point of view. Your patience and willingness to try to understand will be appreciated. Be known for your abundant patience and caring approach with your community.
7. Admit your mistakes – Nobody is perfect, and holding onto your pride will never do you any favors. When you invest in building relationships within your community, members get to know your brand’s human side. You will make errors but, while members may be disappointed, your community generally has the ability and willingness to forgive. Be quick to admit your mistakes and be genuine in asking for forgiveness.
8. Share a common passion – Brands and people are more than capable of setting up daily routines to get things accomplished based on things that need to be done. And while working side by side on something does create a bond, it’s usually not a bond that is sustainable over a very long period of time. Finding a common passion, something you both enjoy doing and talking about, creates the strongest bonds. If you are passionate about what you do, then no doubt there are others out there that feel the same way you do. Find them, invite them to your community, and enjoy learning and sharing together.
9. Show respect and gain trust – The strongest relationships are built on mutual respect and trust. But getting to that point should ideally start with you. Be willing to respect the views of your community even though you may not entirely agree with them. Community members have reasons for their views and it is up to you to understand, or at least accept, them. And, when making commitments to your community, make sure you meet or exceed their expectations. Being willing to compromise, or give and take, will help your brand demonstrate respect and earn a community’s trust.
10. Celebrate Valentine’s Day everyday – Giving your community a Valentine once a year is definitely a nice gesture, but finding ways to show them how much you love them on a regular basis should be what you strive for. Apply your creative energy to think of new ways to accomplish goals 1-9. Most companies are still just awakening to this idea of focusing on their community, so anything you do to show appreciation for your community now can help your brand stand out in the crowd. And, heck, who doesn’t enjoy making someone smile with an unexpected gift?

Although it’s not Valentine’s Day yet, we wanted to get you thinking about the holiday and how love and appreciation can be translated into your community work. How do you celebrate the relationship your brand has with its community?

And, because you’re part of our community, we wish you a very happy, if early, Valentine’s Day!

Community – a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually prec. by the): the business community; the community of scholars.

There are a lot of opinions floating around about how to define an online community, but a much smaller amount of chatter online about how to find it.

Online communities aren’t necessarily fenced in by the boundaries of a website, a message board, or a blog.  Communities can exist across multiple sites and time zones, making the act of finding a community seem akin to trying to pin down a cloud.

The difficulty for many organizations begins right there, with that first step of finding their community. After all, how does one go about finding something that is amorphous and constantly evolving?

Search – For many, the process of finding their community starts with a basic Google or Social Mention search to uncover websites, forums and blogs dedicated to their topic of interest.

Facebook – Facebook Fan Pages are a great way to find like-minded people who are already talking about a topic a company may be interested in.  Plus, it’s easy to jump right into the conversation.

Twitter – Twitter has quickly become the go-to network for companies, people, and news organizations alike.  A basic search can reveal a plethora of talk about a subject, and perhaps a few hashtags or users to get in contact with or follow. Much the same as Facebook, Twitter makes it easy to jump into the conversation.

Water Cooler – Don’t overlook the power of the water cooler! If organizations already know people interested in their products or passions, they should start by asking them where they go online to connect with like-minded people – they may have some great information to share.

We just released an eBook about this topic (and more). You can download it here.

Do you have tips to share about how to find your community? I’m interested in hearing what has worked for you, so share them in the comments!

Communities are bigger than “social networks” like Facebook. Social Networks are just one type of community, albeit, one of the most recognizable ones on the web today. Every community, big and small, relies on 5 types of roles to be successful. The communities that have all 5 working together are the ones that tend to succeed and become desirable destinations.

