Zane Safrit

3 Flashiest Social Media Tools

I asked the following question from Steven Groves,  Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist for TheSocialMediaBible.com.

Let’s start with the flashy stuff with social media. What’s the biggest, flashiest trend impacting social media today. Why? What are the factors driving this trend?

Here’s what he answered:

Three things come to mind:

1. Twitter of course is one of the hugest, main stream tools


2. Video


3. Social networks

The adoption rate of social networks is just astounding. When we consider there are over 250 million people on Facebook and over 70% of them are outside the US, it really is the technology that is making the planet smaller.

The flashiest thing was earlier this year with the race to one million followers by Ashton Kutcher and CNN. Then the adoption as Twitter as another media channel for stars and celebrities.

I am starting to see a larger push to video content and part of that is probably due to the capacities on increased quality and the expanse of potential applications. It adds another consumption channel to the social media model.

You can listen in streaming on-demand to the rest of Steven Groves’ ideas on social media.

Here is the followup post with excerpted highlights from my conversation with Steve Groves.

You can follow Steven Groves on Twitter.

Radio Show Guest: Drew McLellan, Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group

Drew McLellan is Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group where he writes excellent posts on...well, marketing and social media and word-of-mouth and branding. Drew has not only survived 20 years in the advertising and marketing arena, he’s thrived in it. After working for several other agencies, including Young and Rubicam’s CMF&Z, Drew created McLellan Marketing Group in 1995. Over these years he's attained a reputation, well-deserved, as a national branding expert, highly sought after speaker with about a zillion presentations at national conferences, key note addresses, training for his peers in the profession, college students and even his daughter’s tenth grade class. Drew's offered his expertise to clients like Nabisco, IAMS pet foods, Kraft Foods, Meredith Publishing, John Deere, Iowa Health System, Make-A-Wish, University of Central Florida, SkiDoo and a wide array of others.

Drew also organized 2 editions of The Age of Conversation, a collaborative book project with a few hundred bloggers and proceeds for its sale going to charity.

Drew and I will discuss what's changed over this past year in social media and marketing and the Dodger's chances for World Series glory.

The show is Friday, October 2, at 9:30 AM, Central.

Join us in either of these ways:

LIVE

1. Call-in. Dial 646-915-9212
2. Live streaming at this link

ARCHIVED

1. Streaming on-demand at this link

The 6 Biggest Mistakes Tracking Social Media's Impact

Gary Stein at Clickz shares his list of The 5 Biggest Mistakes Measuring Social Media.

Check them out. It's a good post, well-written.

But, it's written from the perspective of a social media agency. That doesn't discredit the post, the perspective, the author. That's not what I'm saying.

However, it's not the perspective of a business owner, founder, principal, CEO, CFO. Their perspective is...cash. And in particular, cash-flow.

I remain amazed at how so few social media agencies, marketing boutiques, branding agencies, whatever, talk about...cash and cash-flow. For their clients. And how their agency improves the cash-flow of their clients.

Now, maybe that oversight is the oversight of the client. Perhaps. But that oversight is short-lived among those organizations who continue to survive and thrive. The rest continue to overlook their cash-flows and soon have none and no cash to discuss. And no business to discuss, either.

Ultimately, you do two things in any organization, for-profit or not.

• You either increase cash-flows or you decrease your cash-flows.
• You either increase your cash reserves or you decrease them.
• You either retain control of your destiny or you relinquish control to lenders and investors.

And all metrics, results, tactics and strategies downstream into this metric. Otherwise, the organization no longer exists.

The advocates of social media too often overlook a grand opportunity for its advancement (and theirs). And that opportunity rests in connecting their metrics (conversations, clicks, follows, friends, whatever) with a key metric for their client: cash-flows.

Failing to even discuss, much less measure, social media's impact on a client's cash-flow not only is the 6th biggest mistake, it remains THE biggest mistake in measuring social media.

BlogTalk Radio Guest: Steven Groves, co-founder of The SocialMediaBible.com

Steven Groves is co-founder of TheSocialMediaBible.com and its chief evangelist. He's also President of TSMB Media. He joins the show to talk about... Social Media. But, more importantly, he joins the show to talk about what works in social media, why social media (strategy, tactics and resources) continues to work where it's worked and what are the trends, past and present and future, for social media to continue to work.

And, Steven's perspective on social media is that of an avid, hands-on, evangelistic practitioner and advocate for the power of social media for businesses and organization. He is an innovator in social media application.  In 2005, he developed a model for real estate agents in the application of social media called Agent2.0 and he developed and promotes a beginning strategy for social media for businesses called The Trinity of Social Media.

