In my first “Skeptic’s View” post, I admitted to signing up—grudgingly—for many of the social media tools because they simply aren’t the way I prefer to communicate. However, as a consultant who helps companies develop and implement effective customer communication strategies, it’s my job to understand the various mechanisms by which users want to interact—and more and more users want to interact using social media.

Since diving into the various social media tools, I’ve discovered a lot of value. In addition to giving your clients something they want and expect, you have the potential to gain incredible customer insights and see a side of them that might otherwise remain hidden. I didn’t think I would, and I did—and that stands true for every tool that I’ve tried thus far.

LinkedIn: A Multifaceted Networking Tool

Of all the social media tools available, LinkedIn is the one that I entered with the least amount of skepticism. I “got” the value that it offered, because it was clearly developed for business people. But it wasn’t until a February 2006 Women in Consulting (WIC) meeting that I really started using LinkedIn.

I implemented a number of best practices from that meeting and started benefiting almost immediately; and I continue to benefit today. The single greatest thing about LinkedIn is it offers so many ways to connect with your network and stay on top on of what everyone is doing.

LinkedIn: What’s the Big Deal?

If you’ve never tried LinkedIn or you created a profile but you’ve not done much because, quite frankly, you “don’t get what the big deal is,” here are a just few reasons to consider tapping this resource:

• It’s expected. A LinkedIn profile is pretty much the status quo now. Not having one is considered out of place if you’re a business professional. That said, assess the need for a Linked profile based on your client base (there’s that audience thing again), your professional connections, and your business. If nothing else, this assessment should drive how you build your profile. If it’s deemed not appropriate right now, then at least you know you’re basing your decision not to join on factors that matter most to your business.
• Project and job offers are a real possibility. If you stay top of mind, employ marketing and networking best practices, and you “know your stuff” (in other words, you’re good at what you do), your first tier connections will recommend or even use you. You may even find work via referrals when a second or third-tier connection solicits their network, asking if anyone knows of a good “fill in the blank.” I know I have received project offers via LinkedIn, simply by following some of the basic LinkedIn best practices.
• It’s a way to stay top of mind. LinkedIn is a lot more than an online rolodex. You can easily keep your network up to date on what you’re doing, with numerous tools for staying top of mind.   
  1. Twitter-like status update bar. Your connections do read these. Maybe not everyone, and maybe not every day. But people do read them.
  2. Connection updates on your home page. Not only do your connections see what you’re up to if you update your status, but your home page contains a flow of what your connections are doing. I love this feature. I quickly and with little effort know what my connections are doing and feel more connected than I do with quarterly emails or calls. If offers opportunities to reach out to them. The key is being authentic and sincere. I regularly look at my home page feeds and respond when I have something to say related to what a connection is doing. Sometimes it’s encouragement and congratulations; other times it’s a suggestion; and yet other times it’s just to say “hi,” it’s been a while since we talked. The opportunities for connecting are as varied as your connections.
  3. LinkedIn update emails. LinkedIn also sends (if you elect to receive them) regular updates of what your connections are up to—this is the same type of information that appears on your home page. So, you don’t even have to go to LinkedIn to stay up to date.
  4. Multiple interaction points. The home page and email updates don’t just filter status bar changes. They track new connections, when you answer questions, when you join a group, when you update your profile or recommend someone. All of this is fed to your connections’ LinkedIn home pages and email updates (if you allow it).
• You can demonstrate thought leadership. There are so many opportunities to demonstrate your thought leadership and join the conversation in LinkedIn, including:
  1. Let your network know when you’ve written an article/blog post, presented at a conference, wrote a book, gave a talk, etc. using the status update text box.
  2. Answer questions posted in LinkedIn Answers. There are a host of categories from which to choose. Remember, whenever you answer a question, your response is posted in your connections’ feed (at least they should be—you control what’s sent).
  3. Pull your blog posts into your LinkedIn profile.
  4. Start and join discussions in your groups (join groups, too, if you haven’t). By the way, Women in Consulting (WIC) has a LinkedIn group.  

