Yesterday, Genevieve presented some ideas on how to find your social media influencers in real life. Once you’ve found your influencers, the next question becomes, “how do you connect with them?” To give you a starting point, here are 30 ways to engage your social media influencers:

1. Ask your influencers questions

2. Ask them to guest blog

3. Comment on your influencers’ blog posts

4. Share their content with your social networks

5. +1 and like influencer posts

6. Link to their content in your blog posts

7. Ask to cross-post influencer content on your corporate blog

8. Make introductions

9. Ask for introductions

10. Give your influencers a shout out on your social networks

11. Invite your influencers to a Tweetup

12. Invite them to participate in a Google+ hangout or webinar

13. Ask them to provide feedback on your brand or product

14. Make changes based on your influencer feedback

15. Provide feedback on influencer content

16. Reward them with exclusive content or offers

17. Host an event to show them your appreciation

18. Give them a sneak peak of a new product or service

19. Thank them

20. Connect with your influencers on other networks

21. Ask an influencer to be your brand’s spokesperson

22. Invite them to collaborate on campaigns

23. Offer to work together to author or co-author an ebook

24. Ask your influencers to host a Twitter Chat

25. Host an event panel and invite your influencers to participate

26. Do a blog or video interview with an influencer

27. Engage with your influencers as people, not prospects

28. Ask them for advice on brand or industry topics

29. Add your influencers to a Google+ circle and share it with your community

30. Create a Pinterest board with your favorite influencer content

These are a few ways to reach out to and engage with your influencers that can easily be incorporated into your existing social media strategy. Start with one or two and go from there to find the approach that fits best with your brand and your community.

How are you currently engaging with your social media influencers? What suggestions can you add to the above list? For more tips on engaging your influencers, be sure to check out chapter 3 of our latest ebook, Win Over Your Industry’s Social Media Influencers.

Note under Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines, any relationship where payment or other compensation is received for an endorsement or testimonial must be fully disclosed. You can read more about full disclosure and what it means here.

This month’s ebook, Win Over Your Industry’s Social Media Influencers, will help you build a strategy for connecting with those who are influential in your industry. It will also guide you to becoming influential yourself! Here’s a snippet from the ebook.

How to Win Over Your Influencers

Reciprocation – If you give first, it’s easier to take. Giving can come in many forms. Offer freebies, insider information or exposure in exchange for a mention, feedback, participation, etc. Blog, link to or tweet about an influencer before you solicit their involvement in your endeavor. Tweet

Commitment and Consistency – Try to find a quote the influencer has already published indicating their love for your brand or support for your cause. Since they’ve publicly stated their opinion, their conscience will encourage them to remain consistent with their words, increasing the likelihood of following through with your request. Tweet

Social Proof – We learn the norm from the actions of others around us. If any of your influencers’ connections or other industry players have participated in your effort, call it out. Another way to provide social proof is with numbers; for example: “18 others are participating. We need 7 more and were hoping you’d be one.” Tweet

Liking – People do business with those they know, like and trust. Make communications personal. Be enthusiastic. The closer you can draw a personal connection to your target, the more willing they might be to take part. Tweet

Authority – In order to recruit authoritative supporters, you have to be authoritative yourself. Establish credibility as an organization or individual by using proper spelling and grammar, professional language, linking to success stories, etc. Tweet

Scarcity – The thought of missing out incites action. Offer a limited-time sneak preview, limited-edition product or service, or limited quantity. Tweet

This list is inspired by the six weapons of influence discussed in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, authored by renowned professor, Dr. Robert B. Cialdini.

Do you have an influencer strategy? How do you engage with influencers? Would you consider yourself influential? Check out the ebook.

Flickr photo credit: wwarby http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/

All community managers make the world a better place by giving their companies a human voice, resonating their customer opinions and feedback, embodying empathy, stimulating meaningful discussion, gracefully admitting when their company has made a mistake, taking pride in helping others, and eagerly solving difficult problems… among many other things. Being a community manager for any company isn’t always easy, but as Robyn Tippins of ReadWriteWeb puts it, “Community Management is the hardest job you’ll ever love.”

Today we’re acknowledging all of you who take customer service to the next level by representing your companies on Facebook, in forums, on blogs and beyond.

In addition, I’d like to give my very own high-five to all the community managers who work at agencies. You extra rule.

Here’s why:

Community managers who work for agencies are chameleons (hat tip to @TDJaxTim of Dalton Agency for putting it this way). They do all of the above, but for multiple clients across multiple industries – sometimes all within a given day. An agency community manager masters the ins and outs of each client’s industry and company, and then replicates that knowledge online through engagement with client customers and prospects. Agency community managers have to stay up to date on more industry news, and be able to toggle between their different communities at a moment’s notice. On top of all that, agency community managers may have to jump through additional hoops to get to the information their community needs since they’re external to the company itself.

Radian6 appreciates all that you’ve done to not only transform your clients into social enterprises, but educate and guide them all along the journey. Thank you for being nimble, for working long hours, and for bringing our industry forward (en masse).

If you work at an agency, go give your social media and community managers a big pat on the back. They deserve it!

Throughout today, Radian6 supported Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD). Check this blog post and Twitter (@radian6) for more content around this day.

When it comes to engaging on social media, the opportunities are endless. From asking questions to contesting to sharing links, there are so many ways to have a conversation. But when it comes to grabbing attention, brainstorming smart approaches will go a long way. Time to turn the heads of others in order to grow your community and brand awareness. Here are some ways to get there.

Thank you for the criticism

If you have a repeat critic, or detractor, do your reserach to understand them better. Once you have the background information, respond in public whenever possible. Yes, hit the issue head on in public. Even thank them! It will start the process of changing their demeanor and show your community that you’re transparent and open to feedback.

$%#!!

Okay, maybe not as wild as this headline, but controversial subjects can provoke strong emotions in your community and inspire discussion. Don’t be afraid to discuss topics relating to your brand or industry just because they’re hot-button topics. Passion invites interaction and engagement.

Hello, we’re here when you are!

Use specific tools, such as 14blocks.com, to find out when your audience is most active on Twitter. Then tweet and engage during those times to reach more of your followers. Surprise and please your community by being present when they are!

Great content. Can I share it?

