This is the unabridged, non-edited version of an article published at bnet.co.uk
The Morgan Stanley report entitled “media and the Internet, how teenagers consume media” is one of the most striking examples of instant information circulation on a global scale. Matthew Robinson — a 15 year-old trainee who was asked to put together a report on how his peers were using the media — no longer needs to work on his online reputation. In a flash, his report was on everyone’s lips (on everyone’s desktop rather) and widely used as a perfect representation of generation Y usage of media and – especially – the Internet.

On the contrary, the fact that a survey of one might be considered a representative sample of a 60 million population is a rather tale-telling instance of how adults, and not teenagers, have become used to consume the media. Call me old-fashioned, but I think I can highlight a few issues with regard to how information is handled in this report.

1. This report is often taken at face value as in this review by the Guardian, with no analysis or questioning of anything that is said in the report,
   
2. Teens are different from adults, but does that mean that their tastes/behaviours won’t change?
   
3. Marketing has taught teenagers to behave as consumers, hence their feeling – more acquired than innate – that they are a race apart. But in fact they aren’t. Teenagers are but adults to be, and should be treated as such, not revered as if youth was meant to be eternal,
   
4. Generation Y – a definition so broad it means nothing – is said to be more IT and especially Internet savvy than their predecessors. As a matter of fact, an in-depth (and confidential) survey carried out by Orange amongst a sample of 15 year-olds a couple of years ago showed that this is not quite true. Teenagers are actually better at using certain technologies such as instant messaging and they practice multi-tasking heavily – not forcibly a good thing
   the Guardian says – but aren’t more au fait with IT than their elders and when they hit trouble, they tend to call … their parents to the rescue,
   
5. Most real bloggers aren’t teenagers, and many of them are in the 40-50+ range; I can testify,
   
6. As a consequence of the above, Twitter is also used by the same people who use it mostly to publicise their content and share resources with their network and also a surrogate instant messaging system between members of that network,
   
7. As a result too, Twitter is indeed a tool for grown-ups and in that, I do believe Matthew Robson is right. Just because teenagers don’t use it now doesn’t make it less interesting however,
   
8. (a mere assumption I admit but it seems) the style of this report has little to do with teenage counterculture and a lot to do with Morgan Stanley,
   
9. This report is assuming that enterprises should fear teenagers who will join their ranks in the coming years. However:
   
   1. By the time they do, they won’t be teenagers anymore, some of them will even have children,
      
   2. By then, most of them will have learnt how to behave in the enterprise world,
      
   3. When Mr Robson hits the job market, that is in approximately 10 years from now enterprises will also have evolved by dint of user pressure, young and old, who want greater freedom in the workplace and have even bought their own technology to bypass corporate rules (a concept known as BYOC),
      
10. Lastly, may I venture to ask who Matthew Robson is anyway? I wasn’t really able to trace him, even in facebook which I guess cannot be regarded as 19^th century technology. So, despite my introductory comment, he might yet have to work on his online reputation, unless this too is an old-fashioned concept.
    

What makes “information” stand out from “data” and cyber babble? Information occurs any time resources are cross checked, double-checked, and when investigations have taken place. Information also happens when authors’ identities have been disclosed (even The Economist’s editors can be traced through the online media directory complete with pictures and contact details).

Don’t be mistaken, and don’t blame the Internet for the fact that adults – and later generation Y who are in fact just adults to be – can no longer tell the difference between information and noise. Blame the people who use the Internet instead.

important notice: this is the unabridged version of a post published at Bnet.co.uk

One is often told that getting the buy-in for a Social Media initiative requires some solid ROI calculation. One would have to weigh the pros and cons, how much it costs, try and evaluate the effort which is required, measure it and translate it into pounds, shillings and pence. And profit should also come into play, since it is deemed inappropriate for a new project to be set up without a clear definition of how much revenue it brings.

