Looking ahead to a panel discussion at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit next Wednesday in Key Largo, I’ve decided to go out on a somewhat futuristic ledge here and imagine how social media could dramatically alter the retail experience. Since most of this technology already exists, add in a touch of creativity and this becomes my very own “Mission: Possible.”

Knowing: “So Nice to See You Again, Ms. Shopalot”
Since many of the ideas below are dependent upon you, the shopper, sharing your social graph with retailers, let’s get the basic enabling technology out of the way. Near Field Communications (NFC) already allow for the instantaneous transfer of credit/debit card data from consumer to retailer, so sharing your social info via NFC shouldn’t be too far away. Now the fun can begin.

Personalizing: “Is that Beyoncé Wearing a Maternity Gown in Your Size?”
Now that the retailer knows who you are, opportunities for personalization abound. Electronic signage reacting to your social preferences could display your favorite celeb wearing an outfit that was on your posted shopping list or simply point to the floor or dressing room where you can find a product selection in the colors you like.

Bargaining: “Would You Like Some Friends With That?”
In the brave new social world, it won’t be the size of your closets that determines access to volume discounts. Instead, it will be the size and collective bargaining ability of your social graph. For example, a “social” wine store could provide their 10% case discount on single purchases because your social network completed the case requirement together that week.

Hearing: “OMG, Best Song Ever”
Sorry Muzak, but the days of one-size-fits-all audio at retail are soon to be over. Social retailers could tune into the preferences of individual shoppers, piping out personalized streams of music built from shared Spotify or Ping playlists. A shopper hearing their favorite jam will be pumped up and in the perfect mood for a heaping dose of retail therapy.

Surprising: “That’s the Coolest Thing I’ve Ever Seen”
Projected touch screen displays (see demo of PicoMagic at CES 2012) combined with social data could completely transform the retail shopping experience. Entire walls could become interactive, allowing shoppers to sort through vast amounts of virtual inventory that is preselected based on social preferences. Sharing and comparing also would become a snap.

Out-smarting: “Dude, Where’s My Bar?”
Social integration into products might just save us from ourselves if we’re so inclined. For example, if you check in at a bar, your car instantly will know to only start the engine after you pass the Breathalyzer on your smart phone. If you don’t pass the test, your phone will track down your nearest and most sober friends.

Rating: “That’s the Way (Uh-Huh Uh-Huh) I Like It… On Facebook”
Reviews of products and services are ubiquitous online, and it is only a matter of time until these move in-store. Now imagine that the products themselves can display reviews in real-time and highlight those from your social graph. Suddenly that banana-flavored craft beer your friends liked is just what the doctor ordered.

Klouting: “Tell You What I’m Gonna Do Just For You…”
Rewarding influential customers with superior service or free/discounted goods is nothing new, but social integration could take those perks to new heights. For example, once a retailer recognizes a customer with a high Klout score (or equivalent), discounts commensurate with their potential influence could be offered with a promise of more after the social sharing occurs.

Gaming: “Shopping is a Game, Isn’t It?”
Once a retailer can respond to your social graph, the opportunities to introduce game mechanics multiply faster than you can say “Batman: Arkham City.” Based on your in-store behavior, instant coupons could be earned or, perhaps more interestingly, virtual points could be aggregated for redemption in Farmville or another Facebook favorite.

Traveling: See You in Key Largo?
Clearly, this little imaginary excursion just scratches the surface when it comes to the true potential of integrating social media into real-world products, which is why I hope you’ll join me down in Key Largo next week along with fellow panelists like John Yi of Facebook and Lars Djuvik of Specific Media/MySpace. It should be a lot more fun than hanging from a window with a broken electronic glove…

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As part of my background research for a story on this program (see FastCompany.com), I interviewed Larry Gee, the SJSU instructor working with IBM to teach “social business” to a select group of undergrads.  I think you’ll find what Gee has to say about this business/academic collaboration quite interesting.

DN: Can you give me a little background on this program from SJSU’s perspective?
SJSU,  College of Business, has always brought innovation to the classroom so students can learn, apply, and differentiate themselves in the business world.   SJSU and IBM has a long relationship over the years.  It is only natural that ideas are bounced back and forth between us;  how we can make a difference when preparing the next generation of leaders.  Bringing social business into the classroom was one of those ideas that fit the innovation framework.

DN: Why did SJSU decide to collaborate with IBM on this project?
SJSU, College of Business,  decided to collaborate with IBM on this project because Social Business is a critical skill that students need to have to be competitive in the market place.   Social Business is a transferable skill across multiple disciplines ie business, bio-sciences, engineering, humanity & arts, etc.  Students worked on a real business problem, real time, to learn and apply social business tools and processes.

DN: Do you have collaborations with other large corporations?
Yes, we have collaborated with other large corporations such as Cisco, Google, Microsoft to name a few.

DN: If you were talking to another educator at a different university who was considering a similar collaboration, what advice would you give them?
My advice:  1) Identify key social business partner asap.  This is critical because a real life component is needed to reinforce key concept and process.  2)  Plan quickly with a clear course work and administration buy-in roadmap for execution in 60 days.  3)  Execute plan and have class up and running by next term.

DN: How are you evaluating the success of this program?
Students must be able to understand and apply social business tools/process to a real life problem.  The program success is measured on how well students learn, grasp, apply, and demonstrate how social business can be used in a business environment to increase competitive advantage or improve business process cycle time.

DN: How have students responded?
Students response has been great because they have already been exposed and used social media, Facebook, blogs, bookmarks, wiki, to name a few,  basic components of social business, at a very young age.   What is new then?  They are able to build a social business environment using various social media tools they already know and use, but this time, in a business setting.

DN: Can you speak to the advantages of having IBM experts mentor your students?
Certainly.  Having a subject matter experts available to talk, demonstrate, and relate to actual projects are key.   One can read articles and talk about them in class.  But when you are given access to the latest  materials and platform to create a social business environment then this is collaboration at its highest.  Mentor is only a few clicks away to kick around ideas and bring those ideas to reality.  This is where academia  and business intersect.

DN: Is there a risk with a program like this that it will be perceived more as a marketing ploy for IBM than a more company-neutral business course?
I don’t believe the program is a major marketing ploy but rather a  business neutral course because majority of tools and contents used were not IBM but rather current tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Bookmark, wiki, etc.  GBS, IBM Business Partner, provided the real life problem for students to do a deep dive into their social business space.

Created with ColorSplash app

Just in case you missed this on MediaPost, here’s an overview of some interesting apps and what brands can learn from them.

I flat out love apps. Every time I discover a new one that enhances my life in some small way, I feel a burst of joy that demands sharing. Obviously, I’m not alone in my enthusiasm. Last week, Google announced the 10 billionth download of Droid apps, and Apple said they hit 18 billion downloads back in October. That’s a lot of apps to love.

Needless to say, not all of these apps are getting used. Like most, I download many more than I end up trying, let alone using regularly. No, it takes something truly special for an app to gain traction. Those that do find purchase, however, can teach numerous lessons to brands operating outside the app-happy universe.

Do One Thing Really Well
Despite Jim Collins’ advice for companies to have a “hedgehog” concept, very few brands have the discipline to stand for one thing and stick with it. Colorsplash, a beautifully restrained app, is a basic editing tool that dramatizes your photos by removing all the color and then filling in specific objects with your chosen hue.

Don’t Hang Out All By Yourself
Though the evidence is clear that tapping into social network APIs like Facebook and Twitter can build awareness and even drive sales, too few brands are doing it. Successful apps like Instagram, another photo modifying app, make ease of sharing across social networks a fundamental usage component.

There Are Still Unmet Needs to Be Found
Brands must continually strive to improve their offerings by identifying unmet needs. One trailblazing app is ZocDoc. The ingenious app allows you not only to locate nearby doctors that accept your insurance plan (in 13 US markets now) but also book an appointment at a specified time. Think OpenTable for doctors.

A Little Hand Holding Goes A Long Way
Some products are complex by nature and finding the added support you need to understand them can be challenging. Ringtones, a fun app that allows you to convert any song in your iTunes library into a ringtone, is a bit complicated at first, but knowing this, the creators also offer a great demo video that makes learning the 3 requisite steps a snap.

Extend the Utility You Already Offer to Mobile
Lots of brands offer great resources on the web that aren’t yet mobile-friendly. This is a big oversight. OpenTable.com, my favorite online restaurant reservation service, has a brilliantly functional iPhone app. Integrating nicely with iPhone GPS, this tasty app helps you find a restaurant with open tables and secure a reservation in less than a New York minute.

Form is as Important as Function
Today, having a product that works is not enough – aesthetics matter, too. To understand this notion, just look at the new Flipboard app for iPhone. The design experience is the brand. Never before has information consumption on a phone felt so joyously elegant, so positively delectable that mere words don’t do it justice.

Turn Your Customer Into the Star
For years brands have been saying the “customer is king” while spending the bulk of their marketing budget on self-congratulatory ads. Songify, a beyond-genius app that turns spoken words into a melodic song, is silly but addictive because it plays into my desire to be an acceptable, if not talented, singer rather than a tone-deaf writer.

Tap Into Your Customer’s Emotional Needs
All too often, brands focus on the practical needs of their audience, overlooking the irrationality that frequently guides behavior. One new app that appeals to our softer, whimsical side is Qwips. Built around personal voice recordings, Qwips allows you to manipulate your audio with effects and pictures sure to touch the heartstrings.

Deliver a Little Bit of Magic
Admittedly, not every brand can be Disney or Apple and find the magic in all they do. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. An app called Drinks and Cocktails delivers my kind of magic by helping me figure out what special cocktail I can make based on what’s in my liquor cabinet. The Sidecar I made Friday night was indeed heaven-sent!

Another marvel of ColorSplash.

Final Note
The average iPhone user has over 100 apps on their phone and spends over an hour a day using them. As apps become indispensible, consumer phone usage increases, as do their expectations for all mobile experiences. If your brand doesn’t have a mobile-friendly site, then you better make one fast. Beyond that, dare I suggest: ‘Appy New Year!

It was painful to watch. Jon Bond, the former ad giant turned social media honcho, was actually getting heckled at the Pivot Conference. A feisty crowd to begin with, Bond’s admission that he “didn’t like Twitter” was like throwing fresh meat at rabid dogs. But rather than raise their voices, they let their fingers do the shouting. So while Bond continued to speak, a steady stream of snarky tweets projected on the wall behind him, acted like foghorns essentially drowning him out.

Being a great speaker was never easy but now, with your audience likely to have a mobile device in hand and real-time access to multiple social channels, the challenges have gotten that much greater. To get a sense of the impact of social media on conference presentations, I interviewed a bunch of regulars on the social media circuit. In the process, they helped me identify these seven (somewhat snarky) new rules for public speaking in the social media era.

1. Don’t Panic if They Aren’t Looking at You
Sure it is disconcerting when you gaze out at the audience and no one looks back. But whatever you do- don’t panic. Just because they are transfixed by their mobile devices, doesn’t mean they aren’t all ears. Explained Jenny Dervin, VP of Corporate Communications at JetBlue who received raves at a recent BDI event, “I think the body language tells you if they’re paying attention – it’s far more distracting to see people whispering to each other than it is to see someone tapping on an iPad.”

2. Stifle the Temptation to Ask for a Device Moratorium
As tempting as it might be to ask your audience to shut down their devices, every speaker I talked to thought this would be a huge mistake. Former actor and speaker extraordinaire John C. Havens suggested, “I might get their undivided attention but it would be mixed with their ire at being told how to watch my presentation.”  Havens also reminded me that in the old days, “before digital devices, a lot of people would take notes on a pad,” which isn’t all that different than tapping out a tweet.

3. If You Aren’t Nervous, You Should Be Now
When I first learned public speaking, an experience advisor suggested that you “imagine the audience is naked,” to quell the initial butterflies. Today, speakers are probably better off reminding themselves that they are the naked ones. If your facts are wrong, your audiences will Google then tweet the corrected data before you can say, “I’m just sayin’.” And if that isn’t scary enough, as author and speaker Jeff Jarvis proclaims, “the lecture, as a form, is bullshit” so you better ask yourself what you’re doing up there anyway!

4. If You Don’t Speak Tweetese, It’s Time to Learn It
Let’s just imagine for the moment that your audience is absolutely riveted by your every word. Chances are some, if not many of them, will want to share your wisdom with their network, not tomorrow when they get back to the office but right at that very moment. It is for this reason today’s effective speakers are not just sharing their Twitter handles upfront but also mixing in tweetable quotes. Added Havens, “puns, sound bites and pithy phrases are [also] ways to aid in retention.”

5. Congratulations! You May Be Speaking to Millions You Can’t See
The irony of speaking in the social media era is that audience in front of you may be far less significant than the collective reach of that particular group. Explained Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media for Citibank, “I’d much rather have the broader reach, it is one of the better measurements of speaking at events.” Havens confirmed, “odds are half of them are tweeting about my presentation and they’re helping market me!”

6. The Reviews Are In – In Real Time
Rather than waiting to ask a friend after the fact how you did, today’s skilled presenters welcome this feedback in real time. Eliason offered, “it’s fun to respond to a tweet when I am on stage and it personalizes the interaction with the audience.” JetBlue’s Dervin finds these tweets helpful as well, “I go back in the stream to see what landed, based on how many people tweeted the same quote—it’s an instant evaluation of my key messages.”