LinkedIn: Best Practices (Tips & Tricks)

• Complete your profile:
  1. Spend time considering how you want to present yourself, how prospective connections might view you when reading your profile.
  2. Gather the information you’ll need to complete your profile (if people are interested, I’ll include this in a subsequent post).
  3. Edit your public profile settings—remember the more you show, the more people outside of your network can learn about your services, expertise, and skill set.
  4. Add connections. I don’t advocate being a LION—LinkedIn Open Networker; be selective. Your connections can reflect on you. You can also open yourself up to people who are a bit “spammy” in their communications. In fact, with every social media tool, I advocate quality over quantity—but I also advocate using these tools to build relationships, too.
  5. Build your recommendations.
• Join groups related to your areas of interest and expertise.
• Spend time on your home page reviewing what people in your network are doing.
• Review the applications that LinkedIn offers for ones that might benefit you.
• Participate:
  1. Post status updates on your home page.
  2. Answer questions posted in LinkedIn Answers.
  3. Interact with other group members, asking questions, answering questions, sharing information, joining discussions
• Don’t make it all about you and your products and services.
• Don’t SPAM
• Request introductions form your network, or send InMails if you have a premium account, to people you’d like to connect with. (See “Working Those LinkedIn Connections” for more on InMails and how to use them.)

LinkedIn: Bottom Line

If you’ve not joined LinkedIn yet, check it out and see if it’s right for you. But don’t show up for the party half dressed. You’ll likely send a negative message.

If you’re on LinkedIn but only half dressed, put on some clothes. Complete your profile. Give some real thought to the best way to do it, looking at it from your audience’s perspective. Be authentic—can’t stress that enough—and don’t be “sales-y.”

And remember, why you should care. LinkedIn is a great way to:

• Build brand awareness, promote events, demonstrate thought leadership, and disseminate information
• Stay in tune with what others are thinking
• Increase your visibility and community size
• Collaborate online
• Keep your database current
• Recruit volunteers, employees, and resources

MarketingProfs, a Women in Consulting (WIC) partner, posted a useful article by Clay McDaniel that details 13 essential social-media “listening tools,” separating them by free and paid-for. If you’ve ever wondered how you can “listen” to all the chatter about your brand or your clients’ brands, check out this article.

Read “13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools’“

Jason Snell of Macworld.com wrote a nice overview on nine ways to use Twitter for business. It’s a great introduction for those who are unsure how Twitter can be used for business.

I agree with everything he says for the most part, with the caveat that you should assess any recommendations in light of your own audience, as well as what makes sense for your business. Consumer companies will have different needs from business-to-business companies who will have different needs from consultants and so on. The key is to view Twitter as a tool and not all tools work for all people.

The one recommendation I disagree with in part is “# 3: Follow people who are relevant…it’s polite to follow people. And by following people you are creating an ecosystem — people will see who you are following and consider those as suggestions for users they should follow as well.”

Yes, you should follow relevant people. And it may be polite to follow someone who follows you, but is it in your best interest to follow everyone who follows you? No is my philosophy. Follow people who make sense for you to follow.  For example, I won’t follow people who: 

• Never Tweet anything of interest to me
• Neglect to provide a bio and/or a link to more information about them
• Are only interested in selling me “stuff”
• Bombard followers with a plethora of Tweets daily – there are people who post 30 or more times in a day; and that’s way more than I want to here from anyone person

These are some of my personal guidelines for following people. They’re based on my reasons for using Twitter. I view Twitter as an information resource. So for me, it’s about sharing and receiving information.

