Social Media Strategy Blog and Social Media Consulting

Valeria Maltoni – The Twitter 20 Interview on Conversation and Community

July 1st, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 13 Comments

Valeria Maltoni is one of the most widely respected marketing voices in the world. And for good reason. Her extensive background spans marketing, public relations, and social media. If it exists in the realm of communications, she’s done it.

Valeria was also an integral nucleus of the Fast Company Company of Friends, a business intelligence and relationship development organization that in many ways presaged today’s social networking craze.

Her blog, Conversation Agent, is an absolute must-read. (Seriously, I read a ton of blogs, and hers is top 5 on the planet, in my estimation). She’s not afraid to go in-depth, challenge your thinking, and strike the match of true conversation – as you’ll see in this eye-popping, live Twitter 20 interview from July 1, 2009.

(Valeria asked in the interview for reader feedback on how blogging has changed – question 17. What do you think?)

1. @jaybaer: Your umbrella premise is that marketing & business are a long conversation. What do you mean by that?

@conversationage: Conversation is the most natural, effective, yet most complex mode of human connection.
The goal of conversation is understanding between participants. Turns out that’s the same goal of marketing and business.

2. @jaybaer: What’s the hardest part for companies to switch from talking AT customers, to talking WITH them?

@conversationage: Companies should let go of assumptions when listening. There’s such a thing as thinking you’re too smart.
It’s a challenge we have as individuals as well. Unlearning is harder than learning….

3. @jaybaer: (h/t @michaeljbarber) Do companies have to actively engage to foster conversation, or can they just listen?

@conversationage: Participation is content and fulfillment of intent – you’ve got to put skin in the game.

4. @jaybaer: How do you see the impact of conversation on corporate marketing operations and staffing?

@conversationage: Hire those who lean forward, who are curious and interested, who listen before they answer, who love learning.
Watch out for language like “spin” and look for honesty and ability to connect- put on hold the shiny objects/jargon-driven.

5. @jaybaer: Interesting. Do you think social media & social networking can be taught or do you have to have a passion for it?

@conversationage: I’m a fan of “and/and”. They need to be experienced. Unless you’re engaged (wrote it recently) you will not get engagement.

6. @jaybaer: You’re a fan of storytelling. Great conversations don’t stem from bullet points. How can brands find their story?

@conversationage: In the same way that money can’t buy you performance, it can’t buy you your story.
Need to emerge when a company looks inside and owns its own brand. Brand is not the logo, it needs to permeate every aspect of business… and take into account the feedback it receives.
Owning your brand also means being passionately in love with what you do.

7. @jaybaer: Little difference between media & customer. Doesn’t that put emphasis on cust service? Will it blend w/ marketing?

@conversationage: Customer service is marketing. Your processes are marketing. So is your receptionist, your building, your people…
More than blending I would say connect with it. Also, medium = context and dynamics so pay attention to who is in the room.

8. @jaybaer: Will all brands eventually have a Community Manager? Does it help the conversation to put a face on it?

@conversationage: How about a community facilitator, a content curator, and a team of conversationalists for product development/innovation?
It’s a team effort to help the organization own its brand. Think about the words: organization, company->organism, together.

9. @jaybaer: I’m glad you mentioned curation. There is SOOO much great content online now (especially in marketing), how do you curate?

@conversationage: Do you have a goal? What do you want reader to do? How are you going to relate to her? How will your content make him feel?
And of course also where are you going to fit in? How do you weave in your experience as a proof point or qualifier?

10. @jaybaer: 10 You are simply the best at building “community” on your Conversation Agent blog. Can you describe your approach?

@conversationage: Love to connect people – where they are. Many ways: “About You” page, comments, email intros, participating to their project.
Offering researched and curated content based upon their feedback also builds community – of learners (me among them)

11. @jaybaer: I don’t want to overstate this, but you’re Italian (and proud of it) Does that change how you view community?