7. When All Else Fails, Surprise the Audience with Honesty
Bringing this article back full circle, Jon Bond perplexed the Pivot crowd with his admission of not liking Twitter. While this honesty may have cost him some street cred with a Twitter-loving crowd, I recently saw another speaker use honesty to extraordinary advantage. Ray Kerins, VP of Corporate Communications at Pfizer, transfixed a BDI crowd with tales of a crisis that had befallen ChapStick on Facebook the day before. By admitting that Pfizer’s social media activities were a “work in progress,” Kerins earned credibility that reverberated through the Twitterverse.

Final Note
All of those quoted above are very effective speakers, and though each has their own distinctive style, there are a few other commonalities I’d also like to point out. First, none of them depend on word-laden PowerPoint presentations. Second, most are good storytellers and use humor, often self-deprecating, to connect with their audiences. Finally, each of them manages to keep their presentations short enough to allow time for a healthy Q&A. And speaking of healthy Q&A’s, you can find my complete interviews with Dervin, Havens, Eliason and Jarvis right here on TheDrewBlog.com.

DN: What do you think have been the keys to SAP’s success with the SCN to-date?
First, we began with a targeted audience and a focused mission: to help developers achieve success with SAP’s platforms and solutions. Only after we had critical mass in that audience did we expand to include a broader base, with the expansion of the target audience driven by the community itself, and features and functionality prioritized based on what our target community members wanted or needed.  Essentially, we were pulled along by serving them, rather than pushing them into new directions we thought interesting, with the success of our community members always as our guide.  Over time, we expended from the base of developers, to sysadmins and IT professionals more broadly, then to business process experts and project managers who straddle IT and lines of business, to business analysts and dashboard designers, and then to include university students and professors – all drawn by community member and market needs.  We moved from basic discussion forums which were appropriate for basic Q&A, to longer-form blogs, to a wiki which is more flexible for projects and work groups… and included aspects of gamification, a career center with job board when the economy took a downturn, to an outside-in innovation crowdsourcing space. Constant evolution through monthly updates and larger advances, based on active listening and responsiveness to community feedback.

DN: What are the real advantages of having a user community?

The advantages depend on your vantage point…

Our individual members report that they are more productive, finding answers and solutions faster, and of higher quality, by being able to consult with other customer and partner members of the 2 million-plus SAP community.  Individually, they elevate their expertise, and put it on display where the quality of ideas – rather than other factors – helps people rise to the top and get positive attention.  Their careers accelerate, their professional horizons expand beyond their city, or country, or industry.  On a more visceral level, there’s also an energy that comes with connectedness; members are energized by each other, the back-and-forth of interaction, the excitement and enthusiasm, and the feeling of being part of something bigger and more important than each of us individually … it’s a contagious excitement and an immeasurable but palpable sense of belonging and shared value.

Our SAP customer companies who have employees participating in the SAP community gain open access to subject matter experts for fast implementation and issue resolution so their projects are completed faster, and with higher quality, which helps them reduce their  operations costs and total cost of operations.  From the connectedness across industries and across global commerce, they are able to increase their business and technical knowledge and insight, make business connections within the vast SAP ecosystem to expand their market influence, and have an easier time discovering, evaluating, and accessing SAP and our partner solutions for more advanced implementations. They even have a greater ability to keep up with emerging trends, and to influence SAP and its ecosystem through participation and connections.  And prospective customers in the solution evaluation cycle have the ability to interact with active SAP customers to get their unfettered feedback and advice – and to get a sense of the extraordinary value and unique benefit the SAP community provides.

SAP partners have the opportunity to establish themselves as subject matter experts, and to gain access to the entire global universe of more than 170,000 customer accounts in our installed base for more fine-tuned market insight as a way to focus their solution offerings, and to keep an eye out for sales opportunities.  They can forge relationships with other SAP partners for solution co-development and joint go-to-market, and even post-sale they can call upon a wider set of experts to help speed problem resolution.   We can also demonstrate SAP’s unusually strong commitment to the SAP partner ecosystem through all of these efforts, as well as our work and investments to generate and pass along leads to partners – it strengthens those partner ties with SAP and the value of partnering with SAP, so we gain more of the best partners to augment and extend SAP’s core.

For SAP as the host of the community, we gain faster adoption and ramp-up whenever we introduce new or upgraded products and services to the market, since our reach and influence are huge and immediate.  As a company, we gain speed, agility, better decision making, and reduce our risk because we gain rich insights into what our customers really want and value, gleaned through our direct connections and fluid feedback loops and listening posts.  We can improve  product and solution quality through our customers’ direct outside-in feedback on our products, services, processes, and  customer experiences.  We reduce the cost, complexity, and time to provide core support while maintaining high quality – and can plow those savings back into better community mechanisms and product innovation.  Those and other forms of interaction lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, better customer retention, up-sell and cross-sell opportunities on the top line, and efficiencies through cost savings on the bottom line.

DN: Would it be as useful (to you or your members) if it wasn’t so large?
There’s a certain critical mass that needs to be built in order for a community to be vibrant, diverse, distributed, and valuable.  If we had a very simple product or a homogenous market, we could deliver benefits with a small member base.  But SAP is a global company, with a vast array of products and solutions, operating in nearly every country and territory on the planet, every industry, serving every aspect of global commerce.  In order to serve our diverse market, we need a very large member base to gain access to experts in everything from Finance to HR lines of business, banking to mining to consumer-goods industries, in Europe and South America and Asia, and across every solution and sub-module of SAP’s portfolio.  We hit the tipping point at about a million individual members several years ago, and we continue to grow at about 40,000 new members each month.  Those kinds of member numbers give us depth and diversity of expertise in just about any relevant topic of interest to our SAP community.

DN: If you were advising a fellow CMO who was thinking of setting up a community today, what would tell him/her? Any shortcuts?
Without hesitation, I would advise any other CMO to lean forward and start building their community without delay, because the value far outweighs the cost, and it is the future.  However, it’s not easy, simple, or inexpensive, and it’s not something that you can build, launch, and then let go.  Community is part science – the platforms, plumbing, apps, and underlying infrastructure – and part art – the policies, practices, programs, and people-oriented components.  It’s uncharted territory, so you’ll need to navigate areas of company rules, emerging legal precedents, daily new learnings, and plenty of antibodies.  It’s not something that you can short-cut; authenticity and transparency and long-term relationships and commitments are key. Get an expert on board who has experience, form a core team to execute, and be personally involved.

DN:  Lots of communities are started (like LinkedIn groups) but very few gain traction.  Why do you think that is?
Communities take work over the long-term, and it’s clear that not everyone who starts one is expecting, anticipating, or willing to put in the time and effort to make them work.  There are hunters and farmers, and communities require aspects of both … hunters to undertake and execute big but limited-time and scope projects, launch them, and move on … short bursts of energy, big pay-offs, motivated by the adrenaline rush of achievement and covering alot of new ground fast; farmers who will toil day-after-day, pruning, nudging, nurturing over the long-term… almost imperceptibly small moves but with staying power, persistence, and timeframes of months and years.  I believe that some communities fail because they don’t take the longer-term view, expect results too fast, and don’t deliver enough value to their target audiences to warrant their members’ continued attention and deep engagement.

DN:  How do you see communities evolving in the next few years?
The platforms and tools have evolved, now, to the point where almost anyone can participate; you don’t need to be a tech guru to participate.  This means that for companies like SAP, we can move from technologist-based communities, to business-oriented communities, right on to communities of c-level members.  We will see both public and private areas where open discussions can occur, whether shared with the world or with a select group of trusted members.  We will see more companies hosting communities of their customers and partners, where those groups really set the agendas, guide the company to build products or to set standards that better suit the needs of the customers.  We will come to expect, as consumers and customers, that the brands we do business with provide the benefits to us of online communities.  And companies will see that the benefits of hosting customer communities will differentiate them, and then will be an expected way of doing business, with tremendous value to everyone who participates.

DN: Do you think being recognized as a good corporate citizen is increasingly important to a brand like yours? Why?
Good corporate citizenship is very important to Petco – it’s built into the fabric of our entire business. Everything we do is guided by our vision for Healthier Pets.  Happier People.  Better World.

We established our non-profit organization, the Petco Foundation, in 1999 and have since raised more than $80 million in support of some 7,500 local animal welfare partners across the country. Each year, we also help save the lives of more than 250,000 animals through adoption events in our stores.  Through the Petco Foundation, we also support spay and neuter efforts, animal-assisted therapy programs and humane education. Working hand-in-hand with the Foundation, our Petco and Unleashed by Petco stores serve as the first and largest national pet food bank in the country. Designated collection bins located in each of our stores allow customers to donate pet food that directly benefits pet parents in need in their local community.

As a company, we’re also increasingly adopting more sustainable business practices. We strongly believe that if it’s good for the planet, it’s good for pets and people, too.  Earlier this year, Petco became one of the only non-grocery store retailers to be recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an Energy Star Leader for reducing our energy consumption by more than 10 percent across our entire business. Additionally, our Planet Petco line of products offers pet parents the ability to choose high-quality, more sustainable products that utilize recycled and reclaimed materials and renewable resources. These are just a few examples of what we do as a company today. It’s an ongoing process and we’re always striving to do more in this important area of corporate social responsibility.

DN: Is there a fine line between “doing good” as a company and talking about it so much that is seems insincere?
You absolutely have to be sincere and authentic in what you are doing and saying, and you must also be fully committed, rather than doing something only half way. A company’s goodwill efforts should be far more than just a marketing campaign. For Petco, all of our “do-gooding” is centered around what we believe is the right thing to do. The programs we create and support reflect our company’s values and the passion our associates have for people and pets.

DN: Is there a particular Petco goodwill/charitable program that you are particularly proud of?
There are many charitable programs that we get involved in, so it is hard to name just one.  A newer program that really took off this year was our National Pet Food Bank program and our National Pet Food Drive. Just in the program’s second year, this year’s drive ran for two weeks (late October-mid November) in all of our Petco and Unleashed by Petco stores. During the national drive, we encourage customers to pick up an extra bag or can of pet food during their shopping trip, or bring unopened food from home, and donate it via the collection bins in our stores. Also for the second year, Hill’s Science Diet supported our efforts by matching 100,000 pounds of donated food during the drive. In just two weeks, we collected nearly 350,000 pounds of pet food – a more than 60 percent increase over last year – to help financially strapped pet parents feed their pets during the holiday season. The Petco Foundation Pet Food Bank is a year-round program, but it’s very exciting to see how generous our customers are during the national drive leading into the holiday season.

DN: I noticed you personally are working with an organization called HABRI.  Can you talk what and why you are doing this?
Petco is excited and proud to be a founding sponsor of HABRI, the Human-Animal Bond Research Initiative. Other founding sponsors are the American Pet Products Association and Pfizer Animal Health.  We got involved because we passionately believe that pets enrich our lives and we want to help generate formal, widespread scientific recognition of the positive role pets play in our lives.  HABRI’s mission is to support research, education and other charitable activities that validate the positive impact the human-animal bond can have on the integrated health of families and communities, by consolidating, organizing and sharing existing scientific research into the human-animal bond in partnership with Purdue University.

DN: Goodwill activities seem to translate well into social media.  Have you found this to be case and/or how do you see good will programs evolving next year?
Absolutely.  We actively use social media (especially Facebook) to engage our fan base, which is now nearing 600,000 likes, to support our charitable causes.  In general, we find that goodwill posts and campaigns featuring authentic stories perform very well in social media.  Positive campaigns with an altruistic call to action perform remarkably better (up to 100 percent more feedback) in user interaction on social properties than promotional campaigns or transactional posts. Human interest stories and, of course, anything to do with pets, are the second most shared and clicked upon posts/tweets/videos.

In October, we hosted our first ever National Adoption Reunion Weekend. Fans online were asked to submit stories about how their adopted pets had changed their lives and were given the opportunity to raise funds for the Petco Foundation through Foursquare check-ins. The social portion of the campaign performed very well, driving the most organic Twitter growth and retweets for a campaign we  have seen to date, the most views on a non-commercial video on YouTube, more than 57,000 photos uploaded on Flickr and more than 3,000 likes across three blog posts. Needless to say, we were very pleased with the results.

DN: I’m a big fan of Pedigree’s “dogs rule” campaign and their pet adoption program.  Have you partnered on “good will” programs with any of the brands that you carry and if so, what are the advantages of this approach?
Every month, we host a National Adoption Weekend when adoption events are held in all of our stores across the country. Each monthly weekend event is sponsored by one of our vendor partners.  We’ve also joined forces with several of our vendor partners for in-store fundraisers to support mutual charitable interests, including Blue Buffalo for Pet Cancer Awareness and Natural Balance for National Guide Dog Month.   I think programs like this are a huge win-win when we are able to work together to help improve the lives of pets and pet parents, and when we all know the funds raised are going to important work that we mutually care about.

DN: What is the best case scenario for a marketing partnership?
The best case scenario for a marketing partnership is a having a common customer, goal and market. It is also important that money never change hands between partners – no referral fees, no reseller incentives.  Partners do not write partners checks.