1. The Host: Somebody has to be willing to entertain all these guests, put on a great event, maintain the peace, and clean up after the party is over. On top of that, the host has to make sure everybody is having a good time. The host keeps your glass full, the food coming, the music playing, and the entertainment fun. Without the host you wouldn’t have a place to kick back, hang up your coat, and pass the time. The host’s job isn’t all fun though. The host has to be willing to set some rules, enforce them, and when in doubt kick some people out. Perhaps most importantly, the host needs to be trustworthy. After all, you aren’t going to just hand over your car keys to a complete stranger.
2. The Facilitator: They’re often confused with the host because they seem like a do-gooder who wants to ensure everyone is having a good time. However, they play a different and very important role. The facilitator genuinely wants to make sure everyone is happy. They have a curious nature about them and truly enjoy a good conversation. Without the facilitator conversations would grow quiet and stagnant. If you will, people would stop moving about and meeting other people. On some levels the facilitator is a matchmaker. Their grasp about all the things taking place in the community is amazing. But, unlike the voyeur, the facilitator is willing to share that information with people.
3. The Popular One: This is the most important person in the community. Yes, the popular one makes it all about them, but they also bring a whole bunch of people with them. Some people show up to see them. Some people show up to be able to say they saw them. Some people show up because they might see them. The popular one has a tight knit set of friends and a large group of pseudo-friends that show up at the same places they do. If you don’t get the popular one (s) to show up you’re going to have a tiny, boring, and listless community.
4. The Instigator: Somebody needs to stir the pot. Somebody needs to be willing to say the things others won’t and do the things that make people shake their head. That’s what’s great about the instigator, they keep things interesting. People love and hate the instigator. They love watching what comes next, but they hate all the attention he/she gets. But, here’s the thing, everybody loves controversy. It’s the reason the news outlets exist. If everyday was 72, sunny, without a chance of rain, and everybody was happy, no one would tune in or read the paper. The instigator engages in conversations just to take the other position. They are pure entertainment.
5. The Voyeur: I love the voyeur. They don’t cause problems, usually lend a hand to the host, never overstay their welcome, and always tell everyone what a GREAT time they had. Some times they’re known as wallflowers, but that’s not really giving them their fair due. Wallflowers, don’t interact and seldom even show up. The voyeur shows up. It’s that showing up that helps the community out tremendously. Even without actively participating they make an impact, because they can be counted. The host can say/claim 500 people showed up, even though 420 of them were voyeurs. The voyeur can be taxed, even though he/she contributes less than many other community members. Yes, without the voyeur we’d all be in trouble.

I’m sure you can identify with one of these roles. Often I’m the instigator, but on this site, I’m the host. Read my tweets, check out my posts on forums, and look at my comments on other people’s blogs to see the type of investigator I am

Knowing the roles and being able to spot the people playing them is critical to making sure your community finds success.

What would some advice be with out a visual and some weights? Exactly! The following image outlines the 5 roles and my belief on their importance. You may find that for your community the weights differ slightly. That’s ok, each community is different.

Nothing says “Community” more than sporting events, and no sporting event fosters community more than the Super Bowl. Not only do sports lovers get to have a field day (pun intended) during the Super Bowl, but the rest of us not-so-sports-lovers get to join the party and critique the ads like it’s our job.

To make the Super Bowl even more fun and engaging, Radian6 and Mullen have partnered to create BrandBowl2010, an interactive site that tracks, scores, and ranks all the good, bad, and ugly comments you make on Twitter about the Super Bowl’s famous ads and the brands that have produced them.

At any given time, the site will feature the top 10 most popular brands, as ranked by a composite score based on volume of tweets and sentiment. “Second-tier” brands will be hanging out in a sub-section of the site called the Locker Room. If you roll your cursor over a particular brand, you’ll be able to view its composite score, the number of tweets about the brand, and the overall popularity of the brand, as well as in-depth details including a spark line, sentiment index, and a word cloud of the most popular words used in talking about that brand.

To participate in BrandBowl2010, just log in on Sunday using your Twitter ID and tweet directly from the site. Join the stream of conversation by using the hashtag #brandbowl. Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still check out the site and see what people are saying. When all is said and done, we’ll be sharing the final results and a pile of additional data goodness from BrandBowl2010.

Community means coming together around a common passion point, be it sports, advertising, or anything else that suits your fancy. Creating interactive experiences like BrandBowl2010 that allow people to share their opinions, expertise, and interests with each other is an important piece of the community pie.

Have fun with BrandBowl2010 and get your friends and family involved, too. Then come back after the game and let us know what you thought of the experience, would you? And while you’re here, share with us how interactive experiences like this one have benefited your community building efforts.