Join us tomorrow at 9:30 AM, Central, with either of these listening options:

1. Streaming, on-demand, listening at this link.

2. Call-in during the show at 646-915-9212.

By Sunday evening, I will publish excerpted highlights from our show.

Be sure to follow Steven Groves on Twitter. He's a resource who can help you master social media for your cause.

Amazing Social Media Stats

Did you know:

It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people... In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.

I didn't. That amazes me. Radio's introduction and spread meant a lifeline to the world for remote rural communities. That world included their county seat, their state capital, their own country, too. It was a powerful medium for connecting everyone.

Now look at one site, one resource, on social media. That shows how fast social media can spread. That shows its power in connecting, communicating, building community.

That's the difference between radio's broadcast media, one to many, and social media's broadcast of many to many, all its members to all its members...if they want.

There are other great stats in the post 20+ more mind-blowing stats about social media.

Did you know:

The online bookmarking service, Delicious, has more than five million users and over 150 million unique bookmarked URLs.

That article just made it 150,000,001.

BlogTalk Radio Guest Highlights: Jackie Huba, co-founder of The SWOM

Jackie Huba, Co-Founder of The SWOM, The Society for Word-of-Mouth and co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists: How loyal customers become a volunteer sales force and Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message and the ever-popular Customer Evangelists blog joined us to talk about the most powerful form of marketing: word-of-mouth from customer evangelists and what’s happened over this past tumultuous year for word-of-mouth and social media.

What’s been the biggest change this year for the word-of-mouth, customer evangelism, community?

The biggest change in Word-of-mouth is social media. Many organizations have realized that “social media is a jet stream” for them and is a great way to connect with customers who love you.

How has that changed the daily lives of consumers, agencies, and brands?

There are many case studies of companies who now embrace this form of media for customer service. Dell, Comcast, hotels, airlines, Zappos, BestBuy.

Companies realize customers are talking about them 24 x7. And they need to be part of those conversations, 24 x 7.

Consumers are starting to realize that companies are listening. People are learning a new comfort level with social media and voicing their opinions and the opportunities to connect with companies. Many advertising agencies are now having more of a difficult time as social media continues to be a free or low cost avenue of advertising.

Why do agencies (PR, social media, advertising, marketing, etc) find it difficult to embrace word of mouth?

They just have many processes that they have become accustomed to. All of the players and facets are known factors. Social media is a disruptive force.It is the evolution of change.

What are you talking about now in terms of customer evangelism that wasn’t happening 1 year ago?

1. Seeing more people using social media negatively: spam, people who don’t know how to use it or using it wrong.

An example is the UK, an intern created a business account for his company to tweet about their products, but he would look for top trending topics on twitter and use that hashtag, adding it to their tweets, whether it was appropriate or not. He was trying to gain visibility, but basically he was only spamming people looking for those trending topics. There was a great amount of backlash and the intern's company needed to apologize.

2. More nefarious people coming forward and offering to sell you 10,000 followers or embedding a virus in the URL on their profile.

What other social media resources are people using with great success?

Using Twitter for customer service. Comcast was one of the first companies to do this. Best Buy has a very large customer service presence on Twitter. 500 employees were given twitter accounts. They created a page where all their tweets and retweets and conversations with customers on twitter are aggregated into one feed. They use the hashtag Twelpforce. Customers can see them. They have a page for employees, telling them how to help customers, from policies to the best service. From a cost basis analysis, this is an efficient way to reduce training cost.

20:37

From the internal operations side, it is interesting that these companies have the confidence to “unleash” their employees to the public, but it also shows the companies recognize these conversations would happen whether or not they are there managing them. They are doing the right thing and providing the training, and the resources and the customers or prospects can see at a glance the service offered. See it as it's delivered every day. That's a huge confidence builder. This is another positive, cost-effective, method of advertising for the brand.

Let’s talk about social media. Everyone else is now. Twitter, blogs, youtube, facebook, podcasts like this, what else?

What’s the relationship of social media to word-of-mouth and customer evangelism? Does it help, hinder, remain neutral?

Twitter is the fastest word-of-mouth on the planet. It's instant. Whether or negative or positive. One example of this was the Dominoes Pizza video where employees were defiling the food and they uploaded it to You Tube.It received 760,000 views in 24 hours. That wouldn’t have happened except for Twitter.