DN: The Optimum Business Benefits program seems like a win/win/win for your brand, your partners and your customers. Are there any risk or downsides to marketing partnerships?
The Optimum Business Benefits program is a win for our brand, partners and customers.  It is important to choose your partners wisely because they become an extension of your brand so you need to be very sure before you agree to partner and market that partnership.

Risks tend to come if you haven’t chosen a partner carefully or your goals are misaligned. That’s why it’s crucial to consider: Can they offer something unique to your customers? Do they stand for the same things as your company and program?  Do they have the same values?  You need to remember that if your customer has a bad experience with one of your partners, it reflects on your company.

DN: Are there any tricks to making the most of a marketing partnership? Why do some work better than others?
Yes!  Making the most of any partnership requires clearly identifying common goals from the outset, measuring success consistently and holding each other accountable. You must regularly communicate with your partner about progress, challenges and next steps. Leave out this necessary component and the partnership simply won’t work.

It’s also important to know your partners well. You should understand where they fit both within their corporation and the industry as a whole.  From a broader perspective, you might be able to provide additional value through the creation of a partner advisory network to give them a collective voice and solicit new ideas.  This will come in handy when there are challenges to overcome. Never meet a customer or a partner for the first time under difficult circumstances – know your partners personally.

DN: Would you recommend that other marketers consider joining this kind of multi-brand program and if so, what should they do to get the most out of it?
Companies interested in joining a multi-brand program should be vocal and outgoing in terms of marketing support for the program.  The best part about multi-brand programs is that you can align with, not only the lead brand, but other companies involved and create new opportunities, offers and messages.  We have seen some of our biggest successes from grassroots activities and campaigns and recommend that all of the participating companies really engage to get the benefits.  Get in the field, get your sales people to understand the value from the beginning and make it a part of their sales training and their sales programs.  And, of course, it is important to check in, measure and build relationships.

While doing homework for another article, I ran across a recent study by IBM called “From Stretched to Strengthened” that offers insights into the challenges facing CMO’s around the world.  The study is well worth reading, especially if you are a CMO, and stresses a number of important themes including the needs to:

• Deliver value to empowered customers
• Foster lasting connections
• Capture value, measure results

After reading the study, I reached out to IBM with some follow up questions and got in touch with Yuchan Lee, General Manager of IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management business.  I think you will agree that Mr. Lee has smart things to say about measuring ROI, using social media for research, the importance of having a clear “corporate character” and finally, the need to think long-term when it comes to customer relationship building.

DN: Is ROI the right metric for CMOs or just one of many important metrics?
It is the most important, as reflected by our CMO Study. Other than a metric based on reflecting customer up-take (e.g., revenue, satisfaction level), which most companies already measure, marketing ROI is essentially the highest level scorecard for an organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively allocate its resource to hit marketing goals.

DN: Why do you think so many CMOs struggle to demonstrate ROI?
The heart of the challenge is the nature to which marketing activities influence buying behavior, and how behavior manifest itself over time. Measuring ROI in marketing involves sifting through tons of noise in the data to connect all the pieces of evidence that influenced the purchase behavior.  This is an inexact, statistically-based science that, until recently, was too hard to tackle.

DN: Why do you think marketers have been so slow to embrace research via social channels? (i.e. only 14% mine blogs)
Before a company embraces a social channel, it must first believe it has to.  This requires a shift in strategy based on the realization that consumers are more in control and the company is losing its grip on branding.  In my experience, this shift is scary to many companies and many are slow to realize it and to turn this realization into action.  Furthermore, even if one is ready to take action, the newness of engaging social networks makes it challenging to know where to begin.

DN: Why should marketers expand their research horizons beyond traditional channels to things like blogs?
We believe traditional marketers need to expand not just research but all areas of market and customer engagement as well as demand generation to the social channels.  That’s where the center of influence for purchase decisions is and will continue to be. That’s where detailed, real-time, and unfiltered market feedback data can be best gathered and analyzed, and ultimately where the brand of a company will truly be reflected in the future (if not already!).

DN: What’s in it for the more proactive marketers who are mining new digital data sources?
Additional data, if incorporated properly, allows a company to know what is relevant to its customers — potentially down to the individual customer level.  We believe the ability of a company to deliver relevant communication in sales/marketing/services is the basic ingredient to a successful customer relationship and a prerequisite to staying in business.

DN: A lot of marketers pay lip-service to their corporate values.  Will developing a clear ‘corporate character’ really deliver competitive advantage?
Having clarity on a company’s corporate character is a necessary but not sufficient element of success.  It must be followed by execution by the organization, every day, delivering a consistent customer experience that is aligned with the corporate character.  The true reflection of the corporate character will come out quickly, most likely in social media.

DN: Your report emphasizes the need to “foster lasting connections.”  Is this goal in conflict with the typically pressing need to deliver short-term revenue?
No.  In our experience, being relevant and adding value to the customer in every communication and interaction is the common denominator for forging a lasting connection with the customer AND the ability to drive successful short-term revenue.  After all, long-term success is made up of series of short term successes!

DN: What are your goals for The Glue Network?
The Glue Network is the first to elegantly combine giving with digital media to deliver bottom line results for companies (greater return on marketing spend or greater return on company giving) and to be a catalyst for good in the world. Our two primary goals are:

• Deliver business results for companies. Today, corporate giving groups are under tremendous pressure to deliver business results beyond goodwill — we deliver that.  Marketing groups are seeking authentic (non-gimmicky) ways of engaging with their consumers and stakeholders that not only deliver more clicks but deeper relationships and a positive image — we deliver that.  Small companies are especially challenged to accomplish these things due to limited resources — the Glue automated platform delivers the same results for a company / program of any size.
• Be a catalyst for good:  Success with #1 means companies will spend more this way — more results for them + more good for the world.  Also, as individuals are engaged in giving at younger ages, they give more over the course of their lives and influence more giving from others.  Through the individuals a company engages with their Glue program, we encourage future good (giving, volunteering, social entrepreneurship).

DN: Do you think a lot of brands are looking to do well by doing good right now given the challenging economy?
Yes, this is absolutely a hot topic for business right now because there are 2 competing factors at work.  Despite the challenging economy, companies (not just big ones) face higher expectations from consumers/stakeholders for social responsibility and the lowest levels of satisfaction in history.  But also (as supported by a recent study by The Conference Board), as these economic pressures persist, what doesn’t improve the bottom line is in the end not sustainable.  So, if companies don’t figure out how to give back and have that giving drive value beyond goodwill or a golden halo, it will cease to be justifiable — which would be a missed opportunity for business and a massive loss for the world.

Companies that aren’t feeling the pain of this challenge are either the few that are far ahead of the curve, with social responsibility deeply engrained in their businesses in ways that create value, or have not yet faced this reality because they continue to look at marketing and giving separately.

DN: There are so many ways for brands to “do good,” why should they align with The Glue Network?
Glue does more than they can do otherwise and we make it far easier for them.  People are nearly twice as likely to buy or recommend a product if it’s affiliated with a cause they care about.  However, when a company makes a charitable gift, the nonprofit may fit with their brand and help a good cause — but necessarily, it’s not the one most of that brand’s customers would have chosen.  To drive greater business value, companies need to create cause-based experiences that allow consumer choice and provide rich, social experiences.  Voting campaigns by brands like Pepsi, Chase, Gap, Target and more take a step toward this but could do more to deliver engaging experiences and tie the experience back to direct direct business results.  And they aren’t feasible for smaller companies to pull off.

Glue’s automated, closed loop platform enables cause-based social marketing programs of any size that create deep engagement, multi-point brand/cause associations, high sharing rates and a closed loop brands can use to drive new customers and rich data.  This is a unique and powerful combination.

DN: What makes you confident that the “goodwill” generated by TGN will translate into ‘good’ revenue?
Companies don’t need Glue to create goodwill.  But when individuals are given rich options and the power to choose (not just vote but choose), they become personally attached to their choice and to the company that enabled them to make it — and more inspired to share the experience with their friends and support the company in the future.  That’s not just our opinion.  Our user data blows away industry average rates for sharing and clicks — meaning we’re inspiring the users (the company’s customers), giving the company access to those customers’ friends and colleagues (highly attractive targets), and enabling them to directly drive new customers and revenue from that base PLUS develop new customer data which all companies know to have value.

The Glue platform is flexible enough to fulfill numerous business objectives spanning customers, partners, and employees.  But for any audience, a Glue program delivers significantly higher business value for the cost than comparable traditional digital media, loyalty, or giving programs.

DN: What kind of commitment are you looking for from brands?
Very little.  We’re committed to making robust Social Cause Marketing feasible and justifiable (through business results) for every company.  We’re like a Salesforce.com <http://Salesforce.com>  (sophisticated CRM for all) or Eventbrite (anyone can be an event organizer) — this December, businesses from small local startups to one of the largest tech companies are creating greater value from the same holiday gift spending through Glue.  For brands that want to create larger programs with a more integrated, branded experience, we can do that too.

This ease and flexibility is made possible by the robust platform we’ve developed with an extensive back-end that enables campaign and non-profit project management.

DN: What can companies do quickly to harness the spirit of the holidays to increase customer loyalty and attract new customers while doing good?
Companies of all sizes spend on gifts and branded merchandise (a $17 billion industry), many of which wind up in landfills and few of which the recipient finds meaningful or worthy of telling people about.  Instead of mugs or gift baskets, give a Glue gift which has meaning for the recipient, does good in the world, and generates free PR for the business in the form of social media recommendations — for the same cost and minimal effort. Contact info@thegluenetwork.com

Final note:  Lynley Sides is CEO of The Glue Network and has spent her career bringing groundbreaking new products to market. She’s passionate about digital media, social ventures, running, skiing and the fight for global human freedom. You can follow her @LynleySides.

The very next day I ran into a seasoned social media executive in a particularly jocular mood. I asked, “Why the smiles?” He explained that an unfavorable video about his company had just gone viral, and now his management would have to take social media a lot more seriously. At that moment I wondered, how many companies are waiting for a social media “break-in” before they install “security?”

Fortunately for you, I’m not the only one pondering this question. Altimeter Group published a study back in August that looked at 50 social media crises since 2001. The report details how unprepared these companies were from both a staffing and planning perspective. It also found that 76% of the crises could have been diminished, if not averted, with proper preparation.

The Altimeter report does a great job of outlining “how advanced companies prepare” for social media crises and is well worth a closer study. So that’s not my purpose here. Rather, I’m struck by the fact that many of today’s leading social media practitioners like Dell, Comcast and Domino’s were all caught off guard just a few years ago. Certainly these social media crises didn’t go to waste.

Dell’s problems began in 2005 when blogger Jeff Jarvis created a firestorm of customer service complaints. “Dell Hell,” as the viral nightmare was called, became front-page news and even hurt the company’s stock price. Since then, Dell has transformed itself into a customer-centric listening machine that even involves founder Michael Dell, who is known to send tweets directly to delighted customers.

Similarly, Comcast’s crisis commenced with the untempered ire of a journalist. Bob Garfield’s “Comcast Must Die” blog went viral faster than you can say “Excedrin headache.” Shortly thereafter, Frank Eliason stepped up on Twitter with @ComcastCares, setting the stage for Comcast to begin a true customer service makeover. Eventually, even Garfield came to admire these improvements.

Domino’s felt the sting of social media in 2009 when two employee/pranksters posted a disgusting video on YouTube. Domino’s sales dropped 10% nationally but not in Chicago, where a local store manager, Ramon DeLeon, waged a localized rebuttal campaign via the social channels he’d already established. DeLeon was prepared to “fight social media fire with social media water,” a lesson Domino’s HQ eventually took to heart as well.

These three examples are worth revisiting for several reasons. First, these crises brought into view broader product and service issues that had festered for several years. Jarvis’ complaints about Dell only snowballed when several hundred other customers joined the gripe-fest. The same goes for Garfield’s conflict with Comcast. As for Domino’s, they soon admitted themselves that their pizza had almost as little flavor as the box it came in.

It’s also significant that each of these companies bypassed a superficial social media response with a tweet here and a Facebook post here and instead implemented much more comprehensive solutions. Dell launched Idea Storm and a social media Command Center, while empowering employees worldwide to become social ambassadors.  Domino’s went so far as to completely change their basic product and invited the public to weigh in along the way.

But most importantly, we can learn from their mistakes and do some preemptive corporate soul searching by asking ourselves these three questions:

1. Do you really need to wait for a crisis to fix those long overlooked product or service issues?
2. Do you really want to wait for a social media crisis before you start taking all of this social stuff seriously?
3. Wouldn’t it be nice if a year from now your company was the one that avoided a social media crisis altogether because of your preparation?

The good news is that preparing for the worst actually will create several long-term benefits for your company and/or brand. For example, training employees to be brand ambassadors will improve job satisfaction and retention rates. Implementing customer listening programs will not only improve customer satisfaction but also generate new product ideas that drive future growth. And perhaps best of all, you’ll sleep a little better at night knowing you’re ready for whatever surprises climb over your social media fence.

