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If you’re interested in how corporations are organizing their social media strategies, then the slide show at the bottom of this post will bring you up to date on current practice.

It highlights the results of recent online study, conducted by the Altimeter Group, a technology management consulting firm. The firm surveyed “140 enterprise-class social strategists across industries,” according to the study.

The study’s catalyst was noted web strategist and Altimeter partner Jeremiah Owyang.  His blog Web Strategy gets 70,000 unique visitors monthly so obviously a lot of people believe his insights and research into corporate social media strategy are on the money.  In this presentation he tracks the career path of a Corporate Social Strategist defined as:

“The Corporate Social Strategist is the business decision maker of social media programs — providing leadership, roadmap definition, innovation; and directly influencing the spending on technology vendors and service agencies.”

Among the key findings:

• Almost 80 per cent of those surveyed said their programs are not looking long term, and have existed for less than three years.
• The vast majority of Corporate Social Strategists report to Marketing or Corporate Communications
• Funding is limited, with more than 75% of companies reporting an annual spend of less than $500,000.
• There are five principal ways that companies organize the social media function.
• It’s uncertain whether the Corporate Social Strategist will achieve top management ranks in the next five years.

Do you agree with Altimeter’s definition and where do you think the Corporate Social Strategist will be in his/her organization in five years?  How will they be influencing corporate strategy?

[tweetmeme]A friend is forwarding my bio to his agency’s new social media director who might need some outside help.  As I was touching up a paper copy to send as an attachment, I asked myself, “Are you nuts?” Paper bios and resumes are so 20th century. My entire business life is there for everyone to see on my blog. I tooled around the web to find out what other social media consultants are doing and, sure enough, they have online bios.

Paper bios are so 20th century

Then another “boing” moment. I should add my new bio as a page on my blog, with a new tab “Social Media Bio.”

When I finished writing, I looked at my About page and it seemed bland in comparison. Dull actually. From me, the word mechanic (as someone once called me after I told him what I do).  So I immediately ditched the About page.

This is not contest, in the sense that you won’t receive any prize, but I’d welcome your comments on my new Social Media Bio. I’m still tinkering with it.  Think I’ll move the search box further up, and make a couple of other tweaks.

But I’d love to hear from you, dear readers, about what you like, don’t like or what I might add or delete. Thank you.

P.S. Since writing this post, I’ve updated my bio based on advice from readers and several experts, and also changed my navigation tab back to “About.”  I’m still not sure I’m keeping that term. As always, your thoughts would be appreciated.

Blog as centerpiece of social media strategy

[tweetmeme]Here’s good news if you’re a small business owner: social media has helped to level the playing field.  In the past, smaller companies couldn’t compete with the advertising behemoths in reaching customers and prospects.

Now you can by going directly to your target audience with a blog as the centerpiece of your social media strategy.  Think of your blog as your home base.  It’s important to get runners on first, second and third base but they need to cross home plate for you to win.

Feed Your Blog to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

From your home base, you can feed important information directly to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other social media sites 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 – think runners crossing home plate when visitors come to your site.  Specifically, you should have a blog because:

1.     A blog is a content management system, giving you tremendous flexibility.  You can create the content, insert and delete copy, add videos, images and podcasts that promote your company and your products and services.

2.     Search engines like Google reward dynamic sites – that is, they want to see fresh content on a consistent basis.  Then, search engines will send more people to your home base.  Static websites just don’t cut it anymore.  The site you’re on now is a WordPress blog, designed to contain all the information found in a traditional website.

3.     A 140-character tweet has its place.  But your customers want to know there is a full-service company behind the tweet.  A blog can contain all the information you had on your old website, but you can easily make changes and update the information to respond to changing market needs.

4.     You can invite guests –  clients, thought leaders, industry gurus – to write guest articles.  People like PR to show off their expertise.

5.     Readers can leave comments on your blog posts giving you valuable market intelligence and endorsement of your ideas.

6.     Visitors can subscribe to your blog.  Just think, a built-in audience for your articles, newsletters and surveys on important topics.

So, what are you waiting for?  Get yourself a blog and go directly to your customers, like the big boys do.