Another examples was The Amazon.com issue that revolved around the rankings for gay and lesbian books that were being pulled so they were not appearing in the top Best Seller list. An author had seen this and believed that gay and lesbian books were being censored and he wrote a blog post about this. The blog post was soon picked up on Twitter and there was an outcry. Amazon had to respond.

A third example was Motrin Mom: there was an ad that moms did not like and they started a campaign against it on Twitter. Within 3 days, the ad was pulled from all media.

The best example of social media being used to generate incredible word-of-mouth for a brand was a Ford fan site began receiving cease and desist letters. He soon began blogging about it and again, the medium of Twitter was the hit again, creating an incredible buzz about the story. Scott Monty, the community manager for Ford's social media site, jumped in immediately to investigate this. He did discover there were several sites selling forged merchandise that had not been licensed. The lawyers only requested that the bad links be removed. In just 24 hours, Scott Monty had quelled that entire disaster.

What is the biggest positive impact of Social Media on Customer Evangelism?

1. Your objective is building a community of customer evangelists: the whole idea with social media and being able to connect with these people on an ongoing basis. It is a business communication mechanism. The ability for any company to connect with their fans is really amazing.

Example:2 guys in 2007 who really liked bacon, wanted everything to taste like bacon. They created bacon salt. They had no marketing experience or retailing.It is delicious! Their whole strategy was to use social media and connect with anyone who liked bacon and commented about bacon.Now they have thousands of people asking about Bacon Salt-going to the retailers, wanting the product. The retailers soon searched the product and began carrying it. It is now in 50 states and they were even on Oprah, all gained through social media.

What are the 3 biggest misconceptions about social media and generating WOM?

1. There's still the misconception that you need something to go viral for something to be successful in Social Media. A funny cartoon or a funny video. You don’t need viral. The largest viral campaign was: Elfyourself – it was distributed to millions of people, but only a small percentage of people realized that it was produced by OfficeMax and it did not generate any large amount of new purchases. So, just because something goes viral, does not ensure successful branding and financial gains.It makes more sense to use these different mediums to build a following and engage.

41:05

2. It can’t be measured. There are really many measures for social media to discover if your efforts are successful. There are tactical and strategic ways to measure results of your campaign.

3. You can put your intern in charge of your SM. You need a seasoned individual to manage your social media and customer service. You want the most experience person managing these types of networks.

It gets back to understanding the value and a commitment level to SM and your organization.

Why do brands and agencies overlook the power of the consumer and WOM?

For some larger companies, it is about learning to change the customer experience, improving the service and products. And sometimes, they, the agency can't be in control of that part. It is a lot of hard work that must be worked on from each level.

What's the most recent inspiring example of a company dedicated to Jackie Huba as a customer?

The small businesses that are learning to use these services. There is a local cupcake company here in Austin. I tweeted about it and then one day the owner saw me, said I recognize you and she realized she’d read my tweets about it. The owner used Twitter to connect with more people, increase her business, and build her brand.

Twitter is sugarmamas

Website: Sugar Mama's Bake Shop

Let’s assume we have companies listening, or employees of companies listening as companies don’t listen, employees do. And they have a limited budget. What is the one thing they can do right now to begin to generate word-of-mouth, from creating customer evangelists?

Have a purpose when doing social media. Use Social Media as a tactic to build loyalty. Focus on that everyday and you will create a business of people who will continually refer you to others.

You can follow Jackie on Twitter at JackieHuba. And you should.

Social Media Links: April 2 - April 8, 2009

* It's not about [Twitter].

Seriously.

Twitter's a tool. Granted, a great tool. But like all tools...it's the context that matters. And like all tools, used wisely...you get the results you wanted.

Ultimately, we always get the results we want in life. They may, though, be delivered with their slap in the forehead and a voice in our head saying Is this the result you wanted...hmmm?

And, with Twitter it's not about Twitter, or Tweets or Retweets, hashtags, DMs or your Follower/Following ratio, anymore than a conversation is about coffee shop and espresso.

Both are mere settings that facilitate and accelerate your conversation and results. Granted, coffee shops accelerate with caffeine and your easy access to it. And they can be a more conducive environment with fewer task-related distractions.

Twitter, on the other hand, can accelerate the conversation faster and farther than you could ever imagine. And you can connect with great and smart people having great and smart conversations previously not available to you.

But, it's not about Twitter. It's about the conversation. ( I start to gag now when I hear the conversation.) It's about the solutions and ideas and resources you find with Twitter and how fast you can find them and they find you.

