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Scenario: Your client or CEO has just called you into his or her office and told you that he or she wants to understand social media and determine its value to your company. He or she has given you 45 days to come back with your recommendations.

What do you do? Where do you start? On what basis will you make your recommendations?

That’s the question that PR Newswire’s Director of Emerging Media Michael Pranikoff, Toby Bloomberg, and I posed to a roomful of public relations professionals at the Georgia Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America's Annual Conference.

It’s the same question that many of us now face. Over the course of the discussion, we addressed a 10-step process to achieving social media success. Click here for the deck we created.

Toby, Michael and I broke the discussion down into four stages: Learn, Listen, Plan, Participate

Learn
Step 1: Define social media
Step 2: Evaluate Tools

Listen
Step 3: Conduct an internal employee audit
Step 4: Conduct an external audit to evaluate discussion about company and your competitors on the web

Plan
Step 5: Determine initiatives and tools that suit your corporate culture and customer base
Step 6: Establish metrics to evaluate success
Step 7: Determine cost and resources to implement program
Step 8: Determine implementation timetable
Step 9: Secure consensus from a wide employee cross section

Participate
Step 10: Set expectations

The audience was composed of professional with various levels of expertise.

The focus tended to remain on tools. As has often been the case, we social media advocates take for granted the level of knowledge that PR professionals possess. The audience had questions about twitter, RSS, wikis and del.icio.us, and few hands went up when we asked them whether their company had a blogging policy.

Few were using RSS in their company’s newsroom site. Another claimed he was podcasting. Toby had to gently inform him that his audio recordings were not podcasts as there was no ability for listeners to subscribe or download them.

Michael does a lot of these types of briefings. He is on the road nearly 70 percent of the time visiting schools, companies, clients and members of the media. The audience was asking what everyone is asking. He sees this lack of awareness as a huge room for growth.

Moving from tools to broader recommendations, we offered up the following questions for PR professionals to consider:

Do you have management support? CEO? Legal? HR?
Do you have employee commitment to remain engaged?
Do you have support from IT?
Who owns the content?
Do you have the authority to direct employees and mandate changes?
Have you instituted a blogging policy?
How will you measure ROI?
Do your recommendations reflect the company’s brand and culture?

Who is your target audience?
Do your recommendations reflect your customer demographic?
How will you publicize and build participation?
Will it be moderated?
How will you handle negative, inappropriate, or off topic comments?
How will you direct questions to the appropriate company representative?
Do you have safeguards to minimize spam?
Do you have a SEO strategy to maximize web hits?

My advice: When responding to a CEO, the focus shouldn’t be the tools. Make simple recommendations. Focus on ROI and how social media can achieve specific business objectives. And better yet, don’t wait for the CEO to come knocking. Take a leadership role and offer to provide a set of recommendations even before you are asked. It is a real opportunity to position PR strategically.

Technorati Tags: PRSA GA; PRSA Annual Conference; Social Media; Toby Bloomberg; Michael Pranikoff;

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Vitrue CEO Reggie Bradford is bringing social media to the brand experience

It seems only appropriate that a social media company with a mission to “empower brands to engage with consumers —effectively and safely” would be headquartered here in Atlanta.

After all, Atlanta is home to the biggest and best-known brand in the world -- Coca-Cola. But where Coca-Cola has roots more than a century deep in the traditional marketing and advertising worlds, Vitrue (Vitrue blog) was founded in 2006 to help companies address the major shift in the way consumers now interact with brands.

As they state in their Company overview:

“Consumers are now willing to engage in a dialogue with companies that vigorously pursue them. The reason for this shift? Social media. In order to thrive in today’s rapidly changing marketplace, savvy businesses know they must unlock the full potential of social media.”

And for this reason, I selected Vitrue as my first profile on Atlanta-based companies who are choosing to embrace social media as a business model or principal marketing strategy.