Promote others more than you promote yourself, such as Chrisn Brogan’s 12:1 ratio. Oftentimes consumers feel that following brands means they’ll be inundated with sales pitches. Show that your brand is not a marketroid.

I’m making a Pinterest board

With hundreds of social media websites out there, think beyond Facebook and Twitter and look at two things: 1) what makes the most sense for your brand, and 2) where your audience is talking. Perhaps your time is better spent chatting on forums, sharing boards on Pinterest, or voting on StumbleUpon.

Hungry? Let’s eat!

Many think of retail when it comes to Cyber Monday but all that online shopping can make anyone hungry. Pizza Hut knew this and used social media to share a special 20% off promotion for online shoppers. If you think about your consumers needs, you can deliver something appetizing too.

What surprise moves do you have up your sleeve? Have you seen any examples of smart ways to grab social media attention? Learn more about engagement in this month’s ebook, 30 Ideas for your 2012 Social Media Plan.

Pin It

Social networking site Pinterest has exploded in popularity over the past year. Despite being an invite-only social media community, Pinterest saw a 4,000% increase in site visits in just six months and reached over 4 million active users in the latter half of 2011, according to The Next Web. While Pinterest began as a community for individual users, retailers are beginning to recognize its potential. Etsy, the popular online marketplace for small businesses, recently made headlines by incorporating the “Pin It” button on its listings pages.

If you’re a retailer looking for inspiration, here are 5 ways you can leverage Pinterest:

1. Button It

Even if your brand isn’t currently on Pinterest, you can make it easy for your community to share your content. Take a page from Etsy and add the “Pin It” button to your website and blog, alongside your other social sharing buttons. You can also include a custom image to make your content more Pinterest-friendly, like we did above!

2. Search for Mentions

As with any other social media site, your content is probably already being shared. Do a quick search of your brand to see what types of pins show up. You can also find out what content people have pinned from your website by adding, “/source/” and your website address to the Pinterest homepage URL. For example, if we want to look at what content people have shared from Mashable, we can enter http://pinterest.com/source/mashable.com.

3. Find Trends

Pinterest is the perfect place to see a real time visual representation of what’s trending. The site allows you to sort pins by category, including Design, Food & Drink, Apparel, and Technology. Depending on what kind of retailer you are, you can easily identify what products in your category seem to be most popular and use it to your advantage.

4. Start Pinning

If you are new to Pinterest, start by thinking about what inspires you as a brand. Bergdorf Goodman has some creative boards that showcase the brand’s personality, such as “The Books on our Shelves.” They also do a great job of presenting their own products in a helpful way, with boards themed around clothing trends and holiday gifts. Just keep in mind that blatant self-promotion is frowned upon, so be sure to share a healthy mix of content.

You can also add other users as contributors to your boards. For example, allow employees to add pins to your boards to make them more engaging and personable.

5. Campaigns

Once you become more comfortable, find creative ways to leverage Pinterest for your campaigns. For its “Pin It to Win It” contest, Lands’ End asked fans to create boards with their favorite Land’s End products for the chance to win a $250 gift card. As mentioned above, Pinterest discourages self-promotion, so the key is encouraging your community to promote your brand for you.

These are a few tips for how you can leverage Pinterest for your retail brand, but the possibilities are endless. As Pinterest continues to grow in popularity with brands and consumers alike, we can expect to see more creative uses of this social sharing platform.

Do you have any other suggestions on how retailers can use Pinterest? Have you seen other campaigns from brands that incorporate Pinterest? Feel free to share your thoughts below!

Click here for a great beginner’s guide to Pinterest from the folks at Mashable.

Whether for public relations, marketing, customer service, or product research, Radian6 can connect Consumer Packaged Goods brands with the consumers who are online talking about their purchases and experiences.

Applying social media listening and monitoring to your advertising campaigns will help you determine your campaign effectiveness. You can use it to enhance the campaign too.

Listen for social response to your campaigns. When you do, you can tweak your efforts to better align with your target audience’s needs. The result? Stronger campaign effectiveness. Here are five ways to get there.

Advertising-specific Keywords

You spend countless hours writing ads. Consider the key phrases in those ads and monitor the social web for them. What is your audience saying about your brand, your product and your campaign? Using a social media monitoring tool will make it easier to capture and track these mentions. You can then do an analysis on the data. Is the sentiment positive? What feedback are they giving you? Revisit your campaign and adjust.

Unique URLs

As shared by Econsultancy, a recent survey found that 65% of all UK print and television advertising now includes a web address. Why is it so popular? Perhaps it’s the benefits:

• Increase traffic to your website
• It’s often the easiest way for your audience to respond to ads, since they’re online anyway
• Gives more visibility to your brand URL
• Provides a mechanism to track response to ads

Use a web tracking tool to watch these URLs and see how many visitors come in, how long they stay, what they’re doing, etc. Determine campaign effectiveness based on web visitor activity.

But there’s more. You can also see if your audience is sharing your URL on the social web. Include it as one of your keywords while monitoring.

Trade Show Conversations

Many conferences have their own Twitter handles, Facebook pages, hashtags and Foursquare check ins. Whether you’re sponsoring the conference, speaking at it or manning a booth, find those social connections and monitor them. It’s a great opportunity to join the conversation and direct people to your brand. Consider creating your own Foursquare location at your booth and provide giveaways for those that check in!

#CampaignSpecificHashtags

#CreateACampaignHashtag to track conversations about your marketing effort (see Jenn’s post for successful examples). Share it on your site, via your Twitter handle and even bring the hashtag offline as a call to action. You’ll see all mentions of the hashtag in one easy list on Twitter and can gauge sentiment, interest, number of conversations and more with a monitoring tool.

User Generated Content

Asking your audience to participate in your campaign adds a layer of valuable content to your site. It’s about listening and engagement as well as getting great content from your audience. A great example of UGC is the Doritos Super Bowl ads. The Doritos brand turned over complete control of its Super Bowl air time to consumers, enabling participants to upload their homemade commercials to www.crashthesuperbowl.com (you can check out the current contenders and vote for your favorites!). The user-generated 2009 spot (made for less than $2,000) snagged the number-one spot on the USA Today Ad Meter, beating seasoned ad pros and resulting in a great story for the brand.