But, it's not about Twitter. Another future ap will be better, faster, cuter, funnier, more frustrating and absolutely THE coolest tool and Twitter will change or dissolve and if the latter, then so will our posts about Twitter.

And, soon, we'll need to remind ourselves then that it's not about THAT COOL NEW AP, either.

If it's about anything, it's about us. A tool like Twitter helps us connect in ways and with folks we'd never have a chance to connect with in the past. It's about moving from me to we and doing it faster. We need to. Our communities thrive when we do and die when we don't.

Link from Michael Draznin.

Post at RaceTalk Blog.

* How to Use LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a dignified reception compared to the open-bar, 24/7 cocktail party, that is known as Twitter. (Again, this isn't about Twitter.) It's pace is sedate, dignified, polite. The pace comes from not only its purpose but its design.

Form meet function. Function like Form. Form grows.

Here's a list of some first steps to make use of LinkedIn. Commenters also add some great tips, too.

I've crowdsourced LinkedIn to create an ongoing series of blog posts from the responses of its members. LinkedIn offers an excellent tool to Ask and Answer questions with your fellow members. Here's the first two posts in this series:

Social Media and Social Change: Who's Driving? - April 1, 2009

Social Media: Would You Recommend It? - March 11, 2009

My next question for the community is:

What's the Biggest Surprise of Your  Social Media Campaign, Personal or Corporate?

Link for article from leif_n

Article by UAE Hosting.

* Google's Buying Twitter!. (You have to shout it as Chicken Little shouted The sky's falling...)

Oh my. This story swept the twittersphere like...a twornado. Or a Twurricane.

I wasn't keen on the idea that Google could buy Twitter. I'm not keen on Google owning my conversations on Twitter any more than I want them to market my digital health records to Big Pharma and the insurance companies. (Oh wait, they're just going to store them...roll laugh track.)

And the news of this may have been as premature as reports of someone's demise. Still. How does Twitter pay their salaries and server expenses? World-changing missions are cool. But, at some point boss we gotta eat and we gotta pay for our servers.

Then again, if it is all about Twitter then someone's gonna want to pay for it.

Link from ValerieStevens.

* BoomBoom Cards: the first ever kit for a social revolution.

We are a group of people who are impassioned to change the world. We had an idea, we thought we’d try it. It’s that simple.

Speaking of mission and social change, here's one of the best, simplest, funnest...ideas that uses social media to build a community of people taking just one step, doing an act of kindness, then sharing that idea with the local audience and then back with the community. You can see the viral spread with each idea, locally and globally, online and in person.

They describe it better than I. Check 'em out. BoomBoom somebody. Boomboom them today.

Link from Helene Scott, one of its founders.

* If we can't, then let's don't.

If we can't add something useful to someone's conversation, even our own internal ones, then maybe we shouldn't. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

With a cup of coffee, that's tough for me, sometimes. But, I'm learning.

Link from Drewmaniac. 

Inspired post from Seth Godin: Exceeding Expectations (or don't bother)

* If President Obama finds the time to chat with his constituents, can't you?

Seriously. If you're busier than he is, ok, you have a pass.

But if your schedule doesn't include any of the following, then you have time to chat with your customers:

• 2 wars
• A global recession
• $1.3 trillion budget deficit
• North Korea
• Mexico and what's happening to it as our drug addiction needs are met
• Iran
• 45 million uninsured
• healthcare as % of GDP growing past 20%
• Wall Street or Where's my 401k?
• Wall Street 2 or What'd you do with our tax dollars, Banker-Dude?
• The bailout plan
• Jobs or their lack
• Rush Limbaugh (Ok. That's gratuitous to some extent. But imagine you had someone on the air waves 'commenting' on your decisions in the same language and tone and helpfulness. ) 

Link from Grant Griffiths.

Article at My Shingle blog.

* Persistence: The key to social media strategy...

and its success. Jason Falls, the author of this blog post, brings out some great points about persistence (and patience) and its role with social media.

There's a bias towards impatience with our nation's business. It's justified. Why wait, if you can have it now? Opportunity costs and missed opportunities and 2nd one in the market loses...etc, etc...are the risks with persistence. Aggression is great. But...sometimes you have to wonder if it's not fear-based. That's a topic for another blog post.

Persistence and patience are required for social media. It's a conversation. That involves listening. Listening involves learning. Learning involves changing.

And it's this listening process that yields the results so powerful for business: self-sustaining, sustainable, cash-flow positive, a built-in innovation process, loyalty, unique, improved conversion rates, greater employee engagement, more upsells and cross-sells and add'l sales w/ existing customers, lower customer churn, customers volunteering to serve as your sales force, etc, etc. 