I am interested in the challenges and opportunities that social media companies outside Silicon Valley face. In many parts of the country, the reality has not caught up with the hype. There is still a lot of concern and unfamiliarity out there.

Still, Atlanta is home to numerous companies who are building businesses that are taking advantage of new ways of communicating and interacting with their customers.

“From the start I didn't say I wanted to get into social media. Vitrue was a story about brands not technology." To help clarify, Bradford described his Company as a "YouTube for brands.”

As much a technology company as a branding company, Vitrue is working with clients around the country to leverage the power of social media.

Bradford has an impressive track record. With a grounding at the Miller Brewer Company, he served as Chief Marketing Officer at WebMD, which later became one of the world's leading Internet destinations with over 38 million unique visitors a month. Bradford also served as President and CEO of N2 Broadband, the leading provider of open-platform, on-demand entertainment solutions.

Bradford’s success has led to funding for Vitrue from General Catalyst Partners and later from Comcast Interactive Capital and Turner Broadcasting.

With plenty of experience with technology and launching brands, Bradford sees “the future of the web is video and short length pieces.”

Not only is the format and forms of distribution changing, so is the relationship with consumers.

“More and more brands are co-creating content. Winners understand this; the losers don’t. Basically you have to give up control to get control. Let brands take advantage of the passion. Every brand needs a place or a community.”

In their book Groundswell, authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff write that companies don’t control the brand. This new relationship creates a dynamic that fosters deeper engagement. But with this new ownership arrangement comes unpredictability and uncertainty.

Through platforms like YouTube and Myspace, consumers are recontextualizing the brand experience in ways that advertisers can't possibly anticipate. (Yes, advertisers welcome when consumers post videos that profess their love for a product, but not when that same video is placed among other videos that advertisers find offensive.)

Brands are expensive investments. Many still think that they should not be left in the hands of the consumer. So how do you permit authenticity and deeper engagement without losing total control?

Bradford thinks he has come up with a solution. It's about brand safety.

Vitrue has engineered a technology platform built with their customers’ diverse social networking needs in mind. Its modular design provides the flexibility to keep ahead of a rapidly changing social media market. Vitrue can add features and functionality without disrupting service.

Their platform has enabled brands like Chic-fil-A for example to help consumers connect with each other through online social networking and user-generated video. Vitrue can create and host a mircosite for their clients. Unlike on YouTube, the brand experience stays on their clients’ sites and remains more contained. Customers can post video to a company site and also syndicate it to their personal site. Conversely, visitors to a personal site can be redirected to a company site.

There is still community, still authenticity, but the client has a higher comfort level with a company sponsored social media application.

For its efforts, Vitrue was named to Business 2.0's "Next Net" Top 25 in 2007.

Technorati Tags: Reggie Bradford; Vitrue; Brand; Brand Safety; Charlene Li; Josh Bernoff; Groundswell;

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I wanted to share a Wikipedia moment from last week. I was at a small reception hosted by LookSmart for Jimmy Wales at a local restaurant in San Francisco. He was on hand to talk about his new search strategy and field questions from the audience.

Afterwards, I approached Jimmy about a frustration I have with the Wikipedia Conflict of Interest (COI) policy. And he was amenable to listen.

As most PR professionals know, the COI prohibits corporate representatives from making additions and edits to company pages on Wikipedia. My point is where you work shouldn’t necessarily disqualify you from being a contributor.

Now I know that companies can spin the truth or just plain misrepresent it, but individuals unassociated with a company don’t have a monopoly on truth or accuracy either.

There are times when companies should be able to insert changes without going through a complex process. And those changes should not be relegated to a side bar that most users will not see or look for.

