A local news and media company is getting into the social media consulting business.  You heard me right.  They’re trying to augment sagging revenues from traditional advertising by leveraging their enormous customer base with this hot new add on: social media marketing!  Step right up and getcha some!

I passionately believe in the need for a strong free press and am all for new revenue streams to keep our news organizations vital but I’m truly disheartened by the business approach of this important company.  Their strategy is to blanket their market with a cookie-cutter social media product. They are COMMODITIZING marketing!

Before I go further I need to be clear that I’m not belly-aching from any competitive  point of view. While I generate revenue from marketing consulting, 98 percent of my services are devoted to national or international clients, so I don’t play ball where these guys are operating.

Here are the “package” social media deals being offered to local businesses. They range from entry level …

• Set up Blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
• Content development sessions
• 1 blog post/week
• Will get for you an average of 50 relevant, quality followers/month
• 5-8 custom tweets/business day
• 3 relevant retweets/business day
• Cross-pollination of channels
• Single-source customer service
• Monthly customized reports

… To deluxe, which includes all of the above plus

• MySpace, YouTube, Flickr
• 2-3 blog posts/week
• Avg 200 relevant, quality followers/month
• 12-15 custom tweets/business day
• 5 relevant retweets/business day
• Quarterly contests or promotions
• Trending topics/keyword tie-ins
• Full customer service integration
• Monthly customized reports

A few years ago, I was in a graduate leadership program at Carnegie Mellon University and took a class from a talented educator and author named Robert E. Kelly.  Dr. Kelly had just written a book called “How to be a Star at Work.” (disclosure: I am receiving no affiliate income from this or any other book!)

Honestly, I thought it was going to be one of those kick-your-feet-up, blow-off kind of classes, but it ended up being one of the most interesting sessions of the program.

We all know that certain people tend to rise to superstar level at work. They may not be smarter or harder working than others, but they have a certain “something” that seems to push them up the corporate ladder.

Dr. Kelly had a research grant to determine the factors that these high-fliers had in common. After all, if you could actually test for these factors, wouldn’t that have a powerful impact on corporate recruiting and training?  Turns out it wasn’t that simple, but after years of investigation he eventually found the magic formula.

According to Dr. Kelly’s research, one of those key characteristics of a corporate rock star is an ability to effectively network and find information quickly.  Let’s say you had two employees — Tom and Tammy — equally well-educated, enthusiastic and nattily-attired.  But Tammy had just one advantage — she knew how to use technology to rapidly find the people and resources she needed to accomplish a task while Tom picked up a phone and started calling people in the company directory. The research showed that Tom had no hope of ever catching up and the more complex the task, the further Tammy would outshine him.

It makes a lot of sense.

I’ve already written about the importance of personal “technological adaptability” as an increasingly important life skill. But Dr. Kelly’s research seems to indicate that expert networking skills like an ability to navigate the social web can also be a crucial differentiator in your career.

So there.  Now you can explain to your spouse that all that time you’re wasting on Twitter is actually a career-advancement opportunity! You may be just 140 characters away from the tweet smell of success.

Illustration: toothpastefordinner.com

It’s uncommon to see much written about individual personalities on the social web — in fact it’s taboo.  However, it’s important to occasionally look at Chris Brogan as a living social media business case study for two reasons:

1) It’s hard to comment on the state of the nation without mentioning the president.

2) Chris Brogan is a pioneer. The issues and opportunities he faces are instructive to all churning in his wake. As Lisa Foote once wrote, Chris is the canary in the social media coal mine.

Chris has created a tremendous amount of value and popularity through his tireless engagement but has also stirred up more controversy than any social media personality, whether through his aggressive use of “sponsored” posts or his apparent sponsorship “flip” at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show.  As I said, he is plowing new ground.  Sometimes you hit a rock.

But last week might have been his biggest buzz-killer when he revealed he charges $22,000 for a day of his services and then subsequently posted (and dropped) an appeal for un-paid interns for his company.