It is indeed a well known fact of Corporate culture that no IT project has ever been implemented without delivering great benefits… well, maybe not. And another well known fact is that, similarly, all systems which have led to losses in productivity should be banned… well, maybe not either.

Let’s take email as an example. We have already described at length the pitfalls in which many corporate email users are falling and how to preserve your productivity and lifestyle by better using email. Yet, email is also responsible for stress, and waste of time and money and effort. On average, Managers spend 40% of their time doing email according to the authors of the Hamster Revolution. I’m not mentioning examples of those who spend 100% of their time on this but I know a few who do. Yet, despite all these productivity issues, the requirement for email is not questioned, barring a few exceptions such as IBM’s 2.0 expert Luis Suarez who declared war on e-mail and almost succeeded (lucky him!).

So is ROI a valid way of showing how useful Social Media can be?

My take is the following:

1. One doesn’t engage in a Social Media project because it brings profit but because it enables one to do things in different ways and that these ways – listening, adapting, innovation – are beneficial to the brand, to your ecosystem, your image, and above all, the well-being of your clients, partners etc.
2. One doesn’t need to spend too much time on understanding how much Social Media will cost because the fact is that it doesn’t cost that much, and it may even cost too little (I have seen many a project valued because of the cash it sank, not the one it never generated),
3. It is very difficult to measure precisely what tangible profits can be achieved from using Social Media, although there has been examples with many SMBC members,
4. User generated content is also a major source of production of high quality content which can then be used in many instances such as client-facing meetings and lead generation. And God knows content is expensive. Any one video could cost from €1,000 to €15,000 but I have seen some instances in which a very talented consultant generated 8 videos worth at least €6,000 each for… nothing. Thousands of views later, he helped the company save approximately €50,000. In the past 12 months, my assessment of the money that was saved by fostering user generated content (UGC) in the past twelve months is in the regions of €200,000 if I include all the top quality articles which all our users have produced and the 1000+ comments which they have generated, some of which have even helped us improve dramatically some of our services,
5. Eventually, my prime advice to those who’d like to spread the word about how Social Media can help a brand engage in passionate discussions would be to suggest to them that they speak to their boss about it and ask him/her to write things for the company blog. I did this and guess what: I never had the ROI question anymore because he understood immediately that he too could spread the word across about his own pet subject (Green IT) and that was – as he himself admitted – invaluable.

Maybe the final reason for not falling into the ROI trap is that ROI is often used by execs to get rid of subjects they don’t like even though there may be no other rational reasons for them to do so.

The question stunned me I must admit. While walking down the aisle of the yearly event of the Confederation of French Industry Medef – equivalent to CBI – I was getting ready for a session of live blogging in front of a panel of ex ministers, worldwide banking experts, and other celebrities such as former Poland’s premier Lech Walensa when a seated person stopped me by putting her hand on my arm. “Tell me”, she said while eyeing my “blogger” badge which signalled that I was one of the 50+ Internet experts invited by the confederation in order to cover the event, “what is a blogger?”

I must admit that I must have looked pretty flabbergasted. As the media is awash with blog reports and web reviews, and even mainstream Hollywood films like the recent State of Play feature blogs as a main contender in the online/offline press battle, I had surmised that blogging was an established fact of modern life. Let’s face the fact readers, it is not! Joe public still doesn’t know what it is about, or not quite.

Blogging is still exotic to many, and not just across the Channel. Judging by the frequent questions I have on the same lines in England and even in the United States, I can assure you that we are not there yet. So how long will it take for everyone to understand? Judging by what happened with core Internet activities, one started talking about the information superhighway as it was then known in England as early as 1994 but things only took off seriously towards the end of the 1990’s.

Will blogging follow the same trajectory? Maybe it just won’t happen like that. It is highly probable that people will all use blogs/microblogs (such as the outstanding Posterous service) and other Social Media gadgets even before they understand the weird names we have given them. To a large extent, this is what this Social Media revolution is all about, i.e. forgetting about the buzz-words and just going ahead with it.