You're never out of touch with a social media campaign...as long as you do what Jason suggests at the end of his article: 

If your ideas fail, get back up and try again. If no one engages with your content, be brutally honest, stay persistent and keep moving forward.

Note: Granted you may get an unpleasant wake up call if you do stray out of touch. But...better that and delivered quickly than losing your company.

Link from StefanW

That's enough for this week. Enjoy Easter Weekend. I'll be back next week.

Social Media Links: March 26- April 1

* Twitter Confirms Paid Pro Accounts Are on the Way.

You knew it had to happen. A cool, fun, open and transparent, community ap for no apparent use other than its members and their interests, passions, lives, humor, craziness, events...And, the adults come in with money and rules and change it.

Granted. It takes money to run this thing called Twitter. I got it. And it's growth takes even more money.

But...I kinda laugh when this thing called Twitter offers analytics and identity confirmations. In the past, in its days of Eden, there was too much fun and too many connections being made to worry about either. And who cared if they looked at your twitter page? What mattered was if they joined the conversation and offered something to the collective, twittersphere.

Life. It changes. And with social media, it changes quickly, right before our eyes.

Personally, I'd much rather everyone pay a cover-charge ($3.00 a month?) to join this thing called twitter. A monthly cover charge levels the playing field. Everyone gets the same party and some tools, the same tools, to make it their party.

And the adults, companies and their marketing departments, can join too. But they can't stand outside and listen only.

Link from peterfrancis.

Blog post at Business Insider.

* Social Media...Advantage Small Business

A short list of action steps for small business and social media campaigns. 

I've said this before and this post inspires me to say it again...Social Media is the tool/resource to level the playing field for small business competing against big business. It's the proverbial sling for small business David's battling the global Goliaths.

Use it. 

Link from SternalMrktg

Posted at Grey Matter Minute

* 27 Twitter Applications for Your Small Business..

Ewwww. I'm rubbing my hands in wicked anticipation for this article. A quick glance through shows me Twitoria  and Monitter and Twitter Gallery (Gawd, I still need to do something with my twitter landing page...) and there's 24 more applications...

Link from fredabramson

Posted at Small Business CEO (great blog)

* Obama Makes History in Live Video Chat

A president taking questions from the public...? It's a first step. And if done frequently, then it's less likely the ballot box will be stuffed... with stoners wanting to know when weed's free or at least legal. Cool and all. I just want a broader range of questions. Regardless, the questions from the people were far better than the question from MSNBC's Chuck Todd:

Why, given this new era of responsible that you're asking for, why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery? 

I guess Mr. Todd, you haven't either read the news or digested the news to discover unemployment is rushing past 10% and that doesn't include those fulltime workers now working part-time or freelancers or those whose unemployment benefits have expired. Much of this rise in unemployment came from existing companies where the skills and talents of their workers were no longer needed. And those same skills and talents, particularly in auto-assembly line workers, are no longer needed...anywhere. No fault of the worker. They did their job. The fault rests with the company who failed to maximize their talents and invest in their training. But they're unemployed. And being unemployed, it means, they may lose their homes or their kids may not be able to afford college or their family may lose its health insurance. Chuck, did you know that almost 50% of personal bankruptcies are caused from catastrophic healthcare expenses?

All this looks like a sacrifice to me, don't you think, Chuck?

Or this classic from Ed Henry of CNN:

But Mr. President, why did it take you days to come out about the AIG bonus mess when Cuomo was on it immediately???

President Obama: Because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak. Next?

Me: Ohhhhh. Snap! More like Ohhhh, smackdown! Done so concisely and crisply, too.

Here's Ed Henry's after-action review of his performance. My read is he put more thought into his post-presser spin post, than he did in preparing for his moment. Reverse that ratio and there's no need for the follow-up spin. Every one else will do that for him. It's called POSITIVE Word-of-Mouth. Ed, I believe, offered material for negative word-of-mouth. And his consumers delivered. 

* The Talking Newspaper.

Every newspaper's management, owners, investors, reporters, editors, delivery-people...everyone associated with a newspaper and who wants that newspaper to succeed should read this post.

For that matter, anyone who wants to read great content, thoughtful and kind and introspective, should read that post and the blog by John Swanson at Levite Chronicles.

I'd riff on it. But I'd only diminish or distract from its import. Go there. Read it. Decide.

* How Twitter, Facebook and Social Media are Shaping Healthcare.

