It is a pleasure to join the bright group of creative catalysts Chris Heuer has assembled at AdHocnium. Over the last few years, I’ve had the opportunity and privilege to meet and collaborate with many in this group. I look forward to working with these very bright minds, including Adrian Chan, Adriana Lukas, Brian Solis, Chris Heuer, David Parmet, JD Lasica, Neville Hobson, and Tom Foremski.

As we near the year-end, the “way things are done” and “the things we hold dear” no longer seem to be accepted truths, do they? Judging from the troubled financial, real estate, automotive, and newspaper industries, among many others, our societies and businesses are going trough a sea change as we adapt to new economic realities and ways of thinking.

Our objective is to help our clients develop solutions and processes to steer through profound change:

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.

PRWeek covered AdHocnium this week, as did my colleagues Neville and David.

As with the others, I will continue as a freelancer and look forward to collaborating on new projects with them in our new collaborative association.

I’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

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?

Continuing what has been a stellar year in Miami in terms of online conferences, the The Word of Mouth Marketing University came to town. To welcome some our friends from out of town who came to speak at the event, including Rohit Bhargava, Joseph Jaffe, JC Hutchins and Jason Anello, we organized a blogger dinner last night:

Brian Breslin of infinimedia

Joseph Jaffe of Crayon

Jay Berkowitz of Ten Goden Rules

By the way, Josh Hallett snapped some great photos at WOMMU, some of which appear on WOMMU’s good live blog. Have a look!

• 23:36 @ashleyb33 Good point! You can comment shared items on Bloglines, but not on Google Reader. Seems like an obvious feature to have, right? #
• 06:01 Took a friend to the airport and now working early at the office: no traffic for once #
• 10:00 @shelisrael Surely due to an online shift of ad and direct marketing budgets … #
• 10:31 Brightkite looks neat … does anyone have a spare invite? Would appreciate it! www.brightkite.com/ #
• 10:33 @martinbowling Thank you! It’s alex@alexdc.org #
• 10:51 @martinbowling Thanks for the Brightkite invite, I’m signing up now. Thx @onajide @pbacgrad @jbruin @pcarles I’ll see you on the other side. #
• 10:55 @MarkTap @pcarles There must be a way to set privacy. By the way, I see the usual suspects & super-early adopter set is alreadyhere;) #
• 11:07 Brightkite’s orange bubble looks much like Plazes’ blue bubble. Lifestreams / microblogs and geo-location go together like hand in glove #
• 11:13 Brightkite is cool. For some reason I thought FireEagle was going to have similar features … #
• 11:20 @enzobalc My single invite just went out … No GPS required b/c you manually enter in your location #
• 11:27 Obviously Brightkite should repost our tweets inside Brightkite … and I’m quickly turning off the post to Twitter from Brightkite! Doh! #
• 11:30 @enzobalc LOL. Looky here twitter.com/nateritter/statuses/800441455 via @nateritter #
• 11:31 @pbacgrad I got suckered by Brightkite into posting my exact location to Twitter. Doh! It’s in your account settings: careful w/ ur privacy! #
• 11:36 @DevBear Choosing GTA4 over 2 year anniversary of RefreshMiami tonight? Come to think of it, GTA4 is prolly safer than driving in Miami #
• 11:44 Retweeting @strategicast: Trying to get an invite to brightkite. Does anyone have an invite to spare? It would be much appreciated. Thanks. #
• 11:55 @brightkite The privacy option should be on “locked” by default, I just tweeted my location to Twitter by mistake (not happy about that). #
• 12:53 @brightkite Publicly tweeting exact address details is for teh suck! Rather, you should enable our tweets *within* Brightkite. #
• 12:59 @brightkite Well, I’ve deleted by now, haven’t it? I syndicate tweets to FriendFeed Tumblr FB Jaiku. Dude, mistakes are 2 easy w/ brightkite #
• 13:07 @brightkite Indeed I did. The privacy settings are on a separate page from Twitter settings. It’s too easy to make the same mistake I did. #
• 13:17 @brightkite I completed first step of wizard and clicked out. I suppose I should read instructions when assembling Ikea furniture as well? #
• 13:36 @brightkite Thanks, I wish that had already been in place. Good luck with your service, looks promising. #
• 18:28 @macaia Did you see Brazil’s now upgraded to investment grade? tinyurl.com/5ojfuj Parity’s not unrealistic! tinyurl.com/67m59v #
• 18:32 Heading to RefreshMiami two-year party at the Brikolodge, see you there! tinyurl.com/6ocf6h #
• 18:51 “Woman and child” memorable still from One Water, the movie tinyurl.com/6yl55a @1h2o now has a Flickr group tinyurl.com/5elxx8 #