Yes Madam, you are right, not everybody knows what bloggers are, yet they are truly here to stay anyway.

note: this piece was originally published on behalf of bnet at http://blogs.bnet.co.uk/sterling-performance/2009/09/23/five-tips-for-b2b-social-media-marketing/

Business brands using social media are starting to see the benefits. But are there any best practices they can use? Guessing that the average businessperson may not know where to start, George Krautzel and Bill Connfrom online agency Toolbox.com have issued a whitepaper on that subject. Here are some ideas:

1. Set objectives first. Don’t head on towards social media just because it’s hip. Who is your target audience and what are you trying to achieve. Are you using the right media outlets for the audience you want to reach?
2. Build a roadmap to engagement. Start advertising on social media platforms and then slowly engage in conversations. “Entry in social media can be as simple as advertising in an online community”, as Conn and Krautzel point out.
3. Examine the costs and benefits of building your own community, as opposed to tapping into existing communities.Building your own community is a lot more costly and exacting than joining an existing one that fits your needs.
4. Transparency is a must. A marketer has to say that he is a marketer, and that’s that. A comprehensive guide to disclosure, as it’s often called, courtesy of the Social Media Business Council. So-called Flogs (fake blogs) are a no-go area,
5. A good marketer listens to what is said about their brand. It’s inppropriate to control feedback, so you should be able to withstand criticism and use negative feedback to improve your service.

I agree with most of Toolbox.com’s advice, but I’d add a couple of caveats:

• Words like “campaign” and “targeting” aren’t really appropriate for social media, in my view.
• And whereas Toolbox advises you to get started with online advertising and then to learn how to engage in conversations, I’d do just the opposite. My ultimate best practice advice would be to ask permission and learn by doing, slowly but surely, one step at a time.

I’ll be picking this theme up in a post soon, but in the meantime, you can download the toolbox social media whitepaper here.

Let me know if you have any other tips to share.

as stated in my previous SEO piece, there are quite a few myths flying around the Web and namely about what Google does and doesn’t with your data. Webpronews has this story about “duplicated content” and God knows there are many people tallking nonsense about that subject. A must-read:

[...] Greg begins by clearing up a popular myth about duplicate content, and that is that Google penalizes sites for having duplicate content. This is not the case. That’s not to say that duplicate content can’t have a negative impact on your rankings, but Google itself is not penalizing you for it. [...]

• read on at Webpronews

note: this is part 2 of 2 in a series of articles on the subject of SEO and marketing, originally published at Bnet.co.uk. This piece is the unabridged version of the article.

10 steps for improving your SEO dramatically and simply

including a slideshare pictorial guide for SEO marketers (see bottom of article)

Important notice: it is reminded that this is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to SEO. All steps have been voluntarily simplified in order to help marketing managers, not to turn them into bespectacled anoraks. My method described here is simple, it is certainly not scientific, it is bound to make any SEO guru scream in dismay I’m sure, but I’ve tried it and it worked time and time again, so I believe there must be something good in it.

Step 1: define your SEO niche

Trying to be all things to all people is a bad thing in Marketing in general, but in web page optimisation it is a lethal mistake. First and foremost, one has to target a so-called SEO niche in order to be well positioned in search engines. Reaching number one rank is a nice to have but can rarely be achieved from day one. On the contrary, it is easier and more effective to aim at niches, one at a time for each page you want to index, and eventually, your ranking will improve.

1.       Target 3 keywords (or combination of). I don’t mean that one cannot index a page for more than 3 keywords, I have seen counterexamples. What I mean is

a.       It’s difficult to target more than 3 keywords from a resource viewpoint,

b.      If you want to be consistent, these keywords will have to be repeated all over your text, so imagine if you have 10 of them!

c.       Your website has probably more than one page so do use other pages to target other keywords, based on relevance (the more the keywords are repeated in the page the more relevant because it means that this page really is about that),

d.      Don’t try and spam search engines, their designers are really shrewd, so spamming a page with repeated keywords may sound very clever but I assure you it’s not plus your readers might not appreciate your style.

