More companies are using the power of internal social networks to help employees get the news and information they need, as well as other resources critical to doing their jobs.

Social networks connect employees

Some are at the starting line, just jumping into the social media waters. Others have built a global “digital village” for employees who can post updates in a Twitter-like feed, share information with colleagues and receive crucial corporate information that is fed to them daily.

One of these companies is Pfizer, the world’s leading pharmaceutical company. I wrote about Pfizer’s internal network My World last year. This network is truly awesome and it has only expanded its capabilities since then.

Come to Our Social Networks Webinar

I will be co-presenting with Bob Libbey, senior director of Global Colleague Communications and Corporate Social Media, Pfizer Inc., at an HR.com webinar on Tuesday, May 22, at 1 pm, EDT.  You can register by clicking on the title of our presentation: How Internal Social Networks Enable Interacting and Responding to Employee Needs.

I will describe how smaller companies can also establish social networks for their employees by using third-party networks such as LinkedIn, Google+ and Ning.

Bob will explain how Pfizer consolidated more than 400 news and information sites, each with its own look, feel and navigation set-up. In the past year, Pfizer’s My World has attracted 175,000 unique visitors (including outside vendors and consultants) and over 60 million page views.

So I invite you to join us on our webinar to learn how your company can start or expand your employee’s internal social network.

Related articles

• Internal social networking can help employees get engaged (bizjournals.com)

Well, you’d think blogging was definitely on the way out for companies, based on a new study, 2012 Inc. 500 Social Media Update.

Although USA Today pretty much wrote off blogging in its coverage of the results, it did quote Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor, as saying that engaging blogs can serve crucial marketing goals — especially executives out to establish expertise in their industry.

CMOs Interviewed

The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts surveyed the chief marketing officers of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest growing companies to learn how their adoption of social media has changed since 2011.

The big news, according to the study, is that CMOs are turning to new platforms and tools including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, texting, downloadable mobile apps and Foursquare.

If you study the chart below, you will see that blogging has been increasingly successful as a social media strategy over the past three years, reaching 92% in usage even as its adoption as a social media tool drops. Blogging is still widely used by advertising and communications companies, less so by government agencies. Oddly, this was the first study including LinkedIn, which showed up at 73% usage, just behind Facebook’s 74%, which topped the list.

Companies are reducing their use of message boards, video blogging, podcasting and MySpace. Blogging reached a high of 50% of companies using it in 2009 to 37% in 2011. Companies responded overwhelmingly that the use of social media has been successful for their business.

Of course, social networks have grown in importance. If you’re a consumer company, Facebook is a formidable channel for reaching retail consumers. LinkedIn is corralling the business community.

So why is blogging losing ground? I believe a big reason that companies are blogging less is that it requires a commitment of time. Yet there is no better vehicle for a company to tell its story and for brand building.

Blogging is Here to Stay

Companies, both large and small, need to factor in blogging as an essential tool in their social media arsenal. As I’ve written before, I believe a blog should be the centerpiece of a company’s social media strategy.

Here’s why:

1. Own your content. When you rely on a third-party social network, you are at the mercy of their rules. What a pain in the neck it was when Facebook started company pages. Now you had two information streams to worry about. Recently, they changed their format again with timeline and have just changed the size of the insert in the large image. With your own blog, you can create the content, insert and delete copy, add videos, images and podcasts that promote your company and your products and services – according to your rules. And your content won’t disappear if a social network disappears.
2. Feed social networks. From your home base, you can distribute important information directly to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other social media networks where your customers are forming communities. Post an article, and it is immediately “pinged” to sites of your choice with a link back to your blog. The viral impact of blog post is enormous.
3. Build credibility. A 140-character tweet has its place. But your customers want to know there is a full-service company behind the tweet. A blog will burnish your brand.
4. Collect market intelligence. Readers can leave comments on your blog posts giving you valuable market intelligence and endorsement of your ideas.
5. Attract followers. Visitors can subscribe to your blog. Just think, a built-in audience for your articles, newsletters and surveys on important topics. As your list of subscribers grows, you can begin to sell them products and services directly, bypassing social media networks.
6. Impress Google. Blogs can rank highly in search, unlike static websites, because the content is changing all the time.
7. Engage Employees. Employees can get the complete story from the company about new developments and not third parties.
   