Note: if this looks familiar, then you saw it first on MediaPost.com

DN: Is it harder to engage an audience than it was 5 years ago before WiFI connectivity was a conference mandatory?
Not at all. Quite the contrary.

DN: At Pivot, at least 3/4 of the audience seemed to have a laptop or iPad open while you were speaking. Do you find yourself wanting to say, hey turn those devices off and pay attention?
Absolutely not. Some of those people are tweeting about the talk; others are reading others’ tweets in the so-called Twitter back-channel. And those who are doing neither are being nice enough to occupy themselves and not visibly yawn.

DN: Would it be worth trying to get the audience to shut down their devices momentarily while you speak?
Not at all. The lecture, as a form, is bullshit. See: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/04/18/this-is-bullshit-my-tedxnyed-talk/

DN:  Knowing that your audience is on Twitter while you speak, are you thinking while you write your speech—gee that line will make a great tweet?
No. I have always tended to talk in tweetese.

DN: Do you get any feedback from these events and if so, why kind of adjustments have you made based on this feedback?
Some things I can change: saying “uh” or “right.” Some things I can’t: I pace.

DN: Finally, tell me a little about your latest book and how you draw from it in your speeches?
Public Parts is about the value of publicness, the power we all have no with a Gutenberg press in our hands. A speech is another means of being public but what I enjoy most about it is not the speech but the conversation, when I go into the people formerly known as the audience (credit: Jay Rosen) and play Oprah. In Public Parts, I start to speculate about such talks being the basis of my next project. A book, if it comes out of it at all, would be a byproduct then.

DN: Do you find it harder to engage an audience than it was 3-5 years ago before WiFI connectivity was a conference mandatory?
In my view, having a connected audience is better, especially because they help to spread the word to others. This spread of message is the ROI for participating in events like Pivotcon.

DN: At Pivot, at least 3/4 of the audience seemed to have a laptop or iPad open while you were speaking.
Do you find yourself wanting to say, hey turn those devices off and pay attention? Never. In fact many times when I present I have an iPhone, iPad or other device open on stage allowing me to see what others are saying. It is fun to respond to a tweet when I am on stage and it personalizes the interaction with the audience.

DN: Would it be worth trying to get the audience to shut down their devices momentarily while you speak?
I’d much rather have the broader reach, it is one of the better measurements of speaking at events.

DN: Knowing that your audience is on Twitter while you speak, are you thinking while you write your speech—gee that line will make a great tweet?
I tend to prefer a conversational style, so I do not think about that as much. The one thing it has changes about the way I present, is I no longer prepare slides especially because the audience is not looking up as much. I do try to be more animated in the way I speak to ensure I have their attention.

DN: Are social media conferences harder to engage than say a group of bankers who aren’t necessarily trying to be the first to share what they just heard?
I find them easier, but sometimes you have to go where they are engaging, such as on Twitter.

DN: Do you get any feedback from these events and if so, why kind of adjustments have you made based on this feedback?
My favorite feedback is directly from the audience via Twitter, or in person. I do also get feedback from conference organizers. When I get this feedback, I love to read verbatims, which often conflict with others in the stack, but this comes down to we all have very different ways of learning, so different styles help. I think it is important for organizers to try to have diversity in presentation style.

DN: Is it harder to engage an audience than it was 5 years ago before WiFI connectivity was a conference mandatory?
I think it’s harder to be in the audience than to be on stage.  As a speaker, you can always find someone in the audience who is looking at you, so you can make a connection.  But I noticed yesterday that as I sat through the other presentations, I found myself looking at the live Tweet stream, the speaker, and to my own iPad.  I was very tempted to tweet what I was hearing but I was too busy listening!

DN: At BDI, at least 3/4 of the audience seemed to have a laptop or iPad open while you were speaking.  Do you find yourself wanting to say, hey turn those devices off and pay attention?
OMG! No!  They may have had the devices open but I had no problem at all finding people to make eye contact with!  I think the body language tells you if they’re paying attention – it’s far more distracting to see people whispering to each other than it is to see someone tapping on an iPad.

DN: Would it be worth trying to get the audience to shut down their devices momentarily while you speak?
Actually, I love it when people live-tweet during remarks I give.  I go back in the stream to see what landed, based on how many people tweeted the same quote, how many retweets there are, etc.  It’s an instant evaluation of my key messages – did they land? If not, what did? It’s very instructive!  Also – I see it as a digital way of taking notes.  I think and process ideas and new information by doodling or writing them down – it may look like I’m not paying attention but I am, and I’m engaging the creative, associative side of my brain as well.  But all of that is said with the assumption that they’re tweeting about what they’re hearing!  I have absolutely no problem with devices being used while I speak.

DN: Knowing that your audience is on Twitter while you speak, are you thinking while you write your speech—gee that line will make a great tweet?
I don’t think that consciously, but I do think and write in terms of key messages – what I want to impart to the audience.  I try to boil my ideas down to the essence – that becomes my chapter header – and then walk that concept out through examples and so on.  Sometimes those chapter headers are twitter-worthy.  Sometimes not.

DN: Are social media conferences harder to engage than say a group of accountants who aren’t necessarily trying to be the first to share what they just heard?
No – just the opposite for me!  The audience at social media conferences are more of my tribe – we speak the same language.  Accountants, as our example here, would make me far more nervous because I worry that in my effort to relate to them, I bungle it.  When I speak to non-communicator audiences, I try to give a tad more background in my case studies so the audience has a flavor of how communicators make decisions and why things like meeting deadlines are important.  Not relating to the audience or at the very least, not entertaining the audience while educating them a little, is a recurring nightmare for me.

DN: At the BDI Conference, you used an ipad for your speaking notes—how did that work?
Better than I expected!  I didn’t have time to print my notes, so I thought, why not?  It helped me stay on track of my key points, but it was a little disconcerting to move from my iPad to the laptop (to advance the slides).

DN: Do you get any feedback from these events and if so, why kind of adjustments have you made based on this feedback?
I do, and I welcome it!  I have learned that I have no respect for time, so I try to keep my remarks within the time frame.  I’ve also learned to speak more slowly – you can still hear a difference in pacing between my prepared remarks and Q&A.

Looking through the twitter stream after I speak is extremely informative.  I think it helps hone my instincts so the next time I sit down to prepare remarks, I have the lessons learned from the prior experiences helping me become more quotable or relatable.

DN: Is it harder to engage an audience than it was 5 years ago before WiFI connectivity was a conference mandatory?
Yes, because we’re all trained like Pavlov’s pups to check our devices every 14 seconds.  In that regard, there are less people standing up and walking out of presentations because they have to take a call versus email or text. But it’s critical not to let that digital zeitgeist not get in the way of my cardinal rule of presenting – make every talk a gift to your audience.  Meaning, prepare the snot out of your deck and rehearse like crazy and do your best to know the audience you’ll be speaking to.  If you do all that and imbue your talk with passion and try to connect to your audience (by looking them in the eyes, etc) you should earn the right for them to put their devices down.  Point – you’re the storyteller, so make it enchanting enough that you distract them from distraction.

DN: At BDI, at least 3/4 of the audience seemed to have a laptop or iPad open while you were speaking.  Do you find yourself wanting to say, hey turn those devices off and pay attention?
No way. Odds are, at least half of them are tweeting about my presentation and they’re helping market me in real-time! Besides, akin to my earlier answer, it’s not up to me to dictate how someone pays attention.  Before digital devices, a lot of people would take notes on a pad.  That’s how they learn.  If people retain more about a talk because they tweet, who am I to judge?

DN: Would it be worth trying to get the audience to shut down their devices momentarily while you speak?  You’d have their undivided attention but not the extended reach of their social networks.  Which should be more important to a speaker today?
If I tried to get people to shut down their devices, I might get their undivided attention, but it would be mixed with their ire at being told how they should watch my presentation.  I was an actor for years, and it’s essential to know when working with an audience who and when to try to get people to participate.  For instance, when I played a scary character in children’s theatre, I’d always direct my lines to the oldest boys in the audience – they loved the attention but I wouldn’t actually frighten them.

In terms of which is more important, an audience shutting down or getting the reach of their networks, the hope is people actually register what you’re talking about besides waiting for the pithy phrase that will make a good tweet.  But for me when I speak, the most important thing is blow them away with my presentation – that’s the only thing I have control over. The rest is up to the audience.

DN: Knowing that your audience is on Twitter while you speak, are you thinking while you write your speech—gee that line will make a great tweet?
Sure.  Or at least, “this is a good sound bite.”  Puns, sound bites, short and pithy phrases are all ways to aid in retention. Humor is also great – I’ve read cognitive studies saying that if people laugh at something you’ve really connected with them and there’s a 50% higher probability they’ll remember what you said than without humor.

Another cardinal rule of mine – never make it difficult for people to remember or share what you say.  My old acting agent used to tell me when I came back from auditions they’d call the casting directors to get feedback on how I did.  If they said, “John came in here and blew me away” or “John’s choice was way over the top but he was really passionate,” may agent was happy.  If my agent called and said, “how did John do?” and the answer came back, “John who?” that’s when I was in trouble.

DN: Are social media conferences harder to engage than say a group of accountants who aren’t necessarily trying to be the first to share what they just heard?
Every audience is different.  A hard core Social Media audience like SXSW where I spoke last year is definitely device and dialogue (to their social graphs) focused.  But a lot of times they’re the most responsive because they’re already drinking the digital kool-aid. Accountants or folks not as versed in Social Media oftentimes have a vibe/energy of, “prove to me Social Media has an ROI” before you even start talking. So my focus there is usually to not focus on the tools of the trade but the overall value proposition of connecting with relevant to your audience, wherever they get their content.

DN: You mentioned you were an actor in a former life.  This sort of gives you a competitive advantage on stage, don’t you think?
Sure.  I studied the craft of acting which includes working on your voice, dancing/movement, and projection.  But mostly good acting is about connecting with truth to the person you’re on stage with in the moment.  Meaning, you can’t be thinking, “this line will make the audience laugh” when you’re on stage or you’re dead.  You can try to make a joke, but every audience is different.  Your job onstage is to deliver your message or story in a way that best connects to the people sitting in front of you RIGHT NOW.  If they don’t seem to be getting your message, use techniques like saying, “Does that make sense?” after you make a point.  Or say things like, “anyone else heard of SIRI?” and raise your hand, indicating for them to raise their hand.  People don’t mind audience participation if you genuinely seek their response and aren’t a tool.  What you should NEVER do is single someone out and alienate them, ala standup comedian mode.  Or, if you’re going to try and do that, prove that you’re making them part of the act versus the butt of a joke – say something like, “Hi, what’s your name?

DN: Do you get any feedback from these events and if so, why kind of adjustments have you made based on this feedback?
I don’t get as much specific, actionable critique as I’d like.  My old acting teacher was great at this stuff and I recommend this practice technique for any speaker – record yourself rehearsing your presentation.  Odds are you’ll see that you flap your hand with nervous tension, or scratch your head every 30 seconds.  You have to identify these nervous tics so you can get rid of them and focus all of your energy on speaking in the moment.

I have gotten some good advice on talking about technology.  Years ago, someone told me they liked what I said but didn’t get the context of my presentation.  I delved right into talking about specific social media tools without providing a backdrop for what an audience learned.

So in that sense I try to always do the following:

• Research who I’m speaking to (marketers, digital savvy or no, what level of the organization, where are they geographically based).
• Make sure I review the expectations of my talk (what’s been advertised) before I being working on my presentation.
• Find a bookend for the STORY of my talk. Don’t just list facts – what is the POINT you’re trying to make?
• Remind people throughout my talk what I’m talking about.  I’m a big believer in the old adage about what makes a good presentation: Here’s what I’m going to talk about, here’s what I’m talking about, here’s what I just talked about.  Less points made well makes for a more memorable presentation than a zillion factoids.

My last bit of advice – change the world with your talk.  Why get up and talk in front of a group if you’re not wildly passionate about your subject matter?  Pretend you’re at a bar talking to friends, or with your family telling stories around the campfire.  This is not about being hokey – it’s an acting technique you need to hone or don’t get up on stage.  If you aren’t completely excited to tell everyone your message, why should your audience be excited to listen?

2011: Great for Social Media Experimentation
Sure the Yankees lost but that probably made more people happy than sad.   Gayle Weiswasser, VP, Social Media at Discovery Communications described 2011 as “a banner year” as they experimented with on-air integration of social media on programs like Science’s An Idiot Abroad.  Noted Weiswasser, “social media has proven to be indispensable when budgets tightened.”

2011: Amazing if You Delivered Demonstrable Value
Clearly, I wasn’t interviewing Yankee fans.  Jay Samit, CMO of SocialVibe was even more effusive, describing 2011 as “amazing” while dubbing it “the year for value-exchange engagements.”  Samit noted that the tough economy has actually benefited SocialVibe as “hundreds of brands have jumped on the bandwagon increasing our reach to over 600 million consumers per month.”  No wonder Jay’s beaming.

2011: Brought in the Four Horseman of the Digital Age
Despite being of the RedSox nation, Brian Kardon, CMO of Eloqua said he was “missing 2011 already!”  According to Kardon, “2011 was the year that the four horseman of the digital age became real:  mobile, social, apps, cloud.”  Added Kardon, “we leveraged our online community to help answer customer questions and create new, valuable content faster and cheaper via crowd-sourcing.”

