I recently spoke with Ross Daniels, Director of Marketing for Cisco, about the challenges of deploying social media monitoring and management tools inside a larger enterprise. I’d spoken with Daniels about Cisco’s SocialMiner, a product that companies can use to capture, analyze, prioritize and take action on consumer posts in social media channels. The application is not aimed at the marketing function but instead focuses on customer service, customer support and sales in the social media ecosystem.

One of the first things companies should do before deploying any software solution to help harness social media activities and actions, says Daniels, is to make sure social media is positioned — or repositioned — as residing between marketing and customer service. If customer service and marketing aren’t talking to each other, there is a high likelihood that social media marketing efforts will fail. Customer service is built for listening and for scaling and can be an integral “pillar” alongside marketing to manage social media.

Here are some suggestions for managers to consider to pave the way for more effective social media management that came out of my conversation with Daniels.

1. Connect customer service with marketing. Start making introductions between departments to establish a more collaborative relationship if it doesn’t already exist. The heads of both your marketing and customer service departments should meet regularly. Marketing plans should be shared with — and can even be enhanced by — customer service. Each side should know how to use social media to not only fulfill their own goals but to help one another to get closer to reaching overall company goals.
2. Assign dedicated staff to social channels. Pick or train people who can develop an expertise in social media engagement and response in social channels. Consider representatives from both marketing and customer service or a shared liaison. Cross pollinate social media activities so no single department — or person — holds the responsibilities.
3. Measure results together. As expectations are high for tangible returns on social media marketing investments, bring customer service in to help measure, analyze and tell the story of how social media is effective for the company. The measurements and analysis customer service already does will bring value to the analysis of social media. Both departments can contribute to generating reports and presenting findings.
4. Mine social media for more than sentiment. Instead of just looking for the positive, negative and neutral of what customers are saying about a company’s product or service, look for clues to how the public perceives the company as a whole. Social media can be used to identify places within an organization where there are silos hindering cross-departmental communications and other operational issues. Use the findings in social media channels to make functional improvements in how the company works, not just what they offer.

As you manage, monitor and respond to social media activity around your company and brand, make sure to spread the awareness and responsibilities across multiple departments. When it comes to social media, operating in silos can be the kiss of death. Social media can also help identify and break down silos, but these changes must be articulated as a core shift in both internal and external communications and interactions. Present social media not as yet another burden for someone to add to their already overloaded work day but as an inherent change in the way the company communicates with the public and within its own walls.

Where do social media responsibilities reside within your organization, and how is that working?

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1. Lack of a social culture. Mandating the use of social media tools such as social network-style collaboration and sharing applications like SocialText or Twitter-style messaging such as Yammer won’t create social interaction. Your company needs to start with a fundamentally communicative culture, one where open sharing and collaborating is encouraged. Just plugging in a new collaborations or communications tool won’t change the culture of your company. If people are hesitant — or even afraid — to draw attention to themselves within your company, they won’t welcome tools that force them into being more visible. While social tools can help expand and reinforce an open and collaborative environment, without mass adoption, they could potentially create deeper and darker silos within an organization. Examine your corporate culture first and create a more receptive environment for internal social tools.
2. Lack of public participation If your team members aren’t already comfortable with using social media tools in their non-work life, chances are they won’t gravitate eagerly to the new social tools you’ve set up for inter-company inter-relating. The flip side of this is that you may see more immediate adoption from team members who are already social media enthusiasts. Identify team members who use s social tools to communicate outside of work and enlist them to help kickstart the use of the new tools. They will often be more comfortable with adopting such tools, and can help champion them to their colleagues.
3. Lack of training. You may have some early adopters to champion your new internal company social media tools, but what about the rest of your team? Without proper training, those who aren’t as familiar with social networking and tweeting may feel left out or even overwhelmed. Even those who take to these tools like the proverbial fish to water will need some guidance as to how, when and why to use the tools in ways that fit into your company’s work processes. Before you install the software, re-examine how your team works, how they communicate and how to appropriately use the new social tools to enhance work and communications, not distract or hinder it. Provide written guidelines and training across the board, regardless of social media skills, to ensure everyone knows what is expected of them, in addition to how to use the tools properly.
4. Lack of access. Has your firewall blocked team access to public social networks? You’re sending mixed messages if you are asking everyone to be more social, to share, to collaborate, to communicate more frequently internally and yet shut off access to public social tools. Before you open the floodgates, however, develop your internal “rules of the road” for interacting in public social media spaces.
5. Lack of willingness. Not everyone will understand the benefit of using social tools internally, particularly for the workers who prefer to remain low-profile, nose-to-the-grindstone, and are content not being noticed. Using team-based social tools within a company can be taxing and can push some people beyond their comfort levels. Make sure the parameters you set up for internal use of social media tools are based on encouraging professional exchanges, expanding internal knowledge bases, increasing collaboration, and helping to improve communications. Be respectful of individuals who may not want to be so personal in a professional setting. Don’t force team members to share their personal interests, for example — make those features optional. While there is something to be said about knowing a little more about someone’s hobbies or interests to engender more human connections within an organization, it may be extremely off-putting to some.