@conversationage: Made in Italy. So genetics + culture. I grew up in conversation and with community in the land of passion. Context again.

12. @jaybaer: You mentioned conversationalists for product dev. Should all companies crowd-source it? Are crowds really wise?

@conversationage: Hold on! Community facilitator, content curator and team of conversationalists work together. + Accountability rests with you.
You’ve got to know (experience) how to read the tea leaves, how to negotiate the conversation and extract useful meaning.

13. @jaybaer: Some companies are using Facebook as a primary hub to foster conversation, rather than corporate site. Thoughts?

@conversationage: Maybe it works for them. And when search+lifestream converge and FB opens up, then the rest of us will join in
My point is be where your customers/prospects are and be coherent. Does the Web site reflect the company’s availability?

14. @jaybaer: Will social graph portability – our friends & likes following us around the Web – be good or bad for conversation?

@conversationage: It’ll be good for those with great memory! Integration is important to experience. 140 characters don’t make a person, only a view.
Seriously- conversation is the art of thinking together to find something new. It’s good to have new people/ideas in it + mix it up.

15. @jaybaer: Proliferation of social outposts is causing fatigue among people that aren’t freaks for it like you & me. Advice?

@conversationage: Pick your tools based on your “flow” – where do you feel energy? What suits you? Leave room to explore new places every week.
Explore, experiment, test, fail – within your abilities to stretch but not to the point of fatigue. Manage your attention.

16. @jaybaer: You’ve always been active in many groups and organizations. Is there a future for offline, in-person connections?

@conversationage: Of course! We may think we live online, but we’re very much social animals. We need to be with others in the physical space .
We did 98 events with the Fast Company network – in person, in the room access to great people and speakers. Best energy ever.

17. @jaybaer: Your blog is ~ 3 years old – congrats – & you wrote for Fast Company for 7 years prior. How has blogging changed?

@conversationage: If you count the listserv, yes 7 yrs. For the expert blog about 2 yrs.
Good content writing has not changed – we’ve changed.

18. @jaybaer: You’ve always been on the client side. What’s the agency’s role in conversation marketing and social media?

@conversationage: Coaches, sounding boards, partners, and specialists to help create the environment and context around the conversation.
I feature agencies in a series at my blog.

19. @jaybaer: The “Conversation Agent” brand isn’t associated much w/ your company, Sungard (unlike @scottmonty). Thoughts?

@conversationage: It’s a pre-existing condition Conversation Agent comes to work every day with the full passion and knowledge/experience.
I believe that it’s a team and not one person that defines a company and owns a brand, so here I’m part of a team.
Personal brand needs to be balanced with stewardship, too. Our customer community is also part of the company’s brand.

20. @jaybaer: I’m a consultant, & I give away content & interact w/ people. But you’re not. Why do you do it? What drives you?

@conversationage: Love of learning, passion for helping people achieve their full potential, desire to meet different people/ideas to meet change.
I also view career as much broader than job. Want to meet mentors and peers and continue to grow and give growth to others.

It’s a very tough call, but I think my favorite answer from Valeria was: “Customer service is marketing. Your processes are marketing. So is your receptionist, your building, your people…” How about you?

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Build Thought Leadership Through Social Networking

June 30th, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 40 Comments

Remember, social media is about people, not logos. That’s why the most powerful form of social capital is personal, not corporate.

That was the theme of my day-long workshop for the Association of Management Consulting Firms last week in New York. My friend and client Elizabeth Sosnow of BlissPR co-presented with me.

Titled “You’re a Rock Star: Building Thought Leadership Through Social Networking” the seminar covered the business case for building your social graph, how to build thought leadership through content, blogging and blog commenting advice, Linkedin and Twitter tips, and more.