Yeah well, maybe Kardon can crowd-source a new manager for his faltering Sox– which is as good a transition as any to take a peak at the year ahead.  By the way, most of the folks I interviewed are speaking at next week’s Pivot Conference (http://2011.pivotcon.com/) in New York City where baseball metaphors will surely be out of play.

2012:  This is Not the Year to Hunker Down
It is safe to say that no winning team did so by expecting to lose.  Similarly, not one of the marketers I talked to expressed any doubts about the year ahead for their companies.  Both Frank and Samit talked about expanding globally while Kardon cautions business leaders who plan to “hunker down.”  “When your competitors are zigging, that’s the time to zag,“ encourages Kardon.

2012:  Look for More Data-Driven CMO’s
Moneyball is not just a shoe-in for an Academy Award nomination but it is a new mantra for marketers awakening to the power of having better and more accessible data.  Explains Hope Frank, CMO of Webtrends, “the shift of analytics from the IT department to the CMO will continue. “  Adds Frank, “clean, simple dashboards allow ‘head of the curve’ marketers like Zinio to develop, manage and measure digital campaigns.”

2012:  It’s Time to Add a 5^th P to the 4P’s of Marketing
Frankly, the only P that’s on my mind is P for Pitching but fortunately for you, celebrated CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett is thinking bigger.  Hayzlett says “the traditional 4Ps of marketing have been joined by a powerful 5^th P—for people.”   “Never, ever discount the Power of One,” explains Hayzlett, since every critic or fan will share his or her feelings.  Hayzlett calls this “the ROI of social media—Return on Ignoring.”

2012: Go Mobile or Go Home (We Mean it This Time)
While my aging Yanks are hardly a sure thing next year, mobile has finally come of age.  Notes Discovery’s Weiswasser, “mobile is incredibly important to our business” so they are focused on building mobile-friendly sites and apps that “make our brands more accessible and fun.”  Adds Oren Michels, CEO of Mashery, “businesses need to engage with customers where their customers are—mobile, social, local, etc.”

2012: Make it Personal
Like any true fan, I took the Yanks defeat personally. Marketers who deliver meaningful levels of personalization in 2012 will be in a league of their own.  Mashery’s Michels sees this happening with personalized apps, emphasizing that, “a great app grants a wish for a particular group of people at a particular time and place.”  Concludes Kardon, “the dream of personalized digital experiences is finally here: Drew likes the Yankees so he gets invited to Terry Francona’s Farewell Party.”

My complete interviews with all of these marketing “players” are already on this blog.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
Missing 2011 already!  2011 was the year that the four horsemen of the digital age became real: mobile, social, apps, cloud.   We found real value from these.  It’s not the proverbial “just a few months away.”   It’s now.  It’s an exciting time to be a marketer!

DN: What new things did you try in 2011?
Crowd-sourcing took a big step forward.  We leveraged our online community to help answer customer questions and create new, valuable content faster and cheaper via crowd-sourcing.  And when the “crowd” creates its, they are also your partner in distributing it.  Content that was created by outsiders received lots more love than that created by insiders or “the usual suspects”.  Companies are reaching outside their walls like never before.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012?
I’m starting to hear “hunker down” talk from business leaders.  That’s a huge mistake.  When your competitors are zigging, that’s the time to zag.  It’s like doing a house renovation.  You get higher quality workers and lower costs during a recession.  The same is true of business.  You can find better talent, get better media rates, pay less for words at Google because there are fewer dollars chasing those things during a downturn.  And when the recession is over, those companies are in an incredibly strong competitive position because they have been continually investing.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Call it 1:1 marketing or mass customization, but the dream of personalized digital experiences is finally here.  Websites are no longer the embodiment  of Groundhog Day, where the website looks the same every day.  Think NetFlix and Amazon – where they use your digital body language to personalize movie and book recommendations.  Retail and fashion sites use shopping card and clickstream digital body language to personalize the shopping experience.  You like Gucci, hate Pucci?  Your favorite web sites should know that and present content that they know you will like.  Drew likes tennis – he gets an offer for US Open tickets.  Drew likes the Yankees – he gets invited to Terry Francona’s Farewell Party! (Blogger’s note: you won’t see me holding my breath for that invitation.)

DN: What do you have to say about the growing challenge of complexity for marketers?
In all the petabytes and exabytes of data, some people see complexity and shudder.   I think smart marketers see beauty in the data and their ability to personalize and improve customer engagement.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
2011 was a pivotal year for digital marketing and businesses. Marketers are getting smarter about their programs and investments, which drives them to companies like Webtrends. We maximize marketing ROI, through optimization, testing, targeting and program measurement with our analytics offering. This is an area companies are laser-focused on. We are certainly looking forward to watching our industry mature in 2012.

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try that worked or didn’t work?
Webtrends has been on an incredibly steep curve of development to meet the immediate needs of brand marketers today. In 2011, we introduced the industry’s first unified analytics offering to provide brand marketers a view of their performance across mobile, social and web properties. Amazingly, we also introduced Webtrends Social, a complete social offering from ads to apps to analytics. Both of these developments have driven deep digital marketing success for our clients.

DN: Are you particularly proud of something you tried in 2011?
Without question it would be the globalization of our Webtrends products and services. In 2011, we opened our Japan office, and enjoyed tremendous growth from our EMEA, South America and Asia Pacific teams. Our products and services naturally translate to marketers globally who are looking to effectively measure their programs and discover new ways to engage their audiences.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012, and if so how?
We do not see the current economic climate affecting our business in any negative way. In fact, we are seeing companies be smarter about their digital investments, driving them to our optimization and analytics solutions. We expect to continue to see strong growth in 2012.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon? If so, what are they and how important do you think these trends are to your business?
The shift of analytics from the IT department to the CMO will continue, as products continue to develop in the direction of clean, simple dashboards and interfaces that allow marketers to develop, manage and measure digital campaigns through intuitive tools and services. We have seen this unfold with “ahead of the curve clients” such as Zinio.

Zinio has been an avid customer of our analytics products and services and has applied it in a super intelligent fashion to shape their business. They don’t just sell magazine covers, Zinio sells the treasure of storytelling under the covers. Based on Webtrends analytics, Zinio is able to determine which articles are the most compelling and leverage those in their “Explore” section. Zinio allows for exploration and discovery of category-driven stories FOR FREE to complement the 5,000 titles Zinio sells. View examples here .

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key take-aways?
Genius in the Age of Enlightenment: Evan Greene, CMO, of The Recording Academy (The GRAMMYs) and Jeanniey Mullen, CMO of Zinio and VIVmag will join me to showcase creative innovation within social programs in music, fashion and publishing.

Key take-aways from our presentation at Pivot will include:

• Don’t let the tools get in your way
• Dive back into the art of marketing with jaw dropping concepts and creative
• And a unified analytics approach to new creative and outreach is critical to ROI on digital

DN: Finally, among the trends I’m tracking are complexity (for marketers) and data-overload (for consumers). Can you comment on these?
Tackling complexity in analytics was another major achievements in 2011. We developed the only unified analytics offering in the industry. Webtrends Analytics 10 allows brands to measure effectiveness across their mobile, social and web properties, and see these measurements integrated in an easy to understand dashboard. It was a major step forward for our industry.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
2011 was a great year for my company and me, personally. I spoke all over the world, Australia, all over the US and met some great people and great companies. Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google and MGM were just a few of my favorites. My book, “The Mirror Test” was released in paperback. And I just became celebrity editor of the largest circulation magazine in the world, “Tweeting & Business”, coming out this month. It’s been a great year. I tend never to look back, just move forward and go!

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try?
I’m always open to trying new things; I love to take risks. But I also think it’s important to continue to examine your company inside and out, drive change and make tough decisions. It’s exactly about what I wrote in “The Mirror Test”.

DN: What else happened for you in 2011?
I wrote another book this year and it will be coming out in January. It’s called Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change and Grow Profits. Gauntlet takes the concepts from The Mirror Test to the next level. I’m really proud of the book. We included some amazing new interactive elements as well that will make the book unique.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012 and if so how?
Overall it’s not, I’m driving change and continuing forward. You have to. I have to take my company and my plans and move forward—whether I succeed or fail is up to me. I don’t look at the economy and let that stop or influence anything I want to do.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Mobile advertising is growing fast than anyone–Google or Yahoo! included–predicted. As a marketer I would have a plan in place for mobile campaigns. And social media continues to evolve. Video is surpassing the written word online. I’ve tape many of my blogs as video as well.

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key insights or thought-provoking take-aways?
I’m fortunate to be on a panel with Gayle Weiswasser, the Vice President of Social Media Communications at Discovery Communications. We’ll be talking about the traditional 4Ps of marketing. But with a spin. The four P’s aren’t going away, but they have been joined by a powerful 5th P — the social element — people. Since it’s a panel, you never know which direction the conversation will go–which I love.

However, key points I usually work into any conversation about marketing and social media are: Never, ever discount the Power of One. Just one follower, whether they are an evangelist or a critic, will tell their friends and followers. Don’t ignore the critics. The recent incident with GASP in Australia is an excellent lesson on how NOT to do it. I call the ROI of social media “return on ignoring”. You can’t ignore the comments–positive or negative. Feedback from your customers is critical; in the past I’ve used that feedback to develop new features and products customers loved and bought like crazy. As marketers it’s critical we really listen and respond. That creates brand ambassadors for your company.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
For SocialVibe, 2011 has been an amazing year. When the economy is tough, brand managers need to justify each and every ad dollar they spend. This has been the year for value-exchange engagements. Hundreds of brands have jumped on the bandwagon increasing our reach to over 600 million consumers per month.

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key insights?
Impressions are the least effective way to measure advertising. Measure consumer engagement. Value exchange advertising turns consumers into brand evangelists generating millions in earned media.

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try?
SocialVibe expanded our value-exchange engagement platform beyond Zynga in 2011, to encompass Facebook credits, premium content, and mobile. With a broader reach of over 150 million American consumers per month, we are now able to pair the product message with their exact audience. The result: millions of consumers opting in to spend over a minute with their favorite brand and sharing that message with dozens of friends online.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012?
SocialVibe is expanding globally in 2012. The success of our London office has us now running social media advertising campaigns in dozens of countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. With a reach of over 660 million consumers, Japan and Asia are SocialVibe’s next area of expansion.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Providing a rich media solutions for small and medium size businesses is a key growth area for SocialVibe. Today we reach hundreds of millions of consumers for the top 300 brands in the world. In 2012, we want to give smaller businesses access to this targeted, engaged audience of consumers.

DN: Are you particularly proud of something new that you tried or recommended in 2011?
Great topic for another story: SocialVibe is now providing our advertising solution to the Presidential Election of 2012. We have clients from both sides of the aisle. The amazing thing is that political ad campaigns generate results even better than brand campaigns because people love to talk politics.

DN: Finally, among the trends I’m tracking are complexity (for marketers) and data-overload (for consumers). How are you responding to these?
Consumers on the Internet are inundated with marketing messages and have learned to tune them out. The secret is to enter the conversation by finding the “pause moments’ when consumers can and will pay attention. SocialVibe has published over 100 case studies illustrating how brands in virtually any category can achieve great results.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
We’d be thrilled to have another year like 2011. It was a banner year for social media at Discovery – we saw great growth across our social media platforms as well as sustained, strong engagement with fans, thanks to consistent delivery of compelling content that kept our fans happy. We hope that 2012 will be another year of experimentation, growth and success.

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try that worked or didn’t work?
We experimented with on-air integration of social media (most notably during a marathon for Science’s An Idiot Abroad).  We’d like to expand that capability across all of our networks and do more with on-air integration during premieres. We also tried a number of social media initiatives with our talent that proved to be a great success on social platforms – live chats, Q&As, Facebook/Twitter takeovers.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty affecting your plans for 2012 and if so how?
Social media outreach and marketing are very cost-effective strategies for driving tune-in and traffic and engaging with fans. We do not expect the economic climate to affect our social media plans; in fact, social media has proven to be indispensable when budgets are tightened.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Mobile is a big trend for 2012 (and has been for the last few years). The more that we can engage our fans across a range of devices through compelling content and apps – whether they augment our on-air programming through co-viewing or simply make our brands more accessible and fun – the more successful we will be. Mobile is incredibly important to our business, and Discovery’s commitment to making its sites mobile-friendly and to developing these apps is a testament to that.

DN: Are you particularly proud of something new that you tried in 2011?
We’re proud of the fact that, with very few exceptions around individual shows, Discovery does all of its social media in-house. We’ve grown from a team of 2 in 2009 to a team of 10 today, which is a testament to Discovery’s commitment to social media and its importance as part of a larger marketing/communications strategy.

DN: How are the dual trends, complexity (for marketers) and data-overload (for consumers) effecting your plans?
We know that our fans are constantly bombarded with information, and that we are competing with many, many inputs for both their television minutes and their online attention. That puts the burden squarely on us to consistently deliver strong, authentic content that is both relevant and entertaining. It is very easy for a fan to hide a page or unsubscribe from a Twitter account, or just simply to pass by our posts without sharing, commenting or clicking through. We try to meet that challenge by setting a high bar for content on our platforms and using social media to spotlight effectively the amazing programming that airs every day across our networks.