David Alston, VP of Marketing and Community at Radian6, recently did a twebinar with AwarenessInc called “Answering the Social Phone”. In the twebinar, David discussed how social media is not really media but a two-way communications channel and that all of the conversations going on out on the web are like phone calls. The phone could be ringing off the hook with mentions of your brand and if you aren’t involved in social media who is answering those calls?

Some brands think that if they don’t have a FaceBook page or a Twitter account then they aren’t involved in social media. This isn’t true. People are using social media to talk about everything… including your brand.

If you missed out on David’s twebinar, be sure to take the time to listen to it. He shares all kinds of great insights on marketing in the age of social media. And if you don’t have the time to listen right now, bookmark this page and come back later.

Some of the highlights:

David talked about how marketing was traditionally about the 4 P’s:

• Place
• Promotion
• Product
• Price

But social media has changed marketing. Now that everyone is connected the place no longer matters, people don’t like to be promoted to and the product has become the whole customer experience and not just what you are selling.

He tells us how the 4 P’s should be replaced by the 5 C’s.

• Content – offer content that has value and can be shared.
• Community – join the community and get interactive. By being involved you can offer help and discover needs and trends.
• Conversation – listen, learn, converse and engage. Be open and accessible.
• Collaboration – once you engage with your community you’ll discover that there are great ideas and feedback out there.
• Connections – reach out to people that are passionate about the things that you are passionate about.

There are plenty of roadblocks to keep you from using the 5 C’s:

• Policy
• Culture
• Bureaucracy
• Momentum (in the another direction)
• Window Dressing
• Misinformation
• Lack of Top Level Support
• Lack of a Plan
• Lack of Commitment
• Lack of Resources

David addresses all of these topics and more during the twebinar so take the time to listen to it. And follow David on Twitter where he shares lots of great info with everyone.

In closing, David explains how brands should look at communities as an investment. If you learn from and engage with your communities they will be an asset that grows. Community members will be your biggest fans and a source of feedback and inspiration.

And in case you don’t know, AwarenessInc is a social media platform provider that helps organizations engage with their audience through the use of communities.

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.

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 “?”.

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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.

One of the biggest criticisms of social media and communities is that they involve a lot of mindless chatter. At first and even second blush, this chatter doesn’t seem to lead anywhere and certainly doesn’t suggest hard business outcomes. It is, however, critical to building relationships. Conversational artifacts – the subjects and themes that people talk about – are critical to building long-term and sustainable relationships. Good salespeople have known this forever – it’s why CRM systems in all their clunkyness have space for birthdays, anniversaries, hobbies, etc. While those software fields are rarely used, people with good relationships skills never forget those small facts. Why? It is the mechanism we use to re-engage because it is
rarely effective to ask after an absence “Why haven’t you bought my product or service yet?” That would be darn awkward. Everyone needs some warm up before a game.

An example of the importance of conversational artifacts hit me recently at a conference. I was at the Inbound Marketing Summit and @newmediajim was speaking. He is a photographer/ videographer for NBC in the White House press corps and for those in social media circles a micro-celebrity in his own right because he gives a unique and first-hand account of history. I’ve been following him for quite a while – as someone who worked in Washington D.C. with a politics degree, I am fascinated by the inner workings of government. Other than that, I really have no reason to talk to Jim. Before the conference had started I saw a tweet from him giving some indication that he was having trouble finding the conference location.
I had tweeted back some specific instructions to help them find the entry. I got no response from Jim because I was just one of tens of thousands of followers – we had no relationship.

At some point after Jim’s presentation, he was chatting with someone I knew so I went over to introduce myself and tell him what a fan I was. But then something funny happened. I must have touched his arm when I said hello and he had on a very soft, velvety jacket. I made some comment about it and that led to some good natured bantering. That gave us the conversational space to continue a discussion and we talked for quite a bit about Washington, politics, and social media. Why? Because of Jim’s jacket. Stupid? Absolutely. Critical? Incredibly. Weeks later Jim sent the following tweet:

This is how relationships start – with a common thread and recognition. Talking about Jim’s jacket was an incredibly effective artifact in developing a relationship where he not only recognized me but remembered me well enough to know how to reach me. I’m sure Jim met a ton of other people at the Inbound Marketing Summit and if he’s like me, many of them are hazy memories. But we had a very funny conversation about something that really didn’t matter that much to either of us. I now know that I am likely to hear back from him if I have a question for him. Now in this case, I’m not at all sure that Jim and I will ever do business together per se but the example serves to illustrate a really important point about mindless chatter. It is exactly how we can start to orchestrate serendipity. For example, it was recently announced that NBC is being bought by Comcast. My husband’s company was recently purchased by Comcast. Maybe that ends up being a helpful connection. I don’t know that it will be but I can take an educated guess that it might be. Orchestrating lots of those probable opportunities leads to connections and relationships with people that matter. Over time you can track it.