Just to be clear, I’m not in the whiney camp that thinks everything Chris does should be free.  I’m probably the most capitalist, business-driven blogger out here. I like it when people make money. I like it when Chris makes money. I think he should take advantage of his white-hot celebrity, celebrate it, leverage it, and roll in the dough. I hope he can double his consulting fees.

So making money is good.  But from an academic view, it would be useful to look at the “how” — the dramatic shift (or perhaps evolution) in strategy that is enabling Chris to become a money-making machine.

For years, Chris has built his core brand promise on:

• Passionate audience-building through authentic helpfulness
• Relentless nurturing of that audience through tireless engagement
• Putting the audience above personal business needs
• Never, ever “selling”

In one video from last summer, he literally screamed at an audience “This is NOT about YOU and your STUPID COMPANY!”  That effectively sums up his mantra, and the “brand” Chris built around himself.

Around the time of his book release last year, Chris flipped this philosophy upside down and took steps to aggressively monetize his audience.  He explained this change by saying that he had been giving stuff away for a long time and that it was time to make money.  Selling of his products, services, companies, book, affiliate links, and paid sponsors became a common theme. He transformed into the social web’s most visible and highly-paid pitch-man, the Billy Mays of blogging.

Chris also increasingly put himself at the forefront of his topics, including video documentation of a day in the life of himself, photos of himself with near-celebrities, announcements of his new business ventures, and detailed explanations of how hard he works to achieve his success.  As you would expect, some readers expressed disappointment with these changes, and they were sometimes categorized as “haters” instead of “creators” and implored to “get over it.”

In other words, Chris has disassociated himself from that core brand promise to his audience.

In the business world, this would be tantamount to Disney opening a Tia Tequila-themed ride, or Nike doing a fitness cross-promotion with McDonald’s.  When a brand becomes incongruent by building a reputation communicating one thing and then executing another, it can be a recipe for disaster.

In the near-term, Chris and his ubiquity seem to have a limitless ability to capitalize on the goodwill of his audience (heck, loyal customers even bought Toyota cars after the first recall).  From a traditional business perspective, one might predict that if Chris doesn’t practice what he preaches and take steps to return to his core competencies, his brand and his ability to monetize will be increasingly vulnerable.

The furor over the posts last week were not the first signs that people have noticed the new Capitalist Chris.  If it persists, negative outbursts from loyal fans might eventually call attention to the problem with his sponsors and erode his brand and his value.

Or will it?  Another possibility is that Chris is going to be just fine losing some — or even most — of his core followers because he is developing a new audience of corporate folks who don’t care what his brand promise WAS as long as he can deliver results to their bottom line NOW.

In any event, the Trust Agent as we knew him is probably coming to an end as he transitions from social media folk hero to mainstream business consultant.  It will be fascinating to watch the results.

What do you think about this strategy shift?

What are the risks of jeopardizing his core audience for launching a new stage in his career?

With the new demands of the business and publishing worlds, is it possible for Chris to be successful at holding on to both constituencies? If so, how?

Illustration: www.chrisbrogan.com

This is a very scientific-looking chart to make this blog look serious and data-driven. In reality, it is completely meaningless. We'll keep that our little secret though. Nobody reads these captions any way.

Last week Frank Podlaha posted a comment on {grow} that had readers asking for more of his views on wading through the noise to find a meaningful signal on Twitter. Frank has been gracious enough to provide a guest post in response to reader requests. Here’s Frank:

Let’s say you’re at an Oscar party (it COULD happen) with hundreds of people.  Great conversations are going on, but all you hear is that dull roar of voices.  Slowly you walk around popping in on different groups only to hear individuals talk about a stunning performance.  Now imagine the same party with millions of people and conversations.  That’s Twitter!

How do you cut through all that noise to find any sense?  It’s takes a little persistence, but it is possible to bust through the constant white noise of nonsense.

Tag Clouds – Your friend.