Use social media to promote your UGC effort. And if you don’t have the manpower or funding for a custom UGC-gathering website, social media is here to help. Use YouTube for uploading video content or Facebook and Twitter to gather comments, ideas or for contesting.

2012 is the year of awesome campaign development, I can just feel it! Use some of these tricks and ensure to take action when you gather feedback. Revise campaigns based on your audience’s needs and relaunch. When you do, your campaigns will be stronger than ever. Remember, your audience is listening to you, are you listening to them?

Learn more about social media listening in the 30 Ideas for your 2012 Social Media Plan ebook.

After attending some great events in 2011 and talking to thought leaders in social media for the financial industry, I’ve put together five of the highest regarded social media events for financial services of 2012. Besides, you’ll likely see Radian6 at nearly all of these!

1. The 10th annual Insurance-Canada.ca Technology Conference, The New Landscape: Social Business, Mobile, Analytics, Modern Technology, gets you started on your social media journey. From IT to marketing, this event is worth penciling into your busy schedule. Take in tons of informative sessions covering all of the latest technology trends for insurance providers. Learn how social communications is changing the insurance industry, and the best practices and best tools to excel in social media, and understand how the next level of analytics tools can help leverage your data. The conference will be held March 5 at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Toronto, Ontario.

2. If you’re a member of the banking community who wants to build a better banking industry with the future of social media in mind, you’ll definitely want to attend Bank Innovation 2012. This is an elite, invitation-only gathering of financial services providers banking ovation today. The event will explore new ideas, products and strategies that will shape the future of banking. The two-day conference, presented by the Bank Innovation blog and social network, is held March 28-29, 2012 at the W Hotel in San Francisco. 

3.The Financial Blogger Conference (FinCon) is a three-day conference designed to bring together the best of the financial blogging community. Over 25% of the personal finance blog-o-sphere will be attending Financial Blogger Conference in Denver Sept 6-9, 2012 for networking and sharing ideas.

4.FINRA’s Advertising Regulation Conference is bustling with securities representatives, compliance officers, lawyers and marketing folks from brokerage firms and branch offices all over the United States. The two-day event will be jam packed with concurrent sessions covering advertising, compliance, sales practices and social media. The conference is held at the trendy Renaissance Hotel in downtown Washington D.C., Oct. 25-26.

5.The Business Development Institute’sFinancial Services Social Communications 2012: Case Studies and Roundtables, will once again house some excellent presentations by industry thought leaders for financial services marketing and communications professionals looking to embark on social media. The conference will be held at the City University of New York on November 15.

It’s going to be an exciting, innovative year for the financial services industry! Hope to see you there.

Do you know any must-attend social media events for financial services to add to our list?

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.

Consumers use social media to get the information they need quickly and efficiently. A quick scan of Facebook notifications. Skimming a Twitter feed. A two-minute LinkedIn group visit. Done, done and done.

In order to meet the needs of the fast-moving social consumer, your content – whether it’s an eBook, presentation, blog or something else – needs to be just as quick and efficient. But with all your great insights and educational information to share, how can you make it snappy? Here are some helpful (and quick) tips. And they’re all individually tweetable.

Grab their Attention

• Headlines: short, sweet and smart Tweet
• Tips, tricks and how-tos: write how users search Tweet
• Ready, set, GO! Summarize your purpose from the start Tweet

Get to the Point

• Share insights ASAP Tweet
• Put essential elements first Tweet
• Be clear and definitive Tweet

Support your Story

• Supporting information should follow in order of diminishing importance Tweet
• Ensure readers can stop anytime and still come away with the essence of a story Tweet
• Prove your points with internal and/or external expert links or quotes Tweet

By understanding the mentality and needs of your audience, you can effectively and successfully deliver content. Not only will your consumers enjoy reading it, but you’ll smile at the exposure and feedback that your content receives. And those are some tweetable results.

Learn more about social consumers in this month’s eBook and how to write effective content in this eBook. What other tips help make your content sing? How is your community responding to what you write?

Nathan Bricklin @socialbrick (Wells Fargo) using his tweets to illustrate collaboration and employee community engagement – photo courtesy of @JoyceMSullivan

The Business Development Institute’s Financial Services Social Communications conference at the City University of New York on November 16 housed some excellent takeaways for financial services organizations looking to embark on social media. Here are my top words of wisdom from the conference.

Key Takeaways

The keynote case study, @YourService, presented by Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media at Citibank, kicked off the conference with an encouraging bang. Eliason showed us how Citibank uses social media to connect the dots from customer service to PR and marketing. His presentation was full of social media soaked inspirational mandates to live and work by, from, “Trust is built with human interaction,” to, “Social media is the power of stories.”

Gregory Weiss, Assistant VP of Social Media at New York Life gave an informative presentation on how New York Life has emerged as a leader in the space amongst its peers. They’re promoting interaction and engagement around New York Life and the insurance industry through the use of social media. This insurance company takes a groundbreaking approach to customer service and marketing through their social media channels by leveraging its brand heritage, employees, and agents to achieve short-term wins with long-term benefits.  And on the topic of compliance – according Weiss, “Social media is a gift for lawyers and compliance folks because it’s trackable [engagement].”

Sarah Carter, VP of Marketing for Actiance, discussed how Financial institutions are increasingly using enterprise unified communications and collaboration platforms, social software, and real-time tools despite the regulations of the finance industry. In her presentation, Enabling Social in Financial Services, Sarah gave a breakdown of the security and compliance issues financial services companies are facing, and how leading organizations are overcoming them. According to Carter, an important element for implementing a successful corporate social policy is to, “Understand and manage the fallibility of human beings.”

Wells Fargo’s SVP and Head of Social Strategy, Nathan Bricklin’s presentation, Internal Collaboration, provided examples of the various ways Wells Fargo has established internal collaboration on social communications. In an innovative manor, he used his tweets as PowerPoint slides. Bricklin discussed the importance of working hard on developing and maintaining social relationships, “Successful engagement is not about plugging in tools and expecting stuff to magically appear.”

Eric Rehl, VP of eBusiness at Robert W. Baird & Co., showed his experiences and findings from a social media pilot, which allows Financial Advisors at Baird to use Twitter and Facebook for business-related communications and marketing. Rehl explained his takeaways and lessons learned from the pilot, “You need a plan; education is key, training [your social media team] is critical for success, provide best practices, and content is king.”