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• 08:34 May 10 is Pangea Day - Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Rio will be linked to produce powerful films: tinyurl.com/6bhp9c #
• 09:28 @shashib thanks for this picture of me, I’ll start using it as my new avatar flickr.com/photos/adc/2448343265/ #
• 09:33 Finally updated my ClaimID page, looking more like it should now: claimid.com/alexdc #
• 13:07 Listening to “Social networking and social marketing in the digital age” on NPR live.friendsofwlrn.org/ #
• 13:38 So the next Mobile Monday Miami is May 12th, hosted by @sass / Myxer. Please tell your non-Twitter mobile friends tinyurl.com/4zx7or #
• 14:10 It’s misguided put the word communityin quotes and in the same sentence w/ “consumer marketing arena” tinyurl.com/3qn4xo #borg #
• 14:12 <rant>Your “consumers” in their “communities” certainly don’t think of such spaces as”consumer marketing arenas”; neither should y … #
• 14:21 @bendtheweb I’d follow you here after hearing you on NPR but you’re not engaging in conversations, just sending out links to your own site. #
• 15:02 @lindasherman I haven’t given PD much thought … maybe I can do something for it with @1h2o www.flickr.com/groups/onewater/ #
• 15:34 This is verbatim: “Now, for the most *IMPORTANT* part of the community: buying that outfit” tinyurl.com/6hnlzr #
• 15:37 @cgranier @montgomery In same vein as revolutiontheme.com/ there’s also premiumnewstheme.com/ and quommunication.com/ #
• 15:44 @robertmurray LOL! You’re right - don’t ask @JamesatBabySpot I wonder whether Wet Seal did some market research before building this #
• 16:29 @aureliusmaximus @JamesatBabySpot Good post, we’re addressing a part of that with StartPR.com tinyurl.com/3f5rka #
• 16:30 @FreeRangeMom Precisely why I don’t spend much time at the mall #
• 16:54 @briansolis Congrats for this tinyurl.com/6xftuw #
• 18:21 Puzzled to see that over half of the ASUS eee PC’s home page is links to other sites? What’s the point? eeepc.asus.com/us/index.htm #
• 19:17 Looking forward to Refresh Miami two-year anniversary on Wednesday tinyurl.com/6ocf6h #
• 20:08 “I suspect that there’s a whole lot of clicking without a lot of thinking,” -Mary Madden, Pew Research Re: FB apps tinyurl.com/3lktqd #
• 21:43 Counting down about nine and a half hours to download “Violet Hill,” the new free Coldplay song www.coldplay.com/song.html #
• 21:45 The Coldplay site is all about a free song, show and site … and a nice bit of artwork, “Viva la Vida!” www.coldplay.com/index.html #
• 22:04 @loiclemeur Glad you and yours are fine #

