Lately I seem to be getting into some discussions with mid-sized and SMB type companies that want to use social media and conversational media in their day-to-day operations both internally and with their customers. I’ll define a mid-size company as anyone with over 50 employees.

A lot of the relevance of social media including blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitter are not lost on these businesses at all. Many of these mostly privately run companies have been started by their senior executive or perhaps by one of the executive’s relatives (dad/grandfather usually) and current management keeps building on past success. Frequently they are middle-aged and they usually have children often in their teens or even college age. These millennial’s are tech savvy and they might hear about the latest Facebook app from them. Or they might hear how their competitor is using LinkedIn to connect with prospects, etc.

The question that I hear at least once in the conversation is “how do I control it once the genie is let out”? My response is you may not be able to control it 100 percent but you can certainly put some guidelines or policies around it for your employees.

Here are 5 simple and easy-to-implement social media and conversational media policies, guidelines and practices that you should consider for yourself, staff or business:

• Respect yourself and others when writing blogs or posting comments or communicating by Facebook. Consider your language and state of mind when writing. If you disagree with someone’s point of view try being diplomatic rather than pugilistic.
• Don’t curmudgeon your competition. It usually doesn’t result in anything positive for your business.
• Stay away from commenting on legal or financial matters that may affect you, your company or your business partners.
• Don’t try to mask or cover up who you are. It’s too easy to track where and to whom comments actually come from.  Remember the comments posted by John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods. He was eventually uncovered.
• Employ basic common sense and good judgment. Don’t publish items that are not yours. Stick to what you know and ask questions about what you don’t.

Lastly, and this is not a policy exactly, keep everything simple – especially because you are a small or medium size business. Don’t try to tackle all the social networking and conversational media applications at one time. Build your expertise in pieces.

And the above certainly can apply to larger – publicly oriented enterprises as well – it just might be more formalized.

Last week I wrote about what I learned from talking to 25 companies on how social media was being used by them individually, as well as how they used it to enhance their business alliances and partnerships. Mostly I discussed the partnering aspects.

I thought that this week I would back up a little and discuss 5 points to consider when building out a social media program for your business.

• First, with any business initiative, start with a vision, plan, and mission. Sounds like a lot, but this could be a few paragraphs or one-pager. You already have a business plan (I assume), so this is just meant to complement it Not complicate it. Try to answer – “What is my prime purpose in using social media?” Influence customers to buy, provide better customer service and experience, build a new lead channel, etc. Then build your one-pager. Your prime purpose may change or expand in a year, so understand that this is dynamic.
• Second, if you’re not top management, then the above will not be very credible until the owners or senior management buy into it. Social media has the ability to touch and influence almost every area of your business operation, as sales, marketing, HR will all be affected by your strategy. You will need multiple layers of support to get this started – but not necessarily everyone.
• Third, think about how your vision will be turned into policy and action. You will need to establish some policies and guidelines about what’s inbounds and what’s out of bounds in your social media strategy. For instance, what guidelines do you need to establish around talking about new products or internal affairs or finances. These are important areas that can affect you legally, financially, and in your ability to compete.
• Fourth, can you track who’s saying or writing what? And what help or guidance are you providing them? What tools, training and programs might help them help your customers or clients better, or do their job better? There’s a lot of territory to cover on this fourth bullet and my next blog will talk about how to help you get connected to the right resources.
• Fifth, and this is the one I like least, but is necessary. What are the consequences for breaking policy? Even in LinkedIn, some groups have policies that do not allow links in their discussions. Most groups don’t, but those that do will or can expel you from the group. LinkedIn itself has certain policies that will be cause for your expulsion. If you plan to have consequences, then make sure they’re communicated well and backed up with adequate training. This topic alone is worthy of another blog and I would appreciate other thoughts on the subject.

