What has struck though me is how many people are already claiming to be Google+ experts. It has been up for what – three weeks? From what I can tell, it is still a work in progress. It appears Google is still tweaking the features. So how can anybody claim to be an expert in something so new?

Frankly, I am always skeptical of anyone who calls themselves a social media expert. I have noticed that the people who are really good at it – Brian Solis, Seth Godin, and Sara Evans to name a few– never call themselves experts. Heck, for that matter I have never heard or read where Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, or Twitter’s Biz Stone call themselves social media experts. Ditto for Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who created the most dominant search engine ever. And of course, it is their company that created Google+.

If the people who created some of social media’s essential tools, and the people who use those tools most often don’t claim to be experts, how can someone out there in Cyberland claim to be? In fact, most of the people who occupy the social media space are still trying to figure Google+ out.

“Robert Scoble invited 1,000 of his friends during the weekend so he’d have enough mass to figure it out,” Gini Dietrich, chief executive officer at Arment Dietrich, Inc.  in Chicago blogged a couple of weeks ago. “Jay Baer thinks there are business applications (I don’t agree…yet). Chris Brogan has 10 reasons he thinks it will be a Facebook and Twitter killer. Jason Falls thinks it is a Facebook competitor and some of his readers hope he’s right just to see something different and/or better.”

I should note that Dietrich is as big a skeptic as I am about Google+. In a July 18^th blog, she wrote: “As of this writing, it has been 24 days since Google+ launched. That is not enough time to figure out a) if it has business applications, b) how it truly works for networking, and c) what it’s value is going to be. For heaven’s sakes. If it goes the way of Buzz and Wave, you’ll have wasted your money. (paying someone for training.)

“Not to mention, it’s still in beta and doesn’t open up to the world until the end of this month. It will be at least a year of use before we figure out its idiosyncrasies.

“But there are still people out there claiming to have all the secrets because they claim to have introduced Twitter to the business world so surely they understand how Google+ is going to affect your daily life. Add to that, they’ve spent 250 hours inside the tool, learning and using.”

Dietrich did the math. She figured out that someone who spent the last three weeks “learning” Google+ spent 11 hours a day doing that. Who has that kind of time to learn one application?

These so-called experts illustrate a major problem with social media. To put it briefly – the used car salespeople have moved into the space. You know the type – the loud pushy ones who claims to be an expert in something. They are not, they are just in it for the quick buck.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are going to fall for their pitch and waste their money on a “training” course that gets them nothing but makes them a little poorer. Those eager ones want to be on the cutting edge, even if all that happens is they end up bleeding.

As Ken Kesey said in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest: “The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he’s getting it.”

I have previously written about selling social media to a company, but that’s only the first step. There is more to be done after completing the initial sale than there was before the sale.

We who do social media full-time forget what a culture change it is for most organizations. Not just for those people in the C-Suite, but for everyone down to, and including, the receptionist. Remember, up until to about six years ago, most employees didn’t have to worry about social media or marketing their company in any way.

“Too often, people from company “A” will recognize great success that company “B” is having by doing XYZ with social media,” Blogger Adam Christensen wrote. “So, logically, they decide to do the same at company A. But the results are dramatically different. Why? Because they didn’t account for the corporate culture variable which is inevitably different between the two companies.”

Christensen is currently the director of social and digital communications and marketing at Juniper Networks in San Francisco. Until April, he worked for IBM in communications and marketing where he led IBM’s social business strategy and execution globally. He worked on projects including IBM’s Watson and Smarter Planet.

So first, what is corporate culture and how’s it formed?

Well, corporate culture is essentially an internal brand. It doesn’t exist until the majority of people at the company buy into it. The company’s leadership and employees who have the same values and assumptions about their place of work create it. Although it can awhile for a company to form a culture, once formed it can be difficult to change.

Why? Because it provides a sense of belonging and safety to the people who work there. Remember, in every company there are the written and the unwritten rules. The unwritten rules are that which forms the culture. By following both sets, especially the unwritten one, an employee can generally minimize surprises and things out of the ordinary.

The problem is that same culture can keep a company from taking the calculated risks they need to stay viable. Consider the bookseller Borders or the video rental company Blockbuster. While I don’t know the ins and outs of what happened to each, I know from being a customer of each that their cultures were wedded to a way of doing business that was clearly no longer viable.

Those examples are not going to stop other companies from making the same mistakes. Staying in one place is usually the normal human state.

So along comes someone like myself telling the leaders and employees they need to adopt social media if they want to remain in business. Yes, they know about Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and the other social media sites. They might even say they want to do it. But it still means a huge culture change.

So what do you do? Well, first it takes an intensive education program. You need to show everyone how social media works and what it can do for the company. You need to show each employee how they fit into the plan.

You also need to get their input. You need to find out what they are comfortable with and what they are willing to start with. As I always say, you have to crawl before you can walk.

Once you and the leadership feels that employees are ready to dip into social media, start out internally. Set up internal blogs, an employee Wiki and other applications. Let as many employees as possible play, learn, grow, build relationships, and develop the needed collective awareness. Once the employees are comfortable with it, take it public. It will work then.

Besides, isn’t it just a bunch of tweens, teens and 20-somethings who use those sites? I often hear from executives that my daughter and her friends use Facebook all of the time. My son seems to be constantly playing games online with his friends. Does anyone seriously think I can sell my industrial widgets to that demographic?

After they say that, they are going to lean back into their chair. You had better be able to make that sales pitch.

The first thing you should do is explain pull marketing. In brief, Pull marketing is not about pulling consumers in; it’s about giving consumers a reason to opt into a company. Consumers are in control; they decide where they go and what they experience.

Pull marketing means that companies go to clients, join their communities, give them reasons to voluntarily draw the company into their personal media experiences. They’re opting into the companies, not the other way around. Companies are being forced to give up some control over their brands.

That’s a hard concept of many companies to swallow. For decades, marketers have had it their way. This idea of giving up control makes the leadership nervous. Remember, most leaders are numbers people – accountants, engineers, and the like. They think they can control all the variables that go into selling their product.

Frankly, that’s nonsense. Marketing is an unpredictable thing. Anyone who says differently is naïve, lying, or has their head stuck in the sand. The best that can be hoped for is to reduce the chances of something going wrong.

Social media provides a better chance of that.

Why? Because normally the whole marketing campaign is created at an agency where six 20-something creatives couple their work with a 30-something senior account director, who in turn reports to a 40-something vice-president, who then takes the concept to the client’s 50-something chief marketing officer, who approves it. Throw in a focus group or two, and maybe two dozen people have signed off on the idea. It is then fired like an artillery shell into the general public with the idea that it will hit its target. The hope is the “explosion” will be big enough to sell the product.

Consumers these days, in general, are smart enough to get out of the way. That’s why more and more traditional campaigns fail.

So what needs to be done is to show the company’s leaders the facts on traditional campaign failures. The numbers are out there. I see no reason to repeat them here.

As I said, most CEOs are numbers people. They want everything the company invests time and money in to be quantifiable. That can also be done with social media. Again the numbers are there. I would suggest going to Hubspot – the Cambridge, Mass.-based social media wizards. They have all the facts and figures you need.

Be prepared to gently push back. There will be skeptics. A lot of old line-marketing people feel threatened by social media. As I said, to them it something “those kids” use. Well, I am older than most of the marketers and I think social media is the way to go.

Remember, social media is here to stay. Be gentle, be patient, but be firm when selling it.

Let me tell you where I stand – I am very reluctant to connect with someone who does not include a picture. I am active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, YouTube, Plaxo and a number of other sites. You will find my mug on every site that asks for it. My feeling is the more information one provides, the better.

Although I have not read every comment in the photo debate – who has the time – those taking the time to write something seem to be split 50-50 on the question. What amazes me is that people are writing fairly long posts on the issue. Of course, like most of these discussions, it wanders off course and ends up being filled with invective.

As an aside, I am continually amazed how people are willing to say things on the ‘Net that they would never say to a person’s face. Someone needs to write an “Emily Post” for the web.

Getting back to my main point, providing as much information about yourself and company is extremely important. Let me count the ways:

• A company that would like to do business is going to do its homework. That means they are going to gather as much information as possible about your business. Make it easy for them. It is human nature to favor the easiest path. If you make them search too much, they are going to look at some other company.
• The same goes for those of you looking for a job. The last statistic I saw showed that 85 percent of human resources people go to LinkedIn first. Besides making it easier, the more information you provide, the better. When things are missing, those make hiring tend to get suspicious.
  • A note about running pictures for those job seekers who, like me, are aging. I have heard the argument that we have a better chance with hiring managers if they don’t see our picture. So what are you going to do when you go to the interview? From your resume alone they are going to figure out how old you are. To me, it is a form of lying not to include a picture.
• The more information provided, the higher your company’s search ranking. That is, of course, if you provide the information with SEO in mind. Of course, you want that higher ranking so more people can find your business.

Now I know many people argue that won’t provide some information because of the fear of identity theft. Well, unfortunately, an identity thief doesn’t need your online profile. There is so much information floating around out there about all of us that it is impossible to keep much things secret anymore.

Of course, no one should post such things as their birthday. That’s just common sense. But one of the things you give up when you go on the Web is a lot of your privacy. It is just world we live in.

So lean into it and post that picture and all the other information. It is going to help much more than it will hurt.

Facebook has more users, YouTube has more viewers, Twitter updates more often but LinkedIn is where the people and companies you want to reach reside. As I tell clients, LinkedIn is the adult Facebook.

“ … what businesspeople appreciate and respect about LinkedIn is that is has significant processes and controls that keep it from becoming like Facebook,” writes LinkedIn expert Wayne Breitbarth in his book The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success. Kick-start Your Business, Brand and Job Search.

I highly recommend Breitbarth’s book. I have over 13,000 followers on LinkedIn. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the site. After reading the book, I realized that I knew just enough to be dangerous. Thanks to Breitbarth’s book, I am a much more savvy LinkedIn user.

So the first question is why used LinkedIn? I will let Breitbarth explain. He explains it through what he calls the Power Formula: “Your Unique Experience + Your Unique Relationships + The Tool (in this case, LinkedIn) = The Power.

What he means is that combining LinkedIn with your existing relationships and experiences will give you a decided advantage over your competitors. By using LinkedIn you can develop and refine your brand by a creating strong LinkedIn profile and expanding your network of contacts. Doing those things will help you accomplish your goals for yourself and your company.

LinkedIn is the place to show your experience and your expertise. It is the place where those you respect can state that in an endorsement. It is where you can connect with potential clients and employees. It is pretty much the Swiss army knife of social media sites.

Now there are many ways to use LinkedIn. But use it you must. You cannot simply sign up for it and expect the masses to find you.

The first you have to do is set up as complete a profile as possible. Breitbarth calls the top part where you list your name, title, business and location the “30-second bumper sticker.” The information listed there travels around LinkedIn with you as you post information, join groups, and comment on other’s activities. As Breitbarth points out this is the more important section of LinkedIn. He has found that many people will look no further than that box. Let me add that when I search for somebody, that’s the first thing that comes up on Google.

I also, and Breitbarth agrees, strongly advocate putting a professional looking photo there. To me not including a photo means you are hiding something. I know the argument that many of my fellow boomers make – that people are going to know how old they are if they post that picture. Well you know what, they are going to find anyway. If someone contacts you through LinkedIn for a job interview, what are going to do – have plastic surgery to make yourself look 26-years-old? So just deal with it.

After that, the key to profile to your profile is being as detailed as possible. The last study I read found that 85 percent of human resources people to go LinkedIn first when looking for a job candidate. You want to give them as many reasons as possible to pick you.

The next key is endorsements. This shows what others think of your work. People have been kind enough to endorse my work. It shows potential clients or customers that you are someone with whom they should do business.

Now, I have a firm rule on endorsements. I will not endorse anyone who I have not worked with. It is simply dishonest. How can one provide an objective analysis of work you have never seen. Likewise, I will not ask for endorsement from someone I don’t know.

Now, I have been lucky in that most of my endorsements are unsolicited. I think those are those are the most objective. On the other hand, I can understand asking for them from people who know your work well. I have also done that.

One more thing – LinkedIn groups. I highly recommend joining as many as LinkedIn will allow. That is currently 50. Those are the place to meet like-minded people, share information, get questions answered, and again demonstrate your expertise.

I don’t think there is any social media site that is as complete at LinkedIn. In fact, if you are going to join only one site, make it LinkedIn.

Granted, it would be better if those residents of the C-Suite had a guide who knew how to lead them throw the social media jungle. Obviously I think social media is the best marketing tool to come along since traveling medicine shows. Both relied on word-of-mouth to sell their products. One was and one is highly effective.

While those executives should do a better job of searching, I also fault we social media marketers. We are part of the problem. We need to make a better case for what we do. We need to show the skeptical executives that the social media sphere is the best place to be. These are people who are used to “fire and forget” marketing. In their world they tell their marketing people to hire an agency and produce a campaign. The only time an executive sees the campaign is in the final approval process. You have to show them how social media is replacing all of that.

What those executives want is a demonstrated method that is going to drive sales and profits. They want to know what the return-on-investment for the money, time and effort they are going to have to put into social media. They don’t feel any need to tell their friends where they are eating or whether they are leading in some kind of faux friend race.

So what do you do to convince them there they should be parking some of their marketing dollars in social media?

First, let me tell you what I don’t do first. I never show anyone Facebook as a marketing tool in the first meeting. To the average 50ish executive, Facebook is where their children post pictures of their dogs and friends. Plus, they have had their personal people tell them a seemingly good job candidate was rejected because of those pictures from that fraternity party. At best they see no need for Facebook, at worst they see it has a huge waste of time. As I once had an executive tell me: “there is a reason why I do not want to connect with people I knew in high school.”

What I do show them are the facts and figures showing how effective certain kinds of social meeting marketing can be. I also show them examples of companies such as Ford, Zappos, and others that used social media to expand their footprint in their marketplace.