Halfdome is Granite

Without going all scientific on you (it was but a one-hour lecture after all), igneous rock, which accounts for 80% or so of all rocks on earth, is formed by magma or lava, either above or below the earth’s service.  And when the magma hardens below the surface it often forms granite, a marvel of geology that we all simply take for granted.  More than just a bad pun, granite provides a nifty albeit rocky metaphor for some sturdy thinking about social media.

A Solid Social Media Program Takes Time to Develop

Because molten magma is really really hot, it actually takes millions of years for it to cool, condense and form granite.  Not that social media need take eons, but  a successful program does take a reasonable amount of time to develop.  Consumers are not necessarily hot about engaging with your brand so, first and foremost, you need to think through all the elements of the program from strategy to brand POV, channel mix to monitoring, content development to on-going execution.

I know this sounds obvious to you daily practitioners but it is often rushed through or overlooked by those new to social.  We recently ran into a stone  wall with a prospect who was looking to plan and execute a fully-integrated social media program for a new product with extraordinarily ambitious fan acquisition goals in under three weeks.  Sadly, we decided to walk away from the pitch, knowing that the odds of success under these parameters were as likely as predicting the next eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

Look Below the Surface for On-Going Success

Though granite is formed under the earth’s crust, it only became ubiquitous after millions of years of surface erosion and tectonic plate shifts.  Rather than seek ubiquity through follower and fan counts, marketers would be better advised to look below the surface at true fan engagement.  Having thousands or even millions of fans is essentially useless if these fans are not engaging with the brand in a meaningful manner.

Buying fans is easy; engaging with them is the hard part.  These days, Twitter followers can be bought for under $30 per thousand and Facebook “likes” can be purchased for as little as a few pennies to a whopping $2 per.   Given the ease of acquisition, it would be easy to confuse abundance with effectiveness.  Engagement measures like comments on wall posts, retweets, link sharing and favoriting are far better indications of a successful social media program.

The Social Media Landscape is Anything But Static

Turns out that exposed granite is constantly under pressure from the elements, which can grind it down into almost unrecognizable bits of soil.  And so it is with social media as competing forces vie to gain competitive advantage and grind each out of existence.  Among these battles, the one between the mountain that is Facebook and the rising tide that is Google+ is already having the greatest impact.

Google+ established a 25 million-user foothold on the strength of its Circles, a unique way to classify one’s friends and associates.   Not to be outdone, Facebook responded with a new way to differentiate between “close friends” and mere “acquaintances.”  Facebook also added a “subscribe button” which allows people to follow the public feeds of anyone, even if your not friends, another feature that Google+ offered from the get go (see the pattern here?).  And with the hopes of crushing G+ entirely, Facebook just rolled out an entirely new user interface.

But wait there’s more. Google+ finally released it API to developers and just now opened up the site to all, which combined could prove to be the perfect rock for David’s sling.  3^rd Party developers like those that drive the features of Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Social Oopmh, can finally integrate G+ into their systems, making it easier for users to post, track and manage all their social networks at once.  With G+ usage down a reported 41%, these changes arrived just in time to remind us that when it comes to social media, nothing is set in stone!

And if you like what you’ve read, feel free to subscribe to the Renegade newsletter or our Facebook page. Finally, if this article seemed familiar, that’s because you saw it earlier this week on MediaPost.

It takes extraordinary chutzpah to promote a vision before it can be fully realized by your audience let alone your company. IBM did just that in 1997 when it introduced the notion of @e-business. Fourteen years later it is doing it again with a concept they call @socialbusiness. Given their prescience about e-business, a concept that radically transformed how companies buy/sell their products, it is hard to dismiss their latest idée fixe: Social Business.

That said, getting your arms around this grandiose idea is not easy. Ethan McCarty, Senior Manager of Digital and Social Strategy at IBM, spent the better part of an hour with me explaining the ins and outs while providing specific examples of how IBM is testing various social business approaches both internally and externally. In the end, I came away with these seven reasons why just about every company should be thinking about becoming a social business.

1. Social media will be dwarfed by social business
While social media has helped many companies become more customer-centric, it is treated primarily as a modestly effective marketing tool. McCarty explained, “Social media is about media and people, which is one dimension of the overall world of business. With social business you start to look at the way people are interacting in digital experiences and apply the insights derived to a wide variety of different business processes.”

2. People do business with people not companies
One of the notions behind becoming a Social Business is that your employees should be front and center in your digital activities. Instructed McCarty, “Since IBM no longer sells consumer products, the brand experience for IBM is an experience with an IBMer,” an experience that is increasingly happening online. To support this idea, IBM recently started adding IBMer “experts” to various web pages— an action that in A/B testing dramatically improved page performance and revealed increased confidence and trust in IBM in focus groups.

3. Your employees need to be digital citizens too
Becoming a Social Business means recognizing the need for your employees to become “digital citizens” and providing the training for them to manage their digital reputations. Accordingly, IBM not only trains its experts extensively, it is now building out “personal dashboards” to help them see the impact of their various interactions. “Good conversation creates good outcomes and that brings value to the organization and to the individual,” McCarty concluded.

4. You don’t need to eat the whole social business elephant in one bite
When asked, “How do you eat an elephant?” the sage pygmy replied, “One bite at a time.” And so it is with social business initiatives. IBM itself tried a number of different approaches internally: First by using a Wiki to draft its social computing guidelines and more recently by offering a “Social Computing Demystified” course to help more IBMers become digital citizens. These smaller building blocks helped pave the way for bigger initiatives like the expertise locator that now taps into nearly 3,000 IBMers from around the world.

5. A social business can be a good business too
The same tools and processes that go into creating a social business can also be put to use for social good. To test this notion and in honor of its 100th anniversary, IBM asked every employee “to take a full day and dedicate it to skills-based service.” Calling it the Centennial Celebration of Service, thousands of IBMers shared their expertise and then their experiences on IBM100.com. “Now you have in this social business program the permissioning and guidance matched with content so IBMers can get started and experiment [with social business],” beamed McCarty.

6. Enough already with the useless email trains
Most companies rely on email as the primary means to share information among employees despite the havoc it often creates. “Email is a very limited tool and does a lot of things to silo work efforts,” McCarty noted. Calling it “completely antisocial,” McCarty believes that a social business needs to employ more collaborative digital work tools (well beyond email) that are asynchronous, enabling a geographically disperse team to do great work together.

7. It’s okay to fail as long as you do it quickly
Since not every social business initiative will take hold, it is important to try lots of approaches and move on when one doesn’t work. IBM describes this as “agile development.” “You can’t spend 10 months planning it and then launching it—the idea is to learn quickly and if we need to, fail quickly,” noted McCarty. As case in point, McCarty claims the first iteration of their expertise locator went from concept to a test on IBM.com in four weeks with new iterations following in monthly succession sprints as short as two weeks. McCarty firmly believes this particular social business program, although still in its infancy, has infinite possibilities.

Final note
McCarty is a passionate evangelist who believes “social digital activity is moving from the periphery to the center of business.” To understand this and how social business is “increasing the surface area of an organization,” be sure to see my extensive interviews with McCarty on this blog.

Drew: What advice would you give to a B2B company interested in pursing a similar program?  What three things would you say to them?

Ethan: Probably, don’t use the word, “expert.” There are some cultures that are completely allergic to using that word in reference to themselves.

Drew: Makes sense. How did you get this thing up and running?

Ethan: One of the things we’ve done that’s been really helpful is we made sure that we had people from all around the world working on the project. I’m a member of a team we call the Expertise and Eminence Round Table.  It started with six of us just meeting on Friday morning and talking about the work we were doing.  The group represents some people from our hardware group, some from software and others from Services and the CIO office.  They heard about the work that my team and I were doing and they wanted to be apart of the project. We realized we were all managing lists of experts, so we got our lists together. We started with a base population in the Expertise Locator System that’s very diverse so we can learn a lot from that. From there we hit the ground running.

Drew: What else would you advise?

Ethan: We are trying to apply what’s called “agile development” to this system so we put out a new version or update it just about every two weeks. The idea is we try to learn quickly, and if we need to fail quickly, we’re failing quickly.  When stuff doesn’t work, two weeks later we’re changing it.  With Digital systems like the Expertise Locator,  you can’t spend 10 months planning it and then launch it.  From the point when we wanted to get this on ibm.com to the point we had it on ibm.com was four weeks.  It wasn’t a service at that point; it was this manually coded thing. In the next version we had the database set up, and in the next version we had the API described.

It was very iterative; my advice – you really want to get something up that you can start to have people experience quickly.  It’s complicated because people expect [that because] it’s from IBM, surely it’s done when it’s out the door. It would be quite different if this were a product that we’re putting into market, but this is a cultural program, a communications and marketing program.  In that way we have a bit more flexibility to iterate and learn as we go— that would be a very key lesson for anybody who’s going to try to get into this.  You’re talking about working with lots of people, and you can’t predict how people behave. It would be tremendous hubris to say that you could predict how people are going to behave.

Drew: Is there a component of this where the accessibility of these experts is giving away the very expertise that you sell?

Ethan: The interaction that experts have or that people have with IBMers right now through this is pretty light.  It’s not like a free six-month consulting engagement with a team of our principle consultants. I think it’s more of a means to get to know us, and we can help you build your business through that.

Drew:  What’s in it for the expert?  I mean they’ve got their own job.

Ethan: That’s a great question. First of all, there are some IBMers for whom interaction with the public, clients in particular, or prospective employees or whomever, is a facet of their job.  If you’re going to be one of our most eminent technologists, you’d be called a distinguished engineer or maybe you’d be a member of our academy of technology or a master inventor. These people already have it in their job description to interact with clients and prospects, and they’re supposed to be mentoring people. There are all kinds of things that they’re already supposed to be doing and quite directly participating as someone in our Expertise Locator System or participating in social business at IBM would allow them to do that more effectively.  Soon, they will actually be able to track it. You could say, “Look, I showed up on web pages 350,000 times.”

Secondly, these days employees are sort of global capitalists in a way. You’re a citizen of a digitally interconnected globe at this point, and your reputation is everything.  If you cannot manage your reputation— your digital professional reputation— you’re in real trouble. One of the things that we’re building out in social business at IBM is a personal dashboard that starts to show things like how many times you were surfaced and how many times people connect with you. We’re helping to establish each IBMers digital reputation with these tool, and a digital reputation is becoming vital in today’s business world.

Drew: Walk me through your various social business initiatives at IBM.

Ethan: IBM’s social business initiatives run deep – from the products and services we sell to clients to our own use of the technology and implementation of social business processes throughout the organization. IBM Connections is our social software platform for businesses designed for workers to network both inside and outside of the firewall. It’s basically the backbone for an organization to transform into a social business. It provides all the necessary social tools – wikis, blogs, communities, instant messaging, etc. – and social analytics features to allow employees to really expand their professional network, to find and contribute content, to identify expertise within their organization and ultimately drive the bottom line for the organization. We’re using this technology at IBM and reaping huge benefits.

Beyond drinking our own champagne, a huge priority for IBM, in order to really become a social business, has been education. We offer a huge catalogue of educational modules all around how to get involved in social computing. Back in 2007, we used a Wiki and about 250 IBMers wrote our Social Computing Guidelines collaboratively. We offer modules around why IBMers need social computing, we provide examples of how IBMers have used social digital experiences to improve customer interaction, sales, business value, various business process – these examples are impactful. We offer a Social Computing Demystified course and then we have a course about IBM’s digital strategy in general. This is all available to every IBMer on an internal site, Social Business @ IBM. It’s a one stop educational resource for the IBMer who wants to establish their digital reputation and two-fold, help to enhance IBM’s brand.

Drew: How have IBMers embraced these initiatives?

Ethan: IBMers are ready to go out there and be the brand. A great example of this is our Centennial Celebration of Service. This year is IBM’s 100th anniversary, and it’s a big deal. In honor of the accomplishment, we asked every IBMer [to] take a full day and dedicate it to skills-based service. This event was about IBMers going out and teaching the thing they’re great at or going to a non-profit and helping them to optimize their IT systems or doing consulting in the industry that they’re expert in. You can go to look at our IBM 100 website and you’ll see some of the visualization’s from the day of service. IBMers uploaded almost 2,000 photos of themselves doing these celebrations of service, they tweeted using the hashtag we created to trend on twitter. The event was all about giving back and celebrating our organization’s expertise and talent, but being the social business that we are, it incorporated so many digital and social experiences as well.

Drew: Tell me about the Expertise Locator.

Ethan: A new social business initiative we’re rolling out is the Expertise Locator, which is also situated in the context of that training material we talked about earlier. IBM no longer sells consumer products; the brand experience for IBM is an experience with an IBMer. If your brand is experienced through its people— not through the products— then you’d want to make sure that your very best people are well equipped to interact with the important audiences and constituencies. That’s what the Expertise Locator is about. It’s incredibly nascent; we’ve just been working on this for a year and a half, but we already have several thousand IBMers who have enrolled internally and we’re starting to help those IBMers prepare for being surfaced in digital experiences all over the place— not just on our Intranet.