Key social media thought leadership takeaways:

IBM has quantified the value of social relationships at $948 in annualized new revenue for EVERY new contact.
Buyers of B2B products and services are twice as involved in social media as the overall US online population.
Inbound marketing is more efficient and effective than traditional targeting and interruption-based tactics, because inbound focuses on hand raisers, and solves their problems.
You have to set social media limits, or you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to be everywhere at once.
The most sure-fire way to be a social networking smash is to focus on adding value and being helpful.
Atomized, distributed content works much better than siloed, “big” content like white papers.
Social media and social networks close the gap, enabling business and personal connections that would otherwise be unattainable.

Slides are below. As always, comments are welcomed and appreciated.

You're a Rock Star: Building Thought Leadership Through Social Networking

View more documents from Jason Baer.

Also, check out BlissPR’s new study on social media adoption by professional services firms. Good stuff.

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Let’s Stop Swooning Over Social Media

June 25th, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 38 Comments

Are you overdoing it on social media? Just a little?

I’m a proponent of social media. In fact, I’m a proponent that gets paid to convince others that social media is valuable. But, like in the early days of Web design, SEO, PPC, email, and banners before it, there’s too much swooning and not enough thinking about social media right now.

The good news is that social media is something special. It’s not just a marketing tactic (although social media marketing can be effective). It’s more of a movement. A philosophy that brings brands and customers closer together through humanization of the brand and mutual respect.

The subsidiary good news is that many companies and their agencies have changed the question in 2009 to “how do we incorporate social media?” rather than “why should we incorporate social media?”

The bad news is that many in the social media arena would lead you to believe that social media is ready for prime time and that you should forsake all other forms of marketing. That’s just crazy. While consumers clearly want to engage with brands in social media, the number of social media users – while growing fast – is not yet overwhelmingly large.

If You Think You Can Use Social Media Only, You Can’t

You simply cannot ignore the percentage of your customer and prospective customer base that isn’t involved in social media. And it’s easy to overlook them. The convenience, immediacy, and conviviality (for now) of social media gives it a strong gravitational pull. I probably spend more time on Twitter than can be justified from a business perspective, but it’s so much fun and I learn so much, that it’s hard to stay away.

And to some degree, full reliance on social media is a marketing cop out. This fallacy of “we’ll engage with our customers and let them do our marketing for us by telling their friends” reads well in a marketing plan, but is exceptionally difficult to execute unless your brand is compelling in a way that most simply aren’t.

The time will come when social media will start to take budget dollars away from entrenched marketing programs the way that banners and search have taken budget from TV. That time isn’t here yet. But it’s coming.

Until then, I encourage you to embrace social media, but leave one arm free to execute smart marketing programs for the 50% (or more) of the world that doesn’t know Yelp from kelp.

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Delegation Equals Death in Social Media

June 24th, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 52 Comments

Are you just a social media cheerleader?

Almost every time I work with a public relations firm or corporation on social media, I hear a version of this statement:

“Us old dogs don’t really understand all this new social media stuff, but we’ve got this brilliant young guy right out of school, and he’s getting us all up to speed.”

Bang Bang. You’re Dead.

If you truly believe that social media can transform brands by flipping the script on the age-old master and servant relationship of companies and their customers, then how do you delegate that assignment?

If you truly believe that social media is more than just a tarted-up version of SEO combined with YouTube videos, how can the most senior people in your agency (or company) decide that they cannot get involved personally?

When TV broke on the scene, did agencies say “I don’t really understand that radio with pictures stuff, but we’ve got this kid who watches it all day. He’ll tell us what to do.”? If you watch and believe Mad Men, I think the answer is absolutely yes. But let’s not make that mistake again.

I’ve worked with some amazing interns, but interns don’t transform brands.

It’s not that they don’t have the smarts. It’s not even that they lack experience. It’s that they don’t have the ear of senior members of the client team.

It Takes a Village

Everybody in your organization – including senior managers and ownership – needs to understand and participate in social media. Period.