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• 09:41 Web 2.0 is now employed as techno-marketing gobbledygook meant to obfuscate ordinary people into… tinyurl.com/2be58n @somewhatfrank #
• 09:54 @jedhallam cheers and thanks for finding this www.liberatemedia.com/resource/ … not pretty, but packed w/ links and resources #
• 10:12 Status stories: “This isn’t about brands telling their story to the masses, but helping individuals tell stories.” tinyurl.com/37tgfp #
• 10:47 @amandachapel the stories that may be interesting to you may not be interesting to me, whereas mass media imposes stories on everyone alike #
• 10:56 @amandachapel commercial imperative vets for stories, thereby catering to lowest common denominator in order to please the most #
• 11:05 @amandachapel lol! don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not advocating substitution, but greater choice #
• 11:07 Taking a break, back after lunch … later, tweeps #
• 11:50 @amandachapel In theory but not in practice; MSM competing for the ad buck leads to popular rather than intellectual choices, for example #
• 11:52 @amandachapel I don’t feel intellectually diminished by the stuff I read online, much of which is written by contacts and friends. Do you? #
• 11:56 @amandachapel Let’s close: discussing MSM v. Social Media in 140 character soundbites is academic and ultimately, fruitless #
• 16:05 “Social capital provides actors in the network with access to broader sources of information at lower costs.” tinyurl.com/25w6xz #
• 16:17 Note to self: the mutually constructed story/fiction about objects forms the social ties that bind (and capital), not the object per se #
• 16:45 Uploaded Brazil mix to Muxtape alexdc.muxtape.com/ @nicolau @brbreslin #
• 16:49 @bentrem Ads not only content abt objects, but frameworks thru which objects are translated into social relations tinyurl.com/2appq7 #
• 16:54 @nicolau @lkomatsu Thanks! I saw Seu Jorge play three times in Paris in 2005, always awesome. @brbreslin saw him in Miami last yr. #
• 21:00 @sass Beam us both to Vegas! And live long and prosper! @jchutchins #

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• 09:41 Web 2.0 is now employed as techno-marketing gobbledygook meant to obfuscate ordinary people into… tinyurl.com/2be58n @somewhatfrank #
• 09:54 @jedhallam cheers and thanks for finding this www.liberatemedia.com/resource/ … not pretty, but packed w/ links and resources #
• 10:12 Status stories: “This isn’t about brands telling their story to the masses, but helping individuals tell stories.” tinyurl.com/37tgfp #
• 10:47 @amandachapel the stories that may be interesting to you may not be interesting to me, whereas mass media imposes stories on everyone alike #
• 10:56 @amandachapel commercial imperative vets for stories, thereby catering to lowest common denominator in order to please the most #
• 11:05 @amandachapel lol! don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not advocating substitution, but greater choice #
• 11:07 Taking a break, back after lunch … later, tweeps #
• 11:50 @amandachapel In theory but not in practice; MSM competing for the ad buck leads to popular rather than intellectual choices, for example #
• 11:52 @amandachapel I don’t feel intellectually diminished by the stuff I read online, much of which is written by contacts and friends. Do you? #
• 11:56 @amandachapel Let’s close: discussing MSM v. Social Media in 140 character soundbites is academic and ultimately, fruitless #
• 16:05 “Social capital provides actors in the network with access to broader sources of information at lower costs.” tinyurl.com/25w6xz #
• 16:17 Note to self: the mutually constructed story/fiction about objects forms the social ties that bind (and capital), not the object per se #
• 16:45 Uploaded Brazil mix to Muxtape alexdc.muxtape.com/ @nicolau @brbreslin #
• 16:49 @bentrem Ads not only content abt objects, but frameworks thru which objects are translated into social relations tinyurl.com/2appq7 #
• 16:54 @nicolau @lkomatsu Thanks! I saw Seu Jorge play three times in Paris in 2005, always awesome. @brbreslin saw him in Miami last yr. #
• 21:00 @sass Beam us both to Vegas! And live long and prosper! @jchutchins #

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• 23:15 @trishussey agreed, Twitterberry is *very* limited, it doesn’t even display direct messages … #
• 23:21 @sass ASUS eee rawks! I got one a couple of weeks ago #
• 08:12 @SandroDelMundo Welcome to Twitter! Hope you’re enjoying Floripa, what a wonderful place to be tinyurl.com/3baqlh #
• 09:21 @f so true … Twitter used to be more like IRC but many are protecting their tweets #
• 09:25 @fredwilson Replying on Twitter via friendfeed is the way to go, it makes the conversation more manageable #
• 10:14 “If the internet has ever had a single defining feature, it is its social nature.” quoting @dalziel in tinyurl.com/2l6b9e #
• 12:34 @technosailor Good luck, man tinyurl.com/36bf9j #
• 15:05 Knight Foundation funds major, $60M local arts initiative in So Fla tinyurl.com/29pj8x #
• 15:21 Enjoying these street marketing tips from FreshBooks tinyurl.com/2bj393 #
• 16:10 “Life out of balance” (kooyanisqatsi), on Flickr tinyurl.com/2n2tw7 #
• 16:22 @rolfkleef are you involved w/ Nabuur.com? @chrisheuer pointed me to it, I’d love to talk about Nabuur w/ you. #
• 17:13 @missrogue nice new look on HPC, congrats #
• 21:01 Co-presented w/ @montgomery the “evolution of communication and opportunities in social media” #
• 21:02 Now learning about Brik-o-lodge, 1st Miami coworking community #