When it comes to specific sites, I usually start off talking about what Linkedin can do for their company. Why Linkedin? Well in the business world it is viewed as the adult Facebook. Most likely the executives you are talking to have a Linkedin profile. They understand how it works and its effectiveness. They know their company has found good candidates for open positions.

In short, they understand how effective Linkedin can be when used properly. It is an easier sell. Not easy, but easier.

The second thing I talk about is blogging. It is a little tougher to sell than Linkedin. Executives usually balk at first when I tell a blog is not a sales document. But when I show how potential clients are drawn to the company’s website by a well-written blog that demonstrates the company’s expertise, the light bulb usually goes on.

From there I move onto YouTube. Watching a video campaign – such as “Will It Blend” shows the effectiveness of using sites such as YouTube. After that comes Twitter, which I describe as a billboard for their company. It is a term they understand.

I also make it clear that it usually takes six months to a year to see the results of a social media campaign. By then, having seen the results of successful campaigns, they get it and are willing to make the investment.

What I just gave you was view from 35,000 feet of my process. Trust me works, but only if you are careful to separate the substantive from the nonsense.

The key to marketing is twofold: to build word of mouth about your company and to increase your Google rankings. A blog is the best way to do both.

People who read and like your blog will tell others about it. They will retweet it, post it on Facebook, and generally spread the word. This builds credibility for your company. It builds Google rankings because the more people who read your blog, the higher Google will rank your company.

Look at the chart below from Cambridge, Mass. – based HubSpot. Note that companies that blog receive an average of 55 percent more visitors to their websites. But I am not going to bore you with a lot of data. Instead, I am going to tell how I do it.

Now granted I was a reporter from 26 years. I am used to writing on deadline. I know the rules of grammar. But as anyone who is a consistent reader knows I am not perfect. I strive for it, but I rarely reach it. You don’t have to be a great writer to be a blogger.

So here are my keys to blogging:

• First, lets talk about what a blog is not. It is not a sales tool. You try to sell something through a blog and you will have no readers. The social media sphere hates blatant attempts to sell.
• What a blog is a way to demonstrate yours or your company’s expertise in a particular area. It is also a way for current and potential clients and customers to connect with your company. It is a place for them to comment, compliment, debate, and criticize. It is a place for you to respond to all of that.
• Choose an overall theme. This blog focuses on social media, marketing and public relations. My readers know they come to PR 101 to read about those topics. This is important. Every successful blog I have read focuses on a particular area. Readers want to know what to expect when they come to the blog.
• Coming up with things to write about – this is often the toughest thing. It is what usually stops people from doing a blog. Here’s what I did before I started this blog more than two years ago: I wrote out a list of 24 things I felt I knew enough about to sound semi-intelligent about. That kept me going for about four months. Now I do research and follow what’s going on so I always have topics. I also try to have a couple of “evergreen” blogs in the hopper in case I am not able to write a new blog that week.
• A note about length – I read some blogging guides that say your piece should be no longer than 250 or 400 or 500 words. Balderdash. Some of my most read pieces have been over 1,000 words. Write something interesting and compelling and the readers will come.
• Be consistent when you publish. If you decide to post a new blog every Monday, do it. Readers want to know when they can expect to see a new post. Incidentally, I used to post on Mondays and Wednesdays. I moving that to Tuesday and Thursdays because of my work schedule.
• Do your research on the topic you are writing about. Yes a blog is part opinion. But back that opinion up with quotes and citations from your sources. When you do quote someone, link to the site from which the quote came, unless you actually interview them. If you interview them, make that clear. I do both. I think it provides a nice mix.
• It takes time to build a readership – usually at least six months. So be patient and don’t give up.
• To build that readership, you need to post links to your blog on as many sites as possible. I post on Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Delicious, Stumbleon, Friendfeed, Google Reader and Linkedin. I also have a dedicated group of readers who have requested I send them the link via email. In addition, I use Google Friend Connect, which is on my blog site. Those people also get the blog as soon as it is published.
• Which brings up another issue – make sure on your blog has share buttons so your readers can spread the word. I will always be grateful to those people who share my blog with their followers.

I think that advice should get you started. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.

Among that last sheaf of messages is a group that is really starting to bother me. It has gotten to the point that I have been flagging them as spam and blocking the senders.

Who are these annoying senders? Are they insurance salesmen, Nigerian widows offering me millions, or schemes telling me how I can make millions while working only 20 minutes a day? Nope, not one from one of those groups.

Where that email is originating is from so-called social media “experts.”

These are people who you would think would know better. After all, they claim to be social media experts. But apparently in their effort to learn about social media, no one explained push vs. pull marketing to them.

In brief, social media’s foundation is pull marketing. What that means is a company provides evidence that it is an expert at what it does or how it makes quality products. It does not send that information out itself. Rather satisfied clients spread the word around the Internet. That builds positive word-of-mouth, which in turn builds engagement and eventually sales.

What that means is one notice sent out. If it is worth reading, or attending, people will. It is more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.

What is not done is acting like a used car salesman and bombarding a potential customer with a dozen or more sales messages.

That’s exactly how I feel when I receive one of these emails telling everything they can do. I don’t care. When I help on something, I go looking for it.

One English-based trainer has sent me seven emails in the last two weeks touting her social media training systems. If an email can be described as breathless, these would fit that description. The subject line on one read: “complete social media course – last remaining places!”

Another group I joined (now that was a mistake) keeps urging me to post on Craigslist. I get one of those about once a week. I tried it once – it didn’t go well.

Then there is my personal favorite. I keep getting emails from people asking me to endorse them. If I do that for them, they tell me they will reciprocate and endorse me. Now mind you, I don’t even know these people, let alone worked with them.

I have a very firm rule about endorsements. I will only do it if I actually know you and worked with you. What value is an endorsement from someone who knows nothing about you? I also never ask for endorsements. If somebody likes my work, they can feel free to endorse me. But that’s up to them.

I am currently taking a sales training course from Westboro, Mass.-based Kurlan & Associates Inc. One of the first lessons we were taught is that people hate sales calls. When you connect with a potential customer start off just saying your name. Then discuss how you can help them. Don’t go on and list all the things you can do. At that point, they don’t care.

So when I get an email or a call from so-called “social media expert,” I immediately know they are not. The step is to hang up or hit the delete button.

The cancellation of both shows marks the continuing decline of a once powerful marketing machine. I think social media is doing the same thing to conventional marketing. It won’t happen overnight – and traditional marketing and public relations should still be part of any marketing plan. However, it is going to happen.

What many people don’t know anymore is that soap operas were started in the 1930s on radio by Proctor & Gamble to sell soap and other products – hence the name. According to P&G’s corporate history in 1933 “‘Ma Perkins,’ a radio serial program sponsored by P&G’s Oxydol soap powder, aired nationally. Its popularity leads P&G brands to sponsor numerous new ‘soap operas.’ Faithful listeners become loyal buyers of P&G brands at the grocery.’” The soaps helped P&G get through the Great Depression. When radio gave way to television, the soaps easily made the jump.

The soap operas came to dominate daytime television. Soaps were “once considered the stable revenue generator of the broadcast television model: the consistently popular daytime staples that helped fund primetime experimentation,” Fast Company Expert Blogger Sam Ford said. But not anymore.

There were once a dozen soaps on the air. There are now just four. Ford wrote that many in the television industry feel those four on their last legs. I think the demise is inevitable.

Like medicine shows and Burma Shave Road Signs, soaps apparently just don’t move product anymore. And that is the ultimate aim of most television shows and other marketing mediums. If it doesn’t sell something, it isn’t going to stay around. The audiences went elsewhere for any number of reasons and the advertisers saw that.

In the case of soap operas, “Many may say it’s because the fans abandoned the genre,” Ford wrote. “The story you often hear from fans is that it’s because the shows lost their way and their interest. As soaps tried to battle over the dwindling daytime audience as if ‘soap opera fans’ were all fans of the genre more than fans of the show, little thought was put into a sustained effort to bring lapsed fans back.”

Does this sound familiar? Let’s look at what’s happening to some other mass media.

“The Audit Bureau showed that average weekday circulation at 635 newspapers declined 5 percent compared with the same six months last year,” the New York Times reported last October. “The decline last year was more than twice that, 10.6 percent, as newspapers struggled through the recession and more readers abandoned print copies for the Internet.” (emphasis mine.)

Just like in soap operas, the advertisers are going away. “Newspaper publishers are still laboring to reverse a massive decline in advertising revenue – the Newspaper Association of America reported that total industry ad revenue fell 6% in Q2,” the Reuters blog MediaFile reported in September.

The same thing is happening in television advertising. “Advertisers are losing confidence in the medium,” respondents to the Association of National Advertisers/Forrester study of national advertisers said. The survey respondents said they have “a lack of confidence in TV ad effectiveness. Sixty-two percent of respondents think that TV ads have become less effective in the past two years.”

So, where are these advertisers going? You know the answer – they are heading to the Internet, of which social media is a part. I could fill this blog with the statistics – 740 million Facebook users, 100 million-plus Linkedin members, Flickr now hosts more than five million images and so on.

Mashable predicts that in 2011, $3.08 billion will be spent on social media in the United States.

“That’s a 55% increase over the $1.99 billion U.S. advertisers reportedly spent on social networking sites in 2010, and nearly 11% of what they are expected to spend on all online advertising in the U.S. in 2011, eMarketer says,” Mashable reported. “Worldwide spending on social networks is expected to rise 71.6% to $5.97 billion, approximately 8.7% of the total amount advertisers are predicted to spend online in 2011.”

Online advertising, which includes social media, is starting to snowball, the Economist reported. “Global spending on advertising will grow by 4.5% in 2011, double the rate of the previous year, according to ZenithOptima, an ad agency,” the Economist said. “This will be led by online advertising which will increase by 16%.”

Look at the Economist chart below. Online advertising is the largest, but it’s the fastest growing.

Chart courtesy of The Economist

So like medicine shows, Burma Shave Road Signs and now soap operas, conventional marketing is slowly going away. It will take some time, but just like those other things, it will happen.

I get an email from the friend the other day, asking about particular social media site. My friends will often ask me which sites I recommend or what I think of a particular site.

Well, as I confessed to my friend, I had never heard of this site. That got me thinking. It seems like new sites are popping faster than dandelions in my lawn in June. But is each of these sites necessary? If someone did a business study of every social media site out there could many of them make a case for their existence?

Obviously, I am active user of social media. I am a social media consultant. I blog, I tweet, I post on Facebook, I use Linkedin incessantly and I am moving more and more onto YouTube. I can make a case for all of those sites. A large part of their appeal is that they are the biggest and easiest to use (more about that second point later.)

I also am a member of Orkut and I just joined a Chinese site called Ushi. I joined Orkut because it has a large number of users in South America and India. Ushi is self-described as the Chinese Linkedin. I do not currently do business in any of those places. But there could time when I do, so I want to have a presence there.

The key to all these sites is simplicity and ease of use. I don’t have to do much to interact with them. Which is good, but I am very busy. The less time I have to spend getting the maximum benefit is what I look for.

I also belong to Plaxo and Xing, but I am not sure why. I really don’t get much out of them.

Frankly, I think I am connected to enough sites. I don’t need any more sites. Yet, I keep getting invited to join others – a couple everyday. The latest is Facebook’s BranchOut. I joined it because I was curious, but so far I see no value in it. It doesn’t do anything that Linkedin or a regular Facebook doesn’t already do.

That’s my complaint about many of the newer sites. They are just duplicates of what’s already being done. Yeah, they might a couple of their own bells and whistles, but not enough to make them significantly different.

I am all for competition if it improves things, but I don’t see any improvement coming out of any of these. They are just not unique. I think this is an area that pretty much been covered.

It kind reminds me of television. ABC has “Dancing With the Stars,” so Fox comes out with “So You Think You Can Dance.” How many cop and doctors shows are on network television. It is all about being a copycat. Eventually, the market gets saturated.

People keep talking about the new Facebook or the next Linkedin. But the sites that might beat those are going to be something entirely new. They are not going to be clones of what already exists.

The newer sites that have taken off, Groupon as an example, did something new.  I belong to Groupon because I reap the benefits.

As long as I am ranting here, I have another beef about the new sites. There are just to many hurdles to join most of them. You want me as a member – make it simple. I think Groupon took me about a minute to join. Not so most of these new sites.  Name, email address, and a password are all that is needed. I will decide if I want to post a profile or a picture. It takes too much time. Yet, they ask for a lot of information. It is not worth my time to supply it.

When the dandelions take over, I pull them out by the roots. When I get site requests, I just ignore. It’s the best of both worlds.

Well, I give you a hint. It all has to with Word of Mouth or WOM. If content is king, then WOM is queen.

Since I prefer to work with small and medium-sized companies, the question usually comes from the owner, the chief executive officer, or the chief marketing officer. It is a legitimate question. After all, I am usually presenting plans that can run into the five figures in costs. (I am not a cheap date. But, I am a highly effective one.)

Many of these companies are going to be marketing for the first time in their existence. They have moved beyond the startup phase. To keep growing, they know it’s time to start reaching out to potential customers.

The men and women who started these companies are engineers, lawyers, carpenters, or bakers. So far ROI has been something measurable. They know if they buy X amount of lumber or flour, they will produce Y amount of product. They can usually calculate their ROI after adding in their other production costs.

Marketing is different. There is a product – more customers and hence more profit. But that’s not something stamped out in a factory. These entrepreneurs are now dealing with something more ethereal – a decision by a potential customer to buy their product. These company owners would like a guarantee that what they invest will provide returns. It is a bet that makes them nervous.

It is true there is a certain amount of gambling in every company. You never really know – even after you do your primary and secondary research – whether the product is going to sell. It is only after the doors are open and hopefully the customers come in that you know your efforts were successful.

That’s the first measure of marketing – the first ROI check off. Are customers finding your business and checking it out?