[tweetmeme]I’ve been blogging about twice a week for well over a year now.  I gave my first update last summer about why I blog.  Write Speak Sell would become the focal point of my thoughts about communicating ideas, which is at the heart of what I have done professionally for over 30 years.  It’s liberating to say what you really think and believe, while always being authentic.

A blog is the centerpiece of a company's social media strategy

Since then I’ve also come to believe that a blog is the centerpiece a company’s social media strategy, both internally and externally.  The CEO is where it all starts. Wise leaders are using social media because that’s where their employees and customers are.

The CEO needs to be talking directly to the company’s stakeholders regularly with quick takes on new developments.  A blog is the perfect vehicle because the nature of a blog is to be informal and for it to express the personality and communicate the authentic convictions of the writer.

A blog liberates the CEO from his ivory tower and into conversations with employees and customers in the social media communities they populate. This is a big culture change for most companies.

With a keystroke, the CEO can distribute her blog to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites where people are getting their information now days.  She can be out there first with the news, before the rumors and misinformation start flying around the Internet.  There isn’t time for a press release vetted by a dozen lawyers before it’s distributed.  Everything is transparent now.

Employee Engagement

The CEO can profoundly influence the company’s future success when employees to buy into his vision. But employees can’t march in step with a CEO who doesn’t engage them in a two-way conversation about his goals for them and the company.  If he does that, they can become the company’s most important brand advocates and commit to providing superior customer service.

Once again, I cite Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh as the pioneer.  In his blog last year he wrote a piece, “Your Culture”  In it he said, “It’s a very different world today. With the Internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire by email or with tools like Twitter. The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously as well.”

Good advice and a good example to follow.

These trends are reprinted from “ Mashable, the Social Media Guide,” By Vadim Lavrusik

With the news industry struggling to find new revenue streams that can reshape their broken business model, 2010 will be defined by experiments in news media monetization. This will also include content that is guided more than ever by the audience and ad revenue.

This coming year we will also see the results of news organizations putting pay walls up, as well as new experimental models like accepting Web donations from readers — some of which may prove to be successful. Below are eight emerging news media business trends to look for in 2010.  For more detail, go to Mashable for descriptions and images.

1. Social Media Monetization
2. Revenue Beyond Advertising
3. As Publications Fold, Others Become Lean and Mean
4. Growth in Hyperlocal and Community Models
5. Local Advertising Grows
6. Local Advertising Models Emerge
7. To Charge or Not to Charge?
8. The Fremium Model

As I’ve written before, internal social networking is growing like wildfire. But not nearly enough companies are leveraging their employees’ love affair with external social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to communicate with customers. I will be describing how they can in a webinar on August 19 at 1 pm. EDT with my colleague Amy Dean.  For a more detailed description and to register for this free one-hour program click on this link FreeWebinarWednesdays.

We will be discussing our concept of “Inside Out Public Relations,” how companies can use employees as brand advocates online to reach their customers and other constituents.  A simple 7-step strategic plan can lead to empowered employees speaking out on their company’s behalf.  Amy will also describe a case study in which she helped an IT consultant use Twitter to become a one-man marketing magnet for CIOs and a go-to source for trade media and conference organizers.

To learn how IBM trusts its employees to use social media wisely, tune in to the video on the landing page of this site.  Along with IBM, it’s time to join companies like Dell, Southwest Airlines, Zappos and Intel and turn public relations inside out!

Does your company have a Social Media Director to manage the company’s social media strategy?  That’s a question I posed in a LinkedIn Poll last month.  With 22 responses, it is hardly scientific, but it was telling, nonetheless.

For detailed results by age, gender, job function, company size, and job title go to LinkedIn.  Overall results,

Yes    18%
No    36%
In the planning stages    18%
Haven’t thought about it      4%
I wish we did but no plans at this time    22%

The greatest number of responses was “No,” more than twice as many as said “Yes.”  Almost a quarter wished their company had a social media director but there were no plans for one.  Isn’t that too bad – social media is fast becoming the dominant communications channel in business, but many companies are still behind the starting line when it comes to establishing a strategic social media presence.

Here’s the kicker:  by age group, 100% of respondents aged 18-24 worked for a company with a Social Media Director.   That’s a wake-up call for companies that are resisting the new media world.  Your future leaders are joining the competition that are already on the social media band wagon.  Beware!