2.       Analyse popularity AND competition and focus on that KEI

a.       keyword popularity will tell you how much a keyword combination is sought after,

b.      competition will tell you how often your competitors have tried to use this combination of keywords for their own SEO,

c.       the right combination between a & b is called the Key Efficiency Indicator index (aka KEI), a very effective way of balancing the two factors,

d.      bringing realism using personal judgement is also advised. Some of the numbers given by some keyword generation tools (see last section about useful tools) will not make much sense unless you interpret them properly and eliminate irrelevant keywords. For instance, networks appears as if it were a relevant keyword for telcos but in fact it’s not because it’s too vague as it mostly refers to social networks. A simple search engine query will prove the point very quickly and therefore, the ambiguity can be removed by qualifying the keyword better (network security is more relevant for instance, etc.)

e.      each page can/must be indexed with a different strategy in mind. This is how you can ensure that different targets are reached from the same website.

note: “The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) was developed by search engine guru Sumantra Roy. it compares the daily searches with the number of competing Web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are good enough so you can use them while optimizing your site.” (source: sitepoint)

Step 2: fine tune your page title

As said in our previous post about Internet content, good content shows in the title. Good SEO too, and this is rather obvious so I won’t expatiate.

Step 3: implement keywords in the URL

Adding your keywords to your URL is also very effective as it will improve the search engine friendliness of your website. It also means generic keywords. Business people are always obsessed with their brand – and this is natural to an extent – but Internet visitors aren’t forcibly. What you have to do is get them to associate your brand with the good content that you are providing. It’s just the same objective but it works the other way round.

Step 4: it may not be useful, but it can’t hurt if you update those hidden meta tags (keywords, descriptions)

Web pundits may declare meta tags dead and buried, the fact is my SEO tool disagrees plus I believe it doesn’t really hurt if you update meta keywords and description and even the highly transparent author tag for some obvious reasons: a) Google declared them dead but who can tell they’re right, since their algorithm is kept secret? b) can you guarantee they won’t change their mind and when? c) it’s a matter of discipline I believe, because if you spend time doing this right, it probably means that you have given a thought to your keywords, and that in itself is good because very few people do d) it will keep your SEO tool quiet when you verify your pages

I do not recommend you oversee this step, it only takes a few seconds and I believe, if nothing else, it serves the purpose of tidying up the page, a little as if you were cleaning the table before lunch, it’s always nicer and healthier.

Step 5: get page copy to reflect your choice of keywords

Page copy, i.e. the length of the text to be found in your pages is the crux of the problem. I have seen websites – God knows I have – which looked like screen versions of paper brochures with nice pictures on them, the odd flash animation and very little text underneath. Usually, Marketing managers are put off by text. It “doesn’t look nice”; the “page is cluttered”, it’s “messy and it’s hard to find what you want” … are a few examples of commonplace feedback one gets from Joe Bloggs who thinks he can design a website just because he browsed one a few minutes before. Yet, the significance of page copy is paramount. The number of times that your keyword is repeated in your page is of extreme importance, and not just because search engines like the idea. The reason why search engines behave that way is that their programmers have – rightfully – decided that if your page were about football, you shouldn’t try and lure people into believing it’s about hockey or rugby. One way of making sure that a page really is about its main subject is by measuring the number of occurrences of your targeted keywords. As a result, each of your 3 keyword combinations should be repeated on average 5-10 times on a page. And if this page is just a cut and paste from one of your sales brochures, forget about it.