So halfway through my plea Jimmy’s cigar goes out. By the time he successfully relights his cigar, he agrees that I have a point, admitting that he himself has experienced similar challenges. I don’t expect any immediate change to the COI policy, but at least that evening I had won a moral victory for corporate communications professionals everywhere.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Jimmy Wales; Wikipedia; Wikipedia Conflict of Interest;

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For much of the week, I was speaking with vendors of social networking and blogging platforms. As I evaluated pricing and feature sets, a persistent question of mine resurfaced: What does a PR professional need to know about technology -- especially for those advocating social networks and blogging?

“Absolutely nothing,” quipped Sam Lawrence, Jive Software’s CMO and blogger. Jive makes social networking software used by companies like CNN and Bank of America.

Sam was maneuvering through a crowded Expo floor in a wheelchair with a stuffed octopus suspended overhead. He had recently broken his foot while getting up from his couch to grab his iphone – case in point that technology can in fact inflict mental anguish if not physical pain.

Sam’s point, “It’s not that technology isn’t important, but it shouldn’t be the focus. Marketing is already overburdened in overseeing the message. For marketing professionals, it’s far more critical to understand the nature of the tools and the theory behind them.”

Views from the Front Lines

And what do communications professionals at some of the largest companies and agencies think?

Ken Kaplan a blogger who helps manage broadcast and new media relations over at Intel’s Global Communication Group explained to me that he “is not a technical guy; I’m a story guy. Tools after all are just tools.”  Ken’s approach is to learn by using. New situations may require new tools, and each tool adds to his collective knowledge.

Ogilvy Public Relations Digital Executive Rohit Bhargava is in full agreement. A highly ranked blogger and author, Rohit also told me that he studied coding earlier in his career. Now I appreciate that code is not essential to his workaday world but that knowledge gives him a certain confidence and ability to connect with programmers and product developers that I don’t have (aside from the Basic and Fortran I used on a mainframe in high school.)

David Churbuck, vice-president of global web marketing at Lenovo and a well-known blogger believes you need very little technical knowledge. It’s more important “that you understand the whole ecosystem-gestalt of this stuff -- e.g. how does a trackback work? Why is a blog so powerful and different from a forum, or a basic web page? (I would argue it's about detection of who is linking, who is commenting, who is subscribing.)"

Mike Prosceno who runs “new” media relations at SAP has a similar take.

From his perspective, many of today’s tools are pretty intuitive, and you don’t need much technical know how to create and maintain a blog or use social networks or feed readers. In creating a corporate blogging platform or community site as part of your company's web presence, he does advise (and your CMO will demand) using an information architect and web designer to ensure that your effort has the look and feel of your brand.

Mike emailed:

“I think those [who know technology] will have an advantage, although I am of the opinion that it’s not mandatory. The real advantage is having a PR professional that understands how to convey your company's information in a manner in which your constituency wants to consume it. In the high tech or telco industries it’s definitely a plus to have coding and mash up skills, but in some industries it’s just not important.”

And speaking for a non-tech industry, Adam Brown director of digital communications for The Coca-Cola Company here in Atlanta wrote:

The next steps for PR2.0 are probably going to come from someone who 'gets' BOTH the technical and communications side of the effort. I believe the future of our PR industry depends on our understanding of and passion for both the words as well as the new places and ways those words can be shared.

So what is my take? Overall strategy is my key consideration. Tactics and tools help get me there. And lest we forget, results for our clients and executives are by far the most critical. The journey is much less relevant. Nevertheless I want every competitive advantage I can find, and understanding the underlying technology gives me one.

Over dinner and pitcher of sangria in San Francisco’s Mission District, I pressed good friend and group account director at Reprise Media Pete Fasano for his thoughts. I was hoping to identify the 10 essential technical things that every PR or marketing professional should know.

We came up with eight. Not a round number, but a good start. And I am wide open to suggestions from the blogosphere to complete a top 10 list. And so, we recommend that you know:

How meta data works

Why linking matters and how to do it

How to embed multi media objects

How to use social bookmarking

How to use social distribution methods (Facebook, Twitter)

What key word density is and how to use it

How to setup analytics for websites, blogs, audio, video

How to make information portable and easily shared via email and mobile devices

Tools after all come and go. Instead we looked at how social media has changed the way we do our jobs in the broadest sense. Together this list covers the boardwalk of authoring, publishing, finding and reporting.