Not everyone will be an expert in every aspect of social media. It’s too broad, and the current moves too swiftly. But you can have a shared understanding of why you’re involved in social media and how you’re going to evaluate your success, and then break the execution into morsels that can be assigned to team members.

More so than any marketing or communication development in this last century, only social media participation yields understanding of its capabilities.

Are you ready to drop the pom poms and get your hands dirty?

(photo by Jimmy MacDonald)

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Observations on Day 365

June 23rd, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 38 Comments

This week makes it one year since I started writing this blog, and I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thanks to every one of you that occupies even a minute of their increasingly precious time by reading Convince & Convert.

The volume of high quality, free, online content (especially about marketing) is astonishing, and I’m delighted that you’ve chosen to consume my water droplet within that fire hose.

As some of you may know, before starting Convince & Convert I seriously considered a university position teaching digital marketing and social media. The two things I like best (outside of wine and BBQ) are pontificating and networking, and although I’m not in a classroom, I hope this blog can become a place for learning where we’re all teachers and we’re all students. I think we’re on the way there, and thanks for being a part of it.

More to the point, thanks to my amazing clients and colleagues who have given me the gift of having a career instead of a job. To be a professional social media consultant right now is an invigorating and fantastic opportunity. I appreciate the trust you put in me every day.

Stuff I’ve Learned

As I look back on the past year (which feels like about 14 minutes), a few observations:

- Social media closes the gap. You can develop relationships and opportunities within the social media sphere that you can’t replicate offline.

- Don’t worry about promoting your blog until you’ve written it for a while. Your community will help guide the development of your voice.

- Give more than you take. If you shine the light on other people in social media, eventually that light will shine on you.

- Blog “success” is maddeningly difficult to bottle. Sometimes, posts that you just knock out become big pass-along hits, and the posts that you slave over go nowhere. Kismet is a cruel mistress.

- Build some hooks. With regard to the fire hose of free content I referenced above, you have to stand out somehow. For me, it’s living in the forest, bottle opener business cards, and the Twitter 20 interview series.

- Blog like a magazine. I used to get up every morning, read a ton of blogs, figure out what was interesting to me that day, and write. My schedule makes that game plan untenable now, so I try to post every T, W, Th regardless of circumstance. I tend to write posts in batches, and release them on that schedule. I sacrifice time sensitivity, but I gain consistency and discipline and rigor. And with so many blogs being abandoned, that’s a trade-off with which I can live.

- Listen. Much of what has made this blog successful was imparted to me by others. The ideas and the writing is mine, but Chris Brogan taught me about images in posts and how to get more comments using questions. Amber Naslund taught me a lot about ease of use. Mack Collier provided invaluable advice about “humanizing” your blog and having a signature series of posts. Valeria Maltoni continues to set the standard for making your blog a community. Darren Rowse and problogger.com have provided more specific, tactical advice than I can even remember. And Chuck Reynolds keeps this blog from blowing up on the technical side.

- Remember that all bloggers start with zero. One of the very cool elements of blogs is that that with rare exceptions, all bloggers are self-made. Conversely, ournalists have an audience largely due to the reputation of the media outlet that employs them. That’s why it’s so important to support new bloggers. If you like somebody’s work, retweet it, comment, build a relationship. Today’s new blogger is tomorrow’s Jason Falls – who was the first blogger to support me. And I’ll never forget that.

I’m fired up about year 2 of Convince & Convert. In fact, in my long digital marketing career, this may be as excited as I’ve ever been (actually, the invention of the browser was a pretty big deal). The way brands interact with their customers and prospects is changing. And it’s changing forever. It’s not about the economy, or technology, or tools. It’s about faces, not logos. It’s an opportunity for us to remake the nature of marketing and communication together.

Let’s make it happen.

(if you have any ideas, feedback, criticism, input, about C&C and what you’d like to see here, this would be a really good time to add a comment along those lines).