Step 6: keywords behind images (‘alternate tags’)

Alternate tags are these little pop-ups which show text when hovering over an image with your mouse. Your SEO will improve greatly if you make sure that these pictures have tags on them. Saving the pictures with meaningful keywords in their file name can also help greatly. Image file names also are URL’s (images are resources, i.e. the R in URL, unique resource location) and are therefore indexed by search engine too.

Step 7: turn your keywords into hotlinks

This step is often overlooked and yet this is one of the most powerful accelerators for SEO. Search engines like keywords in links so please avoid naming your links “click here” or “read more” etc. All your links should be meaningful and contain keywords in plain English: “download the file” should be replaced by “download the report on IT security market trends in America” for instance.

Step 8: submit your site to search engines

When I work on SEO with Marketing managers I realise that they are paying a lot of attention up to step #8 and then they’re done. Or so they think rather. For in fact it’s only just started. Don’t just stop there and wait. SEO requires that your site be submitted to the search engines which will send their bots to visit and index your links and pages. Yet, Google is not good enough. For a start, Google’s market share in the US doesn’t go beyond 65% whereas in the UK and France it reaches 85-90% (source: Orange Business websites). Besides, submitting your site to more than one search engine will help build links around your site and that too can’t hurt.

Step 9: use web 2.0 to boost your positioning

Website optimisation really is longwinded as it takes sometimes up to several months to get a website well indexed by search engines, but it bears some results in the very long run. On the opposite, Blogs and social media links are more dynamic, can sometimes be indexed in a day or even several times a day. Social media brings speed and reactivity in your SEO but things change fast in this world and blog SEO is less long term than site SEO. Hence, having a good mix of the two is a good idea, and I don’t mean here creating fake blogs in order to boost SEO productivity, as fake blogs are completely out of the question.

Step 10: Just keep trying

SEO work shouldn’t stop with step 9. For one, results don’t show immediately, priming the pump a few times is required before something actually happens. Secondly, results aren’t forever because they also depend on your competitors. It’s almost a full-time job in so far as one has to follow up on one’s position on search engines on a regular basis. Rankings evolve all the time, one has to be very careful not to let sleeping dogs lie for too long.

However, the beauty of working in a large enterprise is that one can teach Marketing managers to follow up on their products regularly and this is a lot better and more satisfactory than just having one central marketing person doing all the job over thousands and thousands of pages.

As a conclusion

Marketing managers shouldn’t be over-obsessed with SEO, and mind their own (Marketing) business and shouldn’t forget that things change fast on the web (it’s a continuous task).

There are definitely too many marketing managers getting obsessed with SEO. SEO is a serious discipline, as is Web management or Social media, and is best left to experts who can tell a good keyword from a bad one. As well as I encourage our marketing managers to get involved with SEO when they design their product descriptions, I believe that the eventual expertise will always remain with the professionals of that domain who eat and drink the stuff everyday in the field. At the end of the day, what matters is not what you read but what you achieve, and the results you get on search engines themselves. Besides, don’t expect miracles – Meta tags aren’t a magic solution for instance – and the number one rank in search engines is often a pie in the sky unless you have defined your target niches properly (see above). Besides, no one can guarantee number one position, let alone in the long run, so don’t focus on this, it’s irrelevant and it changes on a daily basis if not more.

All you have to do is your job, work on your products, step in the shoes of your clients and your ecosystem and work patiently, over and over again … and try again when you’ve failed. Your SEO will be the result of this. And your Internet strategist will be more than happy to oblige … once your part of the job is done. Our 10 step survival kit will in that case come handy so as not to miss a crucial milestone in the process.