By the way, the most highly ranked blog on the Technorati 100 is The Huffington Post, one of the most influential newspapers, either online or offline.  Most people think it is a website when it’s actually built on a blog platform.

At last count, The Huffington Post’s monthly circulation was 37 million with 1 billion page views, and is must reading for business executives, politicians, entertainers – and other news media who regularly quote from it.

Not bad for a blog.

* with apologies to Mark Twain

The blogosphere is by its very nature a truly global phenomenon. Anyone with an Internet connection can, in theory, access your blog, no matter where they are in the world. But that doesn’t mean they will. To blog for an international audience, you need to make sure your content is appealing and accessible across cultural and linguistic divides.

Target your blog

Christian Arno

On the day The Huffington Post launched its French edition, founder Arianna Huffington said, “While we will be importing the platform, technology, and tools from across the pond, Le Huffington Post will be rooted in French culture and will reflect France’s own unique personality, rich culture, and diversity of voices.”

As with the preceding Canadian and UK versions, the news giant has tailored its French content to appeal to a specific international audience. We can’t all have the resources of Technorati’s current top-rated blog, but we can focus our efforts on markets that are likely to pay dividends.

The exact nature of your blog will help determine where you should start. A blog about soccer will have a wide potential appeal throughout much of the world but may have a more select, niche appeal within the USA. Concentrating on the Major Soccer League (MSL) could help reach that niche audience while in-depth coverage of leagues based in South America or Europe could give you inroads into those markets.

Beppe Grille has proved that a relatively narrow topic does not necessarily rule out an international audience. The Italian activist blogs largely about politics in his homeland but his blog – available in Italian, English and Japanese – has gained a huge international following.

Use simple words

Unless you’re writing a blog on the joys of circumlocution (that’s general wordiness for the non-enthusiasts) it’s a good rule of thumb to keep the language relatively simple and accessible. This is even more important if you’re aiming for an international audience. English is still the single most widely used language online according to Internet World Stats. An English-only blog may attract a limited number of foreign visitors. But if they speak English as a second language, simple words and structures will make things easier to follow.

While English is the most widely used language on the ‘net, it still represents only around a quarter of total usage. To successfully cross over to international audiences you will also need to translate your blog. Using simple language in your original posts will help make this easier.

Consider your translation options

Once you’ve decided which markets to target, you need to decide how to translate your blog There are many automatic translation programs available that offer a quick, free solution. The drawback is that even the best machine translation is prone to contextual errors. They don’t deal well with slang, abbreviations, acronyms and other cultural and linguistic variations. All this can leave parts of your blog looking stilted and amateurish or may even change the meaning entirely.

Enlisting the help of native speaking translators is a better option by far. This will help ensure an accurate translation, retain meaning and nuance and avoid any embarrassing cultural faux pas. Of course, it is more expensive, so you’ll want to choose your languages carefully. You could test the water by translating some of your best posts into a few selected languages. If you find you’re attracting interest, you can go ahead and translate more.

When to post a blog

The best time to update your content is in the morning. This can give your blog an up-to-date feel but can also present a problem when crossing international boundaries and time zones. It makes sense to stagger the times when you publish your international content. Make a schedule based on the relevant time zones and publish your content as the sun comes up all around the globe.

Make use of social media

Social media is an ideal platform for promoting your blog. All the big hitters like Facebook and Twitter have international audiences and settings but it’s worth remembering that local competitors can be every bit as important within their own spheres of influence.

The home-grown Mixi is a massively popular social network in Japan for example, while Russian-based Vkontakte (commonly known as VK) claims to be the largest European social network with more than 100 million active users. In addition, there may be local specialist sites, forums and social networks that are worth checking out depending on the theme of your blog.