(photo by Perfecto Insecto)

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4 Ways to Increase Share of Voice

June 17th, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 41 Comments

The concept of “listening to the conversation” which is at the core of most social media programs, and is the foundation for many companies that sell listening tools, is really just a pseudonym for tracking content your customers create based on their satisfaction, or dissatisfaction. It’s often described as “share of voice” – the percentage of all online content and conversations about your company, compared to your competitors.

There are four keys to increasing your share of voice.

Out of sight, out of mind

Keeping customers aware of your brand on a continuous basis is a challenge worth tackling. We each interact with hundreds of brands each day, yet how many do you remember? Memorability is enhanced through repetition.

If you want your customers to create content about your brand, they have to remember engaging with your brand, and top-of-mind awareness is heightened through social Web interactions. The more your customers see and interact with you in the venues where they spend time, the more likely they are to remember your brand and create content. That’s why it’s important for brands to have a meaningful presence in large social Web outposts like Facebook and Twitter, and to actually engage with customers, not just create online Yellow Pages ads. Each interaction keeps the brand incrementally more top-of-mind, translating into more content creation opportunities.

Delight and Helpful

The best way to grow share of voice is to delight your customers. Delighted customers create satisfaction-driven content, which reaches other customers and prospective customers of your brand, essentially doing your marketing for you.

But that free marketing can be both a blessing and a curse. Social media is the ultimate b.s. test. If you’re mediocre, the community will figure it out, and fast. How would you like to be the #67 hotel for Indianapolis on Tripadvisor.com?

But don’t think the actual attributes of your product or service have to be great. They don’t. There are plenty of companies active in social media who use their prowess there to overcome deficiencies in their core business (Comcast, for example). In social media, it’s more important to be helpful than good.

Faces, not Logos

People are interesting. Companies typically are not. Thus, people like to talk about people. Perezhilton.com, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Sportscenter. Whether it’s rooted in envy, admiration, gossip or disdain, we have an innate kinship as a species that I just don’t see among my son’s hermit crabs.

Thus, if you want to increase your share of voice, don’t just give your customers something to talk about, give them SOMEBODY to talk about, too. This is the core of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s forthcoming new book “Trust Agents.” Scott Monty for Ford. Lionel Menchaca at Dell. Donna Tocci at Ingersoll-Rand, Frank Eliason at Comcast. When I think of those brands, I think of those people, not the logos.

Give Lollipops

When you’re a kid, you get a lollipop from the doctor if you were a good, complacent boy, and you got the same lollipop if you threw a tantrum, knocked over a table of instruments, and tore the posters off the walls. (which one was me?) While dog trainers, marriage counselors and others might disagree, I support this concept of reward independent of behavior, and you should too.

Other than in an initial audit circumstance, I have a hard time grasping the concept of social media listening without responding. Would you pick up your (800) number and just breath into the phone, listening to customer praise or complaints without saying a word?

If you want to increase your share of voice, recognize people for taking the time to create content about your company, whether that content is satisfaction-driven or dissatisfaction-driven. If somebody uploads a photo of your product on Flickr, track them down and send them a thank you note and a coupon or a T-shirt. And if somebody writes a negative blog post about your company, answer the comment (remember the power of public customer service), try to solve their problem, and send them a thank you and a coupon or T-shirt.

If you treat the negative as good or better as the positive, it’s amazing how much you can innoculate against ongoing dissatisfaction.

Are you tracking share of voice? How are you going to increase it?

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Why Twitter Needs Its Bottom Spanked

June 16th, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 52 Comments

I see Twitter being in real danger of becoming MySpace and SecondLife. Do you?

If Twitter doesn’t get it’s act together and improve customer experience for the masses of new users signing on, it’s going to end up as an irrelevant, niche community for a self-referential subculture.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that new research from Hubspot shows that the majority of Twitter “members” have no followers, and have never tweeted. How would they know what to do? Has there ever been a more lonely club (online or off) than Twitter on day one? Nobody welcomes you. Nobody encourages you. You’re left to figure it out for yourself, using a woefully inadequate search tool, a bunch of abbreviations and lingo you don’t know, and a staccato communication style that values brevity over clarity.