Keeping those customers coming through the door is where people such as myself enter the picture. It is our job to show customers where the door is and give them reasons to through.

A caveat: I always tell potential clients; marketing doesn’t sell the product. That’s up to the company’s employees. Now, if the job is done right, the potential customer will be strongly leaning toward buying your product or service. I will everything I can to make the customer contact’s job as easy as possible. I will plow the ground and plant the seed. You just have to make it grow.

How is that done? As I said in the beginning – word of mouth or WOM. At its simplest level, word of mouth is simply Jane telling John to buy a particular product or use a certain service because she had a positive experience. What social media has done is amplify Jane’s voice so she can hundreds of people about her positive experience.

WOM is the most powerful way to market a product. According to Forrester Research, there are currently an estimated 500 billion WOM annual web impressions. Several studies have found that WOM is the most trusted form of marketing.

Research has shown that for every $1 spent on creating brand advocates there is a $10 return in positive WOM and sales. The Harvard Business Review found a ratio of 1-to-12 ROI for positive WOM. That was twice the return for any other marketing method.

That’s why social media is so effective. It generates that positive WOM and sales through third party endorsements and conversations. It does that with blogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, Linkedin discussion, videos and other social media applications.

So the ROI is there. And social media is the way to generate it.

Social media is not going away. Quite the opposite, actually. Look at the data Marketing Sherpa collected on marketing tactics for 2011.

“As marketing strategies evolve from outbound to inbound tactics, there is also a shift in the ways in which money and resources are spent. We asked more than 1,100 marketers how they foresaw budgets changing in 2011 for the following marketing tactics,” Marketing Sherpa wrote. This is what they found:

Look at the chart carefully – 1,100 marketers see the budgets for websites, search (search engine optimization/pay per click), and social media increasing by more than 50 percent. That doesn’t sound to me like social media is going anywhere.

In order for any of these marketing methods to prove successful, a company must use the three together.  A company needs a top-flight webpage so potential customers like what they see when they land there. Search engine optimization is key so potential customers find that website. Social media is needed to create the inbound links to the website so search engines find it. A marketing campaign that doesn’t use all three is a like two-legged stool.

So, I am not sure why some people seem to think social media is going away. I do have some hypothesis though.

First, I think many people are comparing Facebook, Google, Twitter, Linked in, YouTube and other social media sites to companies that were created during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. That rationale doesn’t apply to the current crop of digital companies. What killed most of the dot com companies is that they never made a profit. Plus, their stock prices were widely inflated. When the recession of 2001 hit and the investment spigot was turned off, those high fliers suddenly had the aerodynamic properties of a rock.

There were a lot of lessons learned in that period. Companies just don’t operate like that anymore.

As I said before, I think some people are just trying to be provocative. They want to be contrarians. Kind of like the people of Vermont, who will never do what the rest of the nation does. Those social media contrarians just want to start an argument. They see themselves as loners, as people who don’t follow the crowd. I image their forebears rode horses and used kerosene lamps by choice well into the 1930s.

Finally, I think there are just some people who hate the whole concept of social media. They have been using the old ways for decades, dammit, and those methods work just fine. They don’t want to take the time to learn something new. It is too confusing for them. Before you automatically assume these people are all old, I was able to qualify for an over 55 discount the other night. And I love social media.

I suppose it is possible one of the more popular social media sites will go away. I don’t think that will happen, but one never knows. Things do change. I grew up with one phone company, three television stations, a record player and a typewriter. The companies that produced those items either went away or changed out of necessity. Yes, I know some places are again selling turntables and other old technologies. But some places still sell candles, but I don’t see them again becoming our primary source of light.

However, the functions those old ways doing things performed did not. I think the same is true of social media. If Facebook or Linked in disappear, something will take their place. Social media is just too dominant to think otherwise.

It is no secret right now there are more people looking for jobs than there are jobs to be filled. Job-hunting has become a survival of those able to stand out. These might not have the best qualifications, but they know to market themselves.

Most job hunters also know that LinkedIn is now the place recruiters look first when trying to fill a position. So, people do everything they can to punch up their profiles to make themselves stand out. Job hunters want to be unique, knowing unique is what gets one hired. They also want to use those words and phrases that will make a recruiter jump at the chance to hire them.

However, for a lot of people, they are not as unique as they think they might be.  LinkedIn recently compiled a list of the 10 most overused terms and phrases within the profiles of its 85 million members. Here they are:

1. Extensive experience

2. Innovative

3. Motivated

4. Results-oriented

5. Dynamic

6. Proven track record

7. Team player

8. Fast-paced

9. Problem solver

10. Entrepreneurial

“We wanted to reveal insights that help professionals make better choices about how to position themselves online,” DJ Patil, LinkedIn’s lead data analyst, said in a statement to CNN.

Look, selling yourself is no different than selling a product. Just as potential customers respond better to a unique message, potential employers respond better to a unique profile. Using any of those phrases listed above is the equivalent of saying “this product is the best.”

As we all know, phrases like that accomplish nothing. The same is true of saying you have extensive experience. It just doesn’t work.

Let me put it another way. As many of you may or may not know, I am writing a novel. Because I was news writer for over two decades, I knew I had to change my writing style. So I went to classes at a wonderful place in Milwaukee called Redbird Studios. There I took a course called “Shut Up and Write” taught by Judy Bridges, one of the finest writers I ever worked with.

One of Judy’s most important rules about writing was “show it, don’t say it.”  Basically that means be descriptive. Don’t say your character was breathing hard. Say something such as the character was so winded his lungs couldn’t handle his body’s demands for oxygen.

The same holds true for a profile, a resume or a business pitch. Don’t say you are innovative. Give examples of how you were innovative in your last job. Showing it, not saying it, might be the difference between effectively marketing yourself and seeing your resume placed in the electronic circular file.

Now, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I constantly preach about being careful about what you post. I know of companies that require access to a potential employee’s Facebook page, Twitter stream and anything else the person has posted. Do you want a potential employer seeing those pictures of you drinking from a beer bong or making obscene gestures? I also know of companies that have refused to hire a candidate because of something they found on one of those social media sites.

The person I was talking to works in staffing. His company has been very successful in placing employees in many, many companies. He gave me examples of very qualified employees who lost on a job because of one stupid thing they posted. What particularly rankled him is that the post might have been made five years ago. As he rightly pointed out, people change and mature. The person may have changed completely, but is now haunted by something they did five years ago.

He also pointed out all of the information that be gathered about someone can be misinterpreted and misused. For instance, the state of Wisconsin maintains a website known as the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access Program. It is commonly known as CCAP. What it is a list of every infraction committed by Wisconsin residents from speeding tickets to first-degree murder. It also lists divorces and other civil matters. It does not list juvenile offenses.

The staffing guy pointed out that a listing on CCAP can follow someone around for life – even if they were acquitted of the charges. He said most people either don’t read the entire entry, or don’t understand how to read it. So they don’t see that the charges were dropped. Instead, they just assume that the person is a criminal.

He made another point I found salient. If someone did commit a crime, how long do we hold that against them? I agree with that. The point of incarceration is to punish someone first and then to rehabilitate them. So once they have served their sentence and been punished, is it fair to keep punishing them by not hiring them or ostracizing them.

Now mind you, I am not talking about all of those convicted of a crime. There are some offenses are so heinous that those who committed them should never be allowed back in society. I put sex offenders, child molesters and violent criminals in that group. I would also add in those who run large criminal organizations, such as drug dealers.

To me though, it makes sense to hire people who have “paid their debt to society.” You don’t want them committing more crimes do you? That is what they are going to do if they cannot get a legitimate job. Sometimes it is a matter of survival.

The problem is that social media makes it harder for some of those people to come back into society. The information is just too easy to access. Unfortunately too many employees are just too nervous to hire someone who they find might have committed an infraction 10 or 15 years ago. It’s too easy to find that information out now.

Is that fair? I don’t think so. What I think needs to happen is greater education and some redaction of information. I don’t see anything wrong with that, do you?

By now it should be clear that any company that wants to have a successful marketing campaign has to use social media in its mix. Other have said, and I agree, that social media is the 21^st century’s industrial revolution. Leaving other forms of marketing out of a campaign will usually not affect its success. Leaving social media out can cripple a campaign before it begins.

Not just any person or agency can create and run a social media campaign. It takes an experienced marketing person who has both the training and experience in using social media. Too often companies stumble because they try to take shortcuts.

Many companies do seem to realize they need social media. The people in charge see their competitors are successfully using social media, so they decide to jump into the game. But social media is still pretty new. That leads to a lot of uncertainty among chief marketing officers. They look at the social media toolbox that’s filled with dozens of sites and are confused.

When that happens companies do one of two things: The CMO hires someone fresh out of college 22-year-old who must know they what are doing because they have a Facebook page and they tweet; or they turn to their advertising or marketing agency and ask them to put together a social media campaign.

The problems with the two approaches should be obvious. In the first case, a 22-year-old may know how to “like” on Facebook, but won’t have any idea on to plan and run a campaign. In the second case, a company will often find their agency has hired a 22-year-old fresh out of college to do social media for clients. In some cases, I know of old-line agencies have tired to talk their clients out of using social media arguing that traditional media will work just fine. I think that’s because they don’t want to admit they don’t know how to create and run a social media campaign.

I have noticed lately is there are many companies offering for-fee webinars, high-priced conferences, and expensive books. These companies all purport be social media experts. But as far as I can tell, none of these actually have done any social media campaigns. Who trained their trainers? What’s their background? That’s why I am always suspicious of those offers.

What of course a company should do is hire an experienced social media agency. That agency should be experienced in both social media and traditional marketing and public relations. Why traditional public relations? Because social media marketing and traditional public relations meld quite nicely. While it is important to use the new channels, you cannot afford to ignore the old ones.

So, when a company decides to do the right thing and hire a social media marketing agency, what skills and abilities should those making the decisions look for? Here are my suggestions for what should be asked:

• What is the agency’s experience in social media? How long has it been doing social media marketing?
• Who will be working on the campaign? An experienced account executive who has extensive training in social media and its uses or that recent college grad with the Facebook page?
• What social media applications does it use for its own business? Does it have a Facebook page, does it use Twitter, do its principals blog, does it post videos on YouTube, and does it know what social bookmarking is? There are many other questions that should be asked. This is just a sample.
• How many social media campaigns has the agency done? What were the results?
• What will the client be expected to do? This is a key question. Social media demands client involvement to a much larger extent than other forms of marketing. It is one of the things that makes it more effective.
• How does the agency measure ROI on the social media campaign?
• How will the agency integrate traditional public relations methods with the social media efforts? This is an area where a lot of social media agencies stumble. While social media is taking over rapidly, there is an important segment of the audiences who still read newspapers, watch television and listen to the radio. Don’t ignore those people. Many of them occupy the C-suite. Remember to a lot of CEOs the apex of public relations success is seeing their name on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. This is an important group to keep happy.

There are a lot of other questions that should be asked. But those should get your started.

It’s high time that a C-level individual engaged in social media, and – once and for all –created a high-level overview and synopsis, crystallizing all of the strategic benefits and critical value streams, and distilling them into a language that speaks to executives everywhere in our native tongue – bottom line stakeholder value. So here you go. I’ve done the work for you. What follows is an “Executive Summary” of my findings.

Social Media Value #1:  Unfiltered Feedback

As you already know, some of the scarcest (rarest) yet most valuable information a CEO can obtain is honest, unfiltered feedback. Think about it. You interact all day with managers, employees, and handlers working to keep the boss happy and therefore keep their job. Sure, being surrounded by “Yes men” can be more comfortable, but it can also insulate you from the stark realities of your business. If done correctly, social media enables CEO’s to hear raw, candid feedback from real people – people who aren’t afraid of being fired because they CAN’T be fired. The truth is, leaders with their ego in check are already fully aware that they work for the customer – the customer is his boss – so if the customer doesn’t like dropped calls on their iPhone or the sauce on their Domino’s pizza, it’s their job to make it better.

Now, every customer is not always right (or wrong), but if 850 out of 1000 user comments say tthe new Sketcher’s Sport shoe caused them to sprain their ankle, then something needs to be fixed – and fast! CoolCleveland’s Founder Thomas Mulready is a perfect example of a CEO with this customer orientation. After emailing out his weekly eMagazine for 7 years, he decided that it needed to be updated, and set about introducing a new format with much fanfare. In doing so, he also did something revolutionary – he asked all 90,000 of his readers for feedback on what they thought of the new style – and boy did they reply with scores of comments submitted over the span of a few days. But then he did something else revolutionary – he actually listened, modifying and improving the new site to reflect reader tastes and preferences. Yes, it takes humility (“Who are these people to give me feedback?  I invented this product! Don’t they know they can just click the links?) but the end result is an engaged audience who now feel genuinely empowered to provide even more feedback, emboldened by the knowledge that their comments actually impact (and can improve) the end product.

Social Media Value #2:  Authenticity

Hand-in-hand with the unfiltered feedback above is the ability to leverage social media to authentically communicate with your employees, partners, customers (and non-customers), investors, and media, directly engaging all of your brand ambassadors efficiently and economically. Rather than layers of staff, spokespeople, and sterile press releases, social media now offers an elegant and effective medium for disseminating information either “straight from the heart” or “straight from the horses’ mouth” depending on your preferred idiom. Dan Gilbert’s recent LeBron James “rant” would qualify as both, capturing the owners’ anger, frustration, and competitive resolve just moments after James’ announced his departure. As you’ve probably noticed, nobody can tell the company story and embody the company brand like the CEO (think Steve Jobs) and by offering the ability to immediately and directly engage stakeholders – whether on a typical day, during a product launch, and/or especially during a time of crisis – social media provides an invaluable medium for maximizing brand value and minimizing potential brand degradation. Social media helps firms “keep it real” but couches it in a positive brand-reinforcing context.

