I use Twitter. I use Twitter a lot. I use Twitter so much that I even wrote my own Twitter Manifesto; which I think is already out of date. Sometimes I use it to chronicle my daily life; sometimes for self promotion and other times to communicate the latest the greatest at Intel.  Regardless of the contents of my “tweets”, I can humbly say that my intention is to be authentic, build trust with those who follow, nurture that relationship and evangelize Intel’s social media initiatives without interrupting the nature of the conversation.

From what I understand, there have been several internal conversations within various organizations about Twitter usage and whether or not there is business value to have employees use Twitter during work hours.  I personally believe there is value; assuming of course that the concept of “community building”, “evangelism” or “social media” fall somewhere within your job description.

My friend and colleague Bob Duffy touched on this subject just the other day:

This is all too real. I was just told last week that some employers are watching tweets and wondering why employees are doing this during work.   I have not heard of policies yet but there’s communication out there to keep it in control or you will be viewed in the wrong light.  The old, manage workers through political pressure trick.

As I read through Bob’s post, I tried to put myself in management’s position and try to understand their point of view about this matter. Now I completely agree that there is a serious problem if an employee is spending their entire day on Twitter and not living up to their performance expectations.  I really don’t think this is the case though.  I think it’s merely a lack of understanding and education, not just about Twitter but holistically about social media. If done right, Twitter can be used to share/learn best practices about social media; get instant feedback about current projects; distribute content and build community.  It really is an awesome tool.

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Every company thinking about being active in social media needs to have some sort of policy around transparency and disclosure. The debates seems to be how heavy handed do you make your policy? Do you leave no room for doubt? Do you take a hands off approach?

Some policy’s range from Microsoft’s “Don’t do anything stupid.” to more complex lawyer written policies.  Some recommend a simple URL link in a blog comment as enough transparency while companies like Dell require employees to add ‘atDell” to the end of their names.

At HP, management refers employees to our existing Standards of Business Conduct with some additional guidelines specific to social media. In those additional guidelines the overarching theme is full disclosure, transparency and respect but it’s largely left open to individual interpretation.

What if your company doesn’t have a stated social media policy? The Blog Council has just released a do-it-yourself Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit.

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Last week a number of separate issues came together around Twitter activity and I just had to wonder why some people are in love with Twitter while others are on the side-lines with folded arms and a scowl.

The divide is pretty strong even among social media advocates.  Check out this post from Steven Hodson.  Who says

I find it insulting that Twitter is even considered to be in the same field as blogs or even micro-blogs.

This is a common response I get on Twitter.   Folks who don’t use it seem to roll their eyes whenever I jump on my iPhone to jot down what I’m doing.

I liken it to people who don’t get social media yet.  Folks who say about social networking and blogging  “I just don’t know where THEY find the time” As they dash away to check their crackberry.

I sense a bit of social media snobbery regarding Twitter.  As if these 140 characters are bits of nonsense, and only fodder for the ubber conversationalist seeking to match their tweet rate with Scoble.

So what is it about Twitter?  On the suface I’d say it’s a bit like open mic night. A soap box game of one-liners to see if you can get some attention and pick up more followers.  But there IS some hidden marketing value that is not well understood

Breaking it down Twitter it is a continual stream of very short posts, out to a friends network. And as a follower you get a river of thought from people you trust and find relevant.  Unlike blog posts, tweets (tweet is to Twitter as post is to blog) are in the moment, real time. They are restricted to 140 characters so they forced to be brief.

This all lends itself to very simple, short and easy to send personal thoughts and updates.  “At Starbucks for the 3rd time today.. do I have problem?”

And when you tweet you are filling in those spare minutes of your day.  And YES, we do all still have plenty of those.  While you wait for your non-fat double half caff-latte order, or wait for a guest presenter figure how to connect his laptop to your projector.  These are Twitter moments, which are the same moments other folks are checking voicemail, checking email, or picking the lint out of their pockets   For most it’s that spare time that typically goes wasted anyway.

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Jeremiah has an interesting list over on his blog. Being a Social Media Analyst he’s compiled a list of all us corporate social media types.

It’s a pretty cool list. But I think there is one drawback to the way his list is compiled. It make’s it sound like you either have Strategists or Tacticians.

When in reality, my experience is, good social media workers fall along some spectrum between strategy and tactics.

Is the Marketing Campaign Dead?

Many people are calling for the death of the campaign. I think that for most social media endeavors that makes sense, but there will always be times where a short timed campaign makes perfect sense.

The problem with campaigns is that they are not flexible. You front load the campaign with all your money, buy your media and then launch it into space. Social media requires you to be able to think on your feet. You have to be flexible, adaptable. All of your assumptions about an initiative can change with one comment or someones positive or negative blog post.

You have to be Tactically Strategic.

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My company launched a redesigned version of its Web site yesterday which puts a new user community front-and-center (forums, blogs) on the homepage. The Web team did the hard job of building the new community and now it’s time for me to roll up my sleeves.