The initial sign on and get rolling process on Facebook and Linkedin seems positively red carpet by comparison. You can reliably find people based on their real name. You can find people based on location. Or company. People are actually recommended to you based on your mutual interests.

Experience is Everything

From a collaboration standpoint, Twitter’s open API is admirable. It’s spawned dozens (hundreds?) of innovative, third party add-ons. But the problem is that new users do not know Tweet Deck from a hat rack. I get it, Twitter. Have other companies do your R&D for you, snap up the best ones, etc. That’s a great model when your service is dominated by early adopters that will gladly utilize a multitude of apps to maximize their experience, like a low rider posse with lighted license plate frames and bouncing chassis.

But when Oprah and Ashton and the gang get the rest of the world involved, you cannot cede the customer experience to third parties. You can’t have your Web site being the 37th best way to use your own service. You can’t have a social networking service that does nothing to facilitate the creation of viable networks, other than “recommending” a list of interesting (but certainly not targeted) users and then swamping them with half a million new followers.

Where’s the video for new users? Where’s the getting started guide? Where’s the profile-creation ease-of-use? Where’s a search engine that searches the biography data that users include when they set up the profile? Where’s the “here’s a list of 100 people in your town, who have tweeted about x, y, and z”? Where’s the LOVE for the user?

And I’m not even talking about the outages and unreliable search results that make Twitter the most widely adopted flawed technology since silicone boobs.

I’ve been working on the Web since 1994, and have spent a lot of that time counseling companies on delivering knockout customer experiences (much of the time working side by side with my brilliant friend Maggie Young). It’s all about sending the right messages to your customers at every touchpoint.

The message Twitter is sending right now is one that I’ve actually heard from Web programmers, and makes me cringe, even as I type this:

“If these people aren’t smart enough to figure it out, we don’t want them as a customer”

If Twitter thinks it’s going to lose it’s technophile credibility by adding some functional hand-holding for my mom and others that share her life raft on the adoption curve ocean, they won’t, trust me. Good customer experience is always cool.

“@ev @biz Make it easier for people who aren’t geeks to love you. Thanks. Please RT.”

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Advice for Facebook Marketing – ebook Showdown

June 11th, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 38 Comments

Is your company appropriately serious about Facebook?

Facebook’s sweeping changes to the “Pages” function last March has made the popular social network much more viable as an interactive, satellite online presence for brands. Some companies are even using Facebook as the core of their social media strategy, and Vitamin Water and others are tagging their TV spots with their Facebook URLs, not their corporate Web sites.

The opportunity (and perhaps necessity) of interacting real-time with fans on Facebook, and the ability to implement limitless applications has made Facebook presences for companies a top of considerable interest. Oh yeah, there’s also this little thing about Facebook having more than 200 million members.

To help businesspeople (and even PR firms), navigate the potential of Facebook, two respected organizations have recently published free ebooks.

The Advance Guard, a new media agency that uses disruptive tactics to burnish the brands of HBO, American Eagle, and The Coca Cola Company, published “About Face: Thoughts on how brands can leverage recent changes to Facebook Pages, to better socialize their presence and engage their Fans.”

Hubspot, a Boston-based provider of software and services for successful inbound marketing (SEO, blogging, etc). created “How to Use Facebook for Business.”

I recommend that you download and read both ebooks (each a quick read at fewer than 25 pages with a lot of graphical examples). Both are excellent, but for entirely different reasons.

Facebook Basics

“How to Use Facebook for Business” takes a linear and comprehensive approach to Facebook education, helping new users navigate account set up, invite friends, and so forth. If you’re not on Facebook, or joined a while ago and have a mostly-dormant account, the first section of this guide will be a huge help. Hubspot also covers the increasingly important area of applying different privacy settings to different people, and creating friend lists (business colleagues, high school classmates, people on whom you want to seek revenge, etc.).