Robert W. Baird and Co.’s Eric Rehl left us with an important statement and a thought-provoking question to consider: Social media is a, “means to an end.” You will only achieve your specific, measurable objectives if you have a plan. Where are you going?

Learn more about social media for the financial services industry here.

Traditional media still has an important role to play. You’ll continue to see those Times Square billboards flashing day and night. But with social media as a growing medium, marketing and PR should consider the different ways to blend the online and offline space. Can billboards work with Facebook? How does television and Twitter work together?

Here are 10 simple ways to integrate social media into your traditional media efforts.

1. Use traditional media as a social driver. Use print, outdoor, radio and other traditional media to promote your social channels. Take it beyond including the Twitter and Facebook icons and add some information as to why consumers should join the social conversation. Do you have special offers? Contests? Helpful tips?
2. Converse in the traditional space. Could a customer’s pleasant comment on Facebook be your next headline? Use these positive mentions and comments as testimonials on your website, headlines, body copy, etc. It will excite the customers that wrote the message (ensure you get their permission) and demonstrate your great brand in a peer-to-peer format.
3. Use traditional media as the prize. Develop a contest on your social media channels. It could be photos, videos, telling a joke on the Facebook wall, etc. Showcase the winner in a TV spot, print ad or on your website. It will generate buzz in both the online and offline space.
4. Continue the story on social media. Traditional media may reach the masses, but you’re often limited in your print and billboard space or your television and radio running time. Capture the audience with your story using traditional media, but continue it online. Maybe it’s a web series or a series of blog posts. Intrigue consumers to find out more.
5. Be open for feedback. With social media, communication is two-way. Your audience can provide thoughts and opinions about your campaigns. Welcome them! Let traditional media spread your message while social media captures the feedback. Make sure to take those opinions into consideration as you modify your campaign efforts.
6. Promote online content. As experts in your industry, you likely have a lot of great content to share. Use blogs, eBooks, webinars and other online avenues to share this helpful content with your audience. Then, set aside part of your traditional media budget to promote the content. Paid search and online display advertising are perfect for this effort.
7. Redefine the landing page. Oftentimes your traditional media efforts use your website as the call-to-action. Much like point #1 above, that doesn’t have to be the case. If your campaign is about creating a conversation, welcoming feedback, encouraging the story to continue, etc., Facebook, Twitter or your blog might be a better landing page option.
8. Respond with traditional media. If you’re listening on the social web and you’re discovering some repeating complaints, engaging in social media is a great way to learn more and dispel any rumors. However, you can make your message louder by using traditional media. For instance, if you’re getting negative feedback on your customer service, use traditional media to talk about it. How are you solving the problem? This approach shows that you’re taking these complaints seriously.
9. Organize offline events with online media. Traditional media can also include conferences and events. Hold meetups, tweetups and presentations at your offices or conferences and promote them via your social channels.
10. Test with social media.  If you have a new product, campaign idea or service to share, consider tapping into social media. Use offline channels to promote it and gather feedback and insights from your fans on the social web. Let them know from the beginning that you’re looking for feedback so the conversation can start right away.

No matter which way you chose to integrate traditional with new media, make sure to continually engage with your social following. They are talking about your campaigns and would love to hear from you.

What other ways are you integrating social media into your traditional media efforts? How has social media changed the way you communicate with your audience? Learn more about integrating social media into successful campaigns with this month’s eBook.

Side note: Social media can fly solo with smart social strategies that have tremendous results. Even $500,000 worth! Let’s Get Ready! won second place in the Chase Giving Awards and took home $500,000, to help students obtain post secondary education. This was purely a social media effort by Viral Technologies and Let’s Get Ready! (See the case study.) Share your story with us on Twitter at @radian6.

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.

Social media is making an impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions, so what does that mean for your business? And what does the future hold for your marketing, PR, HR, fundraising and other campaign efforts? With 2012 nipping at our heels, this month’s eBook, Four Steps to Integrating Social Media into Successful Campaigns, will guide you across the social media landscape to see how this revolution is influencing campaigns. Don’t worry. We’ll take the scenic route!

We’ve divided December’s eBook into 4 helpful steps:

Understand the Changing Landscape – In this chapter we share:  How the social media revolution has changed the campaign landscape, along with the top 5 changes to campaigns that have occurred as a result of social media.

Get to Know the Social Consumer – In this chapter we share: How to leverage engagement and increase sales by understanding the mind of your customer. We also share a few case studies, statistics and an infographic on the science of sharing.

Create a Social Campaign – In this chapter we share:  How to create social media campaigns that meet bottom line objectives. We also ask you to ask yourself some important questions, such as:

• What parts of this campaign could benefit from social interaction?
• What is the call to action and how can that be answered online?
• How will this campaign generate an audience?

Make it Memorable – In this chapter we share:  How to stay ahead of your competitors including real world examples and case studies, plus an entire section on Social Media ROI.

You have new and exciting opportunities to create successful campaigns using social media. Understanding how the social media revolution has changed the campaign landscape will help you plan innovative campaigns to achieve your business goals. This month’s eBook, Four Steps to Integrating Social Media into Successful Campaigns, will send you forward with renewed focus. We hope you enjoy it!

Trish Forant is a Community Manager at Radian6. She’s also a PR and communications professional who tweets about social media and blogs about her adventures in sunny, South Florida. Connect with her on Twitter at @Dayngr.

The numbers are in. Techcrunch shared that the sales from yesterday’s Cyber Monday are up 30% from last year. While the increase could be due to consumers finding smart tips and tricks to hide the shopping from the boss, it’s more likely that businesses are seeing the value of this day and taking advantage of the opportunity. In fact, many brands use social media marketing and monitoring to promote their online sales, even non-retailers.

Big Brands, Small Businesses and Non-Retailers Use Social Media Strategy for Cyber Monday

• Pizza Hut shared a 20% off promotion via social media as a way to take advantage of the increase in online traffic. Learn more in this case study.
• Small business, Furniture and Appliance Mart in Wisconsin, offered a 25% off gift card exclusively to Facebook fans and email recipients, according to central Wisconsin’s WSAW.
• Puma used Twitter to offer 30% off in-store and online purchases plus 50% off outlet locations.