What challenges do you foresee or are you working to overcome as you implement social media tools into your internal company processes?

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1. Managing Your Profile and Reputation

So many networks, so many different audiences and connections. Maybe you’re feeling like you have split personalities: being professional on LinkedIn, running at the mouth on Twitter, then letting your hair down on Facebook. But wait! You forgot that you’re connected with your boss or your client on Facebook. Panic ensues. Or what if someone is Googling your name before interviewing you for a job. What will they find? Over the last 10 years, we’ve all learned some tough lessons about what it means to be digital.

Solution: Reduce the number of networks you use. Keep your work and personal networks separate. Create a “universal” profile to help clear up the clutter. About.me lets you display an attractive, social-media integrated profile. Gist encourages you to claim your public profile so everyone using their application sees consistent information for you. I blogged about the company recently.

2. Privacy Issues and Protecting Your Identity

Are you feeling squeamish about what personal data is floating out there in the ether about you? You may not even realize how complicit you’ve been in releasing this information, from emailing your credit card information because it was quick and easy, to uploading a photo to Flickr with a geotag that reveals the exact location of your home. So what can you do about it?

Solution: Get smart and help educate others about privacy issues. Be smarter about what you reveal and how and when you reveal it. Opt out of automated features on social networks and take the time to manually configure your privacy settings to a more conservative setting. Companies like Reputation.com are popping up to rescue us from our accidental over-sharing.

3. Curating Information and Coping with Information Overload

RSS feeds, Twitterstreams, news feeds… when will it end? We continue to open the floodgates to more and more information, desperately seeking tools to help us parse, filter, slice, dice, and otherwise funnel information into our already overloaded brains.

Solution: My advice? Stop your addiction to data; go cold turkey. Pare down and eliminate. You do not need to know everything, and trying is an effort in futility. Identify no more than a handful of blogs or information sources that give you a solid cross-section of the information you need. Trust the curators whose job it is to be human filters of the information that interests you or that pertains to your work. Count what you’re consuming like you count calories: No more than five sources. Can you do it? And what about your Twitterstream? Focus more on your interactions with others than the never-ending stream of information. Create heavily curated Twitter lists based around specific areas of interest to zero in on more important information, then peruse them occasionally to get a quick fix. Use these lists sparingly and stop immediately if you find yourself getting sucked back into the datastream.

4. Keeping Up With New Tech Developments

You’re human. You can’t keep up all the latest technology development or the myriad of continuous changes to the tech you’re already using. Every week, Facebook offers new features and interface tweaks.

Solution: So what do you do if you want to at least understand where things are going? I’d go back to my suggestion to identify trusted curators, such as bloggers and news sources that are devoted to explaining what is current and keeping an eye on what’s next. Then go back and review #3 above in order to keep your data consumption under control.

5. Organizing Your Digital Files and Data

Our digital ephemera is everywhere, and we are generating data more rapidly than ever before. Our files are hard to organize and hard to find. I’ve come to rely on my computer’s search function to find files because I can’t file them away in neat little folders fast enough any more. Online, I rely on Google to find thing because I find that I have too many tools, sites and apps to help me tuck away data that I can no longer find posts or articles when I need them — did I save it with Delicious? Instapaper? How can you better organize the files and content you want to save and access again in the future?

Solution: Find the handful of tools that help you monitor, manage, curate, archive and organize your data. From Hootsuite for monitoring and managing your accounts to tools such as Scoop.it and Pearltrees to archive, organize and share articles and blog posts, there are tools and applications out there created specifically to relieve your social media pain. Dropbox might be an answer for your files. New sites like Gogobeans offer to bring all your digital “stuff” into one place to help you manage it and manage who sees it. Once you find the one that works for you, use it regularly and learn to use it well.