Social Media Value #3: Six Sigma (Low Cost)

In case you were wondering, executives LOVE things like Six Sigma because:

1. It reminds us of our Greek fraternity days in college.

2. The other soccer dad’s don’t understand Value Stream Mapping.

3. Six Sigma and lean processes are all about speed and cost sacvings, two of our favorite topics.

By its very architecture, social media is positioned to leverage firms’ Six Sigma orientation by expediting interactions, exchanges, customer service, feedback loops, product launches, marketing, and advertising, and enabling it at a fraction of the cost of traditional media, to a much more targeted audience, and in a far more nuanced and contextual value exchange. Social media options allow your message distribution format to evolve from shotgun to sniper, from billboard to message board, and from broadcast to narrowcast.  Plus, it takes your marketing posture from a one-way, blanketing, bullhorn approach to a more intimate, just-in-time interaction; offering the opportunity for a more detailed, valuable and more profitable conversation and connection with your audience (and you don’t need a Black Belt to do it).

Social Media Value #4:  Balancing Transparency AND Privacy

The only thing worse than not using social media tools is using them in the wrong way. Your firm could very easily invest time and money on social media, and then end up spending even more time and money doing damage control because you did it wrong the first time – talk about a lose-lose situation. With social media, there’s a “right way” and a “wrong way” to do things – so if you’re going to do it, do it right. Remember, anywhere-anytime-anyone social media channels must be handled as the “nuclear options” that they are, with the capability to destroy your brand value in a single Twitter, email, or YouTube video that goes viral.

With great power comes great responsibility, and a healthy respect for the global reach and impact of social media must emanate directly from the CEO, who knows better than anyone that the same programs allowing firms to connect and influence the marketplace can also be turned against you to alienate them. And just as social media can provide the market with a transparent window into the soul of your company, it can also showcase you at your worst, doing more harm than good.  Let’s face it, your firm is already dabbling in social media as it is – so you might as well manage your risk and liability by codifying corporate expectations, establishing specific ground rules, and educating your stakeholders regarding proper use of these seemingly innocent yet powerful tools.

Social Media Value #5: Supporting Statistics

Executives rely on market research to support and substantiate any designated course of action, and devour facts, stats, and data-points like shrimp at a wedding reception. Summarized below are a few statistics buttressing the explosion of this social media trend, and detailing how Corporate America is leveraging it to realize significant revenue and market share growth going forward.

• In the last 7 years, Internet usage has increased 70 percent a year. Spending for digital advertising this year will be more than $25 billion and surpass print advertising spending (forever)

• Lenovo has experienced a 20 percent reduction in activity to their call center since they launched their community website for customers
• Blendtec quintupled sales with its “Will it Blend” series on YouTube
• Only 18 percent of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• Naked Pizza set a one-day sales record using social media: 68 percent of their sales and 85 percent of their new customers came via Twitter.
• Software company Genius.com reports 24 percent of social media leads convert to sales opportunities,
• Dell has already made over $7 million in sales via Twitter.
• Thirty-seven percent of Generation Y heard about the Ford Fiesta via social media before its launch in the US and currently 25 percent of Ford’s marketing budget is spent on digital/social media.
• Seventy-one percent of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40 percent.
• A recent Wetpaint/Altimeter Group study found companies that widely engage in social media surpass their peers in both revenue and profit.

(Sources for Statistics: meyersreport.com, lenovosocial.com, George Wright, Blendtec, Mashable.com, econsultancy.com, businessweek.com )

Getting Your Board On Board

Lest we forget, even the Boss has a Boss – they’re called the Board of Directors – and these are the people that recruit and hire CEO’s for the purpose of serving as a charismatic and visionary leader of their organization. And so I urge you, don’t disappoint them when it comes to leveraging social media within your organization. The “Bang for the Buck” value proposition is too compelling to ignore, and the fact is – your competitors are already entering this arena and establishing new service baseline norms and minimum threshold expectations – so standing still amounts to losing ground and therefore is not an option. What you need is a plan.

Do I still hate social media?  No, but I’m only going to embrace it on the “executive terms” that have served me so well to this point in my career and they are, “If you’re going to do something, go all in and do it right.”  From now on, all social media, social marketing, and social networking will be discussed in the context – not of a campaign (which starts and ends) – but as part of an ongoing, strategic, and systematic dialog with our stakeholders and marketplace.

Executives have the focus and vision to road map strategies playing out three, five, and 10 years into the future. But, we’re also “plodders” and are comfortable with short, measured, consistent steps – day in and day out – as long as we know that they are aligned with reaching a desired goal. When we discuss your social media strategy, the focus will be on consistency and sustainability over the long haul. Remember, executives don’t have the ego needs, risk profiles, or the time to be on the bleeding edge, or even the cutting edge. We just want it to work.

I can confidently predict that every month for the next 100 years there will be a new “Must Have” application, portal or community that one of your employees will discover, and then try to convince you that your company will implode if you don’t immediately join, link, or Retweet. In five years, all but three of these ideas will probably be forgotten.  During our meeting, we will discuss how to frame out an enterprise-wide social media strategy, predicated on the foundation of proven tools and that have stood the test of time and offer “Best-In-Class” results, so that you will be empowered to handle these conversations proactively in the context of a larger road map, rather than reacting to these weekly ambushes in a dismissive defensive way. Remember, our goal for social media is not a lark, but a lifestyle and work-shopping a strategy which builds on stable, scalable tools, yet also affords the flexibility to address unprecedented “Black Swan” technology developments, provides you with a welcome buffer from being whipsawed by a weekly website.  Between the two of us, we’ll finally take that reliable “80/20 Rule” and apply it to social media, and then spend time focusing on the 80 percent of stakeholder value that can be extracted with 20% of the effort (while knowingly and purposefully ignoring the remaining 20 percent of value which takes up 80 percent of the effort).

The Bottom Line

In the Forward of Geoffrey Moore’s bestseller “Crossing the Chasm” Regis McKenna writes:

“Fundamentally, marketing must refocus away from selling product and toward creating relationships. Customers don’t like to be ‘owned’ if that implies lack of choice or freedom. But they do like to be ‘owned’ if what that means is a vendor taking ongoing responsibility for the success of their joint ventures.  Ownership in this sense means an abiding commitment and a strong sense of mutuality in the development of the marketplace. When customers encounter this kind of ownership, they tend to become fanatically loyal to their supplier, which in turns builds a stable economic base for profitability and growth.”

While there will always be a “me” in media – social media, social marketing, and social networking tools were designed to work best as a conduit for enabling information exchange, establishing a dialog, and creating a two-way conversation with your audience. At the end of the day, social media is simply about creating and maintaining relationships – and even and executive can do that.

I’m an executive and I hate social media. There, I said it. It’s finally “out there.” But before you Twitter a flaming flash mob link to assemble pitchfork-wielding Second Life villagers outside my door, I urge you to take a deep breath, put down your double frappuccino, remove your earpiece, step away from your iPad, and set your iPhasers to stun, for I come in peace.  If you’ve ever wondered why your CEO also hates social media, social networking and, well, socializing in general, I urge you to continue reading.

Just as Fox TV’s Masked Magician series demystified the tricks of the world’s most famous illusionists, I offer the following as both a behind-the-scenes peak and a confessional of sorts, into the mind of the executive. For to truly understand the conflicting yet predictable stonewalling in this domain, one must search deep below the surface, plumbing the depths of the executive psyche, motivations, and worldviews, for only then will you be able to “crack the code,” engage us in our native tongue and communicate in a vocabulary and language to which we will respond.  Consider this your own personal backstage pass to the inner sanctum of the Executive Suite.

Executive: More Perception Than Position

For starters, the term “executive” isn’t a title as much as it is a mindset or a set of attributes – often leading to career success and the achievement of such rank – but what might surprise most is that this ambition and executive mentality often begins to manifest itself early in life.  For example, while most were partying and hanging out in high school, we were already taking college-level classes while holding down several part time jobs.  And when most were “finding themselves” in college and still deciding on a major after three years, we were serving in student leadership, doing internships, or doubling up on classes to finish college a semester early. And when most were finally in the workforce, instead of clubbing and playing in multiple softball leagues, we were completing an advanced degree in night school, pursuing professional certifications, and framing out retirement plans.

Executives are high achievers – that’s just how we’re wired. Give me a mountain and I’ll climb it. And if you don’t have a mountain, I’ll find my own mountain and I’ll climb it.  And if I can’t find a mountain, I’ll build one – just so I can climb it. But here’s what most people don’t get about executives. Once a CEO climbs a mountain, he doesn’t feel the need to Tweet to the world that he did it. He doesn’t have the natural desire to blog, “Look what a great climber I am” and include multiple pictures with links to his Facebook and LinkedIn account. He did it because it’s in his DNA. He doesn’t require the attention, approval, or applause of others, and therein lies the fundamental source of the problem – executives are non-narcissistic in a YouTube world. We’re outliers. In a society that brags, blogs, and Tweets about the tiniest personal minutia, we could care less because, frankly, we expect success, it’s normal to us. It’s like Vince Lombardi’s admonition to his running back after an overly exuberant display, “Next time you make a touchdown, act like you’ve been there before.”

Eagles Don’t Flock

Executives are “eagles,” and unlike seagulls, eagles don’t flock. We’re not joiners and we’re not groupies, which is why we overwhelmingly prefer challenging single-person sports like running, cycling, weightlifting, and our one concession to “group sports” – golf (which is still technically a single-person sport, but more fun in groups). Lance Armstrong didn’t win his titles without leaving the peloton,and ditto for greats like Sampras, Tiger, and Arnold. They had to go above and beyond the group to achieve greatness, and for this reason it truly us lonely at the top (not that we mind).

Social Networking: The Problem is “Networking”

The reason we hate social networking is the same reason we hate regular networking. Exchanging small talk for two hours in a room full of strangers, with a drink in one hand and a business card in the other, and a “Hi, I’m Doug” name tag peeling off my lapel, and standing – my goodness the standing – and looking unsuccessfully for any food with some protein in it, and wondering if this guy with the too-firm handshake is going to see if we can “LinkIn” after sharing an elevator ride, before glancing at my watch and counting the minutes until I can leave and get back to work. It’s a nightmare. Why? Because – surprise, surprise – most executives are actually introverts, who value their time and their privacy and are constantly evaluating the ROI trade-offs of every hour of every day. (Quiz:  How many times have you heard a CEO describe himself as a “People Person”?)

To say that we are anti-social would be a huge misrepresentation, but when you combine the word “social” with “networking” – let’s just say it sends shivers up my spine. Do I like the company of others? Sure I do – but I want the time to be well spent. Instead of random, shallow, unfocused small talk, CEO’s would much rather sit around with a small group of peers for 2 hours and discuss BIG specific challenges – and their solutions. In fact, the reason so much business gets done on the golf course is because it’s one of the few places leaders actually congregate and feel relaxed enough to discuss what’s really on their minds.

Social Networking: The Problem is “Social”

The next hurdle for executives with social networking are the implications of the root word “Social”, and, by its very spelling, its association to Socialism. Socialism is defined as, “Any system of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively,” and further, “An economic and political theory based on public ownership or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.” (At least that’s what someone wrote on Wikipedia). The premise and value of the “social media” movement is the power of the collective in the production, distribution, and ownership of goods, and the reason executives resist this model is that it flies in the face of their existing worldview which, quite frankly, has been pretty successful to date. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Most of us have a pretty big chip on our shoulders, attributing our career success to the years of diligence, education, ambition, delayed gratification and sacrifices we’ve made to reach the leadership levels we’ve achieved.

Therefore, the anti-capitalistic notion that my work and contributions would be homogenized with the uninspired masses, and that ultimately my value would be determined by the randomness of the collective is a jarring and unpalatable departure. I want to control my company! I want to control my brand! I want to determine my destiny! It’s too important to leave it to chance (or simply be outvoted by the uninformed bourgeois)! Unfortunately and tragically for us executives, the beauty and power of social media is only fully unleashed when we let it go, and that, my friends, is the hardest thing for us to do (…and also explains why we hate checking luggage at the airport).

Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts

Okay, I promised that this would be a confessional, so here’s a shocker. Over time, there is a tendency for CEO’s to get inflated egos.  Now granted, a healthy ego can serve as a necessary defense mechanism to provide protection from the relentless attacks from subordinates, peers, and the media, but too much amounts to just plain pride. We like to think of ourselves as a pretty smart bunch, and our position is such that even if we don’t completely understand something, we often project to our colleagues that we do.

A classic example of this phenomenon transpired during the Enron debacle, where ranks of senior executives refused to admit that they couldn’t comprehend the mechanics of this powerful conglomerate, until it was too late. It’s the same with new advances in technology, which has accelerated during our careers from “hit or miss” to “mission critical,” going from bricks to clicks and from mortar to mind share, while serving as a platform for everything from infrastructure, billing, and product development, to security, scheduling, and sales. The rapid rate of change in digital innovation has caused CEOs to feel extremely vulnerable around technology because it is something on which we have become very reliant, but which we understand and “control” so little, and this vulnerability leads to fear, and this fear to irrational decisions and suboptimal outcomes. When CEOs don’t have the confidence in their staff to delegate, or lack the humility to admit their ignorance regarding technology advances, they get defensive and act out in fear – or fail to act altogether.

Social Media: Justified Fear?