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• 23:15 “Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then …” -Goethe tinyurl.com/ytdmsz #
• 06:56 “‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses!” -Abraham Lincoln flickr.com/photos/adc/2356930829/ #
• 07:07 @conversationage thanks for pointing out @paulisakson ’s slideshare on the future of marketing and advertising tinyurl.com/2sanb5 #
• 07:28 @devbear Good morning! Good luck w/ your meeting, hope it goes well. Btw, I’ve been on a Scrabulous roll lately tinyurl.com/36acd3 #
• 09:50 Starbuck’s new sites include blog w/o comments tinyurl.com/yr6fo6 + socnet w/o profiles/friending/messaging tinyurl.com/3dfkuu #
• 10:57 @mikegee you should try and do it better; YouTube was not first video site, and Amazon not first online bookstore #
• 11:57 Switched to Twhirl www.twhirl.org/ … Snitter got too buggy for me #
• 12:15 Outside of the Valley, are local web trade associations the answer? tinyurl.com/2va93o by @whafro via @vanderwal #
• 12:24 Retweeting @Charles_Liebert la cousine d’un bloggueur a disparu depuis mardi fr.blog.coaliz.com/?p=50 #
• 12:57 @planetrelations I’d be interested in reading that article #
• 13:37 @successforce I’m intrigued that starbucksidea.com and Salesforce ideas don’t seem to have user profile pages? It’s just all anonymous ideas #
• 13:51 @succesforce thanks, your own implementation goes a lot further, that’s cool ideas.salesforce.com/user/rank #
• 14:19 @missrogue bonding capital sounds like “strong ties” and bridging capital like “weak ties” … interesting … #
• 14:28 @missrogue Twitter’s pretty good for developing new weak ties and creating bridging capital #
• 14:45 Going through official muni websites you’ll find no standards; varying degrees of info; poor usability and design tinyurl.com/3yex9k #
• 15:02 @katrinskaya @missrogue I hadn’t considered there’d be gender-specific differences in Twitter usage, this would be interesting research #
• 15:05 Reading “The Strength of Weak Cooperation: an Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Web 2.0″ by C. Aguiton and D. Cardon of France Telecom #
• 15:06 “Strength of weak cooperation arises b/c it isn’t necessary for individuals to have ex ante cooperative action plan or altruistic intention” #
• 15:07 “They discover cooperative opportunities only by making public their individual production.” -C. Aguiton, D. Cardon, France Telecom #
• 15:18 Creative class needs weak ties to mobilise more resources, possibilities and ideas that are source of creativity -M. Granovetter, R. Florida #
• 15:29 @glowbird no mention of semantic web in the paper I quoted, but surely in others they’ve published … #
• 16:41 Miami-Dade County in 2006 had 16.4% of population below poverty level, about 3.1% points higher than the national poverty rate of 13.3% #
• 17:02 @onajide I don’t see future trends in this data. However, Miami-Dade County demographics are fascinating and perhaps unique in the US #
• 17:16 @mjkeliher @markevans both Twhirl + Snitter open new windows for me-Twitterrific opens new tabs. I’ve looked thru FF settings, can’t find it #
• 17:25 @cgranier @jordimirobruix @mjkeliher @markevans Might Twhirl / Snitter window opening thing be an Adobe Air issue, not a browser setting? #
• 17:28 @fullman your overdue $50 might save City from the same fate as Bear Sterns … lol #
• 17:39 @thinkjose thanks for posting those SXSW pics! urltea.com/301n #
• 21:32 @calebelston grats for making Techmeme with Toluu tinyurl.com/2cf2qm #
• 22:19 @brbreslin 960.gs/ makes CSS prototyping much easier, with required code and specs … thanks for the link #
• 22:27 “The issue isn’t about social networks directly, its about behavioral advertising.” - @brbreslin tinyurl.com/358ou9 #

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