It comes down to information flows and the way people receive and digest news. It goes to a new way of doing corporate communications where PR and marketing are more integrated. It goes to the heart of technology where how the news is delivered is as critical as the news itself.

But all the social software in the world won’t mean much if as Slide CEO Max Levchin said in his key interview with Forrester Research’s Charlene Li, it doesn’t bring “value to the end user.”

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Expo; PR Tech Essentials; Sam Lawrence; Ken Kaplan; Rohit Bhargave; David Churbuck; Mike Prosceno; Pete Fasano; Max Levchin;

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Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Expo; Blogging Platform; Social Networking Platform;

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To corroborate their findings, I spoke with executives from several national PR agencies here in Atlanta to get their perspective on how their jobs are changing as a result of social media.

To paraphrase a former president, my conclusion is that it depends on your definition of what “it” is.

It’s a complex question confronting agencies anywhere. More than a matter of attracting qualified employees, agencies must keep up with a changing marketplace and new tools. Clients also point out that agencies are not using these tools themselves.

On the other hand, agencies must also contend with clients who send conflicting messages. Skepticism, fear, inertia or unfamiliarity temper client curiosity for social media. What seems like a mandate or the price of entry in San Francisco is still a nice to have in Atlanta.

Silicon Valley vs Atlanta

While Silicon Valley based Sun Microsystems leverages social networking on its Openeco site...

Atlanta-based Home Depot's Eco Options does not and instead is focused on its in-store strategy.

By way of example, consider Sun Microsystem’s Openeco and Home Depot’s Eco Options. Two sites, focused on green awareness, similar in name, but very different. Sun is based in Sunnyvale, California in the heart of Silicon Valley. Home Depot is located in Atlanta, Georgia. Openeco is dynamic; it encourages collaboration and builds community. EcoOptions is static; its purpose is to help customers find Home Depot’s complete inventory of green products. For Sun, social media is fundamental to the site’s success. For Home Depot, social media is gaining acceptance but it is not critical to its focus on the in-store experience.

For me, the sites reflect the challenges and opportunities that PR agencies face – whether you are in Atlanta or most any city outside Silicon Valley where the business culture is slower to embrace the power of social media.

The corporate social media record in Atlanta does not appear to be extensive but agencies are making inroads.

Edelman built a blogger outreach program for Char-Broil, a client based in Columbus, Georgia, for a New York City press event. Edelman brought together, for the first time, bloggers with a passion for grilling. The bloggers were given the exact same access as mainstream reporters. The coverage in the blogosphere reflected the bloggers appreciation for this treatment.

Fleishman has built an internal wiki for the Center for Disease Control to help promote brand continuity and identity across the CDC's various departments.

And Ketchum created Nokia Mosh.a mobile content site where community members upload, distribute, find and manage content to be viewed and enjoyed on mobile devices.

PR agenices see opportunity and growth. While they are using their national network of in-house social media specialists, Atlanta agencies are also turning to existing local executives or staffing up with new social media experts.

Ketchum South recently hired James Andrews, who previously worked in the record business at Sony Music and has done interactive advertising and marketing. GCI Group appointed Diane Lore, a strategist, journalist and former editor of momseasychair, "one of the leading online spaces for women, who are also mothers." Manning Selvage & Lee brought in Melanie Babcock-Brown, the first person at the Atlanta agency to hold the title of senior vice president digital strategy and solutions. Meanwhile, Marilynn Mobley is Edelman’s senior vice president, strategic counsel. She regularly contributes to her blog Babyboomerinsights that examines the lifestyle of the baby boomer generation. It’s very different than James’ blog Thekeyinfluencer, which is an amalgam of politics, music and youth culture. At Fleishman Hlillard there is Tom Barnes, whose mission is to help people make sense of digital communication methods and practices.