6. Finding the Time to Deal with Social Media

Yes, dealing with social media takes time. How much time? I blogged about it here.

Solution: See #3-#5 above.

If you’re experiencing social media pain, step back and look for ways to pare down and simplify. Narrow down your trusted sources of information. Resist the temptation to get caught up in data frenzy. Leverage technology tools that help you ease the pain.

What is your social media pain point? Let us know in the poll above and discuss it below.

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Here’s what I predicted for 2010 and the outcome as of the end of the year:

1. Myspace will die. Like a bad rash, MySpace is hard to eliminate. The site has been rebranded as “My___” — dumb branding that’s in the same league with The Gap’s short-lived new logo. Myspace is still being (ab)used by bands and musicians, comedians, C-list actors, “models” and other celebrity wannabes, as well as by people who didn’t get the memo that Myspace is dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if Myspace limped quietly through 2011 and finally expired. In order to survive, Myspace needs to create something truly new, engaging, user-friendly, and groundbreaking, but I don’t think it will happen. Facebook has taken over the space like the 800-pound gorilla it is.

2. Virtual goods: insanely popular. Huge. Bigger now than a year ago. You’re making a mistake if you think virtual goods are nothing more than “playing games.” A 2009 report from Inside Network put revenue from the purchase of virtual goods in online games at $1 billion. Their prediction is that the U.S. virtual goods market will reach $2.1 billion in 2011. Even if you don’t understand why people adopt and purchase virtual goods, those numbers are nothing to sneeze at.

3. Gaming: Not just for kids. This trend is still heading up, up, up. You’re missing the boat if you think casual and social game-playing is a passing fad. According to a study by market researcher the NPD Group, 56.8 million U.S. consumers have reported playing a game on a social network. That’s 20 percent of the U.S. population. In their report “The Future of Social Gaming 2011,” Inside Network predicts the social gaming market will reach $1.25 billion.

4. Twitter: Transforming communications. Yes, still doing it. At the same time, Facebook is transforming the way we view privacy, and what, how, and how much personal information we share.

5. Niche networks: Good for marketing. I’m still convinced that niche networks are valuable for smaller, more concentrated and highly targeted numbers. Get beyond the giddiness of having hundreds or thousands of “likers” on your Facebook Page, and you can create real value for your company, customers, vendors or targeted consumers by using niche networks. Industry-specific social networks are good for professional networking and information exchange, while open, relevantly-themed social networks are helpful for marketing, branding, and customer interactions. Despite Ning no longer offering free networks, I find that many niche, topic-specific custom networks are still being built on the Ning platform. But running your own niche network is a beast to build and manage without resources. That’s why Facebook Pages are the low-hanging fruit of niche, branded communities.

6. Augmented reality: Really here. Yes, it is here, but still on the fringe. I think 2011 will see mobile devices more capable of supporting AR, programmers developing useful AR applications, and marketers testing the space. AR will become more widespread, and really great and useful applications will proliferate. The next step will be to get consumers on board.

7. Google Buzz: Hmmm. I thought Google Buzz would be big and important because Google is big. Google Buzz is still out there, but I don’t see much buzz about it, and I barely use or notice it myself. Do you have any interesting use cases for Google Buzz?

8. Mobile. Be there. That’s what I’m still saying. I’ve outlined a few things to consider about mobile in a recent post. And don’t just think about devices, apps, and networks, but also communications and commerce.

5 More Trends to Watch in 2011

Before throwing out some ideas for this year, I want to first say that the trends above (other than Google Buzz) aren’t over yet. Each continues to evolve over time with greater adoption, better applications, and solid case studies. So, in 2011, the above trends will solidify into the mainstream of our technology landscape (some more than others).

Here are some more trends to watch for this year, in no particular order:

1. Location, location, location. This should have been on my 2010 list, but it was still early. Within months after my trends post, location exploded and I professed my love for Whrrl, Foursquare and the like, and I was recently blown away by Glyph Glympse: tip of iceberg stuff. I constantly use AroundMe and have started to use Foodspotting when I travel. And have you seen Path?

2. Semantic technologies. Hard for the layperson to grasp, but the applications will continue to improve and impress. Imperfect but interesting: Qwiki, iGlue, Wolfram Alpha, Evri.

3. Crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowdproducing. You ain’t seen nothing yet in terms of what crowds can do. Real time traffic from Waze, crowdfunding through Kickstarter and Profounder, and many more examples not yet built will be transforming business, creativity, production, process.