Cadence makes the software and hardware tools companies use to design the latest and greatest chips for computers and electronic devices. (I talked about what Cadence does — along with the kickoff of the blogging effort — a couple of months ago in this post.)

On the community front, I’ll be working closely with customers and non-customers (anyone can join) and have my work cut out for me in the coming days, weeks and months. Thankfully I have a wide network of social media experts whose brains I can pick from time to time — including Jeremiah Owyang, who had a great blog post today about our launch.

The biggest takeaway for me from his post today was this paragraph:

“What are some potential next steps for Cadence? To continue to reach to their community by aggregating all of the discussion in their market, not just Cadence centric content. By becoming an industry discussion hub, they could take expand mindshare from other competitors and customers. Examples of this would look like aggregating content from other blogs or forums that are not hosted at the Cadence domain.”

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Make a statement. Get opinions. Ask a question. Get answers. Ask a different question. Get silence.

Look or sound familiar?

It’s fascinating to watch conversations unfold between companies and customers. Large, small, formal, informal – examples of what works well and what doesn’t in social marketing has less to do with your Fortune 500 ranking than it does your commitment and willingness to allow your customers to lead the conversation.

“Follow the leader? Give my customers control? But it’s my company. That’s crazy?” I hear this a lot (including the “crazy” part).

In no way am I suggesting that you relinquish control of moderating, monitoring and hosting your conversation. Instead, I am suggesting that you take a hard look at who, what, where, when and how your customers engage with your company and brand and adjust your social program and planning accordingly.

This can be easy, or it can be difficult. But flexibility, iteration, and ongoing commitment to satisfying customers’ needs and wants are the most common essential ingredients of the most successful conversational marketing programs (See this. Look here. And here, here, and here for examples).

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The following are 10 “secrets” to a successful online community. Note that they are not “the” 10 secrets.

And I suppose that technically they are not secrets … I just like using that word because it sounds scandalous.

The list below is from a presentation I did with Joe Cothrel, vice president of community management at Lithium, last year at an online community conference in San Diego. I was at Symantec at the time and used Lithium as the backbone of the Symantec Technology Network, a online community I launched in 2007 for the functional IT folks whose companies deployed Symantec’s enterprise products.

Here’s the list (drum roll, please):

1. A business owner who oversees budget and sets direction.
2. A community manager who conducts planning and day-to-day decision-making.
3. A moderator who sets the tone, enforces rules, and helps users.
4. Defined roles for staff and users, and software that supports those roles.
5. A set of comprehensive guidelines.
6. Rules for action when violations or other issues arise.
7. The proper structure and atmosphere to engage users.
8. A well-managed group of “superusers.”
9. Measurement processes.
10. Ensuring your company “learns” from the discussions (especially product teams and support).

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I have this friend who is the ultimate pragmatist. He (initials DS) shall remain nameless, but his tendency to scoff at anything remotely resembling hype, I’ve found, is a somewhat universal trait, especially among engineers and technologists. So, of course, the minute I mentioned blogging, Second Life, Facebook, Twitter, or FriendFeed he immediately wanted me to skip my tendency to lobby him like a typical marketer or sales person and get right to the business case. “What’s in it for me as a person,” he wanted to know, “and what’s in it for my company?”

To tell you the truth when he asked me that I stumbled, I stammered, and I struggled to quantify the returns businesses might see from their investments in blogging, communities, and other tools to engage their customers and their community-at-large. And this was awkward because I loathe being tongue-tied!

Now that I’ve spent several months in the trenches actually managing communities, making mistakes, and watching nearly every single one of our community engagement statistics rise  month over month (like registered users, site visits, posts, content contributed by community rather than corporate, etc.) I feel like I have a more realistic perspective on things. I haven’t just drank the glass of koolaid, I’ve guzzled the entire pitcher.

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A big thank you to Kelly Feller who emailed me and several others at Intel this article from the Wall Street Journal, “Most Corporate Blogs Are Unimaginative Failures”. This is perfect timing as I am planning to launch a new consumer blog for Intel in the coming months. The following is a tidbit from the article:

Many businesses have launched corporate blogs in an effort to better communicate with customers and capture a little Web-2.0 mojo. But Huffington Post they ain’t: Not only are these corporate blogs boring as paint, but the businesses behind admit they don’t have much value.

The article also cites a Forrester case study which I believe to be the core problem with corporate blogging in general:

Forrester found that most B2B blogs are “dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion.” Seventy percent stuck to business or technical topics, 74% rarely get comments, and 56% simply regurgitated press releases or other already-public news. Not surprisingly, 53% of B2B marketers say that blogging has marginal significance or is irrelevant to their strategies—the rest call it somewhat or highly significant–and the number of new corporate blogs among the companies Forrester tracks has dropped from 36 in 2006 to just three in 2008.

I see two problems here. First is that many of these corporate blogs are using a blog as a one-way communication channel. That is, they are repurposing press releases and white papers as blog content. They are also restating the exact same technical specs that can most likely be found on the product pages of the corporate web site. They simply have a blog just because their competitors do. Nothing new, nothing real, nothing cool, nothing engaging, nothing personal.

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