Tag clouds are the quickest way to scan the Twitter Universe and pick out the important topics from all that noise.  Tag clouds are groupings of words from tweets where the size (and often color) represents a higher or lower occurrence of that word. Envision a tag cloud as looking at a crowd of people.  The folks screaming the loudest are the ones creating the largest words in the cloud.  Twitter tag clouds are easy to find.  Most free services have some short of generator to help quiet down that dull roar.  Twitscoop, LocalChirps, and TweetDeck all come to mind.  In TweetDeck, look for the little cloud icon button at the bottom of your tweet columns.

The tag cloud generators also let you drill down even further. Reduce the noise to focus on your interests by slicing and dicing the cloud down to specific dates, cities, and list of followers.

List it, then listen

While tag clouds can provide a macro view of the world, they can’t account for the spammers and automated tweets of repetitive marketing links that “hijack” trending topics to spread their corruption. This can skew the results of the clouds. So if you need more precision, we need to dig a little deeper.

Twitter Lists are a great way to cut through this clutter. You have the power here to decide who is worthy to put in special topics and categories.  Building searches and tag clouds on lists can get you past all the nonsensical tweets.  One downside, Twitter lists are limited to 500 names.

TweetDeck will let you create user “favorites” and put them into its tag cloud generator.  LocalChirps Pro goes further with Blacklisting spammers by geographical regions.  Once this white noise is cleaned out, a much clearer picture emerges of what our neighbors are thinking.

Let’s get fuzzy

Now for the big guns. If the center stage of you Social Media strategy means following and searching for product names, events, political causes, whatever; it’s time for true data mining software.  Think about a keyword search of tweets; the results only show when that exact phrase is mentioned.  We don’t speak the topic of our conversations in every sentence, and neither does a Twitter conversation mention its subject in every tweet. We need to find the entire conversation.  We do that with Fuzzy Logic queries.

Fuzzy Logic is a term that analytical geeks use to scare off commoners.  It’s nothing more than applying statistics to our results to find the second, third, fourth most common keyword or term.  These terms are then included in additional filters to our original results.  What we achieve is finding the back and forth conversation about the initial topic.  It’s all about statistics and probability, and it’s still never 100 percent accurate.  That’s why we call it “fuzzy.”  Specialized software such as LocalChirps Pro and ProductChirps can perform fuzzy logic searches.

Many more paid services exist.  To be on top of your brand reputation, monitor all possible avenues of social media, not just Twitter, with Radian6 and RepuTrack.  Or dig deep into specialized analysis with software tailored for specific industries as with ListenLogic.

Where is the Wisdom?

We have drilled down into the masses of Twitter, filtered out the nonsense, and whittled our way to a concise, relevant conversation.  It is truly like finding out little secrets about your customers and markets every day. What you do with the secret … ah, there’s the wisdom!

Frank Podlaha is a brilliant technologist, an inspirational entrepreneur and creator of LocalChirps.com

Studies show that web page  views have been dropping precipitously as folks park themselves on the social web. There have even been a flurry of blog posts from Jason Falls, Jay Baer and Debbie Weil debating whether your blog is now the true “hub” of your marketing communication effort.

But honestly, it seems strange to me that these superb bloggers are even wasting space with this debate. Your good old website (Ahhhh … remember that?) is still your hub.  Here’s why.

What are you really trying to do?

Step away from your Tweetdeck, take a deep breath, and think about what behavior you are trying to drive with your communication effort. In most cases it is making some type of connection, right? Let’s just be honest and put the purist stuff aside. Ultimately you want your readers to take an ACTION like register for something, make a call, or buy something from you.

Is that going to happen on your blog?

Probably not, unless you are doing out-right selling there and that’s (usually) a no-no.  The actual “connection event” is going to happen on your website. So all roads should lead to your homepage, right?  Wouldn’t that make it the very epicenter of your marketing universe?

Even though websites seem to be out of fashion, they still play a critical role in actually driving behaviors. A website should explain what you do, why you’re special, and what a reader should do next.  This is where you sell. And that’s a big deal.