I am a strong proponent of planning for specific business outcomes with social media and community initiatives and because of that, it is critical to understand the power chatter has to those outcomes. Does it make it harder and noisier to isolate the drivers of the business outcomes you are looking for? Maybe but I think that noise has always existed in the workflow, it is just that traditional database-driven applications do not do a great job of tracking or exposing it.

For social media managers looking to get political buy-in for some of these tools that can seem ‘chatty’, I recommend doing exactly what I did here – engage influencers and show some of the conversations to your colleagues. Many of them will be surprised at how quickly you can build personal connections and relationships with people who are critical to the hard business outcomes for which they are looking.

& MTV is listening….

MTV is changing TV – yet again.  It’s listening and engaging with its audience – which at first glance, just sounds smart, not new.  But when you consider the audience is engaging from Twitterville, it starts to sound really interesting.

TV and Twitter Talking Together?

What do Tiger Woods, Adam Lambert and Twilight’s movie cast have in common?  While it sounds like the start of a bad joke, they’re actually the hot topics among the at-home TV audience for an MTV pop culture show – where real-time conversations from Twitter are integrated into the content of the TV show; “It’s On With Alexa Chung”.

Alexa Chung is a 26-year-old former British model turned TV host. Her American MTV show debuted in June featuring celebrity interviews, live music and videos: a mash up of TV and web to attract a young audience who spends time on Facebook and Twitter.

The audience interacts across a number of platforms:  TV, online and mobile. There’s a large and active following on Twitter. The show engages that Twitter audience who tweet their thoughts about the guests and the show. Then MTV takes the pulse of viewers by aggregating the themes of those Twitter conversations. What’s cool is that MTV then reflects that picture back to the audience via a visualization called Twitter Tracker.

MTV’s Twitter Tracker visualizes the volume of tweets around a guest or show topic based on the Twitter activity generated by MTV’s hosts, guests and fans. An individual who will never step inside the MTV studio is still able to engage, contribute content and become a catalyst to generate even more conversations – while becoming part of a community of fans and part of the story.

The show broadcasts weekdays for 30-minutes but the Twitter Tracker keeps the pulse of conversation going for the other 23.5 hours a day on its website — giving fans the opportunity to engage anytime.  This builds on MTV’s continued leadership in being a brand that engages its audience where, when and how they want.

The Genesis of Twitter Tracker:

The potential to use this innovative application with a daily audience has its roots in a couple of successful one-time shows. Twitter visualizations were first used during the MTV Video Music Awards show September 13^th and again during the European Music Awards show November 5^th.  As the shows were being broadcast, the Twitter Tracker was reflecting what people at home were tweeting about the show, connecting the at-home audience with a TV host who was reporting what was being tweeted. The show inspired the tweets and the audience’s tweets fed the show.  What celebrity doesn’t want instant feedback?

Here’s a taste of the first MTV Twitter visualization at the VMAs:

How it works and why it’s important:

These applications and content are created through a partnership of MTV, Twitter, Stamen Design and Radian6. Stamen creates the great visuals and applications that plug into the Radian6 platform.

For Radian6, it’s great to have clients like MTV who use the Radian6 platform in new and different ways. It also shows the potential of integration of social media with TV and other forms of offline media.

More importantly it shows how MTV works on growing a community. Engaging their audience and fans online at any time of day keeps them connected with content, not just during a broadcast. It also enables a window into the audience to discover what they’re thinking and talking about.  It’s no longer just about watching TV; it’s about enabling a live interaction between the show and the audience.  By bringing the community into the content, brings new people into the conversation and reinforces to the audience that they are part of the whole experience.