The agencies are also training their staffs and immersing them in the ways of blogs, social networks and podcasts. GCI held an meet-up of its executive team in Second Life to get acquainted with virtual worlds and online communities. It also has provided daylong social media immersion seminars for clients and potential clients. Edelman in Atlanta has sent the most staffers of any Edelman office to its own social media immersion program in Chicago. There staffers learn how social media really works, how to measure it and when it’s appropriate to use with a client.

All this training and all these hires reflect that agencies understand the growing importance of social media and their desire to be competitive.

As James Andrew sees it: “We are looking at the redefinition of the digital tapestry and all the information channels -- blogs, Facebook, IM and the like -- that consumers use.”

His challenge is helping Ketchum develop a strategy that speaks to the business culture here in Atlanta without compromising the culture of social media.

And that business culture is cautious. Ogilvy PR Managing Director Mickey Nall describes how everyone wants social media, but many are “tiptoeing” through it. Mickey is trying to use social media as part of fully integrated marketing campaigns that address the whole brand. But many clients are still at the early stage of gathering intelligence and monitoring online conversations.

Marilynn Mobley talks about the “paradox” here in Atlanta.

“It is known as a progressive city that embraces opportunity and is open to new ideas. At the same time, the corporate culture here leans a little toward the conservative, so there’s also a healthy skepticism about trying something that seems kind of ‘out there,’ as many people view social media.

“When it comes to the success of social media programs, companies don’t get to declare it for themselves. Only the people who engage with companies can decide if they’re successful. And they make that decision based on whether they believe the company is authentic and transparent.”

Or as Tom Barnes said, “A lot or people are afraid of losing control. But whether they like it or not, online conversations about the brand are still taking place.”

Ultimately I think Brad McAfee, managing director at Porter Novelli said it best. “The reward will outweigh any risks of loss of control. But companies will only figure this out if they take a risk. They may fail, but ultimately they will learn how do it better in the future."

Taking the Lead

There is one thing that all agencies do get however.

Given that we are in the early stages of social media adoption, all the PR agencies I talked to emphasized the real opportunity that social media represented. Not just new business, but the chance to wrest power from advertising and marketers.

As Tom Barnes said, “It’s ours to lose.”

Or as Melanie Babcock-Brown said, "Communicators can't wait; marketers will seize the opportunity."

Social media is about building relationships and managing reputation. Whether we are talking about traditional or new media, that’s a role the PR agencies are best suited to perform.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: TNS Cymfony; Edelman; Fleishman Hillard; GCI Group; Ketchum; Manning Selvage & Lee; Ogilvy; Porter Novelli; Atlanta; Char-Broil; Nokia Mosh; Eco Options; Openeco;

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Openeco: Sun's online comunity designed to help companies become green

Recently, a Silicon Valley vice president told me of fear running through technology companies. They worry they aren't green enough. At least she could take solace in knowing that she is not alone.

Green is the new black as green marketing and green investment have become hot or at least getting warmer on a global scale. The pressure is now on to show your green stripes.

How far we have come from my early green experiences. Back in the early 1990s, companies espousing green principles were met with suspicion, and environmental groups who reached out to the other side were corporate sell-outs.

In 1993, my very first Internet experience was with the EcoNet. At speeds of 9600 baud, I was connecting online to a hearty band of educational institutions, non-profits and small businesses. Environmental groups were using the network for Internet access, but fast and robust it wasn’t. And it certainly didn’t leverage the power of online communities.

Fast forward to 2008. Not only has the environment become corporate, but of course the way we communicate has changed.

Environmental groups and corporate communications professionals now have blogs and social networks to drive their green messages to a much wider community. They can provide far greater detail, far more cost effectively and to far more people.