The next phase of this project is to really describe our experts and do the hard work of figuring out what the policies will be for accessing them – how will we give them enough controls that it’s not invasive to them or they don’t get overwhelmed or how do we make sure the right experts show up on which page so they’re connected with the right people. There are kinks to work out, but we’re really excited about the impact its going to have on the IBM brand experience.

Drew: Is there a risk here of over-promising this one-to-one interaction between this expert and the visitor?

Ethan: I think there is that risk. But, there are a few things that are helping to mitigate that. One is we’re not promising a one-to-one interaction. There are interaction modes on IBM.com where that it is promised, but the Expertise Locator is not that kind of immediate interaction, its offering the opportunity to connect with these IBMers over LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, by phone, etc. The interaction with voices from IBM can be extremely multi-modal and very satisfying. I think we can actually deliver on that, particularly because a lot of the social systems that are emergent that we’re taking advantage of. We could get to that point where, depending on who you are, we would match you with, and what you’re trying to accomplish, we could match you with the right person who has the right modality of interaction.

There are lots of risks and we’re going to have to figure out how to address them and we’re trying to apply some of our best thinkers to that. We also think there’s a big risk to circling the wagons and ignoring this new mode of doing business. Becoming a truly holistic social business is not without its risks, but ultimately taking these risks is what sets you apart from the pack.

Drew: How do you measure the value of a program like this?

Ethan: There’s the operational measures like, Are we getting people to enroll? Are they going through the training? The company does some internal research periodically about a lot of different issues, but one of them is awareness of our guidelines. I would like to see that one of the results of this would be more IBMers really feel like they’re familiar with the social computing guidelines and feel empowered by that. We ask those kinds of questions internally, so those are sort of operational metrics.

When we were first testing how we would show experts on external web pages, we did an AB test. We found that the page performed better when we put experts on it. It’s not that surprising; everybody who’s been doing web stuff for a while knows that your confidence and trust in the page is going to go up when you see real humans on it. We did focus group analysis and asked for feedback. [The participants] looked at the expert: It showed whatever the expert’s latest blog entry or tweet was, so they got the sense that there’s another person there. Their confidence in the page went up; their trust in IBM went up. Overall they were feeling better about being there.

Part 3 of this interview will be posted tomorrow.

Drew: Most businesses are trying to get their mind’s wrapped around social media, and you folks are now talking about social business. What’s the difference between those two terms?

Ethan: I think there’s a variety of interpretations for these terms : social media and social business. Social media is typically about mediated experiences with content, and sometimes it’s about dis-inter-mediating the experience. Social media is about media and people, which is one dimension of the overall world of business. With social business you start to look at the way people are interacting in digital experiences and how you can apply the insights derived from all the data and apply them to business processes that may not necessarily be about dissemination of information.

Drew: Tell me about the various dimensions of Social Business, and how companies can deploy it.

Ethan: Social business is about looking at  business processes differently;  from how you are listening to your customers, to how you are engaging with a wide-variety of constituencies. It could be your employees, or it could be potential investors; it could be current investors; it could be prospects for your business.

One of the main dimensions of social business is about managing relationships through these new business processes. Social media is more about disseminating information in new ways, using people as the medium rather than broadcast systems as the medium.  In social business you might be managing community relationships or relationships with individuals; you might be identifying and activating experts or rewarding and recognizing certain kinds of behaviors. And then of course another really important dimension of social business is collaboration. I think that is beyond the thought of social media because it’s not always about creating an information document.  It could be things like collaborative editing, but it could also be file sharing or expertise location.

There are things in the realm of social business that are more about working to improve the efficiency of teams as opposed to just getting a message out there, which I think a lot of the initial social media really were about. Social business is sort of a super-set of social media. Social media is one component of social business.

Drew: Is social business a mind set or a skill set? Or is it a product?

Ethan: All of the above. There are certainly products that enhance an organization’s ability to become a social business. For example, IBM offers a platform of products that enable social business – wikis, blogs, communities, instant messaging, etc. Beyond these products, and really in order to implement and adopt them successfully, social business has to be move than just a mindset, it has to be an organization’s cultural priority. Leaders have to be committed to making significant business process changes in order to actually make work getting done easier and more efficient. We have at IBM a social business management council that  includes some very high-ranking IBM executives, IBMers in the CIO office, in HR, etc., [and] we perform risk analyses and opportunities analyses to help us establish new modes of work. One of the efforts that I’m leading with an IBM HR leader is to look at how we’re going to formalize these new modes of work into our skills at IBM. Social business at IBM is a priority, we’re constantly fine tuning our processes to better serve our customers, partners and ourselves.

Social business is a pretty broad thing, and it includes skills that aren’t necessarily obvious to every employee.  Also there’s a broad area of policy development that we, as an industry, need to do. If you think about how many relationships between an enterprise’s employee base and those with whom they are supposed to be working have been mediated and controlled by processes that are not necessarily enabled by the most contemporary social business approaches, you’ll see the world has a lot of work to do in this area. That is, to me, very promising.

Drew: How is Social Business being integrated into IBM’s business model?

Ethan: There are a couple major concepts that we’re currently working on. One is acknowledging that social, digital activity is moving from the periphery to the center of business. And to me, that’s a big part of what social business is. It’s the transition of all the interesting and fun social activity that’s taken place in the commercial domain is becoming increasingly applicable to enterprises, and how enterprises get work done; how enterprises manage relationships with their clients; how employees work together. That’s a significant change in business.  Social, digital activity and experiences are no longer a frivolous, nebbishy thing for teenagers and college students. Enterprises are realizing the power of these tools to transform there business.

IBM’s a great example of this social business transformation; a lot of our work is done using digital, collaborative means. Consider this, I’ve got eight people on my core team, and, not one of us lives in the same city, and many of us are in different time zones.  I work with IBMers in Australia and California and Michigan and all around the Tri-State area, and we’re doing all kinds of great work together, every day. It’s asynchronous; it’s collaborative. The way we work together is digital and a lot of it this work and collaboration is not happening over email.  Email is a very limited tool, and in some ways completely antisocial.  It does a lot of things to silo the work efforts. Instead of email, we’re using social tools – file sharing, video conferencing, wikis, communities, instant messaging, etc – to get our jobs done.

FYI, you can follow Ethan on Twitter @ethanmcc.

Some time ago mass-market tomato farmers exchanged flavor for firmness, zest for bug resistance and vine ripening for carbon dioxide coloration. In their eagerness to sell, they lost their way— a cautionary tale for B2B marketers hoping to exploit social media on a grand scale. With this in mind and at the risk of providing metaphoric manure, I offer this tomato lover’s 8-step guide to growing a fruitful B2B social media program.

1. Plant the right seeds
Mass-market farmers lost their way when they put their own needs ahead of their customers.  B2B marketers who approach social media as a sales channel first will see their efforts die on the vine. Explains Trish Nettleship, Social Media Lead at AT&T Business Marketing, “The key is never starting with the platform.  Start with the consumer in mind and that will lead you to the right platform with the right purpose at the right time.”

2. Choose the proper fields
Soil matters; choose poorly and your seeds won’t take.  B2B marketers now have a myriad of social media options from the heavily harvested LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to the lesser-plowed Slideshare, Quora, and StumbleUpon.  CMO.com just updated their helpful Social Landscape, which grades the top social platforms by their ability to engage, generate exposure, drive site traffic and enhance SEO.

3. Fertilize early and often
For B2B marketers, content is the fertilizer that insures growth.  Chip Rodgers, who heads up operations of the 2.5-million-member SAP Community Network, notes that, “it’s a virtuous cycle–content brings community which in turn, brings better and fresher content.”  Rodgers encourages marketers to “feed the community your best [content] by leveraging the experts you already have.”

4. Monitor your crop carefully
Like farming, social media requires constant attention. There are few shortcuts because as Persia Tatar, Founder of the Social Media Society explains, “The core of social media is about relationships.”  Tatar, who built a loyal following on Twitter in just 12 months, adds, “I monitor my Tweet stream and reward individuals that have engaged as brand advocates with special invitations and exclusive content.”

5. Seek organic growth
Gassing tomatoes may turn them red and hasten their trip to market but it leaves them tasteless. B2B marketers who try similar shortcuts in social media will also come up short. Realizing that their subject matter experts weren’t as experienced in social media, AT&T took the time to creating the Networking Leaders Academy.  “We now have an active corps of expert ambassadors who create social proof and digital trust in AT&T,” Nettleship reports.

6. Weed quickly
Even the best-laid seeds can fail despite careful planning.  IBM, which recently launched an “expertise locator” to make highly knowledgeable IBMers accessible to prospects and customers, prescribes an “agile development” process for social programs.  Explains Ethan McCarty, senior manager, Digital and Social Strategy at IBM, “The idea is that we try to learn quickly–when stuff doesn’t work, two weeks later we’re changing it.”

7. Harvest when ripe
Marketers who to try to sell too quickly via social will find themselves in an unappetizing situation.  On the other hand, building trust via social media and the harvest can be bountiful.  After seven years of nurturing, SAP’s Community Network is now driving traffic to webinars and direct product sales.  We’ve really cut back with list buying and traditional marketing costs,” Rodgers says.

8. Refine and renew
Social media programs, like fields, wear out and need to be refined or replaced.  Having milked this metaphor for all its worth, I turn the final spotlight back on Rodgers, who will be making his case at the upcoming B2B Corporate Social Media Summit in Philadelphia September 28-29 along with AT&T’s Nettleship.   Concludes the zesty Rodgers, “[Members are] only drawn to come back because they know your content is always fresh, relevant and compelling.” (Note: this article first appeared on MediaPost.com.)

Thanks to the support of an enlightened board member in 2003, the SAP Community Network (SCN) was able to overcome internal naysayers, and gradually grow into a 2.5 million-member social business juggernaut. Now heading community operations, Chip Rodgers, who I interviewed in advance of his presentation at the B2B Corporate Social Media Summit, the SCN sets a high standard, revealing these 9 ways to know your community is truly awesome.

1. Adding members is no longer a key performance indicator
Because communities are still considered a luxury by some executives and a risk by many (rightly or wrongly) there is tremendous pressure in the early days to achieve scale. The SAP Community Network crossed this threshold in the last 24 months. Reports Rodgers, “Around the time we got close to 2 million, we stopped emphasizing the growth of the community.”

2. Community engagement is a daily activity
“If you build it, they will come,” is pure fiction when it comes to communities, which is why most wither away. Remarkably, the SCN gets about 1.5 million unique visitors per month and 3,000 to 4,000 posts a day. “Our activity numbers are really strong,” Rodgers explains. “I think that’s something we pride ourselves on as there are other communities that may have more members but feel like ghost towns; we have vibrancy.”

3. The community jumps in to defend the brand
It is inevitable that a brand will come under criticism for one thing or another once it opens up a community. Offers Rodgers, “We see this all the time where somebody says something negative or even a little wacky.” But rather than rushing out a brand response, “what ends up happening is a lot of community members [jump in saying] ‘This is way over the line,’ or ‘Nah that’s not really true.’’”

4. You can drive your own circulation
Building and maintaining a healthy community on the scale of the SCN is expensive so there is unavoidable pressure to demonstrate value to management. Rodgers notes, “One of our KPI’s is driving activity to webinars and that turns into real pipeline opportunity dollars traceable back to activity in the community.” In effect, the community acts like a media channel, supporting other marketing efforts and ultimately, top-line sales.

5. The community willingly embraces a direct sales channel
Purists worry that connecting a community with any kind of sales channel will dilute the value of the community. While there is a risk of being too “salesy,” an inevitable by-product of a healthy community are product discussions. Seeing these, SAP set up an online store called SAP EcoHub that started within the community and is now an increasing channel that drives real leads and revenue.

6. The community impacts product development
Customer-generated ideas have long been discussed as the holy grail of community activation, but getting there can be perilous. “The last thing we wanted to do was have a bunch of people contribute ideas and then have nobody listen or act on them,” Rodgers says. Working closely with the “proactive” product teams on selective topics, he has “gotten great feedback and contributions from the community that are already incorporated in the latest solutions.”

7. The marketing group wants in
Successful communities like the SCN are often started outside of marketing departments as a form of post-sale customer service. This orientation gives the community a head start since the emphasis is on creating content of genuine value and not pure product messaging. But with the heightened interest in having robust social media programs, it is not surprising that the SAP marketing department grabbed the reins of the SCN six months ago.

8. The community drives cultural change within marketing
Rodgers, who has run the SCN for five years, might have been apprehensive when marketing subsumed his group earlier this year, but you wouldn’t know it now. “Last year, our CMO said, ‘Guys we need to learn from [the SCN] and we need to have conversations and engage with our audience. We can’t just create another email blast with a bunch of creative and an offer.’”

9. The content developed on the community profoundly improves SEO
With a staff of 12 dedicated to developing formal content like white papers, articles and solutions briefs, Rodgers is able to keep up with his ravenous community, feeding it fresh content on a daily basis. And by optimizing this content for search, starting about 2 years ago, the SCN was able to more than double monthly site traffic. “I mean it was dramatic; it was unbelievable,” Rodgers observes with a sense of pride and awe.