Create separate (but linked) profiles on all the relevant social networks. Keep them up to date and be proactive. Don’t just put links to your blog and hope for the best; write guest posts, leave comments and join in the online conversation.

Taking your blog to an international audience can be a lot of time and forward planning. Given the huge potential audiences you can reach, it can be worth every bit of effort you put in in building new relationships and driving potential business.

Christian Arno is the founder of US translation agency Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 170 employees spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over forty million words for businesses in every industry sector, including the likes of MTV and World Bank. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.

I was just browsing through the McKinsey Quarterly, and stumbled upon an interview with the authors of The Dragonfly Effect, Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, in which they discuss the secret to telling a successful story.

Create Tension

Jennifer Aaker

As a blogger, I am always telling stories. It’s at the heart of what bloggers do. So, let me lift a quote from Jennifer Aaker:

Good stories have three components: a strong beginning, a strong end, and a point of tension. Most people confuse stories with situations. They’ll tell about a situation: X happened, Y happened, Z happened. But a good story takes Y, the middle part of the story, and creates tension or conflict where the reader or the audience is drawn into the story, what’s going to happen next.

A Compelling Story

In their book, they describe a case study of 28-year-old Scott Harrison, a nightclub and fashion promoter, earning lots of money. But he felt spiritually bankrupt and gave it all up to volunteer on a floating hospital while he figured out what to do with the rest of his life.

He came back with a renewed sense of passion, and formed a foundation charity: water to help bring clean water to millions of underserved populations around the world who don’t have any.

In the McKinsey piece, they describe his story – about asking friends to donate $31 to his charity instead of buying him a gift for his 31^st birthday. To date, the charity has raised $20 million and provided clean water to more than 1.4 million people spanning 17 countries.

Read the Middle

I just gave you the beginning and end of the story. If you want to find out the point of tension in the middle, go to the interview on the McKinsey Quarterly

With everyone’s email box overflowing, how do you get someone’s attention to read yours? Baydin, the company that helps you manage your email inbox, analyzed five million emails and discovered the subject lines that got the most responses and those that did not. I read about this in Tech Journal and you can visit the site to see the complete infographic with all the information that Baydin collected.

But I was most interested in the best words to use in email titles — and the ones to avoid. Five million emails seem like a pretty definitive sample to me. I’ve copied the part of the infographic with the best and worst words. Best words: apply, opportunity, demo, connect, payments, conference, cancellation. Worst words: confirm, join, assistance, speaker, press, social, invite.

Funny about the word “invite.” I tend to read those emails. You know, the opportunity for free food and drinks. But maybe that’s only me.

Brainstorm ideas

Over the years the term “brainstorming” has fallen out of favor.

An image of people throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick – meaning throwing out ideas to see if they have any merit – is likely to induce fond memories among old-timers who remember when brainstorming was all the rage.

But, done properly, brainstorming still works.

What is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming was the creation of Alex Osborn, a founder of my former agency, BBDO (formerly Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn). He posited that a group could generate more creative ideas for solving a problem than an individual. There’s been a lot of controversy over the years about his methodology, with research both for and against it.

The New York Times last Sunday carried a very long story entitled The Rise of the New Groupthink in which the writer, Susan Cain, debunks the current trend of people working in teams in open space – or possibly cubicles if they’re lucky – as they collaborate on projects.  She champions the introvert who needs quiet and privacy to be creative. I think she makes some valid points

When Brainstorming Works

Where Cain and I diverge, though, is when she writes, “Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity…people in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic other’s opinions and lose sight of their own; and often succumb to peer pressure.”

I beg to differ. I’ve participated in, and facilitated, numerous brainstorming sessions, which I prefer to call group problem solving sessions. They generated many original ideas that were successfully implemented.

The Facilitator’s Role

Think of the facilitator as a conductor, bringing the strings, brass and percussion together to produce beautiful music. Without the conductor, the outcome wouldn’t be half as enjoyable with musicians coming in a beat too late or too loud.