A few simple tools I recommend:

1) Google Trends and Google Insights show how popular keyword searches are on the Net

2) Google (Adwords) Keyword Tools will check keyword popularity in detail and let you fine tune your SEO niche

3) WebCEO, a fully fledged SEO tool, used by many a big business name

4) Page ranking tool to check your ranking online and then post on your website

A slideshare representation of our 10 tips for simple SEO

note: a picture is worth a thousand words (literally). Feel free to use this slide and pin it on your wall while you try and improve your SEO and want to spread the word around amongst your marketing teams

note: this is the unabridged version of a post originally published at Bnet.co.uk

SEO is a serious marketing tool

Of all the topics surrounding the web, there is one which tops the list from a marketing point of view and it’s Search Engine Optimisation (aka SEO). It is indeed one of the most important levers for bringing traffic to a site. I can barely think of a Marketing manager I have bumped into in the past 18 months who isn’t obsessed with the fact that his products will or will not show in search engines. This is obviously a valid request and a lot of expectations are set on the improvement/optimisation of web pages to be more search-engine friendly, and a lot of pressure is put on web site owners like yours truly. There is nothing wrong with that though, I believe it all boils down to getting the right explanation across to our managers and explaining what SEO really is and isn’t about. In essence, it’s not about cheating; on the contrary, thinking that optimising your site for ‘free products’ when you sell expensive products is not only daft, it’s pointless. So I won’t take any of your time debating on whether SEO is cheating because it’s not. Or at least it’s not a side of the business that I’m interested in.

My conclusion is that education is at the heart of that matter and I have developed a little web owner survival kit in which I have included some of the fundamentals of SEO, to help Marketing managers and site owners with their daily task of improving their web content and better serve their visitors. This post and slideshare presentation will complement nicely our previous manual on the subject of Internet content.

Your SEO is more than just about  web pages: it’s a matter of strategy

My aim here is not to depict the complete picture of website optimisation. This would be an impossible task. Search engines vary their rules on a daily basis, and narrowing down our attention to Google only wouldn’t be sufficient to simplify our work. What I have attempted to do in this article is to focus on the fundamentals of search engine optimisation. I have used this canvas in the field and I have found it pretty effective in order to evangelise about SEO and get marketing managers to take ownership of this task, as a means, not only to improve their web pages, but mostly to improve how their products/services are presented: well, in essence I could sum it up by adding that improving your SEO will also help hone your marketing strategy, therefore killing two birds with one stone.

When Marketing managers come to see me about their web page SEO they often have grievances about the Internet, or the website or even the webmasters, but none of these are really to blame.

_ “I can’t see my products when I type ‘0800 numbers’” I was told by quite a few marketing managers (just change the keyword/product name, you’ll always get the same problem)

_ Ok, I replied, “but why isn’t your page named ‘0800 numbers’ then?”

_ “It’s normal he answered, we don’t call it that way internally!”

As a natural result, the name of a product which is only internal will never show outside the web because a website isn’t done for internal people, it’s meant for external visitors, who need to be addressed with their vocabulary, not yours. Actually, this means that the marketing manager in question is going to have to step into his visitors’ shoes and stop interpreting the world through his own cultural references. In essence, this is what marketing is all about, and it has nothing to do with the web.

part 2 of this SEO survival guide for Marketing managers will be about our 10 steps for improving your SEO dramatically and simply.

There are still people who doubt that Marketing accountability is a must. Golden rules for 2.0 including disclosure, transparency and openness are not ( repeat not) an option. For those people, here is the living proof that posting fake positive comments (a practice known as astroturfing) about one’s product on other people’s websites is a no-no:

ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO SECURES SETTLEMENT WITH PLASTIC SURGERY FRANCHISE THAT FLOODED INTERNET WITH FALSE POSITIVE REVIEWS

Cuomo’s deal is first case in nation against growing practice of “astroturfing” on Internet

’Lifestyle Lift’ Will Pay $300,000 in Penalties and Costs to New York State

NEW YORK, N.Y. (July 14, 2009) – Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced a settlement with cosmetic surgery outfit Lifestyle Lift over the publishing of fake consumer reviews on the Internet.

Under the settlement, Lifestyle Lift will stop publishing anonymous positive reviews about the company to Internet message boards and other Web sites, and will pay $300,000 in penalties and costs to the State of New York. The case is believed to be the first in the nation aimed at combating “astroturfing,” a growing problem on the Internet.

