Last year flew by and I didn’t get the chance to spend time with family and friends in Brazil during the holidays. Instead, I spent a week in Israel, right as the war started.

I’m in Brazil now, though, and I look forward to meeting a number of people I’ve corresponded with on Twitter. Social media seems to be catching on here and this will be a good opportunity to catch up and build bridges with those making it happen.

I’ll be heading back before Campus Party Brasil, which looks like a great tech event.

My mind is filled with questions as I ponder the history, culture, and current events of the region. I’ve heard so many positives and negatives, and it is with a great sense of curiosity and excitement that I travel to Israel and Jordan next week. In particular, I am anxious to meet some people from the tech community, although the timing is not great since most will be busy for year-end holidays and festivities. Still, I’ve been able to contact some thanks to the serendipity of Twitter, and hopefully this will reinforce bridges across the Atlantic. After all, looking at this picture of Tel Aviv, you’d think you were in Miami!

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’ve published a curriculum for social media literacy at the college and graduate level.

This is based on my experience teaching the subject at the University of Miami School of Communication and on the presentations and workshops I’ve given. The coursework and some of the topics are also inspired by Howard Rheingold’s class on Virtual Worlds / Social Media:

In a few short years, the Web 2.0 has profoundly changed the communication landscape. With the advent of new social media tools, more and more people are participating and engaging in the conversation online. As former members of the audience become the creators of content, corporations and media organizations lose control of the message. After an overview of how and why we got here, this course will guide you through what works with social networks, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, media sharing, lifestreams, tagging and other social media tools. Since these tools and services are so new and continually changing, students’ degree of knowledge about the internet is not relevant. For continued effective communication, using these tools is not optional, it’s required.

The course will explore the new media landscape in terms of online expression, social networking, identity management, community building, and citizen journalism. How is social media changing the way you work and live? What are the implications for you and for the organizations you will work with? What opportunities and challenges do individuals, news organizations, and businesses face regarding communication, identity/brand management, and community building? How do we understand, participate in, and leverage communities in our current age of many-to-many media?

This course is grounded in practice, and students will be required to participate in social networks, forums, blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, folksonomies, and virtual worlds. Class discussions, presentations by students, readings, and examples of emerging technologies and media will bring us greater understanding of the issues and practice of social media. We will also learn from case studies, invited speakers, and our own learning journals, new effective strategies and applications of these platforms.

The class is highly participatory both offline and online. Between the weekly scheduled class meetings, this course’s discussion continues in a variety of online and virtual environments. Those who complete this course will know how to use blogs, tags, wikis, social networks, Twitter and Flickr productively, and have a framework for understanding and evaluating new social media tools and platforms.

The full syllabus including the course topics and coursework is on the wiki. This syllabus is distributed under a Creative Commons license.

We had another great meetup at RefreshMiami last night at Yahoo! Hispanic Americas. Adam Singer presented a “Coffee 2.0″ social media case study, Michael Montgomery spoke about microformats, I presented “You, the online brand“, attached below, and Davide Di Cillo presented his new Twitter social football service, Twootball:

Just why did Davide create Twootball? He says:

I was in an unfortunate bind: I am Italian and I love soccer. Of course, I wanted to create a Twitter application about soccer.

But then I realized that no one in Italy uses Twitter, and no one here watches soccer!

So I had to make a Twitter application about American football …

LOL!

The presentations were great and it was fun to catch up with everyone afterwards at Novecento’s.

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. We are in the process of relaunching Social Media Club in South Florida]

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. 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.] [2. 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.]

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?

• 09:30 @ikepigott More than just lazy, it’s also sleazy, slanted and sensationalist journalism. Whatever sells, right? tinyurl.com/6xjyvn #
• 09:34 Coldplay’s song is not entirely free, they’re collecting your email. I wonder what they’ll do with it. www.coldplay.com/song.html #
• 09:45 Retweeting @jamesbuck Free mohammed, send an eCard to the consul attiyashakran@hotmail.com tinyurl.com/6m4dcn #
• 12:36 Wine wholesaler fell thru! Need new sponsor for RefreshMiami 2yr partytomorrow: ~$150 for wine, 50people attending tinyurl.com/6ocf6h #
• 13:00 @lsal77 Thanks for the Flipshake sponsorship of RefreshMiami! w00t! flipshake.com/ #
• 13:27 @quiverandquill @gregoire mapovino.com/ @montgomery @onajide Thanks for your offers and tips, it’s very much appreciated. #
• 13:30 @quiverandquill Kudos for “Rubber Chicken Social Club” in Boston! tinyurl.com/5t7kpq Informal meetups are generally the best kind. #
• 13:50 Without a moment’s hesitation and nary a doubt, he swiftly declared RSS bankruptcy and breathed a sigh of relief. #
• 13:56 @rrodgers On the contrary, it means I clicked the “Mark all as read” button. A refreshingly blank slate (screen, rather) stared back. #
• 14:01 @rrodgers Blog posts unread may rest in peace. They’re gone for good … unless someone links to them from Twitter, that is #
• 15:35 I love Twistori twistori.com/ #
• 16:35 @jpostman Visually stunning style, congrats. But I don’t agree w/ communist/socialist theme to describe social media is.gd/aaI #
• 17:05 Pre-ordered @missrogue ’s “Whuffie Factor” tinyurl.com/6bt2n9 & ordered @cshirky ’s “Here Comes Everybody” tinyurl.com/5w3r49 #
• 17:26 @jpostman It certainly makes a bold statement and will get some attention Good luck with your new consultancy, you’ll do well. #
• 17:29 @thorpus @yourdon I look forward to reading Clay’s book. I’m halfway through Groundswell – the Technographics chapter is very good #
• 17:33 Mobile Monday Miami at Myxer’s office on May 12th. The following one’s at Nokia’s on June 9th. Thanks @sass and @michaeltangeman . Rock on. #
• 17:36 @PelleB Agreed. I understand it’s meant tongue-in-cheek: twitter.com/jpostman/statuses/799845488 Take it up with @jpostman #
• 21:27 It’s really too bad you can’t customize the style of Google Reader shared items page, they all look the same tinyurl.com/4gov23 #
• 21:36 @kingsley2 I’ve got Tumblr, just added you tapio.tumblr.com/ #
• 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? #

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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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