On the flip side, it is a lot easier for critics to expose false claims, identify bad practices and call out inaction. It’s a complicated equation. As you tout one initiative, you lay yourself open to criticism in other areas. Given social media’s capacity to amplify and magnify, it’s enough to make some companies avoid green marketing altogether.

So how do corporate communications professionals manage complex dynamics that govern traditional and social media? The blogosphere can be rather unforgiving with many more voices weighing in. Similarly, how do you address the media’s ever changing focus on the latest environmental threat? How do you prioritize the many global threats and competing solutions out there? How do you handle the public’s desire to do right thing and the sense of fear and lack of knowledge that fuels public debate?

Some companies seem to be doing it right. Take Sun Microsystems. It’s winning praise and coverage for how it’s approaching its green initiatives.

With its Eco Innovation Initiative, Sun is committed to an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from its U.S. operations by 20 percent by 2012.

Sun's David Douglas

As David Douglas Sun’s vice president for eco-responsibility explains.

At Sun, we don’t say we are green. Rather, we say we are getting greener. We recognize that anything bad is going to get picked up at photon speed. We try to be transparent and post data because it will be found anyway. It’s better to get out information in a controlled way. Getting out information to the public also establishes a benchmark or a point of reference that others can point to.

That’s a lesson that Nike learned.

For some time, Nike would experience a new round of criticism each time another overseas factory was exposed. Rather than endure a continuous drumbeat of negative news for its working conditions, they decided to posted the entire list. A bigger bitter pill yes, but Nike was praised for taking "an important step forward" and exhibiting “transparency.”

At Sun, transparency is a virtue. David Douglas has a blog. Sun also launched Openeco – a forum to share ideas, facilitate discussion and find solutions. Yes, discussions can be done at a conference, but an online community is a quantum leap in lowering barriers and sharing ideas.

They are currently collecting tons of data. They are creating a tool to manage and disseminate data. The information is nonproprietary. The site is collaborative, and the goal is community building. Several hundred companies are now involved.

Success can be measured at the societal level. As a company, Sun is promoting the state of the art, environmentally safe products and policies. But in strictly business terms, they also hope these efforts are a differentiator and will provide Sun with a competitive advantage to attract new customers.

But David concedes that it is not all possible. Sun eliminated 99 million sheets of paper by going electronic for their annual report. They looked at corporate travel and didn’t see any substantive impact by making significant changes.

David advises that you look for areas where you can quickly make the biggest headway. "No company is entirely green, but you find places to improve." Public pressure is a catalyst, but is not the reason to go greener.

What’s the biggest social media take away when building a green program? Honesty, transparency and something Dave said. Going green is “not about products; it’s a value.”

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Green Marketing; Green Initiatives; Sun Microsystems; David Douglas; Open Eco; Nike;

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[Today’s entry is the first in a series of postings about the social media community here in Atlanta. I call this series New South Media Buzz. I hope to profile individuals, companies and firms who are leveraging non-traditional media to create new business models and new marketing strategies.]

Georgia Tech student and blogger: Paul Stamatiou

His technology blog is one of the most widely read. His idea for a company was launched over a weekend. He helped build Yahoo’s corporate blog during a summer internship. And he is not yet 22.

His name is Paul Stamatiou – a Georgia Tech computational media major – a field of study, which wasn’t even offered when he was a freshman.

Paul is a member of the small social media community in Atlanta. He stands out because of his knowledge, accomplishments and, of course, his age.

Paul’s blog has a Technorati ranking of 293 and an Authority of 2,837. Technorati lists it as “a tech news blog with a twist of what's going on in the college life of a student at Georgia Tech. Mainly tech guides, reviews, news, how to's and everything in between. Paul is keen on support and answers your tech questions.”

Needless to say, for a blog created as a place to post tech articles, it is now in the top 500 as rated by Technorati.

Paul was able to parlay this experience into a Yahoo internship, but his experience was different than most.