Executives justify their fear of social media by pointing back to a historic drumbeat of disappointment and unfulfilled promises. They recall with vivid detail the never-ending parade of new online engagement vehicles and “paradigms” introduced over the past 15 years by turtleneck-wearing gurus with names like Kip or Seth, which were then propagated by self-proclaimed “New Economy” experts sporting titles like “Chief Innovation Officer” and “Director of Chaos,” and then championed by side burn-wearing hipster foot soldiers who never met a filter they didn’t like. In the 90’s, we were promised that customers would beat a path to our door if we created something called a “web page” and then “posted” it on this thing called the Internet or World Wide Web or something. Then they convinced us to buy electronic lists and send out “Email Blasts” to our target markets, and next it was a website redesign, push technology, pull technology, exchanged links, partner intranets, eBusiness, eCommerce, blogging, webinars, podcasts, search engine optimization, YouTube videos, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, yada, yada, yada. Each time they promised that this time it would be different, and that this new product/protocol/portal/potion would somehow (magically??) drive revenue, increase efficiency, and optimize utilization (or some other buzz word or invented metric). You told me to blog, so I blogged. You told me to Twitter, so I Tweeted. What’s it going to be tomorrow – scan my body into a mashup simulator to create a hologram so I can telepresence myself into sales calls in Madrid via FourSquare using Flickr? All I know is that I’ve spent a lot of time and money on a series of disjointed initiatives and campaigns and so far none have performed as advertised.

Don’t Feed Me Another Fad

Look, executives aren’t that complicated. While I can handle the many nuanced “gray areas” of business leadership, I prefer to see things in black and white; victories and defeats; profits and losses. I don’t mind making significant, strategic multi-year investments and committing to enterprise-wide initiatives which will improve the future performance of my company – in fact, I ENJOY it – what do you think got me to the Executive Suite in the first place? Just don’t insult me. I don’t want to waste any more time or money on the hype of  “the next big thing” or the newest tool or toy, only to be disappointed when the latest flash-in-the-pan fad fades and goes the way of Harvard Graphics. It’s not that I have a fear of commitment – frankly, it’s just the opposite. I have a healthy fear and distaste for doing things randomly just to be doing something; or because someone saw an article in USA Today, or CNBC did a story on it, or out of fear that I’ll be the last one in my circle to “get on board.” (Believe me, the things that keep me up at night can’t be solved in 140 characters or less). The truth is, I would love to commit to social media in a significant way, but so far nobody in my organization has stepped forward with a cerebral, strategic, multi-generational, integrated, systematic, and sustainable methodology and road map for synergistically capitalizing on this medium over the long haul.

Your Network is Your Net Worth

Executives are uniquely conflicted because we know better than anyone the power of relationships, and the truth of the old axiom, “Your network is your net worth,” yet we are inherently introverts, and gravitate towards solitude versus socializing. We understand on an intellectual level that none of us individually are “too big to fail,” and that even the Lone Ranger had Tonto and Batman had Robin, yet we find initiating conversations and exchanges with others to be draining, distracting, and exhausting rather than invigorating and inspiring. Hence we yearn; as a group we pine; for deep within our heart of hearts burns a great bright hope that somehow and in some way this social media movement or platform or culture or whatever could be harnessed and leveraged to cross that chasm and create valuable, authentic exchanges and relevant, real-time dialogue with stakeholders of all persuasions. If we could just develop an all-encompassing framework for how this would integrate into our enterprise-wide strategy, and manage it like a mission-critical project (complete with milestones, deliverables and accountability instead of fuzzy metrics like “buzz”), I am supremely confident that we could achieve escape velocity and – for the first time – truly establish and be able to articulate a synergistic, sustainable, and quantifiable strategy for leveraging “Best-In-Class” social media options to achieve desired corporate outcomes and maximize financial returns.

A Gift From Media To You

You know, it’s interesting. Somewhere in the convoluted catharsis of composing this confessional, I came to a surprising realization.  Maybe I don’t HATE social media after all. Maybe I just hate the Quixotic context in which most social media conversations exist, featuring a perpetually moving target, combined with an obsessive, cult-like worship of the default worldview, “If Something is New = It Must Be Good”, and where subjective criteria like “mindshare” and “impressions” are considered quantifiable deliverables and irrefutable barometers of success.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s high time that a C-level individual engaged this topic, and – once and for all –created a high-level overview and synopsis, crystallizing all of the strategic benefits and critical value streams, and distilling them into a language that speaks to executives everywhere in our native tongue – bottom line stakeholder value.

Part Two will run Wednesday.

After all, one of social media strength’s is peer review. I like to see what other people say about a restaurant my wife and I haven’t yet checked out. I like to know what’s good, what’s bad and how well the servers handle things.

Foursquare also gives me a chance to tell others about places I like. Jody and I have pretty eclectic tastes in food, so we hit a lot of different places. As my future son-in-law has noted, I am Milwaukee’s unofficial ambassador.

Something odd has been happening on foursquare. I am getting requests to friend people from places including the Netherlands; New Zealand; India; and Germany. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to friending people who live in other countries. It is one of the things I like about social media. I have Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter contacts around the globe.

But I wonder why someone in India wants to know about the nightlife in Milwaukee? Are they planning a trip here? That would be nice. Milwaukee is a great city to visit. We have a lot to offer.

Still, I cannot help but wonder if I am being friended by people who really have no intention of ever coming to Wisconsin. Instead, are these people just trying to build up huge friend lists? It is some kind of high school thing where the person who has the most friends wins?

Before I go any further, I should note I have more than 8,000 Twitter followers, more than 7,000 LinkedIn connections and I just crossed the 1,000 mark on Facebook. However, most of that is for professional reasons. I follow people who have similar interests. Plus, I use my lists for as outreach for my clients.  I have to note having more 16,000 social media contacts is an incentive for people to hire me.

I don’t follow just anybody. As I have said, the minute you tell me what you had for breakfast, what cute thing your dog did, or you are going to have your nails done, I will unfollow you. I will also not follow anyone who promises to make me rich or plays games. I don’t believe the former and I think the later is silly.

The people I follow are marketers, flacks, and social media people like myself. I learn from them and I hope they learn from me. I will not follow people who do not meet my criteria. For me it is a matter of quality versus quantity.

I make somewhat of an exception for Facebook because I have family members and friends who I stay in touch with through the platform.

I have not amassed a large numbers of followers because I think it makes me cool. That is not the purpose of social media.

Yet, I think there are a lot of people out there who build lists indiscriminately. Why I am not sure. As I have said time and time again, the one with the most friends does not win.

Why? It’s simple really – even in a time when I, and everyone else, is more connected than ever, it is important to maintain some privacy. As I have said, I don’t want to know what you doing every waking minute of your day. You shouldn’t care about what I am doing during my day.

I am constantly amazed by the amount of information people spew on the Internet. When I think about posting something, I use the supermarket checkout line test: if I were standing in the checkout line in my local store, would I turn to the person behind me and reveal something deeply personal. Remember, the odds are this person is a total stranger. The second part of the test is would that person care?

Of course, there is far too much interest in the minutiae of people’s lives. I saw an advertisement today for a new show on ABC called “Family Secrets.” The show’s teaser on ABC’s website says: “Why families keep secrets and what happens when the truth comes out.”

Come on, who in their right mind would go on national television and spill everything there is to spill about their family. And who would watch something like that?

There is another concern about being too open on the web – security. I will never understand why people announce to the world that they are not home. The Facebook announcement that the Hendersons are making an extended tour of the American West must make burglars drool.

Come on people, you think that everyone reading your posts is doing it because you are so interesting? Some of those readers are tracking who’s not home, when they will be gone, where they are, and when they will get back. No sense in rushing the theft if there’s no need. You mix a trip announcement on Facebook, some pictures posted during the trip and a couple of tweets about the Grand Canyon and you have burglary.

So, my advice is to be discreet. It is the best path to take.

Incidentally, Asheville, N.C. is a beautiful place. I recommend it highly for a place to relax and recharge.

While all of the sharing social media has caused might be connecting people, I see a lot of danger in that. Is it a really good thing for people to know you ate at Ray’s Famous Pizza in New York, then went to see “Promises, Promises” on Broadway and finally dropped in for a nightcap at your favorite local bar?

I often hear complaints from people who are inundated with marketing solicitations. They wonder why they are they getting so many. Think about it. I think this trend is increasingly dangerous. Do we really mean to give up all of our privacy?

Today (Monday), I read a piece in the New York Times about the late author John Updike. It reminded my just how much things have changed in a very short time.

In the piece, writer Sam Tanenhaus that says “Updike was a private man, if not a recluse like J. D. Salinger or a phantom like Thomas Pynchon, then a one-man gated community, visible from afar but firmly sealed off, with a No Trespassing sign posted in front.”

Updike was a man of the middle 20^th Century, pre-Internet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogging. I think the reason he could maintain that distance was that there were not the tools to break the walls he had erected.

I wrote on this topic last year. But since I did, even more ways to reveal yourself to the world have come along. Now there is Foursquare, a site that tells everyone what restaurants, movies and other things you attend. There are more and more review sites, which ask people to comment on a hotel, a car or a book. There are location sites that tell people exactly where you live and where you are traveling.

The amount of information people are willing to share with the world – or at least the 1.8 billion people on the web – is staggering. When I was a reporter, I used to tell people in a week I could tell their life story. I could do that because the paper I worked for bought proprietary databases. Some poor person had spent weeks gathering and inputting all of the information those databases contained. It took time to look through them and you had to know how search what you were looking for.

Now, I can do it an hour or two. It doesn’t any particular skill to gather the information. Anyone with some time on their hands can find out just about anything they want about anyone they want. Often that information is used maliciously.

While malicious use of information is one effect of this spewing, I wonder if there are other side effects? Do we really need to know everything about everybody? I am not so sure. I am curious as to what you think.

As I said Monday, every community needs rules. Otherwise, there is anarchy. No one can do anything is a community in that kind of atmosphere. Social media is no different.

So, here are some more divided by the applications I use most:

• So let’s talk about LinkedIn first –
  • If I do not know you, do not ask me to endorse you. I have over 6,000 followers on LinkedIn, all good smart people. But there is no way I will ever know enough about most of these people to provide an endorsement. I enjoy interacting with them, but that’s not a basis for a recommendation.
  • Join some groups on LinkedIn. That’s one of the best parts of the site, connecting with people who have similar interests. Once you are accepted into a group, don’t be a lurker. Comment on discussions and start discussions of your own. It’s how we all learn.
  • Speaking of groups, if I don’t accept your invitation to join a group, it means I don’t want to. Don’t keep sending invitations.
  • If someone sends you an invitation, and you do not want to accept, do not IDK them. Archive the invitation. As I understand it, if a person accumulates enough IDKs they are banned from LinkedIn. So be nice.
  • Now Twitter –
    • No one is saying you have to tweet 30 times a day, but once or twice a day is nice. Why else are you on there if you don’t tweet?
    • Retweet tweets you like. It is just common courtesy, plus it helps spread the word.
    • This is a personal one, but I do not like people who use bots to increase their follower numbers. I have almost 8,500 followers, but I did it organically, one at-a-time. So don’t send me tweets saying you have a program that increases my followers. This is not high school; the person with the most followers doesn’t win.
    • If you post a blog or something else, tweet about once. That tells everyone that it is out there. That’s okay. But only tweet once. Anything more than that is like ringing the doorbell 20 times in a row.
    • Don’t use auto tweets. I was guilty of this myself last year. It is wrong and I stopped doing it. It is just not honest.
    • Do not send me any tweets about multi-level marketing schemes. I don’t believe you and I will never will.
    • Facebook. I admit I have some issues with Facebook. I think there is way too much extraneous stuff on it. Frankly, I think marketing attempts get lost in the thicket of Farmville, Mafia Games and other stuff.
      • Now, I admit I have taken a couple of quizzes on Facebook. But, it was my decision. I do not play Farmville or Mafia games. I worked on a dairy farm as a kid. It is not anything like that game. For one, you do not get manure all over yourself and the cows don’t kick.
      • As for the Mafia Wars game, I covered the Mafia a lot as a reporter. Not a nice group of people, frankly. I hate it when people glamorize a group that killed people. I have never understood the appeal. What’s next, Al Qaeda Wars? So, don’t ask me to play.
      • Do not create a fan page of yourself and then ask others to become your fan. Remember that rule about not thumping your own chest in social media? Well, this is the penultimate example. To me, it is egotistical and narcissistic. You build fans by demonstrating value, not by asking.

I could write an entire blog about the dos and don’ts of blogging. I have been at it for over year. I think I will cover it next week.

Again, if you like or don’t like these rules, please let me know.

I have been a writer since I was five-years-old. My first piece was entitled “The Eagle That Had Acrophobia.” It was the first writing assignment I was ever given. It came from my kindergarten teacher toward the end of the year. I think the assignment was given to us to test how much we knew about writing and reading. I am not sure the content mattered that much. At any rate, I got a gold star for using all of the words correctly.

That was my first lesson in writing. Always make sure every word is used and spelled properly. Now, I still have not attained that proper state of writing, although I get closer everyday. I am getting closer because I care deeply about excellent writing and I work hard at it.

Which brings me to the point of this screed – how much just plain lazy and incorrect writing I see everyday. Now, I am not talking about typos. To me that’s an honest mistake. The key to read reread so they can be detected and corrected.

No, what I am talking about is the incorrect use of words, run-on sentences, sloppy logic, and just plain bad writing.

Look, social media demands good writing. I am not saying you have to be a Mark Twain or an Ernest Hemingway. I am saying all of the writing posted has to make sense.

Tell me if you can think of a social media application where the use of language is not important. For instance, every study I have read says blogging is the most effective social media application. Well, a blog has to be written, doesn’t it? Twitter demands clear, concise writing if a  thought is going to be stated clearly in 140 characters. For a YouTube video to make sense, the person speaking has to do it such a way that viewers can understand.

Yet, everyday I hear people talking about “building a new building.” Who builds an old building? Or look at the “new baby.” Ever seen an old baby – in the literal sense? Or one of my favorites – “this door alarmed.” How can one tell if a door is upset?

The other night I was watching the local news in Milwaukee. The newscaster talked about the “tragic death of a five-year-old girl.” Have you ever known the death of a five-year-old not to be tragic? Or “the fire totally engulfed the house.” Look of the definition of the world engulfed – “totally” is not needed.