As examples of how to get started or just start your thinking along these lines, take a look at IBM’s guidelines. Or check out Sun Microsystem’s guidelines – one of my former employers – where the CEO has (or had) a highly readable and followable blog. Since Sun is in the midst of being purchased by Oracle, I’m not sure where his future writings will go, but it might be worthy to check out his past material at http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/ as an example of an executive communication blog.

Look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Over the past 3 months I’ve talked to over 25 companies primarily in the Business-to-Business (B2B) space and mostly technology companies (software and hardware).

 Specifically, I was asking questions including:

• What types of traditional marketing activities are you maintaining (webinars, website development, paper-based sales and marketing collateral, seminars, etc.)?
• What types of digital marketing activities are you engaged in (blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn lead generation, Facebook, partner driven digital marketing, SEO/SEM, etc.)?
• Are you combining the two disciplines and in what ways?

 The types of responses were a little surprising as I thought there would be more push toward exercising these emerging techniques around digital marketing.

 What I found was the following in regards to digital marketing:

1. Most companies were taking a wait-and-see strategy. That is they were waiting to see what their partners or competitors were doing before they invested a lot of time and effort.
2. They were unclear about the ROI from digital marketing activities. Some said that they didn’t see any early returns from looking at how their market was engaged in these activities.
3. They were indeed monitoring digital trends and activities – usually informally – until the time they thought would be appropriate for them to take the plunge.
4. In general, they didn’t see the value in Twitter but did see some value in LinkedIn – as this was a professional community – one that they could have meaningful discussions through. However, even with LinkedIn, almost none of them had anything truly formal going on.
5. There seemed to be an executive gap. Mid-level managers and rank and file employees were more apt to use informal social media communication than senior management. Security and trust were important issues at the senior level.

There were some clear trends that I plan on illustrating in some follow-up blogs and reports, but this is a quick readout of what I found.  Keep in touch or sign up for my future reports.

And please add your comments as I’d appreciate what you’ve found.

Note to above: About 15 of these discussions were formal – that is they followed a prescribed set of questions that lasted approximately one hour. Discussions with the remaining 10 companies were more informal although in general the same types of questions were asked.

And there are always more than a few good articles at B2B Magazine for which I used their logo as an illustration above.

In keeping with my theme of 5, here are some thoughts on the top 5 traps to avoid (or potential problem areas to stay clear of) when it comes to partnerships and alliances.

• Not monitoring change signals from your partner
• Failing to negotiate when it’s necessary
• Trying to represent that you or your company can do more than you really can
• Waiting for your partner to dictate the direction that your partnership takes
• Focusing on individual success and not the partnership

Let’s explore each one a little further.

Trap No. 1:  Not keeping a close eye and ear on what your trusted partner is doing in the marketplace is a recipe for getting blind-sided. I’ve been involved first hand with an important alliance that we expected to move into an acquisition deal. Our discussions turned south when our partner was acquired by a larger partner of theirs, all while they were in the midst of negotiation with us. And we were even partners with their acquirer. That was a costly lesson to learn.

Trap No. 2:  Similar to trap #1, failing to recognize when to negotiate new terms and conditions, or direction, can result in unwanted results and outcomes, at least for one of the partners. When there are substantial changes in business conditions, such as when new competitors enter your field or there are a bevy of acquisitions, don’t wait to look at your partnership T’s and C’s until the contract is up for renewal. That’s usually too late.

Trap No. 3:  Trying to represent that your company can take on more than it is capable of or that your every move is firmly backed by everyone in your company can easily set you up for a fall. It’s important to aspire to success but success is more frequently attained through continuous achievement and hitting milestones than with over zealousness or boasting.  Don’t be enticed to offer your partner more than what you can realistically deliver, and target modestly at least initially. Under-promise and over-achieve as the expression goes.

Trap No. 4:  The fourth trap is allowing the direction of the partnership to be dictated by your partner, especially if they are the larger-dominant one. While you may have to submit to some of their terms and conditions, or risk endless tie-ups and delays with their legal department that most smaller companies can ill afford, you must equally dictate the tempo, rhythm and culture of the partnership. If it sounds like a dance, it is.