This is not the first year that social media has entered the Cyber Monday arena. In 2010, some of the top retail brands used social media marketing to support their efforts for this ecommerce holiday. Just look at their Facebook pages and Twitter feed and you can see they’re doing it again.

Today’s consumers are increasingly turning to social media to find the information that influence their purchasing decisions, as well as share their own retail experiences with others. From marketing and sales to customer service, the entire retail experience is going digital, and the success of your retail brand hinges on how you build your own presence and engage in the social space.

Whether you are just getting started in the social space or have an existing social media strategy that’s ready for the next level, this retail industry-specific ebook will answer your questions, get you thinking and inspire you for the future.

One of the questions I’m asked most often is, “What do we do if our customers aren’t on social media?” It’s a valid question. Why spend time developing a social media monitoring, engagement or marketing strategy if you don’t think there’s anything to monitor or anyone to engage with? In other words, if a tweet falls in the forest and there’s no one there to receive it, does it make an impact?

First of all, with around 800 million people on Facebook and more than 120 million on LinkedIn, you can be fairly certain that your customers are there. Finding them becomes the challenge, and one that social media monitoring tools can overcome. But let’s approach this a different way.

What if you could help your customers become more social?

How much time do you spend thinking about the relevance of social media to your business? What about, wondering what tools to use and what networks to try? Your customers are thinking the same things, and asking the same questions. The very fact that you’re reading this blog post means you’ve begun your social media journey, and someone can benefit from what you’ve learned, even if you’re just getting started.

I have a friend named John Doyle, who works for Alure Home Improvements on Long Island, New York. Alure has a great social media story, thanks in part to their work rebuilding homes for deserving families as part of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. John has learned a lot about how social media supports Alure’s business objectives through hands-on, real-world trial and error. And now he speaks to groups of folks all around Long Island about social media and how it can work for them. I imagine John becomes the first Facebook or Twitter connection for a lot of the people he helps. And when it comes time for those people to remodel their bathroom or their kitchen, who do you think will come to mind? (I’ve heard this referred to as the “baby bird” theory, which makes sense, but brings to mind a little more worm imagery than I’m completely comfortable with.)

Even if you don’t think of yourself as a social media expert, you can share what you learn with your customers and community. It’s easy to start a blog on WordPress.com, or a site like Tumblr or Posterous. Then let your customers know about it through your regular channels, like your email newsletter or website. Heck, you could even tell them in person.

You don’t have to sound like an expert. “We’ve started this blog to share what we’re learning in social media. We hope you’ll share the journey with us, let us know what questions you’re trying to answer, and what’s working for you.”

You don’t have to answer every question. You can share the questions you’re asking and the goals you want to achieve. Then when you answer them, you’ll have even more to share. Most of the successful social media bloggers I know started that way, and have built their networks by sharing what they’ve learned.

Your customers already know you. They like you. They trust you. They’re all wondering about this social media stuff, and they would love for you to help them figure it out. And they will thank you for it.

In what ways are you empowering customers to be more social? How else can you deepen customer relationships?

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.

Last week I shared a post about my trip to Relish Gourmet Burgers, a small business that is using social media to grow their business and build a strong community of supporters. It made me wonder why more small businesses aren’t taking advantage of social media for their business, and in my search to learn more about this topic, I found a great study from BMO on how Canadian Businesses are using social media to increase profits. The study states that half of Canadian businesses believe that social media has the potential to increase their profitability, but only 29 percent of small businesses are actually taking advantage of these opportunities.

It would seem that there are some obstacles that are preventing small business owners from incorporating social into their marketing efforts. Rivers Corbett, CEO of Relish, can help others overcome these with some of the lessons he has learned. Check out this video to learn how he made social part of the plan from day one and how it has paid off.

And if you would like to learn more about how social can work for small businesses take a look at our case study.

They are vocal.

They want incentives.

And when they’re looking for help, they want to hear from you.

This is a social customer.

In yesterday’s webinar with author Becky Carroll and our own David Alston, we explored this customer mindset and the opportunities they possess for growing your business. (And don’t worry if you missed it – we’ve got the video below!)

During the packed hour and amidst tons of questions and some Q&A breaks (well, there was a free book incentive for asking a question), Becky walked us through R.O.C.K. – the four keys to growing your business from existing customers.

Relevant Marketing
There is certainly a place for marketing messages on the social web, just in a different way. As you’re listening and understanding your customer, you’ll learn their likes and dislikes, their emotions toward your brand and why they use your product or service. Market to them based on this customer knowledge and they’ll be more apt to listen and respond.

Orchestrated Customer Experience
As mentioned earlier, social customers are looking for a response. They might reach out to your brand on the social web – are you responding? If so, you’re very much in line with the needs and wants of the growing social customer mindset, but keep it up. These customers will soon come to expect this quick and efficient response channel. They may even talk positively to others about their great customer service experience.

Customer-focused Culture
It’s not about you. It’s about your customers. But focusing your efforts on customers and their needs starts from the inside. Hiring strong employees with a passion for pleasing customers will go a long way for bettering your business. In addition to a strong internal force, you can make huge strides by incorporating social. This connects the social customers with the passionate employees to create a bond.

Killer Customer Service
Killer customer service can be fun. Find ways to make customers happy to increase engagement. And it doesn’t have to be major. Beaver Creek gives out free cookies at the end of a day of skiing. In addition to being nice, be convenient. If your customers are sharing on forums or blogs, consider going to those places to engage. Communicating on their terms also means communicating on their preferred channels.

This webinar gave us a great customer-centric social media strategy with ways to engage, listen, find customers and grow your community. If you missed the webinar, we’ve got the video.

How do you define a social customer? How does the social customer mindset impact your business? Weigh in here and maybe Becky will check in as well!

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

Find out how social media monitoring and listening can benefit your team’s and your organization’s Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service goals.

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For many of us, the cooler weather is creeping in but Radian6 has another plan. We are heading south! It’s time to talk social in the southern U.S. at a wide variety of conferences over the next few weeks. While the topics are vast, the concept is the same: the social web is changing the way businesses do business.

The first stop is BOLO 2011 in  Scottsdale, AZ. From October 9th through 11th,  Craig Comeau and Dave Lewis will be part of a conference which empowers marketing talent to leverage the power of the social web. With workshops, forums and even a Vaudeville-style event showcasing attendee talent, it seems that the social web and marketing could be a match made in Scottsdale.