Power to the people and our social media to create the solutions that fit our needs.  Like with Obama's Video Chat press conference, social media lets us ask for and deliver solutions for our needs. And these are solutions that fit our budgets, not building our budgets to meet the company's needs for pricing. See the shift. It's huge. Social media allows us, you and me, voters and consumers, to decide...what we want.

Link from SoSpokeSaroj.

Article's at Health Affairs.

* A Control-Freak's Guide to Social Media

There it is: social media's C word. Control. And here's its description and prescription in the words of the blogpost:

Losing control is a primary reason stated by brands who are unwilling to open themselves up to the conversation - and a major reason why most continue to use social media as little more than a brochure on the web. And yet the illusion of control is just that – an illusion. By not involving yourself you actually do more to remove control than if you did.

There it is. Control's an illusion in the market place, aka the conversation. And by not jumping in on that conversation, by not joining it...you've effectively abandons your brand to the conversation; you know, the one you're not part of.

You can run, but you can't hide. You can spin, but you can't control. You can join the conversation and we'll listen.

Link from Emily Luiz.

Post at Mashable.

Social Media and Social Change: Who's Driving?

I asked this question on LinkedIn last week.

Is social media the cause of social change or does it result from changes in society? 

Here are the answers from LinkedIn's community.

 

Rob Duncan
☆ Innovation catalyst ☆ Director of commercialization & innovation group. Keynote speaker, author, consultant, educ

- Director, Applied Research Liaison Office at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT)
- CEO, Great Capes Consulting.

Hi Zane,

I'd say it's a bit of both. Online social networks provide an enabling function that allows more widespead and efficient networks to take shape. In turn, that changes behavior because more people see what a vast and distributed network is capable of in terms of business leads, collaborative innovation and idea-sharing (LinkedIn Q&A being a good example of this).

Social networks and the theory behind them are not new at all. Researchers like Granovetter have been doing work around the strength of weak ties and the value of social networks for decades. The difference is that we now have the cheap technology to turn theory into practice.

This reminds me of the development of database marketing. It was always possible through the centuries for the corner grocer to remember you, your shopping preferences, your family's names, and even their birthdays. When computing power got strong and cheap enough, it became possible to do this on a vast and distributed scale. Another example of a cheap and powerful technology that enabled a long-standing behavior.

********************************************************
Wink Game
Sales at Wink Game LLC/ ACN/ Oxygenetix
http://www.myspace.com/winkgamellc

Yes.
Links: http://www.clearchannel.com

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Rick Sharrard
I level the legal playing field when somone is accidentally injured

Owner, Sharrard Law

Hi Zane,
So which came first, the chatroom or the blackberry?

But seriously, I believe that people long to be connected and to communicate. As each new technological innovation in communication (mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, cell phone, email, message board, chat room, text message, twitter, etc) leads to use of and evolution of that technology to form new and faster ways to communicate.

Social networking and use of social media is the modern equivalent of the friday night poker game, or CEO's meeting at the athletic club, or getting together for coffee at the town cafe. People still do these things, of course, but now they can do them day or night, with people from all over the world.
The technology fills the need to be in relationship; the ease with which global relationships now occur will change society...and those changes will drive the next innovations which are on the horizon.

My 2 cents.

************************************************
Jacques Vilar
Business Solutions Manager - Capital Markets at JPMorgan Chase (formerly WaMu)
Business Solutions Manager at JPMorgan Chase
Jacques Vilar suggests this expert on this topic:

    * Jordan Mitchell

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Mathew Best
Owner, Best Solutions, Entrepreneurial Coach (Sole Proprietorship)
http://www.somedayisland.com/
http://eadd.wordpress.com/

Social networking is merely the tool. It certainly assists in social change - maybe by the speed at which it happens, but I can see how it would be the cause of social change. The idea for change comes first. This seems similar to asking if money if the cause of greed. Money is neither good nor bad, it is merely a tool.

*********************************************
John Cass
Director of Marketing at ideaLaunch
Blog: PR Communications

Without the technology, you would not have the ability to come together in groups and discuss, once people have the ability to create content, comment and connect very easily using social media it become easier to affect social change. So I'd say social change that occurs because of social media is the effect from those changes in society. Though we have to understand the level of change may be greater, or even wouldn't have happened without social change. In a way it is both.

*********************************************
Josh Chernin
General Manager at Web Industries; Itinerant Writer; and Decent Little League Coach

Hi Zane,

The same question has often been posed about one-way media such as TV. I think it is both--SM reflects what is going on, but can cause change too. It depends on the creativity and originality of the content provider.