When brainstorming, the group has to first identify the real problem. They may have come prepared to work on what they thought the problem was only to discover it was something else.

Let me give you an example. A number of years ago I was invited to facilitate a session for an insurance company in New Jersey. They were losing a lot of sales to the competition. Their products and services were equal to or better than the competition, in their view. The sales team was working hard and making lots of calls. In advance of the session, the team’s leader had concluded that what they needed were more sales people.

The Real Problem

When I arrived, I started by facilitating a discussion about the problem. What did the individuals in the group think? What had they experienced in calling on prospects? Where were things breaking down?

After not too much discussion, the team discovered the real problem. The problem wasn’t that the company did not have enough sales people. The problem was it didn’t have enough trained sales people. The team was making calls but they lacked the training to be successful. It was like a light bulb going off. In changing the problem statement by one word “How do we get enough trained sales people?” we had an entirely different discussion and the ideas came tumbling out.

How to Brainstorm Successfully

Alex Osborn laid out a template for brainstorming that is still used today: focus on generating as many ideas as possible, withhold criticism, welcome unusual ideas, combine and improve ideas.

By also following these guidelines, you are more likely to generate ideas that are actionable:

• Invite a mixed group of staff. Individuals with varying job responsibilities add different perspectives. Invite an employee from outside the department who knows little to nothing about the problem. Some of the best ideas come from people who don’t have a clue that the great idea they contribute is something no one else would have ever thought of.
• Invite your client to participate. This terrifies some agencies – the client will think we don’t know what we’re doing! When I first suggested the idea I thought the managing director would have a heart attack. But the client loved being part of the process and we invited clients regularly after that when we were planning a campaign.
• Maintain control of the group. Cain is correct when she points out that a few members of the group may hog the conversation but it is the facilitator’s responsibility to ensure that everyone contributes. Even introverts have ideas to share.
• Assign responsibilities and deadlines. This is where groups can fail. What do you do with the ideas you generate? The group, the client or the head of the project decides on the ideas to be implemented based on criteria that is established after the session. Don’t give criteria in advance, such as the budget, because it will stifle creativity. At the end of the session, members of the idea team are assigned specific responsibilities with deadlines – not second quarter, but by April 1.

Brainstorming can be an effective tool in generating creative ideas. Not everyone is a Steve Wozniak who invented the first Apple computer or the next Einstein. But everyone has ideas that are worth exploring.

And brainstorming, when done properly, is an effective tool to unleash the creativity of teams whose members aren’t copywriters or designers or great inventors.

Sometimes two heads are better than one, four heads are better than two and eight heads are better than four.

Social Media Examiner (SME) hosted an online webinar yesterday and described how 9 small businesses are attracting thousands of visitors and, in some cases, millions of dollars in revenue. Most of them have only been at it for two or three years. I have to say I was more than impressed.

Social Marketing Makes Dollars and Sense

In the opening slide, we learned why social media is essential for any business.

My key takeaways from the presentation were:

• Give away free content. I’m not talking about the content of your blogs. But useful stuff like Ana White, Carpenter, does — diagrams and detailed instructions, for example, about how to build a cabinet.
• Use very personalized images. In most cases, the business owners had several informal shots of themselves sprinkled throughout the site — with their spouses, holding their dogs, etc.. Photos give you an emotional connection with your visitors.
• Create and empower your community. For example, run a contest to engage your readers. If you have a photography business, you could invite your audience to submit their best photos, select winners and post them on your site.
• Enable readers to share your content. Be sure to prominently display social media buttons for social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ so that your followers can share your content with their followers, potentially drawing many more visitors to your site.
• Leverage social proof. If you have impressive followings on Twitter and Facebook put those numbers up on your site. Include testimonials.
• Choose the channels that work best for you. If you’re a small business, it takes time to be active on every social network. Experiment and see where you should place your focus. You don’t have to be everywhere.