Let’s travel further south to Dallas, Texas where Jamie Casey, Darren Macleod and Bob Faigel will meet call center professionals from around the world for ICMI’s Call Center Demo and Conference on October 11th through 13th. It’s a hands-on experience with tours of call centers, exhibits and presentations. All the while, attendees will learn how their day-to-day experiences are impacted by social media and the opportunities to utilize it for the greater good.

Our last stop for today’s post brings us about 1,100 miles southeast to the SOCAP Annual Conference in Orlando, FL. Join a group of Radian6ers including David Alston, David B. Thomas, Zoe Geddes-Soltess and Tom Hasselman for an experience about customer relationship management and the social web. It’s on October 16th through the 19th.

With all this hot social talk, I’ll apologize to my sweaters. They’ll have to wait a bit longer.

We want to know your travels for the next few weeks. What conferences are you attending? Are your social conversations heating up?

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

Airline Frequently Asked Questions

We currently manage multiple social media accounts – how can you help make this easier?

Our Engagement Console pulls all of your Twitter handles into one easy location, helping you to keep your finger on the pulse of your brand. You can even pull in your Facebook account to stay connected with your fans there, too.

We also allow your team to work collaboratively on projects together with our workflow capabilities, so not only can you manage multiple accounts – you can work with your team to ensure that all questions and comments get replied to as quickly as possible.

We’ve been monitoring the online activity of our competitors – now what?

If passengers are discussing experiences they’ve had with other airlines on the social web, now’s the time to take their comments and critiques and turn them into actionable results. Think of these comments as potential sales leads – they’ll give you the opportunity to understand what your competition is doing, and allow you modify your offerings accordingly. Check out our applications section to learn more about the power of social for generating sales leads.

Our customers are travelling all over the world – how many languages do you track?

Radian6 currently tracks 17 languages, including: Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

We’re hoping to use the social web to reach out to customers about flight cancellations and delays – do you monitor in real time?

Everyday we work to return over 8 million relevant results to you, so that you’re always in touch with customer conversations.

Our customer support teams work around the clock – do yours?

We’re pleased to offer 24 hour a day support, five days a week. Call, email or ping us on Twitter and we’ll have you back on track in no time. Click here for more information on our support hours, and all of the ways to reach out to our team.

Have more questions about our platform? Check out our comprehensive FAQ here.

Contact Us

Ever wonder about the faces on the Radian6 materials and website? Who are they? Are they modeled after real people? Do they bear a striking resemblance to someone you know? Well, now you can get to know them. We’re continuing a series that looks into their lives, experiences and challenges. They will share their personal insights on what works (and doesn’t work) when it comes to the social world. Did you miss meeting Karen? Today we introduce Steve!

Hi, my name’s Steve and I’m a marketing manager with a company that provides strategic business advice to companies looking to improve efficiency and business practices. I’m a big sports fan and avid skier. I am always connected to either my computer or phone and love engaging through social media although I sometimes find myself lost in a sea of emails. The team I work with daily is a group of smart and savvy individuals and right now I’m enjoying making work my number one priority.

I’ve been thinking a lot about social connections lately and especially on the best ways to develop these for B2B. I came up with a few ideas of my own, but I always like to get feedback from the experts. I thought I would share some of my thoughts as well as a few tips I learned from Jeff Cohen and then also ask for your input so I can incorporate it into the social strategy for our business.

One of the main things I’ve realized in my work is that social connections for B2C and for B2B are very similar. Radian6 has talked about it a bit before, especially in the eBook Social Media for B2B: It’s Not as Different as You Think, which really made me realize that the same rules apply. It’s about nurturing and building relationships.

From a very basic tactical standpoint there are a few things I wanted to get our team thinking about and actively doing to build these relationships:

• · We have developed fairly active Facebook and Twitter accounts and we are going to make a point of going out and liking those companies we have relationships with and those we wish to through our corporate page.
• · I will be encouraging all employees on my team to seek out the person at prospective companies who has a role most similar to their own. They will use things such as LinkedIn to find these people. My thought process is that those are people they can build strong connections with and can potentially have more in common with when it comes to work.
• · Making a point of taking offline connections and migrating them online will also be something we will work on as a team. Instead of following up purely by email when we have phone conversation or meet in person, we will also make a point of connecting with people through social channels in the hope that they will be interested in connecting as well which will provide another avenue of getting our information to them.

After speaking with Jeff Cohen about some more strategic ideas, our team is also planning on implementing some of the following:

• · We would like to reach out to industry leaders or emerging leaders and ask them to participate in our video series for our corporate blog. We won’t be focusing on self-promotion here, but rather seeking to help share some best-practices and lifting up potential clients to strengthen that relationship.
• · We are really looking forward to trying out some informational interviews with potential clients. The purpose would not be selling to them, but rather as an exercise in learning from them what methods, information and resources they would like to receive if we were to sell to them.
• · As a team we are also going to make a point of not only spending time providing resources online through social media, but also asking experts for their valuable input. People like to be asked questions and they enjoy talking about “what they know”. We want to help give them the opportunity to do so in hopes that it will build a relationship.

What do you think? What other tactical and strategic ideas can we implement to build these connections? Have your tried any of the above ways to make social connections and how have they worked?

Note: Characters are in fact fictional; any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental.

Airline customers are social. As the leading social media monitoring and engagement platform, Radian6 can help airlines listen and connect to with their customers on the social web.

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Visit our Social Media for Airlines section to learn more about how Radian6 is helping the industry.

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How Can Airlines Leverage Social Media

The airline industry is all about forming communities. Many of your travellers are regulars, people who log countless hours in the skies for business or pleasure. The social web is a great place to interact with these frequent flyers, gather their feedback on where you’re succeeding, and where you could stand to make some improvements. Your customers will appreciate your willingness to connect, and putting a customer service agent on the front line ensures you’ll be reacting to situations before they turn into bigger issues.

Contact Us

Up, up and away.

We’re Here to Help

People are continuously using the social web to discuss your airline. They could be tweeting from an airport with questions on flight delays, or maybe using Facebook to celebrate their great experiences with your in-flight crew. Use the social web to reach out to ensure that they’re having the best experience possible each and every time they take to the skies. In much the same way that you turn to Sabre for their expertise in the field of airline solutions, Radian6 is here to help you manoeuvre through the social web.

