Dont worry, this isn’t another 101 reasons for a business to be on Twitter, hopefully we’re getting over that one now, although I am still staggered at the number of small businesses that I meet who could benefit massively from micro-blogging.

Tonight’s article I want to focus on executives in business.  Why?   As usual, nothing gets real buy-in unless it comes from the top, is agreed by the top or understood by the top.  In many large businesses, the board is still dominated by Generation X Executive Directors.  As a result, there is a real danger of the business not staying relevant in the changing landscape of customer expectations.

To them, marketing means mailshots, sales means door-knocking and relationship managment means regular lunches or dinners with top customers.  That certainly did the business a decade ago, how things have changed.  Those things still matter, don’t get me wrong, but their priority has changed.

Social Media is something that all executives – in my view – should be practicing.  To keep an eye on their own organisation, their competitors and their customers.  A few examples: -

1)  I blogged recently about using the Linkedin company search tool to identify staffing movement in key competitors, this allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of what is happening in your industry.

2) A blog in itself is a fantastic way to communicate to staff, customers and potential customers about your views.  A great to underpin your key messages, strategy or positioning.  it’s ideal if you run a larger business where it’s hard to get round the floor.

3)  Twitter is a fantastic tool for reputation management and connecting your message directly to the people who may use your products or services.  There’s no quicker way to establish what people think about your business reputation than to read it in real time.

The key question is always, how much time is this all going to take? The answer all depends on the importance of managing your network and personal reputation.  For me, around half an hour a day.  10 mins at the start of the day to catch up on any major network changes or messages sent directly to me aswell as preparing any Twitter links to send out, 10 mins over lunch doing the same and 10-15 minutes at the back end of the day to run a blog out and again catch up.   In my time at home, I probably invest about another hour a week in total keeping up to date with my overall network.

And what is the financial reward? Return on Engagement is the new Return on Investment.  Like networking of any type, if you think that an immediate financial gain is the only thing that justifies your time, then you’re probably one of those executives I described in paragraph 2.  Looking back on a couple of years worth of time invested in business social networking at a personal level, I would say: -

1. I’ve recruited key staff into the business at no cost.
2. I’ve never been asked to speak at so many conferences ahead of my competitors.
3. I’ve never been asked to sit on so many judging panels, increasing regional and national profile for Brother.
4. I’ve been able to position the business as one of the leading voices on B2B social media in the UK.
5. My network of peer to peer contacts has never been so solid.  I was described recently by the Manchester Evening News as “one of the most connected people in the North West,” and feel I have a great list of C level people I know that I can call on for advice or help.
6. I’ve learned a tonne of stuff.  Twitter particularly is a like a free news channel that you can personalise to your specific taste/requirement.
7. Lot’s of people that I know on social media networks end up buying our products, simply because they know me.
8. The brand reputation has never been stronger.
9. People bring opportunities to you first because you’re accessible (they might not normally make it to you due to your Corporate layers of gatekeepers/filters).
10. You meet some really interesting people and all sorts of outside work opportunities/collaborations/friendships come your way.

Don’t be scared. As you can see, I can clearly demonstrate sound business benefits.  To get the same, you have to get started, throw yourself open to your audience and get engaging.  Don’t have someone pretend to be you, be authentic and Do It Yourself.  Need help or advice, connect with me on Linkedin here or drop me a note.

There are lots of reasons why you’d want to find out a bit more about a company.  Whether they are a competitor you are looking to profile, someone you’re looking to join for employment or a sales prospect.  I’ve written previously about the idea of the CIA in social media, that is, the ability to research and investigate on-line.

A little used feature of Linkedin is the company profile option, which holds some fascinating information.

Here’s how it works. Let’s just say that I wanted to find out a little bit more about Manchester City Council.  Normally with any large public sector organisation, knowing where to start is a nightmare.  So, in Linkedin, go to your top box where you search and change the drop down box to “companies” from “people.”  Then type in “Manchester City Council.”