Final note: It’s not often you hear about a huge B2B company operating with a B2C mentality for customer engagement. For my complete interview with Chip Rodgers, see my previous post here.  You can visit the SAP Community Network at and hear Rodgers yourself at the upcoming B2B Corporate Social Media Summit in Philly on October 12th.  This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.

DN: Can you give some background on the SAP Community Network?
The SAP Community Network actually started about eight years ago, and so we’ve had a little bit of time to ramp up. We currently have about 2.5 million members, and it’s a very active community. We get between a million and a million and a half unique visitors a month and about 3,000 to 4,000 posts a day in discussions and blogs and wiki pages.

DN: Tell me about the membership of the SAP Community Network.
It’s about 50% customers and then another probably 30% partners and then we have a large group of employee members as well. There are also independent contractors, developers— just people who are interested in the SAP ecosystem. It’s open to anyone that wants to join. There are a few core pieces of information that we ask for and obviously unique email address.

DN: From a content standpoint, with all these members, are you constantly feeding this beast yourself or is it somewhat self-sustaining?
I have two teams. The content team works with about 400 SAP experts to feed the community with a lot of our formal content: white papers, articles, solution briefs, eLearning, videos, etc. I have a team of about 12 working with a group of stakeholders that are SAP solution managers or folks from support or people in solution marketing that have all the actual information, the expertise and are actually the ones that are building the content.  I’ve also got a group of six that are managing the community-generated content, so that’s our blogs and forums and wikis, and similarly they’re working with a group of about 700 moderators that are in the community.

DN: You know the scale of this community is kind of mind-boggling. Can you draw a direct line between your activities and your ROI?
More and more we’re able to show that there is a connection. We’ve gotten to the point where we’re running a lot of webinars on different topic areas, different product areas. We’ve really cut back with list-buying and some of those traditional marketing costs to get people to come in and listen to a webinar, learn about a new product area, and then take the next step as a pipeline opportunity.

Drew: You started this in 2003, which predates Twitter and Facebook, and I’m curious how you brought [them] into your community. Are they adjuncts or are they truly integrated into this?
Having this background of engaging with the community, when Facebook and Twitter came along, they were natural extensions and ways of engaging with the community. We now have a group that is really focused just purely on social media. We work together to leverage the community and our social media activity. A little bit more specifically, we do a number of things like, if you post a blog in the community, we have an RSS feed to a Twitter account so it automatically tweets the title of the new blog that was published. We think of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, even YouTube, as kind of extensions— concentric circles around the community— to reach community members and try to get the word out.

DN: Was it tough in the beginning to get management behind the community?
We laid a lot of groundwork for social media within SAP. We were fortunate that we had a board member that thought it was the thing to do and defended it every time. When we first opened the communities with blogs and forums and wiki, some executives were nervous – saying, “why should we create a place just for people to complain?”  But our feeling was that there are plenty of public places for people to criticize the company, why not create the place where we can be a part of the conversation?  And fortunately, our board defended it.

DN: Has the community ever defended the brand?
What we’ve found is if you work with the community and build trust, and you’re open about how you engage and you answer questions and address issues that come up, the community will support you. It’s not always SAP that has to defend [itself] when someone goes haywire.  We see this all the time where somebody says something negative or even a little wacky in the community, and your knee-jerk reaction might be, we have to answer that. And what ends up happening is a lot of other community members come in and say, “Well you might have a point here, but this is way over the line.”  The whole group kind of comes together.

DN: What are the other ways that you report on the success, or what are the metrics that you guys look at to rationalize your existence?
We actually have a few metrics. One is just purely in terms of activity and contributions in the community, page views, member satisfaction, things like that. We do those transactional kinds of things with the community to makes sure that we’ve got good content that people find interesting, so that’s one level of measurement. One of our KPI’s is driving activity to those webinars that turns into real pipeline opportunity dollars. It’s traceable back to activity in the community.

The third is a part of the community called SAP EcoHub (http://ecohub.sap.com). It started as an online store for our partners to set up storefronts and sell their products.  We’ve expanded it to include SAP products as well. It is connected to the community so that if there are conversations going on about certain product areas, we have links in those conversations going back to EcoHub. If you happen to be on a conversation you can see the product.  That is an increasing channel for us, for our partners and for SAP to drive revenue directly.

DN: You have a few people that are in the conversation, how do you make sure that they are all on brand?
We do have a social media corporate policy, guidelines, best practices case stories, and training courses.  We have an active internal social community, so there’s a lot of discussion and activity and assets [and] resources available to people when they start to put a toe in the water in social media.  A lot of those principles are similar to when anybody goes for media training, for example.  There are a few guiding principles like, “Don’t talk about things that you don’t know about.” And stay away from forward-looking statements like, “We’re going to do this,” or “We’re going to do that.”  But otherwise I think a lot of it is just common sense.

DN: You have this substantive, meaty community where people are actually participating, and you’ve already proven its worth and along comes Twitter and Facebook. Has there been conflict because [social media] is a separate group, and it’s not part of your group?
There is a social media group driving policies, best practices, training, reporting, and other aspects of social media for SAP, but we’re all part of marketing. It’s interesting because community and social media are somewhere in the middle of several traditional corporate groups.  It’s a little bit of marketing; it’s a little bit of communications; it’s a little bit of support, there’s an aspect of listening for product roll-in, and there’s an aspect of sales channel. So there are always discussions about where does it really belong. But community and social media are about people connecting – so if you’re doing it right, the entire organization is responsible for connecting with customers and partners in their respective areas.  So yes, we are separate groups, but we have a communities and social media council of leaders from each of those groups as well as social media ambassadors embedded throughout organizations and geographies at SAP.

DN: With 2.5 million community members, your activities are dwarfing anything SAP might have on Facebook [or] Twitter. How as the marketing/social team dealt with this?
We actually work very well together and leverage each other’s strengths on a nearly daily basis.  But it’s interesting that when we were first having discussions about Communities joining marketing, our CMO was saying “There’s an opportunity to learn from what Community Network has done.   We need to have more conversations and engage with our audience. We can’t just create another email blast with a bunch of creative and offers.”  It’s been a cultural change within the company.

DN: Have your content development efforts had a measurable impact on SEO?
We are very much SEO champions, and it’s been through experience. We had to figure out what to do on all those pages to do better with search engine: where things are laid out; how are we tagging pages; what are the titles in the pages, how are URLs formed. So many things factor into it. We had this three-month project just to go through everything and then get the word out to all the stakeholders and get everybody to update all their pages. I mean it was dramatic; We were bumping along at around 400,000 unique monthly visitors, and all of a sudden we shot up to like 900,000. It was unbelievable— just blew me away.

Later that week, I attended my fifth Media & Technology CEO Summit put on by my friends Tom Livaccari and Ken Shapiro, two UBS financial advisors who are about as far from the cold-calling yacker as you can get.  Long-time proponents of the approach I call Marketing as Service, The Livaccari Shapiro Wealth Management Group offers a textbook case on growing your business by selling less and doing more.

Know your Niche
For Marketing as Service programs to be effective, it’s essential to have a tightly defined target to whom you can deliver a meaningful benefit.  Having been entrepreneurs themselves in the ‘90s, it’s not surprising that Livaccari and Shapiro decided to focus their practice on advising entrepreneurs and CEOs of Internet, media and tech companies. Remembering the unique issues these entrepreneurs faced, Shapiro noted, “We always wished we could find an advisor that would in essence partner with us.”

Start Small
Since Marketing as Service programs can be costly, start small and build from success.  When Livaccari and Shapiro first realized they could help their clients by bringing them together, they started with a roundtable discussion among a few CEOs facing the same issues. The program grew quickly. Reported Shapiro, “They found [the events] so valuable that [attendees] suggested other CEOs that they thought could benefit from similar discussions in the future.”

Vary the Value Add
At the core of every successful Marketing as Service program is something of genuine value to the target.  For Livaccari and Shapiro, the value to their prospects and customers is more than just useful information.  Explained Shapiro, “Clients tell us that these summits have helped them stimulate meaningful ideas, make valuable connections and in one case even initiated a conversation with a party that later acquired their company.”

Rely on Relevance
One of the more obvious aspects of Marketing as Service is the benefit of pinpoint relevance to everyone concerned. “Because the content and the other participants in these events are so relevant to our clients and prospects’ lives we find they are eager to join us,” added Shapiro.  “This leads to these events being excellent ice breakers, which enable people to experience first-hand our consultative and value-added approach.”

Differentiate by Doing
The essential notion behind Marketing as Service is the fair exchange of value between buyer and seller, during which the seller earns the trust of the buyer by doing something meaningful instead of just talking about how good they are.

“These events are an excellent way for us to provide prospects a window into the way that we interact with clients, put their needs first and help them with a wide array of issues that are not commonly addressed by others in our field.”

Triumph with Trust
It is the mandate of any form of marketing to build trust. Without trust, there is simply no brand, especially in the financial services arena. Marketing as Service programs like Livaccari and Shapiro’s CEO Summits are particularly good at building trust.  “From these events prospects often begin a dialogue with us regarding whichever matter is most pressing to them, and over time this often leads to them becoming a client as they gain comfort with us, our approach and our thought process.”

Extend your Engagements
Done correctly, Marketing as Service programs offer unique opportunities for meaningful engagement that go well beyond a specific event.  With the goal of being recognized as “uncommon partners,” Livaccari and Shapiro have built a community of likeminded CEOs who are thus positively inclined to share what they’ve learned. “We know that as long as we put our clients’ needs first then over time they become our best sales force as they share with their friends the positive experience they have had.”

Final Note:
Having been in their client’s shoes, Livaccari and Shapiro have built a successful practice by simply doing what they wish others had done for them when they were entrepreneurs. Its not rocket science. Just smart marketing.  For more insights on their approach, see the Q&A with Shapiro on these pages.  (This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.)

Oh and if you found this content useful, feel free to subscribe via email or RSS in the box at the top of this page.  Thanks.

The Hype
Even if LA was not on your itinerary last weekend, chances are you heard about the feared mother of all traffic jams anticipated because of a temporary shut down of a 10-mile stretch of concrete connecting the City of Angels with the San Fernando Valley.  Every major news outlet covered the so-called Carmageddon, which also inspired a real rant by Stephen Colbert and a comically imagined one by Adolph Hitler.

Like Carmageddon, the stories about Google+ came at us fast and furiously especially in the tech arena.  Some believed it was a monumental affair.  Wired’s Ryan Singel offered high praise, “Google+ is smooth fast and intuitive – a product that feels far more akin to the revolution that was Gmail.” Stephan Shankland of CNET was even more effusive, noting, “Circles is the next biggest improvement, far and away over Facebook.”

Then last Thursday CEO Larry Page reported that Google+ had gained an eye-popping 10 million members in its first two weeks.  Page also noted, “we are seeing over 1 billion items shared and received in a single day.”  Explaining that Google+ was “still only in field trial with limited access as we scale the system,” Page implied that once unthrottled, extraordinary growth was simply inevitable.

The Reality
Fearing the worst, most Angelinos actually stayed put for a change, avoiding the 405 in unprecedented numbers.  Not only was there no Carmegeddon, traffic was so light that one intrepid driver zipped around town, reporting that it was the best conditions he’d ever seen!  More amazingly, the city’s construction crews finished up 18 hours ahead of schedule making this the biggest non-event since the premier of the infamous Ishtar.

While the reality of Google+ is far from certain, voices of caution are already emerging.   Blogger Robert Scoble told his minions that Google+ was for “geeks and early adopters” and not your mom. C-Net’s editor-at-large Rafe Needleman shared his reservations, “I like G+ but I’m finding setting up my network kind of slow going.” And David Berkowitz of 360i posted a yellow light on MediaPost.com, noting, “Google+ will hardly win over the masses overnight.”

In fact, Google+ is using a clever “invitation only” marketing ploy that piques curiosity, especially among social media practitioners like myself.  For these folks, trial is not an option but an expected mandate, one that also comes with a critic’s eye.  And from this critic’s perspective, so far Google+ is underwhelming, lacking the “the gang’s all here” reach of Facebook and the disarming simplicity of Twitter.

Now What?
For the mayor of LA and his constituents, the fact that Carmegeddon never happened was a triumph of perverse engineering.  Scaring people off the streets with weeks of apocalyptic predictions was brilliant, pretty much guaranteeing that the worst was not to come.  Leave it to Los Angeles to make headlines with a media mirage titled after an obscure video game.

As for Google+, its future is hardly certain despite smart marketing and early user adoption rates.   Undoubtedly new users try it out but only a few brave souls are prepared to forsake Facebook in its favor.  This lack of commitment reflects a growing sense of social media fatigue.  As one worn out user noted, “I’m already on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.  Who has time for all this crap?”

Lots of other questions remain, the most fundamental being–is there a meaningful plus in Google+ that will propel the user experience well beyond Facebook’s?  So far, Circles (the primary organizing principle) is more of a roundabout than a great leap forward.  Hopefully Google has more pluses up its prolific sleeves. Otherwise G+ may go the way of Carmegeddon, a much-ballyhooed balloon of hapless hype.

Note: this article first appeared on MediaPost.com.