Creating the spokes

You need to use the social web to support this effort by creating an “information eco-system” to lead prospective stakeholders back to the Mother Ship and eventually DO SOMETHING. You can think of these outposts on Twitter, your blog, Facebook, YouTube or wherever as spokes or outposts leading your visitors home.  Likewise, your website should also be leading people back to the outposts, if that is where they need to be to get the information they need.

Whether you work for a non-profit, a university, or a business, you’re in this to drive some type of behavior. That behavior is consummated on the website (usually a contact page) and all social properties should point to your site and your opportunity. Your website still matters … a lot!

What am I missing here?

{grow} community update: Dave Fleet posted an article which serves as a nice reference if you’re interested in reading more on this topic.

I have a “virtual” company. Well, it’s a real company, but I don’t have a building and employees and all that traditional stuff. I work with a posse of freelancers who might be spread out all over the country. So I have the best of both worlds. Great company, great people, but no worries about payroll and HR issues.

Everything works great about this model except for one thing. You can’t brainstorm by yourself.

This was the problem I was facing recently when I needed to come up with creative ideas to help a client company mark its 30th anniversary. I had some ideas, but I’ve been around long enough to know they weren’t the BEST ideas. For that, I needed to put some minds together. But how? I was on a deadline and needed to write a proposal quickly.

It dawned on me that this is what the social web is all about — networking, sharing, helping, creating. So with literally no planning, I wrote up an invitation on my blog to join a web meeting at 4 p.m. that very day and sent out one tweet asking if anyone would be interested in spending 30 minutes with me to think out loud. I was fortunate that seven people joined me, including one from Brazil and one from Spain. Some I didn’t know at all, some like Gregg Morris and Carla Bobka had become my friends over months of interaction on Twitter.

I used Citrix for the online meeting interface and conference call.  I wrote out ideas on my shared computer screen so all participants could build on what was being said.  On the notification on my blog I had given dial-in instructions as well as a little background on the problem.

In 30 minutes, I had two pages of great ideas.  I massaged the ideas into a proposal, presented it to company management and <ta da> they loved it!  But there were side benefits, too:

• I explained to my client how I came up with the ideas, which further strengthened their interest and commitment to the social web.
• The people who connected on the call enjoyed the exercise and have reached out to stay connected between themselves. I think that’s cool.
• I had an idea that worked, will be repeated and it was something I could share with you.

What I could have done better:

• Planned it ahead of time and allowed more time for people to learn about it.
• 30 minutes was probably too short. Another 15 minutes would have made a big difference.
• Two participants had technical problems which limited their ability to participate. A few additional people bopped in for a few seconds and left. I’m guessing they had tech problems too.

All in all, it was a  simple, cost-effective, successful people-technology mash-up.  Are you doing these kinds of things to support your business?

Perhaps by now you’re heard of the “Please Rob Me” site that highlights those on Twitter disclosing that they’re away from their homes.

While the site is kind of funny, it draws attention to a serious point — disclosure of detailed personal information, including your precise physical location, will lead to crime. Notice I didn’t say MIGHT lead to crime. It is inevitable that the bad guys are going to figure this stuff out. They always do.

Last week I saw my first tweet that actually had a map attached to it. The stalkers can not only find you, the technology is telling them how to get to you.  Or your empty house.  Or your kids.

I’m particularly concerned by this emerging generation who is de-sensitized to what they’re sharing about themselves.  They’ve been conditioned to put everything out there all the time, so why not tell everyone where you are, too?  They’re actively and willingly teaching The Machine their personal habits, behavior patterns and hang-outs, just so they can be named “mayor” of a location on Foursquare or receive a free latte at Starbucks.

Where corruption can occur, corruption will occur. It is only a matter of time before a tragic crime draws attention to these serious issues and people start taking action, perhaps even legislation. Let’s not wait for that, OK?

As an individual, and especially as a parent, I think we need to draw the line on certain social web behaviors.