Here are the high-level tips:

• Don’t automate it
• Be conversational
• Follow people who are relevant
• Make sure your people are on Twitter, and refer to them
• Answer your mentions
• Search for your name
• Consider creating sub-accounts for sections of your business or customer base
• Use Twitter to ask your customers questions…and get good answers
• Be a good Twitter citizen

Read the full “Nine Twitter Tips for Business” article

Women in Consulting Seminar: Creating Social Media Success for Consultants
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 from 8am – 12pm
Early Online Registration Closes, Monday, June 1, 2009

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn-almost everyone has heard of these social media tools. Millions are using them for personal enjoyment, and many business-to-consumer companies are capitalizing on this popularity.

But do these tools make good business sense for consultants and small business owners? Can they help you generate leads, establish you as an expert in your field, stay connected to current clients, and reach out to potential clients? The answer is yes! And this WIC-sponsored seminar, featuring Shel Holtz on Twitter, Irene Koehler on LinkedIn, and Sara Smith on Facebook, will show you how.

Learn more and register

Key Learning Points

• Go beyond a simple “how-to,” and discover how to promote your firm, expertise, and credibility more effectively using social media
• Understand the common pitfalls you should avoid
• Increase your understanding of LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and how best to use them as a consultant or small business owner
• Receive social media tips and a glossary of terms in a take-back-to-the-office guide

Location/Time

Michael’s at Shoreline, 2960 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043
Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 8:00am – 12:00pm
8:00 – 8:30 Registration, continental breakfast, and networking
8:30 – 11:00 Individual presentations on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter
11:00 – 12:00 Moderated panel with social media experts

Cost

• WIC members: $79 early bird registration, $89 after June 1
• WIC affiliate list subscribers/WIC partners: $99 early bird registration, $109 after June 1
• Nonmembers: $109 early bird registration, $119 after June 1

About the Speakers

Shel Holtz – An accredited business communicator (ABC) and principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, Shel has nearly 30 years of organizational communications experience in both corporate and consulting environments.

Irene Koehler — Founder of Linking Northern CA and Almost Savvy, and an avid online networker for years, Irene has successfully navigated the confusing process of creating a virtual presence, one that best represents the message and persona that individuals and businesses want to convey.

Sarah Smith — As manager of Facebook’s online sales operations account management team, Sarah (and her team) partners with strategic advertisers to help them achieve their Facebook advertising objectives using campaign optimizations, social media strategy, and general education about cutting-edge tools and new product features.

Avery Horzewski (moderator) — Avery is a marketing and customer communications consultant, and serves on WIC’s board of directors, overseeing the organization’s marketing, PR, social media, and website initiatives.

Learn more and register

I love Mack Collier’s “Social Media Ain’t About One-Night Stands, It’s About Relationships” post on The Viral Garden. It’s short and sweet, with a couple of good examples to underscore his point. I love it, though, because of the key point he drives home: social media is about communicating.

As many of you may notice, communication is a common theme in my posts. I love communication (studied it in school, actually), and doing it effectively is the key ingredient to business success — and doing it effectively all starts with knowing your audience and really listening to them.

A few key points from Mack’s post:

• Social media isn’t about generating buzz, it’s about connecting. It isn’t about campaigns, it’s about movements. “What to use Twitter as a way to generate buzz for your product launch? Fine. Now what’s your plan for leveraging that buzz and using Twitter as a channel to connect with your customers that are now paying attention to you?
• Social media tools are just tools. “Many companies miss the mark when it comes to implementing social media because they focus too heavily on the tools as opposed to the communication and potential relationships that are enabled by them.

Nice little post by Joel Postman at Socialized PR offers seven rules for establishing a corporate presence on Twitter:

• Create a Twitter profile that helps people verify your legitimacy
• Let consumers know who they’re talking to
• Empower your Twitter representative to make a difference
• Protect consumer information
• Include your social media affiliations on your corporate website news page
• Be human, and have a sense of humor
• Turn control over to “regular” employees

I like Joel’s style. He admits there are other rules that he’s not covering, that these are just the ones he feels most strongly about, and welcomes suggestions from others. He also provides examples of companies he thinks are doing it right. They are, for the most part, the ones we hear about often; but I think it’s good to repeat the better examples, given that Twitter is still new for so many people/companies.