In the first few weeks at Yahoo, he was helping to lead the effort to build Yahoo’s corporate blog -- Yodel -- and experiencing a Silicon Valley rite of passage – a mention in Valleywag.

His Yahoo colleagues kidded him and joked that “the voice of the company was built by a teenager.”

This past fall his idea for a company was selected as the winning business concept in Atlanta’s startup weekend.

Three days later a company was born, and it was one of the most successful start-up weekends.

Skribit was based on Paul’s desire to cure writer’s block by allowing readers to offer suggestions for future postings.

Skribit is a free, customizable, user-generated content suggestion application for blogs. It helps bloggers gain reader insight. At the same time it enables readers let bloggers know what interests them. Skribit also connects readers with fellow readers, increases their value in the blogging community, and helps them discover related blogs.

As Paul envisioned it – “It’s where you go for tomorrow’s news or a Techmeme for tomorrow.”

Startups appeal to him. “I am a tinkerer; I enjoy making it work and learning as I go. Start-ups are where I get my passion. I can do something instantly and avoid bureaucracy. It’s not just about the money. It’s about building community and following your passion. Effective social media should not only benefit the creator, but the community as well.”

As for the future of social media, Paul doesn’t see it slowing down. He feels he is typical of his generation, but his accomplishments and belief in the power of community make him a breed apart.

Paul is planning to move to California after graduation. Skribit’s success may delay his departure, but he is drawn to the Bay area. I don’t blame him and have often thought of moving there myself.

Paul’s success and his future plans are why I selected him for my first posting for New South Media Buzz.

He is the best of what Atlanta’s young high tech community has to offer. He also represents the challenges and promises of building a high tech community in Atlanta or any area that is trying to attract and retain high tech professionals.

I think Atlanta and Paul have benefited from each other. He came to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech, and Georgia Tech has given Paul an excellent foundation.

So why California? As he explained it to me, his motivation is not just about money; it’s about community. California offers much more opportunity. He knows many like-minded people out there and is attracted to a culture that is focused on technology.

Atlanta has technology companies, but the dynamic is different. In northern California the community is decentralized, but it has a high concentration of users. Atlanta is also decentralized but its community is less concentrated. For now, we need to develop a more centralized infrastructure and create a clearinghouse of activities to nurture the growing number of individuals who are focused on social media.

And while Georgia Tech has a strong tech engineering focus, it is still in the early stages of building web apps and online communities programs that can produce the next generation of entrepreneurs.

In speaking with Atlanta-based CEOs, I feel Atlanta is making inroads, but we are not there yet. If Atlanta is going to build a thriving social media business community, it will need to find ways to incent more young tech professionals to move and stay here. We need to build programs and a community where social media can flourish and prosper. We need to create a culture that rewards social media, and we need successes to spur more investment and help businesses overcome any skepticism or fear they may have.

I am confident we are creating that business climate in Atlanta. It will take commitment and economic incentive. In coming posts, I hope to identify companies that are showing the way.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Paul Stamatiou; Georgia Tech; Atlanta High Tech; Skribit; New South Media Buzz;

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I came across something unexpected during my visit last week in San Francisco, a city deeply immersed in technology and social media.

While reconnecting with a former colleague well steeped in the ways of the Internet and blogosphere, I learned she was essentially blogging offline. (In talking to Andrew Getsey over at Atomic Public Relations about it, I liked his term -- analog blogging.)

My colleague and a few of her friends have created what is known as a circle journal. While others are posting the most intimate details of their lives online for the world to see and read, her group of friends is sharing personal thoughts and experiences with each other using paper and pen.

The circle journal is not about rejecting technology. It is recognition that private conversations are not only personal; they are powerful. Friends share their emotions in their own handwriting.

Describing her experience, she said,

“We don’t write anymore. It’s a way for us to stay connected even though we live in different cities. It’s safe; but it’s dangerous. It’s about trust. It’s also a physical thing. I can see their heart beat in their writing. It’s raw. Typing is very different. With circle journals, there is no spell check. There are no penalties for sloppiness.”