I did a web search and found sterling examples of bad writing, such as:

• PET OF THE WEEK: Nannouk is a 10-week-old Spitz mix female and will grow to be medium sized. She does well inside. Sterilization is mandatory for anyone wanting to take her.
• Operationally, teaching effectiveness is measured by assessing the levels of agreement between the perceptions of instructors and students on the rated ability of specific instructional behavior attributes which were employed during course instruction. Due to the fact that instructors come from diverse backgrounds and occupy different positions within a given university, both individual and organizational based factors may contribute to the variance in levels of agreement between perceptions.
• The man was eating a fish that still had its head on and was drinking red wine in great gulps. The fish’s eyes looked alive.

My thanks to the University of Minnesota-Duluth for the examples. There are a lot more on the university’s website.

I am not going to get into people who don’t know the difference between then and than. Or writers that don’t know when to use who and that. I could go on forever.

Yes, those examples are all funny, but they are also sad. Allegedly educated people who spoke English as their first language wrote those three examples. What the hell is wrong with them?

I just had to rant about this. I know I am fighting a losing battle, but it doesn’t mean I plan to stop.



However, what these students don’t have is much social media knowledge. That surprised me.

In fact, in the last week it has been driven home to me how many people either don’t know, or don’t want to know, about social media. That was my awakening. It isn’t just students – it people at every level of every organization. I feel like these people are standing at the bottom of a mountain with their backs turned. The social media avalanche is roaring down and about to engulf them. Yet they can’t, or choose not to, hear the rumble of the approaching change.

The rate that social media is taking over is like an avalanche. I could give you numbers about how fast it is growing, but I am going to save that for another blog.

Curious about my metaphor, I did some research on avalanche survival. One of the things that experts advise is to swim in the flow if you get caught. The key is keeping your head above the snow. That’s good advice for people who about to be engulfed by social media – start swimming with the flow.

I do not include most students among that group. They clearly want to learn. That’s why I was asked to come and speak at UW – Whitewater.

When the conference’s student organizers first approached me, I assumed they wanted me to talk about social media marketing. I have met many Whitewater students. They are bright and committed. They also have never known a time without the Internet and computers. In contrast, I have known a time without push-button phones and cable television. Yes, I am that old.

So, I assumed they would know more about the various social media applications than I did. I figured these students didn’t need me to tell the basics. The two women organizing the conference gently disabused me of that notion. They told me students wanted to hear the basics. They wanted to learn about Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube and all of the other social media applications.

Now, I know UW-Whitewater Public Relations Instructor Ann Knabe is drilling her students in social media. I have heard from the students about that. Ann, who is a friend, is very good instructor. However, I guess the students want to hear from someone else who is actually doing it on a day-in, day-out basis.

As I said, I think a lot of people out there would like to know about social media and how to use it. But, they don’t understand the implications of social media taking over marketing. Or, they are just too embarrassed to admit they don’t know what to do.

That second point was brought up at a meeting I was at last week. I am a member of the Southeastern Wisconsin chapter of the Public Relations Society of America’s social media committee. (Say that five times fast.) At a recent meeting another committee member talked about his experiences teaching social media. He said he runs into many adults who are afraid to admit they don’t know what they are doing.

Another thing I like about working with students is that they much higher embarrassment threshold. They are not afraid to admit they don’t know how to do something.

I think that embarrassment is why many companies are not moving faster to integrate social media into their marketing. But, hey get over it. There is nothing wrong with asking questions and admitting you don’t know something. So let this be your awakening. Doing nothing will get buried in the coming avalanche.

So while you can consider this a rant, it is also a warning and a how-to. A rant about why organization and the people who run them don’t try to head off crises; don’t realize what will happen if there isn’t a crisis plan; and a how-to – perhaps avoid the problem.

There are three kinds of crises:

• Immediate crises: Most dreaded type. Happens quickly and unexpectedly. Little time for research and planning. Includes such things as earthquakes, fires, plane crashes, product tampering, workplace shootings, and death of a key officer
• Emerging crises: Allows more time for research and planning. May erupt after festering for long period. Includes such things as sexual harassment, substance abuse, overcharging on contracts. Key is to convince senior management to deal with the problem before it explodes.
• Sustained crises: Problems that smolder for long periods of time, despite best efforts to put out the fire. Rumors go viral, getting reported in the media, tweeted about, posted on Facebook, written about by bloggers and other social media sites. Examples include P & G being in league with Satan, that fluoridated water is dangerous or that some childhood vaccines lead to autism.

Obviously, there isn’t anyway to anticipate the sudden crisis. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a general plan – a framework – in place to deal with it and whatever happens. How many companies have you seen scramble in the first hours after a crisis happens? It doesn’t have to be that way.

Planning for a specific crisis is not possible. Planning on to handle crises is and should be done.

That’s why I am always amazed when I see a company like Toyota get in trouble. Here is one of the smartest marketers on the face of the planet. Yet, they create a crisis because they don’t listen to their customers’ complaints. Clearly they didn’t have a crisis communication plan in place. That’s just dumb. The list of companies that have done the same thing would fill two blogs.

What all those companies lacked was a scout, someone whose job it was to keep his or ear to the ground (and Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). If you keep any eye on what’s going on out there, you can avoid a lot of problems. The idea is to identify the grass fire and put it out before it becomes a forest fire.

Sometimes crises happen despite an organization’s best efforts. That’s when the plan comes in. Knowing what to do is half the battle.

Remember, as Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “The plan is nothing; planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of ‘emergency’ is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.”

As a note: reporters cannot accept anything of value. It is against most publication’s ethics code. So don’t send anything. Anything I received went to charity if possible. If it was food, it went to a food bank. If it was perishable food or beer (hey, I work in Milwaukee) I shared with the entire newsroom. I always said – maybe I have my price, but other than Bill Gates, I doubt anyone could pay it. A box of cookies wasn’t going to influence me.

When I left journalism just over seven years, I went to work for any agency run by a former reporter. It was a great place to learn. Like everyone else, I did the traditional things one does in P.R. and marketing. The only difference for me was that my pitches and writing were better. I had a good track record there and at my next job.

The appearance of social media four years ago changed everything. It was also when I learned that traditional public relations and social media go very well together. I had a client that couldn’t get employees to open emails. After doing some research, we decided to a series of podcasts. The podcasts were very successful. It wasn’t even called social media then, the usual title was Web 2.0

The employees found out about the podcasts through the traditional channels. There was an announcement in the company’s newsletter; each department head received a written announcement to read to their employees. We also got some press coverage because at the time what we did was unique.

Without going into a lot of tedious detail, I soon learned when I went out my own that social media is becoming the dominant form of marketing. I have done everything I can to learn about it and how to use it. Still, the growing dominance of social media doesn’t mean that there is still not a place for traditional methods.

Do not discount the power of a story on the front page of a local newspaper or on the local television station. While it’s a shrinking group, many people still get their information from traditional media. That includes elected officials. It is silly to ignore those people. They are probably also on line, but what’s wrong with reaching them through multiple channels?

Yes, I advise sending out a social media press release. See last Monday’s blog for the reasons. But it is still a press release. Just in a super-charged form.

Twitter is a great place to release news. Many, many journalist now follow Twitter. Rather than call 50 reporters, you can send out one tweet and get journalists to call you. They might be working for a traditional outlet, but you reached out using social media. See, you married the two methods.

As for employees, I always advise a combination of social media and traditional methods. In any kind of many workplaces, manufacturing, retails, and others, employees are not going to have constant access to the Internet. They probably have it at home, but they are not at home at times when you want to get the word out. If it’s really important, you should have a face-to-face meeting. If it is not that important, but if you want employees to know something, there is nothing wrong with posting a notice where they can see it.

None of this changes my opinion that CEOs should be blogging, companies should have Facebook Fan pages, should be posting videos on YouTube, creating groups on LinkedIn and tweeting company news. That should be the primary focus.

But just as I use a hammer on home improvement projects that first belonged to my grandfather, traditional tools still have a place in marketing and public relations.

For the past few years, I have thought the press release was an outmoded way of getting the word out. From my own experience as a reporter, I know how little time reporters have to read all the stuff they get daily. However, the old fashioned released has morphed into a social media release. It is press release on performance enhancing drugs. I am starting to see how effective that kind of release can be.

When I was a reporter, press releases were a fact of my workday. Before the Internet, dozens arrived daily in the standard number 10 business envelope. As a young reporter, I dutifully read through each and every one of them. I thought it was the right thing to do. Who knew, maybe the key to next Pulitzer Prize was in the one of those envelopes.

Reporters get a lot of mail from every imaginable source. Not just press releases, but letters from convicts who feel they are wrongly accused, happy readers, angry readers, story ideas written on pencil on legal paper and a lot of other stuff. That avalanche of envelopes is what stopped from reading every press release. I just didn’t have time to weed through them every day. I would quickly sort through the pile, keeping only the ones with return addresses that told me the company might have to say.

The people I dealt with soon learned the best way to get my attention was to call me. We would discuss a potential story and if I was interested, I would request more information. Even then, I didn’t want a press release. What I wanted was background information that provided basic facts – things such as the size of company, number of employees, annual income, size of the project, that kind of stuff.

I don’t think I ever missed a story by not reading the press releases. My sources knew if they gave me a good story, I would fight like hell to get it into the paper. I was usually a pretty good salesman.

When I switched to public relations seven years ago, I brought the anti-press release attitude with me. Because I spent 26 years as a reporter, I have great contacts all over the U.S. and even some internationally. Reporters used to be professional nomads. We would continually switch jobs, always striving to get to a bigger paper with a larger circulation. You make a lot of friends doing that. So, if I had a client who needed a story placed, I could usually reach a person who could make that happen.

Even when I didn’t know somebody, I was pretty skilled at getting a story into a publication. I speak the language of reporters. I know what gets them excited. I know the first four words you say to any reporter when you call. I should make this a quiz, but I won’t – the first four words are: “are you on deadline?”

That’s all changing with the rise of social media and the shrinking of regular media. There are fewer reporters chasing more stories. They need stuff they know is accurate and can access quickly.

As I said at the start, enter the social media press release. What is it?

As I also said, it is press release on steroids. It is so much more than the old paper press release. When I set up one up for a client, I include pictures, background material, contact information, video, links to my client’s website, their Twitter feed, their Facebook fan page and the LinkedIn pages of key executives. It is so much more complete than the old ones.

And sites such at Pitch Engine allow you to send links to the information out to just about anybody to whom you want.

What I usually do is call the key contacts I want to receive the information to give them a heads up that it’s up. Then I email the link so they can access the data. I have found universal acceptance for this.

Reporters and bloggers seem to love it. At one of the click of the mouse, they get anything they need for their story. It makes their job easier, which makes them happy, which means they are more likely to a do a positive story. That in turn makes my client happy, which makes ultimately makes me happy.

So, you see, while the traditional press release is going, going…. , the social media release is on its way. Once again, social media takes a traditional method of doing something and improves it.

You’ve decided it’s time to dip a toe or more into the social media pool. You know the Internet can be a very unforgiving place. You want to make sure you are going to do it right. It’s time to hire agency, but before you do that you want to have your own plan. While you are going to listen to the agency’s advice, you also want to know the landscape and have a general idea of how to get from Point A to Point Z.

This is what I encourage all of my clients to do. Yes, I am the expert, but it helps when they have some ideas of their own. One of the mottoes I live by in my business life is: “all of us are smarter than one of us.” You should do the same. If an agency is unwilling to listen to your input, you are working with the wrong agency. You are paying the bills after all.

Before anything else, this what you have to keep in mind about social media: it is not a tactic, or a strategy or just another way to do what you have always been doing. It is an entirely new way of marketing and it is taking over fast. I am going to cover how fast next week, but know that its use is increasing very, very quickly.

So, what to do first? It most definitely helps that you have your own ideas. The first thing I do when I sign a new client is meet with the principles to discuss their wants and needs. The process goes much faster when both sides have a good idea of the road map they are going to use.

Remember, your social media, marketing and public relations plan should be key parts of the company’s overall strategic plan. Marketing communications should never be treated as an island or silo. Rather, it should be one of the engines driving your company to be successful.

Integrating marketing communications planning with the company’s overall plans is key. I have seen too many companies that keep public relations and marketing in silos. They are only taken out when some senior executive needs to get a message out or sales are dipping. That is just wrong. Public relations and marketing are a company’s front door. It is the first thing a potential client or customer sees.

So, the first step should be to do discuss and define what you want to accomplish. Do a situation analysis. Discuss what the positive and negative forces. Figure out who want to reach and how to do it. Come up with a goal. A goal should be a broad-based destination, where you want your company to go.

It will be up to agency to figure out to reach that goal, to come up with the strategy and tactics for getting you there. But it is key, especially in social media, to know where you are going.

The second thing you should know is that a successful social media campaign takes time and your involvement. This is not like an advertising campaign where you approve campaign concept, check in on the production and then approve the final product.

Social media is a continuing process. It calls for doing things such as blogging, tweeting, creating a Facebook fan page, and posting videos on YouTube. It is highly effective when done right. However, none of those are things you can do once and forget about. It takes your commitment to the process to make it work. Success does not come in a week. Usually it does not come in a month or two. I always tell clients to expect the process to take at least six months to show results.

But when those results do happen, and if done right, they will, the success will be far better than what comes from other method.

When I first met my doctor almost 30 years, I walked into his office, sat down and asked him: “so, what was your grade in anatomy?” He laughed. I asked the question again. He saw I was serious. He pointed to his medical school diploma that was hanging on the wall behind me. It said he had graduated summa cum laude. I was satisfied.

Why did I ask? Because as the joke goes: do you know what they call the medical student who barely passes? Doctor.

You should be asking the same kind of questions when you decide to hire a social media agency. Too many times, I see people and agencies pass them selves off as social media experts when in reality, all they have done is signed up for Facebook and have a Twitter account. When you ask if they use social bookmarking, or how they measure ROI, their eyes go blank. Or, they give you some gibberish about how ROI is difficult to measure.