Monitor Competitor Activity

Listening on the social web won’t only be beneficial when it comes to conversations pertaining to your brand – it’s also helpful for figuring out what people are saying about your competitors. Want to see what’s causing people to sing the praises of a rival airline? Maybe you’re hoping to gain insight into why their last marketing campaign was such a success? Social media monitoring can help you uncover these stories, and more.

Handle a Crisis Situation

Interacting on the social web can be invaluable for connecting with your passengers during those hectic times, especially when the weather is causing delays and cancellations. Check out our case studies section to learn how Air Canada overcame potential weather-related flight cancellations by reaching out to their passengers via Twitter.

Interact with your Passengers

Social media monitoring should not be used only in crisis situations. Tuning into routine passenger conversations is a great way to provide outreach, not to mention stellar customer service. Maybe you’ll discover they’re discussing your in-flight entertainment and suggesting ways to make it better. Perhaps they want to congratulate your team for another job well done. No matter what they’re saying, these are discussions you don’t want to miss out on.

Enhance Customer Loyalty

With your passengers hanging out on the social web, there’s no better place to perform a little customer outreach. Facilitate giveaways, and reward your customers for using check-in services while waiting for their flights. It’s just another way to create a stronger community surrounding your biggest fans.

Get Started

The “Age of Interruption” is over. Brand perception is no longer influenced only by advertising, public relations and corporate messaging. Brands are now a sum of the conversations about them. Those conversations are happening everywhere and now being shared across the social web. Traditional marketing has changed. Social Media has created new and exciting ways for brands to engage with consumers and build fans.

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Listen and measure social conversations

Are people talking about you online? Learn who is talking about your brand and what they are talking about. Discover how your brand, product or service is being perceived by your community online and identify advocates that can influence public sentiment about your company and products.

Shape your brand with social media marketing

Understanding the health of your brand is easier than ever. Monitor public perception of your company and products on the social Web and understand the volume, overall sentiment, key demographics, influencers, and more. Look for trends, adjust your plans, and engage where you can make a difference.

Gain social market intelligence

Get a deeper understanding of what’s important to your customers, what is influencing their decisions and how they feel about your competitors. Stay ahead of emerging trends and get meaningful intelligence to guide decision-making and marketing planning.

Measure campaign effectiveness

Are your Marketing efforts generating the results you expected? Use social media monitoring to understand what is driving conversations and the “why” behind your social traffic, such as in-depth sentiment, demographics, likes and dislikes, and more. Adapt content and messaging based on campaign buzz and analytics.

Interested in hearing what people are saying about your brand? Click here to get started with Radian6.

We’ve bundled all the sage social media advice from 2010 into nine major takeaways. These rules encompass social media application from the beginning stages of listening and information processing, to the more advanced stages of community engagement. And we’ve organized the rules into the categories of “Listening”, “Measurement”, and “Engagement” for easy browsing and reference.

While social media as a corporate communications channel is gaining ground, it’s still seen as a rather new and novel medium. As a result of this, and because there is a level of uncertainty with regards to its benefits, there seems to be a large demand for case studies and practical examples of corporate social media use.

With this in mind we will be sharing a number of case studies on our Blog over the next couple of months. First up, we highlight how we worked with Kellogg’s UK who were looking to roll out a social media strategy across their business.

To begin Kellogg’s sought to understand, in detail, what was being said about their brand and four of their main product groups; Coco Pops, Special K, Crunchy Nut, and Rice Krispies Squares. Working with 6Consulting, Kellogg’s launched a listening and monitoring initiative. The insight gained through this was then used as a basis for future cross departmental social media involvement. (more…)

“How do we report on all of this stuff?” is a question frequently heard from all corners of the sandbox.  Customer service wants to know how their activities on the social web can tie back in with their existing metrics, sales wants to see how it impacts their lead times, sales cycles, and other sales-related metrics, and marketers want to know how to get the information out of the system (as a first step) to funnel to the other groups, as well as know what information they should be looking for as a department.

Phew. That’s a lot of wants!

To help you break it down, here are some steps to help you get started with your marketing and communications-focused reporting plan:

What programs are included in your strategic plan over the next 6 or 12 months?

Social media reporting shouldn’t JUST be used to report on social programs.  Identify which campaigns you’ll be running, shows you’ll be attending, and other activities you’ll be starting (or continuing) over the next 6-12 months. What are the keywords associated with these activities? Do people pick up on things and talk about them on the social web before/during/after? Are they reacting positively or negatively to your campaigns or events? Do you see correlation or cross-pollination from offline program to online channels?

What keywords are associated with your brand?

It may sound simple, but a lot of people track things like @ mentions, Twitter followers, and other statistics, but don’t track keywords associated with their brand.  What does your mission statement say? What are your brand attributes? How are you ranking both for share of voice and share of conversation for these keywords, as well as your market?

Conversation volume.

How many people are talking about you during your reporting period? Is this number growing? Do you notice the same people talking about you week after week or month after month? Can you track sentiment over time and see if a growth in conversation volume also corresponds to a growth in positive sentiment?

Be creative.

No report is going to be “standard” or the same as everyone elses. The key to is to make your reporting plan reflect your business goals, objectives, and tactics.  What is trackable? What do you currently report on? Start there and the social metrics will become apparent far more quickly than starting from “what metrics should we track” and working backwards to applying those to your activities and objectives.

If actions speak louder than words, then it’s no surprise that customer service is playing a larger and larger role in peoples’ buying decisions. Today’s marketplace is packed with redundant products and services, so we turn to big-picture differentiators, like brand reputation and buying experience, to help us make purchasing decisions. This is also part of why we talk to our friends and networks about their experiences with a brand or product, and share our own experiences, as well.

Before the Internet, though, we’d tell a few friends about our fantastic or horrible experience with a brand, and they’d tell a few people, and eventually it would fizzle out, probably not having reached more than 20 people by the time the conversation died. But now, if we have a great (or equally bad) experience, we can share that experience in a blog post, a blog comment, a tweet, a video, a Facebook status update, and on and on, and that commentary could potentially be seen and shared by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.

That kind of mass exposure has a definitive impact on brand reputation and, ultimately, sales.