Ultimately, it’s not about expanding your audience. It’s not about instant gratification. Its power is in keeping thoughts private and physically holding friends’ trust in your hands in a journal that moves from one person to the next and back again – full circle – in the time it takes to write and mail a document.

At first glance, this topic may seem off message, but it goes to the heart of online conversation. As professionals we are so focused on what people are saying on blogs and social networks. At its best, social media facilitates open and honest conversations. It fosters engagement and customer loyalty. At its worst, its irreverence and lack of decorum can blur the boundaries between public and private, decent and indecent, respect and disrespect.

For social media advocates, it’s easy to forget there are limits to transparency. Not everything is suited for corporate blogging and public disclosure. Power is not always found in wide distribution. That’s often a lesson lost on many in the MySpace generation who may someday regret the utterly personal pictures they post online. Circle Journals are also a reminder of the many conversations that don't make it online.

Living in a world where reputation is everything, I would not participate in a circle journal, but I can appreciate their allure.

They represent to me a basic desire to build connections that can only exist in the private sphere. It reinforces the need to be selective and vigilant in what we say, when we say it and how we say it.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Circle Journal; Blogging;

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Last week I attended a blogger meet up sponsored by Forrester Research’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Blogs are a powerful way to interact, but will never replace face to face meetings. I had a chance to catch up with Renee Blodgett and Ken Kaplan and meet bloggers Ben Metcalfe, Karl Long, and Neil Blecherman.

Among trays of pizzas and plates of calamari was a stack of advanced copies of Charlene's and Josh's new book, Groundswell, which is also the name of their blog.

Groundswell is a “movement.” For Charlene and Josh, “It’s a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.”

The book is an excellent primer for those seeking to understand the basic elements of social media, where we are seeing a shift in the balance of power from company to customer.

Beyond extensive discussions on tools, demographics, analysis and advice on how to successfully manage social media, I was struck by an observation they made about General Motor CEO Bob Lutz’s highly successful corporate blog, FastLane.

In their assessment, FastLane hasn’t revolutionized GM or changed the competitive dynamics. What it has done is revolutionize the communications process.

Herein lies the challenge. Is it possible for a revolution in the communications process to change the competitive landscape? And in pitching social media to management, should it be positioned as incremental change or game changing?

I tend to agree that blogs in and of themselves will not turn poorly run companies into well managed ones or challenger brands into market leaders. They are, after all, only tools, and they must accompany substantive changes in how companies treat their customers. But not tapping the groundswell can severely challenge your market position, particularly in a highly competitive industry.

Philip Soffer, vice president of product development at Lithium, has a lot of experience with this question. His company builds forums for some of the biggest corporations who are seeking to tap the power of online communities. Lithium is also hosting a web seminar with Josh.

From Phil’s perspective, community impact on the competitive landscape varies from industry to industry. With GM, social media probably won’t change the competitive landscape when so many other factors are at work. But in the case of wireless carriers, “the absence of a community is now a serious competitive disadvantage.” AT&T for example is a real leader in this effort, and “now all wireless carriers understand that they can mitigate a lot of their image problems by being more open, and communities are key to that.”

Groundswell also addresses how to spread a customer centric focus within your organization. The authors support an incremental approach building support step by step. I also contend that how you position this shift in communications with management depends on where in the organization you are looking for approval.

As Phil emailed me.

In customer support, where communities have a very clear ROI, management tends to be more conservative. They talk less about transforming the business and more about the bottom line. On the other hand, many companies have "customer experience" groups that report to marketing, and they talk about communities as transformational, because they're part of a larger strategy of openness. We've heard a number of our customers say, ‘We're using the community for support and self-service, but we view its larger function as marketing.’ These are companies that want to 'forumize' their whole Web sites. If they're successful, it really can be transformational.

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