• Actively teach your kids to be net-savvy. Instill a healthy dose of paranoia into their mindset.  Teach them about privacy settings and being Internet “street smart.”
• Take a view that Internet access is a privilege, not a right. Set clear expectations and limits. If a child does something to endanger themselves on the Internet, there should be consequences, just as if they had wrecked a car or set a fire in the kitchen.
• Personally, I would forbid my kids from using Foursquare or any technology that reveals their personal location at  a point in time.
• Be involved in what they’re doing. Know enough about the technology to ask the right questions. Look at who has friended them and what those people are saying to your kids.  Until you are convinced they can demonstrate mature judgment, I don’t think kids have a right to Internet privacy.

A man told a story yesterday on a news report on Internet safety that as a precaution, he follows every one of his young son’s Facebook friends. “I’m a 39 year old man,” he said. “And these kids automatically follow me back even when they don’t know who I am. And their parents never question it either. It just shows me how dangerous this could be for young kids.”

If you’re a parent, deal with this. Don’t ignore the issue or avoid conflict with your kids over the family “privacy” battle.  Will you leave a comment and let me know what you think on this issue?

A new study of the world’s 500 largest public corporations by the University of Massachusetts Center for Marketing Research indicates that the level of corporate blogging may have flat-lined while the adoption of of other social media platforms, especially Twitter, continues to escalate rapidly.

Corporate blogging

Of the Fortune 500 companies, 22%, have a public-facing blog with a post in the past 12 months, including three of the top five companies (Wal-Mart, Chevron and General Electric).  That’s up just 6% from a 2008 study.

Rank on the Fortune 500 list seemed to influence the adoption of blogging by the F500. The top 100 companies (or to 20%) on the list represent 39% of the 108 blogs.

All 108 blogs were examined to determine the level of interactivity the blog allowed — 90% percent of the Fortune 500 blogs take comments, have RSS feeds and take subscriptions.

Twitter

Of the 108 blogs located, 93 (86%) are linked directly to a corporate Twitter account, a more than 300% increase over the 2008 study.

173 (35%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2009 Fortune 500 have a Twitter account with a post within the past 30 days. Of these companies, four of the top five corporations (Wal-Mart, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and General Electric) consistently post on their Twitter accounts. For more on GE’s social media efforts: click here.

Podcasting and video

The 2009 Fortune 500 were also examined to determine usage of additional social media tools. 19% of the 2009 Fortune 500 use podcasting (up from 16%) and 31% are using video on their blog sites (up from 21%).

Implications

While blogging has more or less flat-lined for the mega-companies, a recent article I posted on the fast-growing Inc. 500 corporations showed a much higher rate of adoption. In fact, nearly half of the Inc. 500 had corporate blogs compared to 22% for the Fortune 500.  What could this mean? I guess you would expect smaller companies to be fleeter in adopting new ideas, but blogging isn’t that new.  Besides, the incredible adoption of Twitter demonstrates that the Fortune 500’s do have at least some understanding of the social web.

I have experienced first-hand how difficult it is to manage a meaningful blog in a public company straddled with so many laws and regulations. It’s hard to be responsive and authentic when you have to get everything reviewed by the legal department.  I’m guessing that many companies are experiencing the same angst –   What is the role of a blog in the corporate communications structure?  What are the benefits versus the cost of approvals and the time needed from executives to sponsor the work?  And just how many blogs does the world need any way?  Does the heightened use of video and podcasting indicate companies are turning to new means of expression?

What do you think?  Has corporate blogging reached its saturation point?

{grow} community alert: Jon Buscall has written a wonderful companion piece that actually answers the questions I pose here!

Many thanks to Nora Barnes and Eric Mattson for their detailed and important research.

Illustration: Web Tycoon

Today I’m privileged to feature a wonderful social web success story from my friend Imad Naffa.  He recently told me about being re-tweeted by Queen Rania of Jordan and how he increased his business by 25 percent in six months through Twitter alone.  I hope you enjoy learning from Imad as much as I have:

Imad, first tell us about your famous tweet and how it was picked up by the queen.

