By focusing on the end goal of innovation and transformation, we are not limited to social media solutions - we can think differently about business processes, branding, marketing campaigns, customer support, hiring, training, partnerships, sales and other aspects of operations even.
Read More View CommentsI’m honored to be counted among the people invited to give new impetus to the Social Media Club. Through conversations with companies, organizations, local universities, and interactive agencies, I’ve experienced the growing interest in social media and the increased demand for industry practitioners. By bringing together those who have an interest in seeing the industry improve and evolve, SMC provides the much needed forum for sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy. 1
The interim board will establish the guidelines of this association, to create the necessary framework before the SMC grows further on a national and global level. Once the framework is agreed on, local boards will be established with interested corporate and non-corporate members. Please read the full press release if you’d like to know more.
As we collaborate on on organizing SMC for the future, Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club and Partner at The Conversation Group, acknowledges that:
“Our core mission will remain the same: promotion of media literacy; support of industry standards efforts such as Creative Commons licensing, Microformats, Data Portability and OpenID; discussion and promotion of ethical behavior; and sharing our knowledge among our members and the industry community at large.”
The newly named members of the interim board, some of whom are friends and others who I look forward to meeting, include:
- Lee Aase — Social Media University, Global
- Rohit Bhargava — Influential Marketing Blog and Personality Not Included
- Richard Binhammer — RichardatDell
- Michael Brito — Britopian and Conversations Matter
- Chris Brogan — ChrisBrogan.com
- Mike Chapman — Austin Social Media Club and Every Dot Connects
- Megan Cole — MeganCole.org
- Alex de Carvalho — alexdc.org and Social Object
- Todd Defren — SHIFT Communications and www.pr-squared.com
- Serena Ehrlich — Business Wire
- Jason Falls — Social Media Explorer
- Maggie Fox — Social Media Group
- Jon Gatrell — spatiallyrelevant.org
- Howard Greenstein — HowardGreenstein.com
- Francine Hardaway — Stealthmode
- Josh Hallett — Hyku
- Annie Heckenberger — pikpr.blogspot.com and redspurs.com
- Chuck Hester — Intellicontact
- Chris Heuer — ChrisHeuer.com
- Sherry Heyl — Mind Blogging
- Tara Hunt — HorsePigCow
- Bill Johnston — Forum One
- Jennifer McClure — Society for New Communications Research
- Mike McGrath — Dogpatch Dispatch
- Jake McKee — CommunityGuy.com and Ant’s Eye View
- Gregory Narain — SocialTwister
- Lee Odden — Online Marketing Blog and TopRank
- Erica OGrady — ReinventingErica.com and Peanut Butter Media
- Jeremiah Owyang — Web Strategist
- David Parmet — Marketing Begins At Home, LLC and PerkettPR
- Jackie Peters — heavyBlog
- Doug Pollei — pollei.com
- Pierre-Yves Platini — Yoono
- Douglas Pollei — Pollei.com
- Connie Reece — Every Dot Connects and Austin Social Media Club
- Chris Saad — ChrisSaad.com
- Andy Sernovitz — Word of Mouth Marketing and GasPedal
- Brian Solis — PR2.0
- J.J. Toothman — jjtoothman.net and Red Pill
- Todd Van Hoosear — Tech PR Gems
- Des Walsh — Des Walsh dot Com
- Kristie Wells — KristieWells.com
- We are in the process of relaunching Social Media Club in South Florida ↩
I’ve had countless conversations with companies and interactive agencies on the significance of social media and the impact it will have on businesses’ marketing, PR and product development activities and processes. From these conversations and from my own experience using, teaching, consulting and working with companies and non-profits on social media initiatives and programs, I’ve developed an approach to frame the conversation, as described below. Please see footnotes for credit to Tara Hunt and Yvette Ferry. 1 2
The Premise for Social Media
An increasing number of companies are now dipping their toes into social media, but many are still unsure what it is and how to implement it for their customer base and profitability.
Social media sets itself apart from previous types of media in terms of the engagement and commitment of people. In mainstream media and advertising, people were relegated to the role of an anonymous and passive audience. This paradigm is no longer working. Today, the community is everything, and more and more companies are recognizing their need to change with the times.
In a social media setting, people become active and interactive by expressing their opinion on what they’re viewing, by having the ability to alter content, and by creating their own content to be viewed by others. The means of production, distribution, and story-telling are multiplied while costs are lowered, granting millions of people the possibility to produce their own individualistic content. The result is a new, more engaged type of user. This engagement is further increased when the user may create an identity and make explicit their social connections. All of this translates into increased efficiency, use and, ultimately, volume of business for appropriately engaged companies.
A Framework for Social Media Integration
Integrating new media into companies’ business practices and culture involves concentrating on three areas: communication, user experience, and product development. In large part, each area depends upon the others for resonance, coherence and reinforcement. You can increase conversion and retention from advertising and marketing (and viral) campaigns by developing and enhancing your communications, website usability, and product features, by selecting and integrating the appropriate social media for your markets and by optimizing the use of these media.
Communication
Effective communication entails developing a holistic marketing approach that works with and not against community-building efforts. Successful online companies are generally those that listen and respond to their customers, a simple premise that can be remarkably difficult to execute. Most companies struggle to listen to and “hear” what their customers are saying, and this unintentional deafness affects their bottom lines. You can create communication strategies for user engagement, as well as internal communication and implementation processes that both reflect and impact community and product development. In addition, you can develop social-network outreach strategies, integrate new media into corporate outreach efforts and optimize search-engine results in order to be more findable by your customer base. This effort involves developing an outreach strategy to identify and establish relationships with your users and also to create spaces in which your communities may interact, using new media.
User Experience
The ways in which your company interacts with your website users is critical to their experience. The cohesiveness of the community you build is largely dependent on the quality of the interaction your users have at your websites, and the community management resources you make available. This means creating websites with social attributes and affordances that encourage users to come back, because they can interact with your company and also with each other. It also implies creating dashboards, business processes and empowering (or hiring) employees to perform community management, ombudsman and relationship-building activities. You can lay the foundation for growth and optimize the results from advertising, direct marketing, and viral campaigns by developing optimized user experiences, using new media and social networks.
Product Development
Product development entails creating services and products based on the use and desires of users and customers. Using specific metrics and baselines for measuring user engagement and growth, you can hear what your customers are saying and assess the ways in which they are using your products, services and websites. You can use data and develop internal business processes to prototype, test and create products and services that are responsive to the stated and implicit needs of your customers and user bases.
Finally, monitoring your products, brands and reputations is important to your own ongoing success and you can track and manage the reputation of companies, brands, and products, using new media.
Overall, you may find that social media is more timely, efficient, and cost-effective than other approaches.
What do you think? How do you approach social media issues with your company or clients? What frameworks do you use for discussion?
- Credit is due to Tara Hunt, who seeded my thinking on this, although this post is not necessarily reflective of her views. Please read her excellent blog for more on Social Media Strategy and community management. ↩
- Yvette Ferry deserves credit for helping me organize these thoughts and motivating me to put pen to paper. She is a freelance writer you should consider hiring for your projects. ↩