You’re search return should come to this page.  It shows that there are 501 people on Linkedin who work for the council with profiles on Linkedin, ideal if you want to look through and see a target for connection.  Your direct connections are shown and recent activity.  At the bottom of the page is shows who has moved jobs, great if you want to drop someone a line. 

Here’s the bit that most people miss.  On the right hand side of the page is a hyperlink to “check out insightful statistics about Manchester City Council employees.”  Click that and it should take you here.  Now if you just work yourself round that page and see what level of information you can see about Manchester City Council.  Right from the number of graduates they employ, how long people have worked there, where people live, where people go to when they leave, whose got a new job title and whose just departed.  All in real time.

This is a stunning research tool, particularly if you are a recruiter or in HR.  What’s really great is that you can click the link at the top that says “Follow Manchester City Council” and this – a bit like Twitter – will send you a weekly or daily digest update on what is happening, job title changes, job changes etc.  If Manchester City Council were – for example – a major account of mine (if I were a salesperson), I’d be following them and keeping right up to date with whats going on within the organisation.   If a trusted contact of mine had a promotion, I’d drop them a card.  If a trusted contact left, I’d want to know where they were going in case there were a chance of business somewhere else.

It’s a terrific feature in my view and – when used properly – another powerful reason why social media should not be ignored by business to business sales organisations.

Will you be my facebook friend, Facebook friend, Facebook friend? You know the type, the digital equivalent of someone that whistles around networking events collecting cards with a ruthless intensity, discarding people like sweet wrappers as they surge towards their KPI of how many they can collect in an evening.  I know they exist, I’ve met enough of them.  That’s why I don’t connect with everyone on Linkedin, I prefer to connect with people that I’ve met in person to keep touch of someone where I have a common interest or business opportunity.

What is nice however is when you do get to meet people as a result of social media.  When something comes off.  When an on-line interaction goes off-line, then gains further traction.  Social media then turbo boosts that relationship, making it more relevant and allowing you to develop your relationship further.  It isn’t the silver bullet as everyone would have you believe, it’s just another tool in the box, albeit a bit like a Swiss Army knife, multi-purpose in its action.

I’ve lost count of the people that I’ve now met on social media that have turned into really solid contacts and friendships.  Without social media we would have never met.  It brings together communities and common interests, like a laser beam on the world, picking people out that might have a propensity to collaborate with you, help you or do business with you.  This is the bit that many businesses still don’t get. They still think it’s about Facebook friends, endless hours of wasted time posting irrelevant status updates and non-profit generating activity.  Deployed badly, it can be.   Deployed correctly, it’s quite the opposite.  If your business thinks that a physical networking event is a good idea, then you need to also look on-line too.  Networking events can be hard work sometimes, you don’t always get quality, you might get quantity.  Take it online and you might increase your propensity to speak to your target audience.

Speaking in Manchester tonight, Al Mackin, Managing Director of SEO Consultancy – The E Word – launched their Manchester Twitter report.  This is one of the first white papers which aims to highlight some of the key influencers on Twitter in the region using slightly more complicated methodology than number of followers.  The aim of the report was to begin to identify best practice across key sectors, it makes for an interesting read.

Amongst some of the other content tonight, there was also an attempt to identify the social media capital of Europe. Surprisingly, this was highlighted as Madrid, in Spain, with London, Paris and Manchester following closely.  Head of Social Media at Juice Digital, Steve Downes, looked at an index analysis which showed that Manchester has a higher penetration of its population using Twitter when compared to London, which was interesting, so the region is really taking off, which was good to hear.

The landscape is really beginning to change out there, not just in Europe, but further afield too.  China has over 90 million people that have written a blog, a simply staggering thought when you combine it with the fact that they have more English speakers than we do population in the UK and a signal that global reach is stretching.  52% of Indian based businesses use social media activley, when compared to only 33% of UK businesses.  With 65M Tweets being sent every day and a further 300,000 new users signing up daily too, it’s no surprise that business wants to join the conversation.