I liked that he showcased offbeat companies such as Easy Lunch Boxes and Orabush tongue cleaner (don’t laugh, he’s raking in the money). I concluded from the presentation you never know when an simple idea will turn into a profitable business.

Lessons Learned

At the conclusion of the seminar, Michael Steltzner, founder and CEO of SME, summed up the key lessons in this slide:

Please share in the comments box how your small business is using social media to build your business. I’m all ears.

I’ve been waiting for the day when an idiot would leave his cell phone on during a play or concert I was attending – even after the usual announcement to turn them off — and the phone would start ringing. It happened the other night and how Alan Gilbert, music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, handled the incident was so instructive that I thought I’d share it with you.

Ring, Ring, Ring

Disrupting Mahler's Ninth

The orchestra was playing Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, his last masterpiece. Just prior to his death, the composer had also been music director of the Philharmonic so he holds a special place in the hearts of the orchestra and its fans. Below this post is a video of the famous last movement of the symphony.

If you’re familiar with the symphony, in the final movement there is an exceedingly soft period when the violins are scarcely whispering. Guess when the phone went off?

Finally, Alan Gilbert stopped the orchestra, turned in the direction of the phone and asked that it be turned off. The phone kept ringing. Obviously, the offender didn’t want anyone to know who he was – probably afraid of a lynching.

How to Handle Disruptions

Maestro Gilbert demonstrated what an effective communicator he is. After the phone finally went silent the conductor faced the audience and said, “I apologize. Normally when these things happen we ignore it because stopping is even more disruptive. But in this case I just had to.” He turned to the players and told them where they would begin again.

Then he turned back to the audience and, with a smile, he said, “Well, we’re ready to go!” That brought laughter and a big round of applause. The orchestra went on to finish this brilliant piece of music and deservedly won a standing ovation. Stopping a concert is so unusual that The New York Times wrote a piece about it.

What I Learned

We all face disruptions and disappointments in our lives. It’s how we handle them that can turn a negative into a positive.

When you’re making a presentation, do you scold people who are talking and disturbing others in the audience? Or do you make a joke and ask if you can join their conversation? Scolding them will make the audience uncomfortable (not to mention the offenders).

Taking the high road will gain you the respect of the audience like it did for Alan Gilbert when he carefully communicated to the audience why he had to stop the performance.

When you lose a piece of business do you go into a funk and blame it on the client? Or do you try to learn what went wrong and try to fix it? Maybe other clients are fuming about the same thing and you’re not even aware of it – like not returning phone calls or always being late with assignments.

Protecting Your Brand

The New York Philharmonic is one of the world’s great orchestras. A simple disruption of one performance isn’t going tarnish its brand. But what if Alan Gilbert had gotten into a shouting match with the offender with the ringing cell phone? Ironically, that could have turned the audience against him because they would have become so uncomfortable with the way he handled it. But he didn’t do that, of course. He handled it with grace and style.

I hope you don’t mind my sharing this experience with you. Like the rest of the audience I was furious at the owner of that darned ringing cell phone. It could have totally ruined the performance. But Alan Gilbert managed the incident like a true leader.

He and the orchestra went on to give a ravishing rendition of the last movement. The audience was on its feet. The cell phone incident was but a memory.

Update: The mystery of why the phone kept ringing has been solved. It was the alarm clock of an iPhone. The phone’s owner is interviewed by The NewYork Times.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when I received the following email from The New York Times at 1:04 pm.

Not me. Of course, as you may have read, The Times committed a big boo-boo yesterday when it accidentally cancelled the subscriptions of 8 million print and online subscribers. The media and Twitter scribes were all over it in the intervening three hours before the Times sent out this correction at 4:19 pm:

The Correction

The Times did the right thing, of course, but I’d like to make a point about content and tone of the correction. Aren’t they in the communication business? Note the cold tone of voice and shortness of the second email. Why was the first email sent in error? How did it happen? Subscribers would have welcomed a more detailed explanation.

A Missed Opportunity to Engage Readers

A Forbes writer, who also received an email, tried calling the Times and kept getting busy signals. It’s a sure bet that many, many other subscribers had the same experience.