The guide also provides step-by-step instructions for creating a Facebook Page for a business, and if you’ve not yet set up a page for your company, it’s easy to follow advice. While Facebook Groups have fallen out of favor somewhat not that Pages for business is powerful and flexible, the Hubspot ebook includes the clearest comparison I’ve seen on the advantages of Groups vs. Pages.

Three pages are also devoted to Facebook advertising (which I very much recommend for its low cost and targeting capabilities), and Facebook’s revamped and excellent reporting features for Pages.

Facebook Advanced

As noted in the introduction, The Advance Guard’s “About Face” ebook is targeted at the experienced Facebook marketer, and it consequently lacks the process-oriented, instructional approach. What it does contain, however, are several excellent tips for making your corporate Facebook presence more interactive and powerful.As stated in the introduction:

“To take advantage of (Facebook), brands MUST be social – creating content, sharing status updates, posting photos, hosting events and making regular contributions to the Community.”

Facebook is not and cannot be a digital Yellow Pages ad for your company. You need to interact with your fans, and the opportunities for doing so are widespread and exciting. I learned a lot from this ebook, and if you’re ready to ramp up your corporate Facebook presence, read it today.

The Advance Guard does an excellent, thorough job in juxtaposing the tabs on Facebook Pages as Web site navigation, and discussing how many tabs are possible (10), and the options for reordering them. An interesting point that I had forgotten is that each tab has its own URL, useful for promotions and tracking.

The guide includes significant coverage of The Wall, and has a killer, concise tip: “Think like a blogger, not an advertiser – try to unfold stories over time, rather than blasting out messages.” Great advice.

The Advance Guard – and its co-founder CC Chapman (whom I interviewed recently live on Twitter), are big proponents of photography, and they devote a section of the ebook to advanced photo usage on Facebook.

One area where a step-by-step approach might be useful is in the overview of FBML and boxes. FBML (Facebook Markup Language) is the code used to create and place custom objects on Facebook pages. It’s similar to HTML, but has some of its own vagaries. Excellent coverage in this ebook on the power of FBML and the ability to place up to 10 elements on the boxes tab, but a code level walk-through would be even more useful.

A very interesting tip that I’d never considered is the potential to use applications to populate the Wall and interact socially, but not including that application on your Page.

The “About Face” ebook also includes links to 16 Facebook Pages, each with a meritorious use of a particular element or application. Extremely useful to see these best practices in action.

Know Why, Not Just How

I recommend both of these ebooks, but before you read them, make sure you have a clear understanding of WHY your company is on Facebook, and what you’re trying to achieve. Like all things social media, Facebook advice can get you thinking tactically, losing sight of the big picture. The result is often an inconsistent, murky approach as you whipsaw back and forth between company social media “initiatives.” (not knowing your strategy also makes determining ROI impossible).

As The Advance Guard states in their ebook (and Hubspot echoes in theirs):

“Develop a strategy as to exactly WHY someone should become a Fan. Perhaps they will receive special offers and be the first to know about local events. Make it very clear what they will get out of this relationship. After all, they know what YOU are getting out of it.”

What’s the #1 question you have about Facebook for business? Ask in the comments, and I’ll ask Hubspot and The Advance Guard to answer them in a future post.

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19 Top Takeaways from B2B Forum

June 10th, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer
| 16 Comments

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum in Boston.

As usual for MarketingProfs‘ events, it was a superlative, intimate mixture of excellent speakers and smart, eager attendees.

For me, the highlights were the presentation by Sandy Carter of IBM on their use of social media, and the keynote by author Barry Schwartz on reinserting ethics and “practical wisdom” into business.

Sandy made be realize that the B2B vs. B2C chasm is mostly hokum, and Barry made be remember just how incredibly lucky I am to be able to do social media consulting and blogging for a living.