Trap No. 5:  While it’s obviously never wrong to focus on your success, if it’s always coming at the expense of your partners’, your partnership won’t keep its legs very long. It’s important to look at the partnership as a joint venture – each side having a stake and a gain. Look out for your partner when they sometimes can’t look at for themselves and you’ll both be successful in the long run.

As I’ve been learning the past few weeks, I’m sure there are many other traps to be aware of. I’d love to hear your favorite.

Of course, I thought this was pretty cool.  As I learned more about what they were doing and why, I became intrigued and enlightened. I was not expecting this kind of behavior especially from a bank with the word Royal in it. I guess it seemed like an oxymoron at the time. I was used to hearing this level of modern thinking coming out of the likes of Wells Fargo, who at the time and over the years has been equated with one of the most progressive technological banks in the world. Indeed, Wells Fargo initially had the most Internet banking users and of course one of the best online experiences as the Internet was incorporated into financial services in the 90’s.

As a result of something I’m working on, I had occasion to re-enlighten myself on what RBC was doing. Their latest contest features a “Do-Over” video challenge for the best advice on starting school over again. There were 3 student winners in Canada, each receiving $10,000. OK, the Royal Bank of Canada is quite profitable and managed to escape relatively unscathed from the financial debacle. I believe their total losses were less than $10 billion. So $10,000 is not a lot of cash to give away.

But really, what’s more interesting is the fact that RBC took an active role in using web 2.0 to connect with young people and to get their input into their system. RBC started when the use of these social internet mediums was still in its quite early stages. And they began when there were mixed concerns about how to manage and monitor it in the event of negative backlash or comments directed at or to the bank.

They’ve made it a success. I can’t say that RBC is the de-facto standard when it comes to the use of social media technology, but they’ve come a long way while there has been such negativism and adversity in the banking world. I’ve been equally impressed with their commitment to green and the environment, community service, and a recent revamping of their entire online experience. They now service 3 million online customers. All pretty heady doings from a bank with such a stuffy name.

RBC does operate in the U.S. as Centura Bank and RBC Bank USA and I cannot speak to that aspect of things. I certainly would be interested in hearing your comments on social media in financial services.

Some of my efforts have come in the form of attending events such as the Search Engine Strategies conference (March, NY), or Federated Media’s Conversational Media Summit (June, NY), or a Mashable meetup, or working with a business client, or business association colleagues such as MENG – Marketing Executives Networking Group and ASAP – the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.

There’s not too much in the way of resources out there that can be of a lot of value since some of these social media capabilities are relatively new or at least relatively unexplored when it comes to B2B alliances and partnerships and how they can be expanded and improved through the judicious use of social media activities. Where I’ve found resources, I will make them known, as there are a some.

So over the next several blogs I will be putting together a series of what’s going on in this area compiled from input and presentations at conferences by companies including Intel, as well as conversations from alliance, marketing (traditional and digital marketers), and sales professionals and executives in my network. I will attempt to capture Best Practices (where there are some early BP indications) and point you to a half dozen resources and places to look for information or expertise.

I may ask you and my larger network to take a survey on what you think and what you are experiencing.

These upcoming blogs will address the following questions when it comes to social media, web2.0 and alliances:

• What is Social Media and Web 2.0’s impact on the strategic alliance process and partnering?
• How can it be used effectively with channels?
• How does it integrate into the traditional partner marketing and business development process?
• Which social media and Web 2.0 strategies are more partner effective and in what situations?
• What are some case studies and who are the successes in using social media and Web 2.0 to improve partnering?
• Who or what failed and why?
• What is the cost and ROI of using social media and Web 2.0 for partnering and how does one measure it?
• Is there an opportunity (lost) cost of doing nothing?
• How do business partners maintain control and are there specific partner rules of social media engagement?
• Who or where can you turn to for help?