The agency you want to hire should have a solid grounding in both traditional marketing and public relations and social media. They understand how to use both, how to meld them and how to measure results.

Social media as a method of public relations and marketing matured about four years. That’s when broadband became widespread. Broadband is necessary to run most social media platforms.

Because it is so new, there are not yet any solid standards for determining who’s an expert and who’s a pretender. I have studying and using social media for about three years. I started doing podcast scripts and moved on from there. I have been doing it long enough that I know what I am talking about.

What distinguishes one agency from another is how long they have been using social media, their level of commitment to it, and how successful they have been.

So, if I were looking to hire a social media expert, here would be the questions I would ask:

• How much experience with social media have you and your agency had?

You want to know if they attended a couple of webinars, maybe have a Facebook page and Tweet and now think they are an expert. That does not make them an expert, not by a long shot. Ask to see their blogs, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn usage, Facebook pages, and YouTube posts. This shows they are experienced users. Ask if they use Digg, Stumbleon and other social bookmarking sites.

• Where did they learn social media?

This shows their level of commitment. And also ask how they stay on top of the changing trends in social media. That’s important.

• Ask for the names of clients for which they have run successful campaigns. You want to be able to check on what they did and if it worked.

• How do they view social media – as a tactic, a strategy, or an entire new way of marketing?

The answer is the last one. Social media is not a one-off. It requires a commitment of time and resources. I would argue that it is more effective than traditional marketing, but it takes knowledge to do it right.

• How do they integrate traditional marketing and public relations efforts with social media?

Traditional methods definitely still have a place. Often there is a melding of the old and the new. Many journalists now use Twitter for instance. You need to make sure that traditional methods are not neglected.

• Who handles social media in their agency?

You want to know the senior people are committed to social media. You don’t want to find yourself working with some junior assistant account executive that got the assignment because he or she has a Facebook page.

• How do they measure Return On Investment (ROI) for social media?

There is no one method to do it. Personally, I believe it can best be measured by increased website traffic and sales, but there are other ways. Make sure the agency has a method for measuring ROI.

Those questions you should get started. Next week, I am going tell you about to set up a social media campaign.

And as for Wednesday’s rant: well, I am going to give you my take on NBC’s decision to interrupt the Olympic closing ceremonies.

I am one of the most active social media users I know. I have more than 5,000 LinkedIn connections, more than 8,000 Twitter followers, about 500 Facebook followers and over 100 on YouTube. I blog twice a week. I also use Plaxo, FriendFeed and some other sites. I should be doing this – it’s my business. I run a social media marketing agency. Would you hire someone to do social media if they didn’t use it?

I have some problems with social media though – or more accurately, the people who are now using it. So, they are:

• The people who invite me to join a site to which I already belong. Every site has a search function that allows you to check members’ name. Do that before you invite someone to join Facebook or LinkedIn.
• The constant creation of new sites. I have yet to see one that could replace LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. Look, this ground has been plowed already. I think those sites are here to stay. Maybe one of those four will be “AOL – The Sequel,” but I doubt it. That is not to say there are not some good sites, but enough already with the constant creation.
• The constant invitations I get to join those new sites. If I don’t respond, it means I do not want to join. Don’t keep sending invitations. It is annoying and a breach of social media etiquette. After three invitations, you go into my spam file, never to return.
• The growing number of multi-level marketing people appearing on social media. To paraphrase Shakespeare: spam by another name still smells as bad. Just because you are sending the information via a new medium doesn’t make it anymore believable.
• As long we are on the subject, no one works five hours a week and gets rich. Steve Jobs, George Soros, Warren Buffett and all those other self-made billionaires worked really hard to get where they hard. I suspect they are still putting in 15-hour days. The only people who make money off those schemes are those selling them.
• And one more point on that subject, you do not have to spend money on search engine optimization to get your webpage to the top of Google rankings. This blog is rated a top website by Google. It is consistently is on the front page of Google searches. I spent a lot of time achieving that, but no money. It just takes work.

Now that I have gotten that off my chest, I am curious what your social media pet peeves are. Let me know.

The latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor estimate the current unemployment rate at 9.7 percent. That’s 9.3 million people who are unemployed. Globally, it is estimated by the United Nations’ International Labor Office that 212 million people are out of work.

As a note, in the United States you are only of work if you are collecting unemployment. Once you stop, you are no longer counted. There are some arguments that the real unemployment rate is 17.3 percent – depending how you want to crunch the numbers.

Things don’t look good right now for a lot of job seekers.  There are approximately 2.4 million job openings in the U.S. according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You know that expression about the five pounds of feces and the one-pound bag – well, I think we are seeing it in action.

I wrote about job hunting back in November. Things have actually gotten worse since then. I thought it was time to touch in the subject again, Here are some other suggestions on finding a job.

How Does Social Media Figure Into That?
What does this all have to do with social media? It’s simple really. With approximately four workers for every position, it behooves anyone looking for a job to develop an edge. The days of just sending out a resume, or responding to a job post are long gone. Let’s face it; any company with an opening is drowning in a tidal wave of resumes and cover letters. I doubt most are even read.

You need to do something to stand out – I mean really stand out. Yeah, you guessed it – get active on social media. Why? It will help you get noticed

Remember, most positions are never advertised. Companies that have openings compile a list of possible candidates through their own searches.

According to author Richard Nelson Bolles in his job-hunting book “What Color Is Your Parachute?” the average hiring manager is scared to death that he will hire the wrong person. Anything you can do to calm that person down is a positive.

Incidentally, I highly recommend Bolles’ book. It is old media, but it is very effective. It helped me when I changed careers.

Here are seven things I would do if I were job hunting:

• If I didn’t have one already, I would create a LinkedIn profile. Studies show that 80 percent of human resources people make LinkedIn their stop with looking for a new employee. Although I not seen a reason why that is, I suspect it is because LinkedIn is a trusted resource.
• On that LinkedIn profile, I would make sure my former co-workers had posted recommendations about me. Again, employers seem to trust these more.
• Also on LinkedIn, I would join the groups that correspond with my profession. I would do that for three reasons:
  • Almost all groups have a jobs section. It’s a good place to start looking
  • It’s a great place to network. Tell people you are looking for a job. Probably 10 percent of my over 5,000 connections list themselves as “in transition.” Talking to others in your profession will give you a leg up in the job hunt.
  • It is a good place to demonstrate your expertise. All of the groups list questions and statement from members. Answer those questions and respond to the statements. Ask your own questions.
• Start a blog about your area of expertise. Several studies have shown that blogs are the most effective kind of marketing. However, blogs are also the rated the most difficult thing to do. It takes time commitment and consistency to produce a good blog. But, it is the best way to demonstrate expertise. Write about what you did in career, talk about how you solved problems and the challenges you faced. All things a human resources person wants to know. Make sure you link the blog to your LinkedIn profile.
• Create a personal web page. It is very cheap to buy a domain name through a service such as Go Daddy. Make is a “business” page with you as the company. Sell yourself as if you were a company.
• Create a video resume and post it on YouTube. Again, link it to your web page LinkedIn profile. This will give potential employers a chance to see and hear you.
• I know some of you are going to ask about Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is a good to tell people about your blog and ask questions. Facebook – well, I am not so sure. Yes there are now 375 million who use the service. But, there is so much noise on it. I will tell you one thing you should do on Facebook – if you have embarrassing pictures, or questionable posts, take them down. Many employers are now requiring employment candidates to allow themselves to be friended on Facebook by the company so the company can review the candidate. The last thing you want them to see is that picture of you in Key West, drinking from a beer bong. I know of companies that have passed on people because of such pictures.

Good luck.

Writers note: I would to thank all of you that signed up with Google Friend Connect. It is both flattering and humbling to know you think enough of this blog to make that commitment.

Okay, social media scares many C-suite people. That’s no surprise. Because if you are honest when you present, you should make them realize that using social media means acknowledging they don’t have complete control of their brand. Of course, they never really did. A brand’s identity is determined in the marketplace. It’s what consumers think – be they business-to-business or business-to-consumer – that defines a brand

It is hard for most senior executive to admit they really never had control of their brand. Facing that means acknowledging that all the money spent on marketing and advertising did not provide a failsafe way to ensure happy consumers and ever increasing sales.

Social Media will allow them to listen to what consumers are saying

Social media won’t do that either. However, unlike advertising, it doesn’t make that promise. What it does promise is a way to listen into and influence the conversation that is already taking place about a company or a brand. The odds are far better that there will be a positive outcome if a company knows what is being said.

Some executives will respond that they already know what their customers are thinking. After all, people will send emails when they have a complaint. That’s true. But remember, a person who is so upset that they are motivated to send an email is usually not representative of the customer base. Blog and Twitter comments will provide a far more accurate picture of what people are thinking.

Also unlike traditional marketing, those using social media want to hear the negative comments. How else does one get better unless one knows what the problems are? The good thing about this method it is much more inclusive. Rather than relying a focus group or a marketing study, a company has opened up its comments to entire customer base. That is much more representative of what’s actually happening.

How does one listen to these conversations? By creating a Twitter brand, by blogging, by having a Facebook page and a LinkedIn group. In addition, videos posted on YouTube are good. In each of these cases, and in other social media applications, you are looking for people to comment. It is from those comments that you will find what people are thinking.

Eventually what you to do is convert those commenter’s into fans and eventually evangelists for your brand. I will talk about how to do that in another post. But, I have just told you the first step.

Social Media takes time

After you describe all of this, the next objection is going to arise – social media takes time. Writing a blog, maintaining a fan page on Facebook, Tweeting and responding to Tweets, answering questions on LinkedIn, posting videos and monitoring and responding to comments are not something that can be done in an hour once a week.

These are many executives who used to their agency doing all the work. All they have to do is approve the campaign and make sure the agency has access to whomever it needs to work with at the company. It is a kind of “fire and forget” strategy. Now, you are asking them to become an active part of their own marketing effort.

Remember, social media is not a tactic or a strategy. It is an entirely new way of marketing. It requires a commitment to stick with it. Nothing turns off a potential customer more than sporadic, unscheduled use of social media. Blogs especially have to be posted on a specific schedule. Nothing kills a blog following faster than making it hard to find. The same thing applies to a Facebook fan page or a YouTube video channel.

This is, of course, your opportunity. You are there to teach them about social media and maintain their accounts. You are the solution to their problems of time management. It why they will hire you.

One note though – do not, ever, write your client’s blog yourself. You can edit it; you can proofread it, but don’t write it. That’s dishonest. PR firms have gotten into trouble for doing things like that. Tweeting for them is fine, as is maintaining the Facebook page. Just don’t be a ghostwriter. You want those thoughts about the company or product to come from someone who really knows it. Plus, consumers react badly when they perceive something isn’t what it purports to be.

There is more to do on social media. I will discuss the most important element next week. Stay tuned.

So, you review your new client’s needs and decide social media is the best course. Or, you are pitching a potential client and feel using social media would be the most effective way to meet their needs. The problem is the CMO and CEO are in their ‘50s and think The Wall Street Journal is the be-all and end-all of information dissemination. They think Facebook is a place where their kids waste time in mindless pursuits and tweeting is what birds do.

This is a more common situation than one would think. It is true that more and more major corporations are turning to social media for their marketing needs. However, there are still a large group of executives who frankly don’t get it.

As an aside, I have run into public relations executives who also don’t get it. They have told me they are taking a wait and see posture on social media. I get the feeling these people’s great-grandparents were buggy whip makers in 1908 when the first Model T drove by. They told themselves this automobile thing was a passing fad.

So, how to do you leap that hurdle?

So, how do you convince the person in charge that using Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools are the most cost effective – and just plain effective – way to market? It’s not easy, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as you would think.

The first step I take is to ask the person in charge if they use LinkedIn. According to the latest numbers I have seen, approximately 80 percent of employment managers go to LinkedIn first when looking to hire. So, the odds are fair to even that the CEO and CMO are at least familiar with LinkedIn. If you are really lucky, they have their own LinkedIn profiles.

The odds are also good that they don’t realize LinkedIn is a social media application. If they have a LinkedIn profile, explain they are already using social media. I often see resistance crumble at this point. Once they realize they are already using social media, explaining the rest is easier. You are not home yet, but at least you have hit a solid double.

But, what if they don’t use any social media?

Now, if they don’t have a LinkedIn profile, I sometimes show them social media’s dark side. “United Breaks Guitars,” the Motrin moms, and the Comcast stuff will often make the people in charge sit up and take notice. What I tell them is social media can kill your company before you even know you are bleeding. For instance, I have read estimates that United Airlines lost an estimated $100 million because of “United Breaks Guitars.” Watch a CFO’s ears perk up when he hears that number.

Of course, fear is not the only motivation you should use. After scaring them, tell them of social media’s successes. Southwest Airlines had one of its most successful fare sales ever primarily by using Twitter, Paula Berg, the airline’s manager of Emerging Media said at a conference I attended last fall. PepsiCo has pulled all its Super Bowl advertising. Instead of television ads, the soda company is going to spend $20 million on a social media campaign.

“… the Pepsi Refresh Project is about getting the global community to nominate projects that need funding in local communities, you upload your video/project profile, gather as many votes as you can by spamming the social sphere and the top projects will win finding from $5k multiple times per month up to $250k a few times every month,” according to the Digital Buzz blog.

There are a lot more examples of the successful use of social media. There are thousands of companies using Twitter. Ford, Honda, Jet Blue, the Marriot Hotel chain, Wachovia, and Sun Microsystems are heavily involved in it. You will find the same results for companies using Facebook.

Remember, most CEOs – especially in this business climate – don’t want to be a pioneer. They want to know that whatever you are proposing has worked for someone else. Once they know it has worked for others, they are willing to listen.

Now, if you find their competitors are already using social media, you have broken through another wall. Remember, those C-suite people are judged on results. Their board of directors, their shareholders, their lenders, analysts and journalists are all looking over their shoulders. Those company leaders do not want to discover they are losing market share to a competitor that is using Facebook or Twitter when they are not. In this case, they already see the benefit.

