Bernaisesource

Technorati Tags: Social Media Today; Blogger of the Week;

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Yesterday I wrote about the limits of vision and its role in the enterprise.

At the Web 2.0 Expo last month, I had a chance to hear David Carter address his vision of Web 2.0 and its impact on the future direction of the enterprise. David Carter is CEO of Awareness, which helps companies build and operate branded Web 2.0 communities.

“Enterprise 2.0 is about using Web 2.0 tools and practices, but in a way that decreases the tension between the users and the corporate IT Department.”

And right now there is plenty of tension out there across the enterprise.

With concerns about security and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, IT is understandably resistant to loss of control and decentralization. Its role is to protect the kingdom by keeping intruders out and data in. IT is all about accountability, ROI, department buy-in and structure.

At the same time, as David Carter points out, other departments have issues as well. HR has concerns about compromising privacy and creating the potential for a hostile work environment. Legal is concerned with limiting liability and avoiding lawsuits that may result from a misuse of data.

On the other hand, business units are under extreme pressure to conquer new markets by any means and anywhere possible –- whether it’s inside the firewall or data sources and applications outside of it. They are about frictionless participation and customer engagement. Similarly, employees want easy to use tools to share information and manage connections with their colleagues.

With all this tension and competing interests, where do vision, values and the big picture fit in?

Well clearly they can't be ignored, but in challenging times, companies may need to be "more tactical” when it comes to social media as Stan Anderson, managing partner at TechDiscovery said to me.

TechDiscovery develops custom applications for software and technology-based services companies. In a tactical world, it is not about storming the Bastille or tearing down the company firewall. It's about finding solutions that address quarter by quarter goals. In this environment, Anderson believes the business units will win out. IT may not be 100 percent happy, but at the end of the day, the compromise may come down to five words: “I can live with that.”

The Take Away for Corporate Communications

So what does this mean for corporate communications professionals?

The adoption of enterprise Web 2.0 tools helps pave the way for the adoption of web based communications tools. It raises the comfort level for decentralization and collaboration -- the buidling blocks of social media.

I truly believe that corporate communications can play a pivotal role in managing the benefits of Web 2.0 technology. At the most basic level, we can create and implement the tools needed to communicate externally and internally to the various stakeholders. Equally important we can help the enterprise put Web 2.0 into the context of an overall business strategy and company culture.

But this responsibility requires us to be sensitive to the competing needs across the enterprise. After all, our job is to help reduce tension not heighten it. That is something we can all live with.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0; David Carter; Stan Anderson;

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Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0; TAG; Technology Association of Georgia; Brighthouse; Joey Reiman; Chief Blogging Officer; Generation Y;

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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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