So what’s next?

MTV has been a leader in pretty well everything in media since it launched in 1981.  It’s a network built on firsts: in programming, technology, popular culture and personalities.  They’ve continually shaped and reflected the new and the emerging and no doubt will challenge us at Radian6 with new ideas to engage their community in the experience.

About Rob: Rob Begg is Radian6’s Director of Business Development for the media and entertainment industries.  You can connect with Rob on Twitter @rbegg.

Date: Thursday, December 10th
Time: 2pm EST

Do we really need to Make a Case for Social Media?

With …
•    325 million on Facebook
•    100 million on MySpace
•    40 million on Twitter
•    100 million daily views on YouTube
•    50 million people blogging

Edward Boches says social media changes everything except the need for creativity! He should know, as the Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer at Mullen, a modern advertising agency based in Boston. He definitely has an opinion!

He’ll share those opinions and a multitude of stories in a Twebinar with Radian6’s Amber Naslund and David Alston on Thursday, December 10th at 2pm EST. Join us and meet Edward as he shares his passion for “Creativity in the age of Social Media”.

This Twebinar is open to communities everywhere so please join us by logging in with your Twitter account on Thursday, Dec 10th (no preregistration is required) or listen to the audio on our Engaged Brand BlogTalkRadio channel.

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?

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, 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. 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 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.

Head to the Twebinars site to log in and join the discussion (don’t worry, we don’t see your login credentials; Twitter keeps those). We can’t wait to talk with Edward, and we hope you bring along some questions.

Radian6 will be a great destination in December for learning and illuminating the path through social media. December 1st will see fresh new content in the Engaged Brand section of our site including e-books, articles and video.

Our December theme is “Making a Case for Social Media” and usually the first place you go to start that conversation is with your boss. We’ll have tips to make that conversation as easy and productive as possible. But before even booking a meeting with the boss, you can examine the “Anatomy of Engagement” that provides a framework and ideas for creating your guidelines for social media participation within the company and for engaging with your external community.

And if you want to know what the road ahead looks like, check out the new video by Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun. He’ll lead you down – or up- the Yellow Brick Road to social media maturity and outline not only the first steps to get started in social media, but the five stages to arrive at a fully engaged and mature social media company.

Two web events are also scheduled. On Thursday December 10th,  we’ll tackle “creativity in the age of social media” with Edward Boches (@EdwardBoches) who’s both the Chief Creativity and Chief Social Media Officer at the communications agency, Mullen. Edward’s always had an eye for creativity; even thumbing through the pages of ads in Life magazine as a lad captured his imagination. Perhaps that’s what led him into media communications. He’s had some pretty cool discussions in his career, presenting ideas to Oprah (who apparently liked them) and co-writing TV ads with Ellen DeGeneres. Edward will inject his enthusiasm and creativity into our Twebinar so be sure to join us on Thursday, December 10th at 2 pm EST.

Then as we head closer to the holidays, we’ll propose some good cheer with our friends at Molson Coors in a Twebinar Thursday, December 17th. We’ll be joined by Ferg Devins, Adam Moffat and Tonia Hammer as we talk about lessons learned and how social media connects brands with their communities. So raise a glass and toast the upcoming season with us.

Both Twebinars are open to everyone so please join us by logging in with your Twitter account on Thursday, Dec 10th and 17th (no preregistration is required) or listen to the audio on our Engaged Brand BlogTalkRadio channel.

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?

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, simply type it in to Twitter using the #radian6 hashtag and end it with a “?”. We’ll see it.
• Your hosts 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 events will be posted on our blog 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.

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.

Social Media is everywhere these days. It’s talked about, it’s lauded, it’s criticized. And for a business that might yet be Getting Started With Social Media, all of the information, tools, and opinions can be overwhelming.

Getting a foothold in social media does not have to be painful if you have the path in place to rise to the top. Please join Lauren Vargas, Radian6′s Community Manager, on Thursday, November 19^th at 2pm EST for our free webinar as we discuss what you need to build a solid social media foundation.

Lauren’s discussion will focus on a 7 step process 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.

Space is limited.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/768210923

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

We can’t wait to talk with you about best practices and real-life examples, so be sure to bring some stories and questions.