As this progresses, I will put the information into a whitepaper for easier reading. So if you would like, send me an email or sign up for my updates on these findings and a complete whitepaper and I will be happy to forward it to you.

Lastly, and just as importantly, if you are interested in discussing, questioning or being a part of the input, let me know.  Or just comment below if you have thoughts.

If for no other reason than its viral spread, this story is worthy of one more comment. As of this morning, this better-than-average you tube video had close to 3.5 million hits and and a whopping 16,207 comments.

I saw this you tube video this weekend while working on a website with my brother-in-law and his wife. He’s a doctor and she is a physicians assistant, so neither of them are tech or social media gurus, but general users of these social mediums. As we were working, she came in to say we had to check out this cool video which she heard about on the news. After a few crack ups, we talked about how damaging this is to United’s reputation and the effect that a $3,500 damaged guitar can have on a $19 billion corporation that employs 53,000 and operates 3,300 flights a day, transporting over 65,000 daily passengers (4 million a year). To put the story in perspective, earlier this month, the LA Times wrote the following:

“In spring 2008, DaveCarroll and company headed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Omaha, by way of (shudder now, frequent fliers) Chicago. Just after landing at O’Hare airport, says Carroll, one of his bandmates and another passenger looked out their windows and saw baggage handlers heaving around guitars with wanton disregard. Carroll says he complained immediately to three flight attendants, but was met with indifference. Some time after arrival in Nebraska, Carroll says, he discovered that, sure enough, the base of his 710 Taylor acoustic guitar had been smashed.

But he had gigs to play, so he found a way to do that. As Carroll acknowledges, he didn’t attempt to complain again until beginning his return flight a week later. Over the following days, weeks and months, Carroll made many phone calls to United representatives in Chicago and (who didn’t see this coming?) India, but basically he says United did nothing for him. Meanwhile, Carroll spent $1,200 getting the guitar repaired “to a state that it plays well but has lost much of what made it special.”

The capping blow, Carroll says, was an e-mail from a Ms. Irlweg, who denied his claim for compensation because he didn’t complain in the right place, or at the right time. The airline wouldn’t even give him $1,200 in travel vouchers, Carroll contends. So he vowed a sort of musical revenge — not one protest song, not two, but three, with a video for each, all to be posted on the Web. Carroll says he told Ms. Irlweg all about it, but got the usual response.”

Here are the links to the video and to the full article in the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/smashed-guitar-youtu-4850/

And here’s the link to United’s 12 Point Customer Commitment - http://www.united.com/page/article/1,,1505,00.html?navSource=Dropdown07&linkTitle=ourcustomer. 

Clearly, three of these 12 items are at issue in how they responded to Mr. Carroll.

From a marketing and social media standpoint, the amazing thing is how quickly this spread, from the original you tube video, to a newspaper article, to TV news and finally it’s near dominating effect on the United brand. I’m certainly not the first to comment on the marketing effects that this has on United and won’t be the last. More importantly, there is clearly a lot of triage and damage control that a company like United needs to be engaging in and that is reflective of any company that touches millions of customers. Any high-touch, million-plus, customer oriented companies must have a team and program in place ready to cope with any issue of this magnitude. I also realize that, thank God, this is not a plane crash, but you would think that United would already be well experienced with how to deal with major negative publicity and would have the wheels rolling so to speak.

This episode continues to illustrate to me that in this highly connected world we live in, the effect of one individual can be enormous. From a technology standpoint, I recall the issues Intel had with their processor’s incorrect math about 10 years ago. I think if that occurred today, Intel would have been addressing a much more severe reputational problem simply because of the immediacy that social networking brings to the table. The bottom line today is that companies clearly need to have a social media triage plan in place to address issues that may mushroom beyond the scope of normal expectation and hopefully use social media as a mechanism to improve quality and customer satisfaction before issues like this come up.