Josh.

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Gianluigi Cuccureddu

Web Marketing Strategist ★ Consultant @ Traffic4u

Hi Zane,

I'd say that it is neither.
Social Media is an effect by technological possibilities and developments.
The fundamentals/roots of social media (engagement/participation/communication) is rooted in the human being, nothing more, nothing less.


Best regards,
Gianluigi Cuccureddu

******************************************

Thanks, all.

It is the classic chicken or egg, chatroom or blackberry ( excellent contemporary excellent, Rick!), question.

It's fascinating for me to watch social media serve as an accelerant (as Steve MacGill, CEO of Peersight Online, described social media) to the speed of social change. And at the same time be driven by that change to itself adapt to the needs of the community and users and their vision of possibilities as they're awakening to them. The potential for wondrous innovations and solutions personalized for our needs and dreams only rises as we find more ways to get together, digitally or virtually for the friday night poker game, or CEO's meeting at the athletic club, or getting together for coffee at the town cafe...any time we want with anyone around the world when they want when we share common dreams and resources to assist in reaching those dreams.

And as always, thanks to Susan Poirier, CEO of Ace Concierge, for her excellent work putting all this together.

This is the 2nd in an ongoing series of blog posts that result from crowdsourcing the community at LinkedIn. The first blog post in this series was Social Media: Would you recommend it?

Note: The original question for this blog post was edited here for clarity. Thank everyone at LinkedIn for getting past my clumsy phrasing of the original question.

Social Media: Would you recommend it?

I asked the following question on LinkedIn a few weeks ago:

On a scale of 0 - 10, and 0 being very unlikely and 10 being very likely, how likely would you be to recommend social media to a friend or colleague?

What would you say?

You may recognize the text of this question. It's the Ultimate Question Survey created by Fred Reichheld. 

I received 14 responses.

By no means is this a scientific. And the results are biased as I used a social media resource for this survey.

And I used LinkedIn as it's the more conservative of the social media resources. It has the open, transparency, of social media. But the interactions lean towards one-to-one...civilized compared to the mob scene at Facebook or the rousing cocktail party at Twitter.

Here are the responses:

* Kay Stout: On-Air Guest at Behind The Mike Show, Executive Advisor at Oklahoma Professional Search, Chairman: Speaker's Bureau at Oklahoma Prosperity Project,  Career Coach, Management Consultant, Writer at Another Point of View blog.

Yes, I would. Sites like LI provide a valuable "social" way to connect with others, as well as Twitter, Facebook, Naymz, ecademy. Special interest groups also work very well.

We like to connect with people who share a common interest or background.
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* JL Robinson, Office Manager at TW Layman Associates  JenniferLRobinson.com

You would probably find lots of useful information on social media as a business tool at Chris Brogan's site. http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

His tag line is: Chris Brogan advises businesses, organizations, and individuals on how to use social media and social networks to build relationships and deliver value.
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* Amanda Edwards-McArthur, Account Manager and Senior Recruiter  http://recruiters.ning.com/group/seattlerecruiters

10 no question! Social Media is a way to reach an audience that is vast and more targeted. There is value in word of mouth and viral marketing that goes above and beyond typical advertising. Many large organizations are starting to supplement their Marketing with Social Media content and I believe that will continue to grow in popularity. If I were looking for a specific product and wanted more information I would go straight to the web for an opinion not an advertisement which is what social media offers.

Likewise numerous marketing agencies are staffing full teams to assist their clients in this endeavor. If you could tweet (for free) 2,000 targeted customers regarding product releases/specials/sales why wouldn't you?

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* John Cameron, CEO at ROCK SOLID Business Coaching Inc.

8
The only reason that I didn't give it a 10 is because it can be time consuming.
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* Dave "The WireMan" Maskin WireNames.com - "a strand of wire is transformed into a work of art at your event." at WireNames.com

10. I get lots of gigs from Linkedin alone.
WireMan is in demand...
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* Katherine Watier,  Director of Online Marketing & Development at Environmental Working Group

10. Facebook now has so many users that if it was a country, it would be the 6th most populated. If you're a business and ignoring that potential audience, you are doing so at your own peril. Also, Q & A sites like Yahoo Answers have 10s of millions of visitors per month and rank well in SERPs. Most businesses will find an appropriate question on two there. Finally, Google is moving toward ranking social media sites more favorably than traditional sites. So if you're a business and not engaging with the blogging community (or running your own blog) you're not keeping up with where your potential customers are or how they would like to connect with you.