(A humble thank you to everyone (including you) who make it possible for me to have a calling, instead of a job. I’ll try my best to help you however I can. And never be afraid to ask.)

I also got to reconnect with a veritable posse of social media folks whose work I admire, and I met dozens of very sharp B2B marketers, many of whom had great questions about social media.

And whether it was the keynote about Twitter from Steven Johnson (who wrote this week’s cover story in Time Magazine about it), several panel sessions on social media, the Twitter 1:1 therapy sessions, or my own social media hot seat lab, social media was everywhere at this conference. Including a TON of #mpb2b tweets.

I scanned every #mpb2b tweet – thousands – to bring you these 19 gems. The thoughts from this conference that I’ll be using in my own work. (thanks to the awesome Mike Damphousse @damphoux for this best-of idea, which I proudly and promptly borrowed). Note that some of these tweets are my own, because I thoroughly live tweeted many sessions. (read about how I use Twitter for note-taking)

@jaybaer Whoa. @sandy_carter shows IBM/MIT research that puts value on social connections. $948 annual revenue per strong connection. #mpb2b

@BDSolutions @ConversationAge says: creating thought ldrshp content is abt educating reader & empowrng them 2 share/teach their new knowledge #mpb2b

@GinnyBartosek #mpb2b nugget: You’ve already lost control, in fact you need to, but you CAN guide the narrative about your org by listening and responding.

@MitziThomas Website Analytics: Does the home page provide evidence that user goals can be completed? 15% of B2B sites pass. #mpb2b

@MitziThomas Customer loyalty measurement: the best predictor of customer loyalty is employee loyalty. #mpb2b

@timust3 “Customer service isn’t a burden, it’s a gold mine!” – Chris Penn, Edvisors. Leverage customer questions to drive content. #mpb2b

@timust3 When designing, create pencil sketches w/ direct client input instead of creating a gfx mockup and getting a simple yes/no approval #mpb2b

@bdsolutions @ExactTarget reports 73% of subscribers report email as junk/spam based on from line; 69% based on subject line #mpb2b

@jaybaer “Has your social media program changed the way people perceive you?” asks @kdpaine Bingo. I’m getting a tattoo of that. #mpb2b

@angelaleavitt Guy Powell on marketing dashboards “marketers measure the easy things, but not the right things” #mpb2b

@HGMarketing As you target further up the title chain, make the emails shorter, simpler, something that a CxO can read on an iPhone #mpb2b

@DeedsAC Social Media for B2B is about storytelling, building relationships, & creating a conversation–& it’s not always about the product! #mpb2b

@AmberCadabra Excessive “rules” are insurance against disaster and a guarantee of mediocrity – more Barry Schwartz at #mpb2b

@schoolmarketer Integrated marketing: don’t just be “more”. Be different. What makes ur brand different? Share it. #mpb2b

@DonnaTocci By 2011 70% + of calls to cust. service centers will come from mobile phones. Great oppty to get them to opt into future mobile msgs. #mpb2b

@emailman Great #mpb2b session on mobile marketing. Follow same opt-in practices as you would for email marketing to ensure a positive customer experience

@jlysne @amyafrica says click here now gets 4-6x more clicks than click here #mpb2b

@donnatocci When designing your website the phone number should be clickable to initiate a call right away for mobile users. Good tip! #mpb2b

@marketingprofs Do you have a job, career or a calling? Allowing people to use judgment & intuition allows them 2 develop a calling #mpb2b

Which of those 19 is most interesting to you?

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Jay Baer
I'm Jay Baer. I'm a social media strategy consultant and trainer for public relations firms and leading corporations. I've worked with more than 700 companies (and 25 of the Fortune 1000) since starting in digital marketing in 1994. I conducted the first live interview on Twitter, and routinely interview social media luminaries for my Twitter 20 series. I live in the forest in Flagstaff, AZ where I review restaurants.
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