Lifestyle Lift employees published positive reviews and comments about the company to trick Web-browsing consumers into believing that satisfied customers were posting their own stories. These tactics constitute deceptive commercial practices, false advertising, and fraudulent and illegal conduct under New York and federal consumer protection law. The settlement marks a strike against the growing practice of “astroturfing,” in which employees pose as independent consumers to post positive reviews and commentary to Web sites and Internet message boards about their own company.

• read on at http://www.oag.state.ny.us/media_center/2009/july/july14b_09.html

important notice: this is the unabridged version of an article which was originally published on the Sterling Performance blog by Bnet.co.uk

Bob Pearson, has just been appointed President of the newly rebranded Social Media Business Council (*) after a successful stint as Vice President, Communities and Conversations at Dell. Bob has been kind enough to agree to answer our few questions on behalf of our BNET readers. My focus in this interview will be on Bob Pearson’s experience, how he plans to use it in his new role, and about his plans for the expansion of the Social Media Business Council.

BNET: you successfully deployed social media initiatives on behalf of a worldwide high-tech company. Is social media only for geeks?

BP: No, social media is about having a conversation directly with your customers. It’s so important that companies take time to see the value in building a long-term relationship with their customers via social media. Many of the initial ideas may have started with “geeks”, who I certainly appreciate, but we live in a world today that has over 1.6 billion people online and more than 500,000 new people going online everyday for the first time in their lives. Social media is becoming mainstream for customers today and should start to become so for companies in the near future.

BNET: what are in your eyes and based on your experience the top three benefits which you, your previous employer and your clients derived from these social media initiatives?

BP: There are many benefits for companies, but gaining ideas, co-shaping your brand and unlocking the value of employees are certainly three important ones.

Social media provides an amazing window into how customers think and what they want. For example, why conduct a focus group with 10 people in a single location when you can build an idea community, ala Dell or Starbucks and receive thousands of ideas and listen to customers discuss them over months? For companies, it’s also important to co-shape your brand and reputation with your customers online. If you conduct strong analytics and you know where your products are being reviewed, you’ll find that a large brand may have as many as 5,000 conversations about itself every day. Ask yourself how many of those conversations you’re participating in or knowledgable of? If you’re not, you’re outsourcing your brand. Powerful thought.

I’ve also seen how social media inside a company enables employees to share their thinking and, quite frankly, let you know if they agree with the direction of the company via their comments or, in some cases, their silence.

BNET: what were the three main successful drivers behind your successful implementation of social media?

BP: I’ve heard people say “make the R small and the I big in ROI”. I like that advice. Social media does not have to cost a lot of money to try. What you need are some courage and a willingness to engage directly with your customers. I like asking people “how many customers do you actually speak with every day”? For too many people in companies, the answer is zero.

Here are three key drivers: #1 – know where conversations are occurring about your brand #2 – have clear rules of the road in how you will conduct social media, including an online policy and #3 – realize that customers want to hear from you, they do not want to hear from “the company”, so personalize your approach. The new formula is “Brand + Personality”.

BNET: how big and how successful is the Blog Council and what sort of a club is it?

BP: Social media is becoming a new discipline within companies that impacts all employees and all departments. As a result, it’s very important for leaders in social media to have a private place to share best practices and learn from each other in real time. There is no better person to learn from then a peer who is figuring out the same thing in a different industry.

The result is the formation of the Blog Council, which now has 60 of the world’s leading brands as members, such as Orange, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Intel, Microsoft and Coca Cola.

BNET: are all companies entitled to join the blog Council, or do they have to meet certain criteria?

BP: The Blog Council is for larger companies, generally over 5,000 employees. The key is that members are actively seeking to improve in social media. We want members who want to learn by asking their peers questions, share ideas and do it all in an “ego-less” environment.