There are two other guidelines (I prefer guideline vs. rule) that I’d add to Joel’s list:

• Use Twitter to communicate not to sell
• Be authentic

Yes, there are definitely more guidelines that we could add to the list, but “communicating not selling” is really big in my book. Most people don’t like a hard sell, and they dislike it even more in the social media realm.  (Yes, I’m someone who is turned off by hard-selling, so I’m biased. It really annoys me, especially on Twitter.) That said, if you disguise your selling as communicating, people will figure it out and not like it and be even more annoyed. Hence, I included being authentic as a top guideline.

Yes, businesses on Twitter and other communities ultimately want to improve their bottom lines. Customers/clients understand this, but followers would rather companies do it by delivering good customer service, sharing useful information, and providing other similar customer-oriented Tweets. After all, that’s that what good business is really about — the customer.

So be good at what you do. Be customer oriented. And be authentic. And carry all of these components into Twitter (and other social media endeavors for that matter). If you do, your odds for success will be a lot higher — which leads to another guideline: know your goal(s) before you establish your presence (okay, so it really was “Plus Three)

Read “Seven Rules for Establishing a Corporate Presence on Twitter“

As the author of “How to Monitor Online Conversations” (Dawn Foster, Web Worker Daily) points out, “Keeping up with online conversations can be a daunting task.” That’s why I like Dawn’s article. It’s short-and-sweet with a few manageable recommendations for readers to follow — perfect for someone just starting out and not sure how to harness the plethora of information that’s available.

I recommend reading “7 Things I Learned Online that I Use at Work” by Valeria Maltoni on Social Media Today. A nice common-sense read like Jen Berkley’s latest post, “Encourage Your Clients to Talk to Their Customers…Now More Than Ever!”

Why do I like these two posts? They focus on basic communication principals. In Jen’s, it’s talking to our clients about what they want — common sense, but not common practice, as Jen writes. In Valeria’s post, it’s about talking to customers within existing tools the same way you would using social media. Simplistic? Yes. Always done? No.

“7 Things I Learned Online that I Use at Work”

“It’s not necessary to launch a full social media marketing campaign to get the benefits of new ways of talking with customers and colleagues.

“Every company already has the tools it needs to do that — they’re called marketing communications, public relations, and customer service. They are each powerful when the proper definitions are used.

“Think about it — put the relations back in with public, the communications back into marketing, and the service for customers. To help either reinforce or create a community, all you need to do is listen, hear, act on what you’ve heard, repeat.

“I can assure you I’m fully aware that it sounds simplistic. Yet, whenever things get out of hand, one should step back and return to basics.”

1. Ideas come from anywhere
2. Sharing and deciding are not the same thing
3. Talking needs to be paired with doing
4. Simple does not mean easy
5. Transparency is key
6. The currency of modern business is adaptability
7. Sometimes doing more means accomplishing less

Read Valeria’s full article

MB Deans, a Women in Consulting member and a friend in my Facebook network, asked me a great question on Facebook in response to my “Skeptic’s View of Social Media” post:

“Great perspective. I agree; you can’t NOT communicate…. (Or you can, and let your customers and competitors do it for you.) Are social media just another channel, or are they really something new and reshaping communication?”

My quick answer: yes to both — social media is another channel and it’s reshaping communication.

The question and my answer remind me of a similar question I was given in college for a classical rhetoric midterm: Does Aristotle think rhetoric is ethical or unethical? During review prep, I asked my professor, “What if you think the answer is neither?” To which, she replied, “Great, I’d love to hear more about it. Build your argument.”