Some of the largest marketing associations sponsored an event this week in Florham Park, NJ, under the auspices of the NJ Marketing Council. For anyone interested, I thought the following would be a good list of major, national associations to connect with. I am a current member of MENG and have been a member of the American Marketing Association in the past. The list below is a link to each national association. They each have local chapters and local websites to link to as well. For the purposes of this list, I’ve provided the national link only. You can find your local chapter link on their sites.

Feel free to add others of interest in the Comment section. I’m sure I could have missed a few.

American Marketing Association (AMA)
The American Marketing Association (AMA) is the largest marketing association in North America. It is a professional association for individuals and organizations involved in the practice, teaching and study of marketing worldwide. It is also the source that marketers turn to every day for information/resources, education/training and professional networking. AMA members are connected to a network of experienced marketers nearly 40,000 strong and include leading marketing academics, researchers and practitioners from every industry.

Business Marketing Association
Begun in 1922 as the National Industrial Advertising Association, today’s Business Marketing Association represents a lifetime of expertise in business-to-business marketing and communications. For more than 80 years, BMA has been the pre-eminent service organization for professionals in this vital industry. As market realities so often prove, no one stays in business that long without continually meeting their customers’ needs.

International Association of Business Communicators
Founded in 1970, The International Association of Business Communicators provides a professional network of over 15,500 business communication professionals in over 80 countries. Our members hold positions in: Public relations/Media relations, Corporate communications, Public affairs, Investor relations, Government relations, Marketing communication, Community relations, Writing.

Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)
MENG is a national network of top-level marketing executives. The organization is devoted to enhancing its members’ professional skills, relationships, and knowledge and prides itself on a culture of genuine camaraderie.

Media Communications Association-International
MCA-I is the premiere organization devoted to providing accomplished visual communicators with professional and business development opportunities. MCA-I continues to promote the growth, quality and success of film, video and multimedia communications and related businesses. The organization is based upon vigorous member participation and acts as an advocate on significant industry issues.

Public Relations Society of America
The Public Relations Society of America, based in New York City, is the world’s largest organization for public relations professionals. The Society has nearly 32,000 professional and student members. PRSA is organized into more than 100 Chapters nationwide, 19 Professional Interest Sections and Affinity Groups, which represent business and industry, counseling firms, independent practitioners, military, government, associations, hospitals, schools, professional services firms and nonprofit organizations. The Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) has nearly 300 Chapters at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP)
SCIP provides education and networking opportunities for business professionals working in the rapidly growing field of competitive intelligence (the legal and ethical collection and analysis of information regarding the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions of business competitors).

At one time, SIFMA was the singular top conference in capital markets and I believe in the 1990’s there were as many as 8,000 attendees. In those days, when I was planning and managing this event for companies including Sun Microsystems and Sungard’s Mint division, the goal was to coordinate all the sales, PR and partnership meetings and presentations so that the staff were not overwhelmed and in the right place at the right time.

There was even a time when I had to order up 2 additional suites to augment our busy floor booth. The suites were geared for round the clock meetings including whisper meetings where we discussed our roadmap to certain clients. And over the past 4 or 5 years, I’ve been attending a fun post-SIFMA client-vendor business dinner, which includes an afternoon of fishing held in the Hampton’s and Montauk on Long Island.

After attending a number of other conferences over the course of the past year, I’d like to offer up some ideas for SIFMA to rebuild its once heralded stature. Here’s some food for thought:

• An event like this begins with industry leadership. I attended a banking event a couple of years ago and the speakers included Ben Bernanke (Fed Reserve Chairman), Jack Welch (CEO GE), Sheila Bair (FDIC Chair) and David Gergen (CNN). Even got to talk to Jack and his wife for a while. Sure, few events are likely to get this caliber of speakers, but consider doing a simulcast from Washington to make it easier for some government employees to speak remotely. And from the tech side, how about Larry Ellison of Oracle or Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.
• Content is King and the full conference price of admission does not warrant the expense for this level of information. I paid full fare last year – thank goodness that I didn’t this year as the agenda suffered further deterioration.  SIFMA must get more speakers from the industry to tell their story. Even some recently unemployed industry veterans could work. There’s no substitute for industry speakers. Have a vendor track if you’d like, but don’t let it dominate everything.
• Build interest before the event. Try a pre-conference mini virtual event to test the waters on content. Or survey the industry to find out what they want to hear most.
• Gather followup after the event. Consider a half-day virtual event for those that couldn’t make it featuring highlights from presentations and exhibits. 
• While the Hilton may have become sacrosanct over the years and a move to the Javits facility on the West side is probably over-kill and would undoubtedly sacrifice intimacy, the SIFMA organizers must consider some rearrangement of the current facility which will create enhanced interest and flow in the exhibits. The addition of the TMC Theater was a plus, but it was too small and even having Frank Abagnale, subject of the movie Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo DiCaprio, did not quite make it. If SIFMA got Leonardo DiCaprio instead – well that would have been something – but of course that’s not realistic.
• One last important comment – use more social marketing including Blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter to network this event.

I could probably come up with a half dozen more, but maybe I can turn it over to you for comment.

In any case, I’m a stalwart and will continue to attend SIFMA if only to keep up with friends and have some interesting conversation. See you next year.

As most of you probably know, Microsoft, up until a few days ago, had been using its Live Search engine with MSN. However, Live Search from Microsoft has been in a bit of classic web branding quandary as livesearch.com is owned by Tyler Tullock (not Microsoft) who is trying to retire on the ownership of that domain name by either selling it to Microsoft or getting compensated by driving traffic to Google (and to be fair, he did own the domain first).  On the enterprise search side, Microsoft leads with FAST, the engine they also purchased about 18 months ago – but FAST doesn’t appear to play a major role in their consumer oriented approach – at least at this time.

The big money and market share play is around consumer search and Live Search at least had little or no brand or market control compared to Google or Yahoo. So Microsoft, in its quest to gain a share of search player status, has been investing in their latest incarnation of search which we know is branded as Bing. Bing now has its own website, name and look and feel.

Accordingly Microsoft has been investing heavily in promoting Bing, I believe to the tune of nearly 9 figures – a hefty sum these days for advertising and promotion.  But what’s the alternative? According to their Q3, March 30, 2009 financials, overall revenue was down 6% and online advertising revenues took a double digit drop of 13%. So it makes sense that Microsoft needs to know if they can build a competitive market in search in the near future and the timing is hopefully propitious for them as they enter their new fiscal year.

How will Microsoft know if Bing is successful? That question was posed last week to Scott Howe, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, during Federated Media’s Conversational Marketing (CM) Summit in NY. His company, aQuantive Inc., was bought in 2007 for something like $6B, so it was no surprise that he had his own Mercedes limo driver parked out in front of the Hudson Theater in NY waiting for him (on 44th Street in the theater district, that is usually reserved for real entertainers).

In any case, he was asked how much he thought it was worth to Microsoft for a percentage point gain in market share (paraphrasing of course). Obviously, and as he replied, Microsoft is not looking for incremental gains, but something that elevates them into the high teens and beyond. Anything else in the big picture is probably a failure (my comment – not his).

So if Bing booms, then Microsoft scores big time. It will likely eat into Yahoo and Google’s market share, causing at least for Yahoo a further decline in value –something that they can ill afford. And what a great way for Microsoft to start the New Year. On the other hand if Bing bombs, then Yahoo’s stock possibly increases making it both more expensive and probably more imperative to get back into negotiations with Yahoo. In either scenario, Microsoft should know by the end of their Q1 which direction the market wind is blowing.

Bing already seems to be picking up some early momentum (several percentage point increase in market share) and the search engine and its interface have some pretty nice features. The question is whether it’s enough to get people to migrate and stay migrated.