Now that your customers can have such a huge voice in the marketplace, it stands to reason that they need to be handled with a bit more care than the traditional customer service model allows. In the best case, that fantastic care you give will make your customers champions for your brand.

Customer Service is More Than a Department

Companies such as Zappos and L.L. Bean are known for their customer-focused business models. Everything they do, from pre-transaction to post-transaction is focused on making sure the customer experience is as high-quality as possible. Customer service for these companies is not just a department, it’s an important part of the corporate culture.

In these instances, because the customer service mindset lives outside the walls of a single department, the job of every employee to a certain extent is to speak on behalf of the customer. Internal and external conversations, marketing collateral, and larger business initiatives take into consideration the customer, making the entire system more inviting, personal, and people-friendly.

The Marketing Angle

At the end of the day, your business relies on relationships. People choose to buy from you because they like the relationship opportunity your brand presents — it feels good to them — and they come back because they get satisfaction from that relationship they’ve built with you. You’ve solved a problem of theirs and done it in a way that fits them.

To that end, strong relationships will always be talked about, be they with another person, a company, a product, or a service. We share the experiences we have in our relationships with others as a way to connect and relate, and the more extreme the experience (good or bad) the more it will get talked about.

Simply, if you provide top-notch customer service, people will talk about you. They’ll tell others about how well they were treated in your care, what they thought of your product or service, and if they’ll be going back to you for future purchases. With such good word being spread, others will be interested in your products and services, and they’ll seek you out, too.

Creating a positive and personal customer experience is a fantastic way to get people referring their friends, family, and larger networks to your company. The personal reference has power, and it’s one of the strongest marketing tools a brand can work to develop.

How are you improving customer service inside the walls of your company? How do you think those improvements will impact the way your customers, prospects, and community talk about you?

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.

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

But…how? What does that mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’ll find helpful resources:

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

The Engaged Brand:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Blog:

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

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

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

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

We’re so excited to announce that Microsoft has selected Radian6 as a social media monitoring tool supporting their Central Marketing Group. As a brand that is mentioned in 6% of all online postings per month, Microsoft has been paying close attention to user generated content for several years. Particularly to listening to and understanding buzz around their company and their products as well as engaging with customers for support, events, and product launches.

And at Radian6, we’re poised to help take them to the next level, delivering some broader and deeper listening capabilities to their core marketing and product teams.

Why Social Media?

Aaron Lilly, a Sr. Marcom Architect at Microsoft, explained that Microsoft sees immense value in the social space, because it helps the company connect more deeply with customers, prospects and enthusiasts on their terms and wherever they are online. This improved connection allows Microsoft to share the news and information on the company or products that their customers are asking for, where they are asking for it.

“Radian6 helps us discover where important conversations are happening online, so we can be part of them,” Lilly explains. “There’s a huge value in being able to have a rich, real-time dialog with customers across our diverse businesses.”

Lilly says Microsoft’s involvement in social media is both proactive and reactive. They’re proactively contributing to the dialogue about Microsoft by sharing information and providing access to the company through social channels like Facebook and Twitter. But they can also be responsive to the issues and conversations that happen around and about the company and their products, often helping to clarify a misunderstanding or offer quick and valid direction from the source.

Whether it be questions around the Bing search engine, or chatter about how Office is impacting the way people work, those discussions give Microsoft lots of opportunity to better understand how their community views their brand, products, and business, and lets them use those insights to inform future strategy.

Why Radian6?

Given the breadth and diversity of Microsoft’s businesses, and the volume of online conversations, the central marketing team needed a tool that could work alongside their existing tools and processes and that could not only handle the volume of buzz but also make sense of it all in a business context. As Microsoft builds out internal capabilities in social media through tools like Looking Glass, Radian6 provides global scale and depth capabilities today and integration opportunities for the future.

“For brands like Bing, Office or Zune, we have large inter-connected marketing and product teams,” says Lilly. “It’s really important that we’re all looking at the social conversations through the same lens. Radian6 provides both breadth of coverage and the depth to analyze and respond.”

We at Radian6 are excited about the possibilities working with the teams at Microsoft, and helping them make the most out of their social media strategies. Thanks to the Microsoft crew for bringing us on, and stay tuned as we share more about our work together in the future.

So then. The dust has settled a bit, and I’m getting cozy with my new role here as Radian6‘s Director of Community. It’s no small occasion, not just because it’s a new job to me, but because I think it’s indicative of something bigger and more important that I’m hoping to see in the business world.

Community management is in many ways the first of what I think will be a host of hybrid disciplines that will filter out of the 2.0 era. It’s not customer service, it’s not communications, it’s not brand management or business development. It’s all of those things, but rooted in a very fundamental principle: being accessible to customers and empowered to help make your business more useful to them.

It’s the next step to getting involved with social media as a business, but it’s a critical one that almost needs to happen simultaneously. Community roles provide the human element that completes a healthy cycle of communication from company to customer and back again, all with a real, personalized voice. (After all, what good is talking if you have no accessible and approachable way to listen and respond?)

Just like we’re discovering that the same communication strategies and tactics are evolving alongside business, so too are the roles that have been traditional touchpoints for customers and clients. Silos don’t work anymore (I would actually argue that they never have, but this for another discussion…). We’re all responsible for stewarding our brands, and community roles put customer relationships front and center to doing that well. It’s less about a laundry list of responsibilities, and more about being fluid and flexible enough to learn what your customers and clients need from you, and adapting to that.

But this has a host of challenges, right? How do you scale humans to be everywhere they need to be? What’s the balance of familiarity and professionalism that’s needed to do it just right? How do you keep up internal communication and make sure you’re doing something with what you learn? And most importantly, does this role matter to your customers and if it does, what are their expectations for it?

So let’s hear from you. Let’s talk about what *you* think community management is all about, and what unanswered questions we should be tackling.  Is this an essential role to you, or a glorified buzzword? Why? And how do you see it fitting into today’s business operations?  The comments are yours.

Cold calling has been served notice, a new era beckons and with it an altogether different way of working. Social networking has arrived and will soon replace cold calling as the predominant method of prospecting in business.

I have profoundly changed the way I do business and have firmly embraced social media and the networking possibilities it has created. To that end I have reduced to a very small percentage the amount of time I spend cold calling. (more…)