Legal beagles Pannone took the stage to ground the social mediaphoria by reminding attendees that social media is not excluded from the law, including libel.  Their advice was to have a crisis management policy, a social media policy and make sure that if anyone really takes offence to something you posted, to remove it, unless you are absolutely sure it is true.    All standard stuff, but something to beware and plan for.  Three interesting facts that I took away were: -

1) Twitter (the entity) can potentially be jointly liable for any libellous Tweets if it is reported to them and they do not remove it.

2) Digital libel (unlike normal libel which normally has a one year window) re-sets every time someone view the post, which means that the window for action may remain open in perpetuity.  I’m no lawyer, however,  I’m sure that would be a nightmare if it happened.  A good reason to have a robust policy.

3)  Your staff contracts should be reviewed to include things such as digital bullying and defamatory statements made outside of work about you the employer.

Overall, it was  a good event.  Not the usual “jump on the bus” type of event, a little more educational and something for everyone.

It’s no surprise that we’re all taking in massive amounts of information nowadays, I recently noticed in a newspaper article that the brain processes about 16GB of new information a day.  With all this going in, it’s becoming harder to cut through to people, that’s for sure.  People are inundated with information and simply can’t absorb it all, therefore our brains just seem to skimming and cramming as much information as we can in order that we may need to recall some reference to something, at some point.

As a  result, we’re all filtering much more in our lives. Relying on trusted sources or tools to give us the bits we don’t want to miss amongst the noise.  Counting up my columns on Tweetdeck earlier today, I have thirty six, which are monitoring the fifteen hundred or so people on Twitter I follow and the 311 Linkedin connections I have.  The columns are set up to monitor key words, key people, sectors and topics which I’m interested in, listening to or want to keep an eye on.  By using filters in this way, I can keep a cockpit view on the things that really matter such as my most trusted business contacts, industry talk, new products or new connections being made by people I know.  This means I only need to take a glance at it, two or three times a day to catch up on what really matters, in reality, it means that the top 10% of so of people I follow, make it into a column, like a modern day black book!

The more valuable content you distribute, the more your reputation can increase and the greater value you have as a syndicator of value to your network.  The trick is to not do too much of it, otherwise you become a news information service and drift into obscurity.  I’ve seen people on Twitter who rapid fire out news, who get unfollowed just as quickly as they crowd out users screens with information, thinking it is of value.  Quality always trumps quantity when dealing with people want to filter.  The more you do it yourself, the more you recognise it’s value to others.

I told a social media agency off the other day. They made an approach via e-mail to me enquiring whether I integrated Social Media into my PR deployment. The e-mail was personalised, written by someone, not an e-shot. I wont embarass them or the agency by naming names. As an agency pedalling Social Media, the very minimum that I would have expected is that, prior to any approach, they should have already checked my social media landscape. Pretty basic. Had they done so, they would have seen that I already use Twitter, Blogging, Youtube and Linkedin as part of my personal and business communications. Now, if they’d of said, “we’ve done a scan of your landscape” (because were a social media agency) and we think you could improve your digital footprint like this…., then fair enough. Approaches like this, are inexcusable to me nowadays. I’ve blogged many times about Time, Attention and Trust (T.A.T) and how it’s never been easier to investigate your potential prospects (see this post for further info). It goes to show, that the smart businesses, individuals and agencies are using Social Media in the right way. To research their prospects and tailor make their approach. The less savvy agencies out there aren’t practicing what their preaching, not the smartest advertisement for their business or for social media as a serious platform for business generation.

Last week I reached a bit of a milestone, I’d posted over 300 articles on this blog.  Speaking at a social media workshop I delivered later in the week, I devoted a specific section to blogging and how it can really help with your authority, help to drive organic search and drive customers to you.

It all sounds very easy doesn’t it?  The most common problem with people starting blogs is keeping it up, I started once and stopped after two or three posts, I just couldn’t think of things to say.  I had a six month or so blogiday and came back to it after some encouragement from someone.  I’m really glad I did as -since then – it’s become a really enjoyable hobby, has increased my personal reputation and drives lots of speaking opportunities (ve previously posted my top tips for new bloggers and these all still ring true).