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* Kristin Braga,  Account Coordinator at Strategis  

Hi Zane,

I would give it a 9.5, because all media tools have their shortcomings. Although social media can be a full-time gig for anyone, any dedicated to it is worthwhile. With sites like Twitter, messages are conveyed without a lot of noise due to the 140 character limit. For lead gen and customer engagement, social media will likely become the way of the land. On the lead gen side, the economy has getting a foot in the door of companies with diminishing budgets nearly impossible. For what I have seen with my sales team, networking has become the greatest tool for getting new clients. Through LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter and the like, prospective leads can get a real look into your company and what it is worth as well as thought leadership through blogging. The same holds true for customer engagement. It is so hard to even get a person on the phone, often causing a disconnect between a company and its clients. With social media tools, clients can provide feedback without barriers and stay engaged with what is going on at your company.

I am complete social medialite and have seen its affect on generating buzz for our clients. I fully endorse it and now after I keep talking about it I so think it is worth the 10.

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* Norbert Werthenbach, ITOMIC, Maximum effectiveness of websites by focussing on usability (norbert at itomic.nl, +31630208008)  

8 but probably growing as I am just starting to appreciate and get to know the different possibilities. Up until now I did get into touch with a number of people/companies with which I could partner. I am really committed to give it a try though.

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* Rusty Dworkin, Leader, Global Network Provisioning at EDS-an HP Company 

For me, I think you have to distinguish between purely social and business social networking tools. Purely social tools such as Facebook, MySpace etc, have limited appeal to me because there are too many irrelevant threads, but if you're marketing to that demographic, it is probably very useful.

However, I believe that in the next 10 years we'll see a veritable explosion in the number and quality of business networking tools such as LinkedIn because, so far, the social aspect is limited to a business nature without the garbage that generally accompanies purely social networking sites. I liken it to attending a business-related social event for grownups who are serious networkers for business purposes. We may discuss non-work topics, such as hobbies, but the primary foundation is that business or professional connection.

LI networking is extremely useful to me, especially for communicating with people whose knowledge and business background are aligned with mine and my interests.

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* Josh Chernin, General Manager at Web Industries; Itinerant Writer; and Decent Little League Coach 

I'd say a "7" and climbing. LI has been great for me...contacts, great answers to questions, and yes, a couple pieces of work (so far). 

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* Gianluigi Cuccureddu, Web Marketing Strategist ★ Consultant @ Traffic4u,  LinkedIn Profile

To keep my answer on a meta-business level, yes "social media" is a viable business "tool", it even goes further than that, it's transformational and the way companies are going to conduct business will drastically change. When 3.0 integrates, not only people can be connected but also knowledge can/will be, already we've been seeing collaboration initiatives that seeks oppertunities outside the conventional boundaries within the company (R&D) , co-creation oppertunities within Marketing/Sales and so on. The business landscape in its essence can change.

"Social Media" goes beyond Strategy and Tactics.
A definate 10 but still at the dawn of possibilities-exploration. 

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* Dani Nordin, The Zen Kitchen: Tasty Design that Feeds Your Business

If done well, absolutely - but not in the absence of traditional face-to-face (or even telephone) networking. I find that sites like LinkedIn, twitter and Facebook allow for easy followup with people I've met, and also allow people to "get to know me" (so to speak) before I meet them in person. It's been invaluable to my business strategy.

Dani Nordin
the zen kitchen
tasty design that feeds your business 

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* Erica Friedman, Social Marketing Queen, Publisher at ALC Publishing, President of Yuricon

Of course it depends on the business. for the local sandwich store, not so much. maybe a 3 - for the local accountant, depoending on what he wants to do, could be a 7. For a graphics company, a 10.

Services which can be sold over long distances as easy as short ones, services that rely on online presence, those are all going to find Social Marketing to be incredibly useful. Products that are not shippable or are reliant on foot traffic will be much less likely to benefit.

But in every case, if the business bothers to have a website, then they should also consider social marketing.

Cheers,

Erica Friedman
Yurikon LLC
Intelligent Business Promotion

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* Guillaume Foutry, Business Development at 77Agency  

75% of online europeans spend on average two hours a week on social media, so as everyone is there you have to be there.
For business uses you obviously have LinkedIn and a couple of other tools, but increasingly people use Facebook or site such as Meet up to interact with people. Regarding the tools, well it depends mainly on you business, your objectives and your resources.

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Thank you, Ace Concierge, for your timely and prompt production with this post.