BNET: what are your plans for the development of the Blog Council? Is there anything you’d like to share with our readers? A scoop maybe?

BP: Well, it’s fair to say that our name was ready for a change. In fact, we just changed our name to the Social Media Business Council and you can find us at www.socialmedia.org.

BNET: some of the “bloggers blogging about bloggers” to put it in the words of Andy Sernovitz are sometimes critical of the blog Council, what would you like to say to them?

BP: We welcome everyone’s opinion. We’re focused on building social media as a discipline and helping our members achieve success. It’s all about the conversation and we hope everyone will share how they think we can do better (as an organization and for our members).

BNET: there has been points made by Forrester’s Josh Bernoff and also Seth Godin (in his Meatball Sundae opus) that social media wasn’t for all big companies. What is your opinion about that?

BP: I respect the body of work of both Josh and Seth very much, but I could not disagree more with this particular comment. Social media is for every company that wants to improve how it interacts with its employees and its customers. Internally, a company has a major opportunity to unlock intellectual capital of its employees or gain their ideas more quickly to improve products. Externally, we are scratching the surface on how we can empower customers. Imagine opening up new B2B channels between major companies to communicate more effectively, for example.

I’ve worked inside three Fortune 500 companies and have met with many others, so I’m quite sure of the opportunity ahead of us for companies of all sizes.

BNET: Is the blog Council only about corporate blogging or does it cover a much broader spectrum?

BP: The Blog Council is about social media and how it is utilized to improve communications with employees and customers. Social media represents the most direct way to have a conversation and, in many respects, the most powerful way to learn, share and build relationships. The leading companies of the world are embracing social media and learning how to utilize it effectively. Not every company understands the significance of social media today, but that’s normal for any transformation. They will with time.

Thanks Bob for answering our questions very openly. Our Bnet readers interested in knowing more about the the Social Media Business Council can connect to http://socialmedia.org

(*) note: For the sake of disclosure, it needs to be pointed out that the author is also a member of the Social Media Business Council in which he is the Orange representative.

Of course, we knew already about it, but it’s been made public only recently that the late Blog Council has changed its name to Social Media Business Council (aka SMBC). We are very pleased to be able to relay that information (note: I am a proud member of smbc) and we wish our friend Bob (picture below) and the whole council a lot of successful un-conferences and blogwell meetings.

The aim of the name change is I believe obvious, that is to say to send a clear message to the business community – and the social media community – that social media isn’t just about Corporate blogging, it’s about a much broader range of subjects and tools including micro-blogging, social networking and others. This however – I can almost hear a few giggles here and there – that Corporate blogging is over and that we made a mistake by promoting Corporate blogging. Nothing could be more false. It means that Corporate blogging is one of the tools – and a powerful one at that – and that it cannot stand on its own without a few others on the side.

For your benefit, here’s the press announcement made by the Blog C… sorry, the Social Media Business Council

Blog Council becomes the Social Media Business Council, moves to SocialMedia.org

Posted by on June 30, 2009

Big news from all of us here at GasPedal and the newly renamed Blog Council: Our community for social media leaders at large companies has officially changed its name to the Social Media Business Council and has moved from BlogCouncil.org to SocialMedia.org. Here’s the press release with more details:

Chicago, IL — The Blog Council, a community of social media leaders at large companies, has officially changed its name to the Social Media Business Council and will call SocialMedia.org its new online home.

“Every day, our members share advice on how to build successful, scalable and self-sufficient social media programs,” said Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Social Media Business Council and its parent company, GasPedal. “This new name and domain better reflect the wide range of issues our community focuses on.”

The name change was a collaborative effort, with members sharing dozens of name suggestions before selecting Social Media Business Council through a vote at Member Meeting 4 in New York City.

• read more on the blog of the Social Media Business Council

note: picture courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/hyku/ on Flickr, this picture was made available by its author under the Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic creative common licence.