It can be hard at times, the words or topics don’t always come easy, you have to work at it.  Sometimes, time is at a premium, so write two or three posts when you are in the mood and save a couple to drafts to just publish when you are time strapped.  One tip I do have though is to always keep your antenna up.  Whenever I now see a headline, hear a speech, observe something or do something, I’m always thinking about how that could be turned into a blog by adding my own opinion or observation to it, that is by far and away, the easiest way to get stimulation for your words.

If you can get over the 100 day hump, that is if you can stick at it and keep posting after three months, you’ll make it as a blogger and begin to see the advantages that your words can bring to your business.  I wrote another short post here to back up the point, give it a go!

“Social media is not a unicorn, it’s a horse!”  That’s how I opened up my bit of the panel session at the SAScon conference in Manchester today, when asked about the role social media plays within my business at Brother, highlighting that is should form part of an overall marketing plan.  The panel was exploring the challenges of actually getting social media going in business.  Rather than write a massive long blog about it, I’m going to bullet point the key points I made (in no particular order): -

1. T.A.T is what matters nowadays.  Time. Attention & Trust.  See earlier blogpost about it here.
2. Choose your channels carefully and only do whats relevant to the outcome you want.
3. B2ME is the new B2B.  Blogpost here.
4. Keeping relevant in peoples lives is what matters.
5. Engagement should lead to marriage.  If you are going to get going with engagement, ultimately you want that person to be a customer or stay a customer, that’s the end game or don’t get engaged.
6. Social media promotes authenticity and transparency and can create emotional connections with customers.
7. Getting it all going can be hard work.  I personally drove it in my own organisation.  If you don’t have the buy in from the leaders, it can all end in tears if the going gets tough.
8. Create a framework.  Develop a policy that is relevant to your business, don’t borrow someone elses.
9. I.T. have to be on board.  I’m fortunate in having a supportive European IT Director.  In many business they can get in the way or be a barrier.
10. 61% of businesses say sales and profit are their key drivers yet 64% of people practicing social media say it is hard to measure (source – econsultancy survey).  Social media should form part of your overall campaign integration, not be mutually exclusive of it.

Social media is a trend not a fad.  It’s here to stay.  Customers are no longer king, they are KING KONG (didn’t manage to get that soundbite in).   We all have intolerance of bad service and we have the tools to tell others.  If you want to win more customers, win their hearts and their minds and then let the six degrees of separation do the rest!

Second Life, Openism, Blue Mars, 3D Explorer.  If these mean nothing to you today, they certainly will in future.  They are all example of Virtual Worlds and this evening in Manchester I had the job of Chairing a really interesting mixed reality debate called The Death of Distance.  Around 800M people alredy have virtual world accounts, around 2/3 of these are under 16.  Before you roll your eyes and tut and say “it’s not for business”, give me a minute to explain.

So, firstly picture the scene.   Room with about 40 people in it and projector.  On screen, a virtual world, designed by the clever folk from Corporation Pop.  A specially designed virtual world avatar of me (which looked slimmer and younger with no bags under the eyes – yippee), avatars of four other people attending virtually (x1 in Australia, x2 in America, x1 in London), two people piped in via video conference on a screen in the virtual world, a laptop running Twitter with the event hashtag #DofD.  Got your head round that?

The central theme of the discussion was to examine the role of distance in a world which seems to be getting smaller, due to digital technology and the role that virtual worlds can play.  Topics we probed and talked about included the return on investment, how to overcome global cultural barriers, how to establish authenticity and trust and how to break convention.  I cited videoconferencing as one of things that is in the same league as the paperless office, it’s talked about a lot, yet global paper production continues to grow, in the same way that videoconferencing never really became mainstream.   The recent Icelandic volcano might give us the wake up call we need on this stuff.  An estimated 7M people were stranded globally when planes were grounded, so will this change our behaviour?