At the time, this annoyed me to no end, because I wanted to be told what the correct information was so I could spit it back out on the test and get an “A” just like kids are trained to do through most of their schooling. In hind site, it’s the best learning experience that I’ve ever had (thanks Anne!), because she taught me to:

1. Think critically, don’t just absorb ideas
2. Develop well-reasoned, well-supported arguments
3. Not be afraid to go outside established parameters

How does this story relate? Because my answer was that Aristotle didn’t think of rhetoric as ethical or unethical, but rather as a tool that could be used ethically or unethically. Similarly, social media is a channel, just another channel. However, that channel has the capacity to reshape communication, just like other new communication channels that marked a dramatic departure from the status quo: the printing press, radio, television….

As a channel, social media shouldn’t be ignored. Social media should be assessed like any other channel for effectiveness with your target audience. If you decide it’s a good fit, it should be entered into with the same level of commitment that you give any other channel, and it should be integrated with your overall communication strategy.

As a dramatic departure from the status quo, social media demands your attention. Follow it. Assess it. Keep track of what’s happening, because at some point it may impact your business. As I mentioned in my “Skeptic’s View” post, you don’t have to like social media, but you should pay attention to it. Time will tell whether it’s life-altering or a fad; but if it’s the former, you don’t want to be left completely out to dry. So keep tabs of what’s happening where, make decisions based on you and your audience and not just what’s the latest and greatest, and don’t ignore it just because you don’t like it or think it’s just for kids.

A side note on MB’s statement, “…you can’t NOT communicate…. or you can, and let your customers and competitors do it for you;” I think this underscores a core characteristic of social media that you don’t control — nor should you try to control — the conversation. Just because you’re not participating doesn’t mean your customers and competitors aren’t. Nice point MB!

I have a slightly different take on the “you can’t NOT communicate.” Even when you do or say nothing, you’re still sending a message by the very act of not doing or saying anything.

So, let the discussion begin…. Of course, I would rather have the discussion face to face over tea or wine or at WIC meeting featuring a panel debating the topic….

I must confess that I grudgingly signed up for many of the social media tools. They simply aren’t the way I prefer to communicate. At the same time, the entire phenomenon intrigues me. The reason for my simultaneous disinterest and intrigue in relation to social media can be traced back to my education and that which I love and love to study: communication.

I much prefer to speak to someone face to face or over the phone, or watch/hear someone express their views on TV or over the radio. I like the richness that those modes of communication provide, both in the nonverbal cues that accompany the words as well as the depth of information that they provide because they’re not limited to 140 characters or a screen page.

However, so much about social media gets my nerdy side operating in hyper drive. What is it about Facebook that has people spending endless time sharing brief snippets of their lives, taking quizzes, writing notes, and the like–and why should businesses care (my consultant self asks the latter part of this question)? Why is everyone chomping at the bit to express their thoughts in 140 characters or less on Twitter? And why have these become almost the standard for hooking up with friends–and now colleagues?

I am on Facebook. I do Tweet (although right now I’m more in stealth mode, listening to the conversations). I blog. And I am active on LinkedIn. However, as I mentioned, I went on Facebook and Twitter reluctantly. I needed to, I didn’t want to. As a consultant who helps companies develop and implement effective customer communication strategies, it’s my job to understand the various mechanisms by which users want to interact–and more and more users want to interact using social media.

Bottom line: it doesn’t matter if you like social media or not, if your audience does, you need to consider it–seriously.

You CANNOT Not Communicate–this is one of my favorite phrases. I even use it as my company tagline. It’s also a good reminder that everything you do–and don’t do–sends a message. If you write off social media because you’re not interested in it, then you likely risk alienating at least a portion of your audience. More importantly, you risk losing a pretty amazing opportunity to get to know your audience in a way that you might not otherwise be able to do.

And it’s this latter component that has this skeptic convinced that there’s value in exploring social media. In addition to giving your customers something they want and expect, you have the potential to gain incredible customer insight and see a side of them that might otherwise remain hidden. 

My next post will be ”A Skeptic’s View of Social Media: LinkedIn” (a tool I’ve been using for quite some time and the one that I was least skeptical about). I’ll then do one on Facebook and the Twitter. And if someone wants me to cover another social media tool, let me know.