There is much more to talk about when it comes to pitching social media. I will cover more of the topic in next Monday’s blog.

So, last week we talked about using social media to find a job. Here’s the second part of that.

I have been asked two questions on using social media in job hunting. In the first one, the writer said he had a hard time taking social media seriously. He observed that most social media applications were created and used by 20-somethings. He wondered on how many people older than that actually used social media.

That’s an important question. If social media’s primary audience is made up of teenagers and 20-somethings, what’s the point of using it to find a job?

Well, it is true those age groups are active users of social media. However, so are millions of people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond using social media. As for companies, the last figure I saw showed over 15,000 companies using Twitter for a variety of reasons. According to Strategy Labs, the 35- to 55-year-old segment using Facebook grew 172.9 percent between 2007 and 2008.  In January of 2009, Strategy Labs estimated that almost 7 million people in that age group were Facebook users. The average age of LinkedIn users is 41-years-old.

Another statistic – according to Nielsen, 80 percent of employers start their search for employees on LinkedIn. Obviously, that’s a site a job hunter wants to be a part of. In fact, social media is a place a job hunter should want to be.

As for the second question – what does one write about?

Actually, that’s a pretty easy one to answer – write about what you are good at professionally. If you were a supply chain manager, write about the time your chief raw materials supplier suddenly couldn’t give you all of the widgets you needed. Talk about how you handled that situation. Or write about the time you primary shipper screwed up shipping product to your largest customer. Write about you how you solved the problem. You can also write about dealing with difficult employees or the time you planned the employee summer outing.

You get the idea. If you have specific questions, email me and I will try to help.

Here’s the key on whatever you write about: what you are doing is demonstrating your expertise by giving real world examples of how you used it. This is a much more dynamic way to show what a valuable employee you could be than handing in a two-page resume with a three-line description of the situation.

That’s the key to using social media in job searching – it is a dynamic way to show you are the person that fits the job. It is much better than blindly sending out resumes. Think of it this way, you are baiting a trap for potential employers. When they read your blog, they just might think this is a person they need to interview.

Which brings me to my next point, creating and setting that trap. I know I keep hammering this point, but it’s the key to social media: the hunters have become the hunted. While there are never any guarantees, social media can make you the prey for companies looking for someone with your skills. However, you are prey working to attract the hunter.

Another satisfied job hunter who used social media to get back into the workforce.

So, how to do you do that?

Well, the second point I keep hitting is that social media is a toolbox. As I have said before, you can build a house using only a hammer and saw, but it will go a lot easier if you use all of the available tools.

The blog should be your foundation. It will give you the most amount of space to demonstrate your expertise. LinkedIn should be next for three reasons:

• As I said, it is the first place most employers look for potential hires. A LinkedIn profile is more complete and in-depth than a resume. LinkedIn asks for a lot of information, which is a good thing. Someone looking for a new employee will be able to immediately evaluate potential candidates. Posting a link to your blog will help also.
• Most people on LinkedIn have third party recommendations from former co-workers or clients. These are invaluable. Someone who has garnered three or four recommendations will stand out from the crowd. One thing: it is perfectly acceptable to solicit recommendations from people who know you well. It is not to solicit recommendations from people for whom the only contact you had with them is through LinkedIn. How good could recommendation be anyway from someone who doesn’t know you?
• LinkedIn hosts thousands of different groups covering every possible profession. Joining those groups allows you to connect with professionals in your field. Members of those groups post discussion topics or questions. Joining in the discussion or answering the question is another way to demonstrate your expertise. In addition, most groups also post job openings. Those listing are a lot more current than anything you will find on a job board.

The next tool I would suggest using is Twitter. You can tweet about your blog posting – once – as I do. Once is okay because you’re telling people it is up. Anymore than that and you are bragging. In addition, there are many links to questions and discussions posted on Twitter. Again answering shows your expertise. In addition, you can join Twitter discussion groups. Discussion groups are delineated by a hash tag, which looks like this “#.” So a group would like this #publicrelationspros. You find groups by using Twitter Search. You are then talking to like-minded professionals who might just know about a job. Make sure your Twitter profile reflects what you are good at.

As a crazy suggestion, you might want to record and post a video blog on YouTube. They are usually called Vlogs. If you feel comfortable doing this, get yourself a web cam and go at it. I would suggest at least doing an outline of what you are going to talk about. And practice, and practice, and practice some more, before you record. , I have found rehearsing eight times is the most effective for some reason. I don’t why – it just seems to work. You want to sound natural when you talk.

Doing a Vlog gives a potential employee a sense of how you handle yourself. It can demonstrate your presentation skills. But, if you don’t feel comfortable or you are the kind of person who freezes in front of a camera, don’t do it. It will do more harm than good.

Well, that’s all the time we have. However, I am getting so many responses to the job-hunting blogs, I am going to continue writing about the topic next week. See ya then.

As I start my day each morning, I spend about 45 minutes reviewing the emails I have received from my LinkedIn contacts. Some are requests to connect, some are emails from individuals asking questions or inquiring about my company’s services, and some are from the LinkedIn groups to which I belong. I repeat the routine in the afternoon. I regard the 90 minutes or so that I use as one of the most important exercises of my working day.

Although it seems like a lot of time to spend on one social media application, it is a very productive use of 90 minutes. I find that with LinkedIn I learn more, make better contacts, and am contacted by more prospective clients than any other application – with the possible exception of my blog. There’s no spam, no silly games and no time-wasting requests to become a fan of someone you’ve never met.

That’s why I called LinkedIn the Facebook for adults. It is Facebook without all the superfluous noise. No LinkedIn user will tell you what they had for breakfast or post a video of some cute thing their cat did. They will ask for opinions on a proposed marketing plan or for an introduction to the CMO of the company they’re pitching.

LinkedIn defines itself as: “an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals.”

According to its website, LinkedIn:

• LinkedIn has over 50 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world.
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of its members is outside the U.S.
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

Like any successful venture, LinkedIn was started because its founders saw a need for a social network for those moving beyond Facebook and MySpace.

“Before you turn 25, your social needs tend to be in the foreground,” LinkedIn co-founder Konstantin Guericke told BusinessWeek Online in 2006. “You want to be cool, express yourself, focus on your friends. I am in my late 30s. I am married and have two kids. My social needs aren’t that great. My professional needs are in the foreground.

“It is harder to reach people in my age group than it is to reach younger people, who are much quicker adopters of technology. But once you do, the network effects are stronger. And even though a younger audience is easier to get, it’s also easier to lose.”

Building that audience and interacting with it is the key to LinkedIn. LinkedIn audiences tend to be very loyal, according to a number of studies. They are also much more serious than the users of other social media sites. These are people who want you to get to right to the point.  It is why I belong.

Getting started with LinkedIn is simple. Access the site and fill out the required profile section. You will not be providing any personal information. LinkedIn doesn’t want that information What it is looking for is a professional biography – what your current position is, where have you worked before, and your educational background. It also asks for professional memberships and accreditations. Links to blogs and websites can also be listed.

Right away, you can see where the value comes from. Anyone looking for someone in your field can search on LinkedIn for you based on any number of criteria. The last numbers I saw said 80 percent of companies looking to fill a position go to LinkedIn first. It is easy to see why. A person’s professional life is laid in the site.

In March, CNNMoney.com reported that: “employers also increasingly rely on LinkedIn to recruit and vet their potential hires. Drew Patterson, vice president of marketing for Kayak.com, used the site to find two of the five employees he hired last year, paying $195 to list his job posts for 60 days. In addition to his fellow Harvard alumni, and his former Columbia Business School classmates, Patterson considers LinkedIn among his most useful job networks. ‘LinkedIn is great because you have some sense of where this person is and how they fit into your world,’ he said.”

Joining LinkedIn is free. The company provides four levels of service ranging from the free service to its Pro Service. The Pro Service costs $499.95 a month. The price ncreases from level-to-level.

LinkedIn has three areas that I believe set it apart from every other social media site. The first is the ability of people to list recommendations from their colleagues and co-workers. Generally, the recommendations are unsolicited. In fact, they should be. I feel it is breach of LinkedIn etiquette to ask for a recommendation unless you know well the person doing the recommending. It is not uncommon for two people to recommend each other. Potential clients or employers can review a person simply by going to their LinkedIn

The second way are the LinkedIn groups. There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn. Each group is geared toward a particular industry, discipline or area of interest. Some of the groups have 15 members, some have thousands. The advantages in the groups are two-fold: you can find people who work in your industry and network with them; and the groups give you a chance to demonstrate expertise in your field.

The second one is very important. Social media marketing demands that you show expertise. You can do that in the groups by joining in the discussions that go in the groups. Answering a question, or posting a comment allows you to demonstrate your knowledge.

The third way is the ability to contact a person through LinkedIn. There is no need to provide your own email address. That blocks spammers from bombarding you with annoying, unsolicited email.

There is another advantage to LinkedIn. Having a LinkedIn profile increases your Google search rankings. That’s important because it makes it easier for those looking for a potential company to work with to find you.

Although LinkedIn tool is not the only tool in the social media toolbox, it is one of the most important. It can be the key to a successful social media campaign.

Someone once asked bank robber Willie Sutton why he chose to make his living the way he did. He replied: “because that’s where the money is.”

The same holds true for social media. Why should you and your company be involved in it? Because that’s where the people are. More and more people are forgoing traditional media. Now, they want to talk about a product or event before spending their money. They want as much information as possible before they buy something. They want to hear from the most authoritative sources. They turn to social media for that information.

What smart marketers know is that social media is allowing people to form communities. A community can form around a cause, an event, a product or a company. But it is a community where people talk to each other. As I said last week, there are conversations going on right now about your brand. You should be part of it, but whether you are or not, the conversation is going to happen. What you want to be is the host, determining the conversation’s directions and subjects. As the host, you want to give people the best reason to join circle.

Many companies are starting to get it. It can been seen in the remarkable growth of  social media in the marketplace.

Consider these examples:

•    Forty-two million American women use social media tools on a regular basis, according to a recent social media survey by BlogHer, the women’s blog network, along with iVillage and Compass Partners. That’s over half of all adult American women, according to an article in Small Business Trends.  As they spend more time with social media, women are spending correspondingly less time with traditional media; 39 percent less time on newspapers, 36 percent less time reading magazines, and 30 percent less time watching TV, the article noted.
•    The 35-year-old to 54-year-old demographic led the growth of Facebook in 2008, with use jumping by 276 percent, a study conducted by iStrategyLabs found.
•    Toyota’s new campaign for its revamped Prius hybrid will for the first time make use of Facebook, Twitter and HowStuffWorks. The social media effort will be integrated with other sites and Toyota’s consumer sites. Many, many other companies are moving into social media campaigns.
•    Small businesses across the United States are finding social media levels the playing field for them. They can now compete with much larger companies in building awareness. Implementing a social media plan costs a lot less than traditional methods.

I could go on for a long time about what is happening in social media. But, I know all of you are following the trends, because you are all smart entrepreneurs and marketers. I also suspect you are more than a little overwhelmed by all of the social media choices out there.

Right now, I have over two dozen social media websites bookmarked on my web browser. A lot of people would see that as confusing and wonder I need that many different sites.

Let me use a somewhat lame analogy. I used be a professional bicycle mechanic. I still do a lot of work on bikes. I have a very large tool box with many specialized tools. Each does something different, from tensioning a brake cable to installing pedals. I need them all. Owning a just a few would severely limit my ability to do what has to be done on my bicycles.

The same is true for social media.  Don’t think of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg and all the others as individual sites. Instead think of them as hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, and pliers. You need a complete set of tools to do any job. You need a complete set of sites to do a campaign.

Of course, just having the tools, as opposed to knowing how to use them, is a very different thing. Just signing up for Twitter and tweeting about a client is not, in and of itself, going to build much brand awareness.

As social media expert Brian Solis has said: “The conversations that drive and define Social Media require a genuine and participatory approach. Just because you have the latest tools to reach people, or have played around with them, doesn’t mean you can throw the same old marketing at them. And, it doesn’t qualify you to attempt to do so without first thinking about why and how, as it relates to the people you’re trying to reach.”

As another social media expert Simon U. Ford has pointed out, social media is made up of social networks, blogs, vlogs (video podcasts), podcasts, social networks rich media platforms, distribution channels, and micro‐content and content aggregation. Each of those areas is made up of many different applications. It is confusing to a newcomer.

Ford is perhaps one of maybe a dozen people who have solved the puzzle. He has made very effective use of social media. He has coordinated events, sold EBooks and run very effective campaigns.

Besides Ford and Solis, there are few others who really get social media. That list includes Josh Bereano, Chris Brogan and Sarah Evans. Right now, social media is kind of like Oklahoma during the land rush. A lot of people are trying to stake claims. Not all of them are going to succeed. It will take awhile for things to be sorted out.

However, there are things you can do right now to learn social media.

Let’s  review the sites I consider the Big Four of social networking: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. These are four tools that must be in your social media toolbox. Facebook has some fantastic business applications. LinkedIn has become the place where professionals talk to each other. Twitter provides a way to instantly contact potential customers to tell them about your product. If you are going to provide any kind of video endorsements, YouTube is a must.

The key, and this is where you need an expert, is how to link those sites into a single campaign. We will talk about in my next blog.

I post this every Monday. As a new feature, if you have questions you would like me to answer, please email me. I am always looking for topics and input. My email address is in the next paragraph.

If you want to subscribe to this blog, please use the RSS feed link in the upper right hand corner.

In addition, please join my community. In the upper right hand corner, there is a widget marked Google Friend Connect. Please join. This is an example of cutting edge social media.

My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help clients with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link. It’s a cliché, but it’s true for me: no job is too big, no job is too small. I have worked with companies on the Fortune 500 list and I have worked with companies that have one employee. The service I provide is the same for all.

Email me at jjcole54@gmail.com