According to Gartner, they estimated that 70% of businesses would be using some sort of virtual world application by 2012.  The panel disagreed.  There seems to be a lot of barriers to entry right now, mostly technical.  I.T. departments want a policy for everything, opening up network bandwidth is a real issue.  Yet, so much can be gained.  We heard from IBM and BP about the tremendous cost savings they implemented by switching conferences from real world to virtual world, up to 75% reduction in costs, yet similar outputs.  The figures speak for themselves.  This does however take, time, resources and senior management buy in!  Big companies have these.

We also heard from some smaller businesses who had really embraced video-conferencing.  They cited “triple-shifts,” sometimes also knows as “chasing the sun,” where they baton passed projects from time zone to time zone to give them competitive advantage.  Linden labs cited the “war for talent” and that businesses need to embrace new things to attract the brightest stars of the future, I have to agree, this is something businesses can’t ignore.  Linden already have over 1400 business globally using virtual worlds to give you some perspective.

It’s great to see Manchester pushing the boundaries of communication technology.  I enjoyed chairing it as I’d never experienced such a multi-layered discussion before, it challenged me and gave me a new experience to learn from.  I can now really see how virtual worlds could be used in business, I had an open mind before the event, however was struggling to see the exact application.  Collaboration is the name of the game, linking up disparate people to maximum effect.  Before you all cut up your airmiles cards, my final thought is this, human interactions are still key.  Some relationships are developed in a bar or restaurant at night, when the work of the day is done, particularly in far eastern cultures where it can take more time to cultivate relationships.  The Western world is more open to social networks, meeting people on-line and doing things quickly.

So, like anything it’s a balance.  Humans still need to meet, it’s just the frequency may change and we may use different platforms to collaborate.  As a result of this little project, I discovered Basecamp where all the prep was done virtually, I’m already using it for other things, it solves a problem.  With a dispersed global workforce, I can see why IBM and BP use virtual worlds, it may take a little longer for other businesses to catch up.  To give you some flavour of what IBM achieved with Linden Lab, have a read of this case study.  Distance may not be dead yet, however it is certainly starting to sound poorly.

Panel Participants

1. Adam Nelson, Executive Director of Business Operations, Linden Lab, San Francisco.
2. Joe Little - Senior Technology Consultant, BP International
3. Neil Katz – Distinguished Engineer, IBM.
4. Stuart Smith – CEO, Woodholmes
5. Professor Justin O’Connor – Queensland University of Technology, Australia
6. Donna Davidson, BRC Imagination Arts

Case Study

In April, I’ll be Chairing a really unique meeting, perhaps the first of it’s kind in the NW of England.  In one room, we will have a live audience, an audience of people linked in via video-conference and an audience of people attending via virtual world avatars, all in real time.  At the same time, it will be streamed to the web, live via Twitter and also invite people to participate via SMS.  It will be multi-platform.  It’s ambitious and being co-ordinated by Corporation Pop on behalf of Northern Net.

The theme of the discussion is “The Death of Distance.”  That is, distance should not be a barrier to holding back business.  In a globalising world that has its foot hard on the accelerator, finding new ways to connect with people have to be explored.  Distance is – in many cases -  irrelevant. Markets and people are a connection away.  Video conferencing is still considered a luxury for many businesses, however, costs are coming down, bandwidth is improving all the time and technology is becoming more accessible.   What really interests me about this discussion particularly is the role of avatars in bringing people together.  What role does a virtual avatar play vs. a real person staring into a camera?  Does this de-sensitise or improve the communication experience? I’ll aim to get these questions explored.

Virtual worlds are already being used by many large organisations to connect people, particularly in universities where they can be used in virtual learning environments.  As more and more businesses chase the sun, that is, take advantage of high speed broadband and fibre optic networks to baton pass work around the globe, virtual worlds and workspaces will become more commonplace.  I – for one – am really looking forward to the challenge of pulling it all together on the night and participating in real life aswell as having a virtual avatar working in synchronicity (Mrs Jones might be a tadge concerned that there’s a clone of me, she’ll argue one of me is enough!).