Sure, it was nice to receive an apology. But The Times missed a great opportunity to engage with its subscribers. The paper could have used some humor in its message and personalized it with the signature of an actual person.  Can a company write a letter?  Didn’t a human being write this missive?

The Times wrote a story online about the mistake at 2:29 pm and sent out this  message in its official Twitter feed, “If you received an e-mail today about canceling your New York Times subscription, ignore it. It’s not from us.” Oh, yes, it was. Turns out the email was sent by a Times employee, according to Eileen Murphy, a Times spokesperson. And why the delay of almost 90 minutes before the subscribers received the apology?

The Times Email Could Have Said –

Dear Valued New York Times Reader,

Wow, did we goof! We did NOT cancel your subscription. Please ignore our earlier email with the subject line, “Important information regarding your subscription.”

It was an honest mistake — someone pushed the wrong button and we had 8 million unhappy readers for a couple of hours before we fixed things. Your email was not compromised. Everything is back on autopilot. You’ll continue to receive your New York Times as you always have.

If you’d like to vent, we invite you to visit us on our official Twitter account at https://twitter.com/#!/nytimes. We’ll also answer any questions you have about your subscription or any of our other services.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. We value you as a New York Times reader.

Sincerely,

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr.
Publisher

— now isn’t that better than the email I did receive?

PS – see the comment below. The email went to non-subscribers, too. What a goof-up.

Less than a year ago, I happened upon the blog of Danny Iny. He and I became online friends. I wrote a post for his site Firepole Marketing and he wrote a post for Write Speak Sell.

Climbing the Pole

Danny Iny

Little did I know that I was engaging with a shooting star of social media. Danny has blown me away with his strategy of engaging and building a loyal community of followers.

He went from zero followers in less than a year to hundreds of thousands who have read the dozens of guest posts he’s written for his own site and for ProBlogger, copyblogger and many other top-ranked blogs.

Danny’s Story

Danny tells the story of how he did it his new book Engagement from scratch, in which he has enlisted leading authors and bloggers to contribute chapters on audience building. I highly suggest that you read it if you are trying to build an audience. I’ve certainly learned a lot.

In his foreword, Danny says, “My partner and I had just launched a promising new venture called Firepole Marketing that offered a marketing training program for small businesses, entrepreneurs and non-marketers.

We had already built the training program, and just launched our brand new blog. We had no readers, no subscribers, and no relationships with the big players in the industry.”

Danny and his partner started out by launching a contest to promote their training program. As he recounts, “So what were the sales results? Nada – we didn’t sell a thing.” He learned that first you need to build your audience before you make a sale.

The Four Stages in Growing an Audience

Danny also learned there are four distinct stages involved in growing an audience online that every blog and website has to go through. He says:

Stage 1. Truly Awesome Content.  Know who your audience is, and create something extraordinary for them.

Stage 2. Build Your Community. Connect with other people who can help you along the way – not just the big players that you look up to, but also your peers, who are trying to do the same thing you are.

Stage 3. Be everywhere. Do the work to become ubiquitous in eyes of your audience.

Stage 4. Get viral. Harness the formula that I outlined earlier (in the book) to generate some real virality and growth but only we’ve got the critical mass for it to work.

What the Experts Say

Luminaries such as Guy Kawasaki and Brian Clark write about general principles of engagement and building an audience. Other authors tackle tips on developing content and using social media, steps to take and lessons learned.

Just this month Danny was an “expert” panelist on a webinar The Business Blogging Teleseminar organized by Tom Treanor at RightMixMarketing. The panel also included blogging guru Denise Wakeman.

Wow, Danny, way to go! Excuse me while I go implement the advice of you and your experts.

For more information about Danny Iny, visit Firepole Marketing. His book “Engagement from scratch! How super-community builders create a loyal audience and how you can do the same!” is available on Amazon.com. It can also be downloaded for free at EngagementFromScratch.com.