I left Jordan to come to the US in 1980. I headed straight to Fresno State in California, and enrolled in the Civil Engineering program. I was 17, so I was old enough to have a lot of memories of growing up in Amman (the capital of Jordan).   During those years I met one of Amman’s cultural icons, the “Peanut Man” and I posted my experience on my Blog.

I knew Queen Rania of Jordan was active on social media and had numerous followers. I wrote her via Twitter to let her know of my blog post about the “Peanut Man.”  Since the Jordan Times, a local Jordanian Newspaper, wrote about him, I figured the Queen would be interested in the post I added. Sure enough, she re-tweeted my post.  In a follow up post, she noted that she met him, was sad of his passing away, and added a picture of her and the Peanut Man in downtown Amman. The picture appears in my blog post (and above).

You told me your tweet went crazy.   How did you know it went viral?

Queen Rania has about 1.2 million Twitter followers. Once she re-tweeted my blog post, I noticed dozens of re-tweets of her post. Obviously, her followers picked up on the story and wanted to share with their followers. Most of the people that re-tweeted the Queen’s post were new visitors to my account.

Did the Queen follow you back?

Queen Rania is not following me at this time.  We communicated via @messages. I post on technical topics, social media and world affairs. I’m afraid I post too much and will overwhelm the Queen’s account if she was to follow me. She only follows 56 people!

You have a large and loyal following, Imad.  How did you build your Twitter audience?

The key for me was that I already had a passion for the Internet and providing resources for building code and construction topics. I’ve developed web sites and software over the last 20 years. Twitter allowed me to broadcast these offerings and I found there was a great need for such information globally.

But I learned that technical information would not do it alone. Once I branched out by posting on other topics I was interested in, there was a great increase in the followers.  Once I started providing information on a myriad of topics like the economy, sustainable energy, culture, and social media, my number of followers increased dramatically and rapidly.

How do you use Twitter for your business and how do you assess its effectiveness?

Twitter has allowed me access international professionals in my field that I would not have met otherwise. Now I’m collaborating with engineers and architects in the UK, Africa and the Middle East on topics relating to their  building codes and construction projects.

In addition, I am now able to broadcast to a large international audience the many technical offerings that I developed over the years and are a must-have tools for architects, engineers, developers and code enforcement officials. The number of subscribers to my web-based engineering offerings have increased by at least 25 percent in the last six months alone due to Twitter. I can track where the users are coming from, and that’s how I’m able to assess the increase in traffic to my web sites and online offerings.

Imad Naffa is Founder, President and Sr. Engineer, NAFFA International, Fresno, CA. Follow him at @imadnaffa.

I had two very contrasting social web experiences in the past 24 hours that I wanted to share.

The first came from one of my students, who is urgently trying to learn how the social web can benefit her business.  Yesterday, she had exciting news to share: “We just had out first re-tweet!  I couldn’t wait to tell my boss.  We are so excited!  Now … what do I do?”

We talked about the importance of community-building and connections and how RT’s on Twitter are a nice way to compliment and reach-out to people.

The second episode came from a blog post I read from a Twitter personality who as far as I can see does nothing but re-tweet other people’s links all day long. His post was about how he had now received more re-tweets than the Huffington Post and was one of the top-10 re-tweeted people on Twitter.   Who actually measures these things?  He made no connection between his RT’s and personal relationships or any benefits other than he is on somebody’s list. There were about a dozen comments on the post … none of them from him. There was no engagement, no community, no sharing.  For him, the ridiculous notion of re-tweet count was simply a mythical badge of honor.

These two stories illustrate the best and the worst of the social web.

If you authentically cherish and appreciate those who are connecting with you, you will ultimately succeed in creating personal and business benefits.  Can you hold on to the excitement you felt when you saw your first re-tweet, or the first comment on your blog?

If you approach this as a numbers game to validate your own self-esteem, people will easily see through your veneer and in the long-term you’ll have a lot of meaningless followers trying to sell you a spot on the Trump Network.

Where are you on your social media journey?  Are you creating meaningful connections?

Illustration: www.zazzle.com