4. QR Codes. I’m still wrapping my head around them, but they are worth watching, learning more about, and using.

5. iPad (and other tablets). I’ll be honest: I don’t love my iPad. But really, it isn’t a lack of love for the device, which is sleek and uber-portable. The applications don’t do it justice. You can’t just port what was on the computer to the iPhone and then to the iPad. You have to think different. In 2011, some companies will do just that.

6. Apps commerce and communities. When was the last time you bought software in a box? That activity will continue to decrease. I’m pretty sure the Apple App Store will have plenty of competition cropping up in the next year, including the Chrome Web Store, Google Apps Marketplace, and all the mobile device-specific stores, as well as apps communities like OneForty.com. Developers will have more and more outlets for different versions of the apps they’re producing. Marketers will get into the game as well.

Way into the future? I know 2011 isn’t the year, but soon, touch screens will be the norm. My own four-year-old daughter touches every screen she sees, because she has no concept that not every screen operates like an iPod, iPhone or iPad. Soon she won’t have to look at me after touching the television screen to say “Mommy, it’s not working.”

What trends are you watching in 2011?

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I’ve compiled this list of eight reasons why you shouldn’t fear social media for anyone who is still apprehensive about using these tools, particularly for work.

1. Didn’t websites prove to be not so scary after all? Remember when you first heard about the Internet? Email? Websites? Sure, we all had those moments of trepidation, where we weren’t quite sure if someone was going to steal our identity, stalk us, or rip us off. We did our homework, talked with friends and colleagues, took some classes, or hired someone else to help us. We eventually learned that websites weren’t scary, email was useful, and the Internet was changing the way we communicated and worked forever.
2. Social media is not rocket science. Contrary to what the occasional unscrupulous scam artist might want you to believe, there are no “secrets” to social media marketing, and it is not hard to do. You do need to learn the basics, and you probably won’t fully understand how to best leverage social networks and other social platforms until you’ve used them for a while. The question isn’t if you can learn what to do and how to do it well, it really boils down to whether or not you have the time to do it yourself, or if should invest in someone who is well-versed in the ever-changing intricacies of the many aspects of social media.
3. You have are many ways to learn more about it. Start with a search on Amazon for “social media.” There are many books which can present some foundational information about how social media works and differs from other ways we communicate online and off, although keep in mind that within a few months, those books could be mostly outdated. There are also ebooks, articles and blog posts detailing the ins and outs of social media. You can search for “social media” on this blog or read past Social Superstar columns, for example. There are classes from universities to adult continuing education on social media as well as online courses, workshops, teleseminars and tutorials. Your challenge isn’t finding a class but instead is making sure that the sources and instructors are credible, however, a quick search on Google can speak volumes.
4. There are now a myriad of case studies. Just Google “social media case studies,” and you’ll find a slew of results that break down how companies and organizations are using social media with positive results. Sure, you may still have to sift through some hype, but down-to-earth and practical examples of social media marketing tactics being put to use and producing an acceptable return on investment are increasingly prevalent.
5. Many helpful tools are available. As social media marketing continues to mature, more and more companies are producing tools to help you create and manage your social media channels and then measure the growth, activity, and results of your social media activities. A quick starting point for identifying types of tools and popular tools in categories from communications to monitoring is the Wikipedia definition page on social media.
6. You can take baby steps. Any good consultant will tell you that you don’t have to pull out all the stops right out of the gate to successfully leverage social media for your marketing, communications and customer relations efforts. Start small and grow over time. Develop a plan where you identify and pick the right tools, select and roll out your social media channels slowly, and manage them effectively and efficiently. I usually recommend LinkedIn as a good place to start for any professional; it’s as easy to set up as filling out a resume and can get you connected and networking in no time.
7. You can ask questions. As you dip your toe into the social mediasphere, you can pose questions to your friends, fans and followers in your favorite social network and get back near-instant feedback and answers. Try LinkedIn Answers for business-oriented queries about social media. You might also get some useful input from your network and an expanded audience using an answers site like Aardvark. Or you can simply ask people you know who are using social media effectively. Almost anyone you ask is usually happy to provide some tips or thoughts on the matter.
8. You can get help. If you’re still stymied, there are so many ways to get help these days. If you’re looking for someone to help you manage your accounts on a basic level, there are consultants who offer social media management services. Even virtual assistants who are in the business of being detail-oriented and organized are adding top-level social media services to their repertoire. If you’re looking for deeper and more strategic help, there are many reputable social media marketing agencies and, increasingly, advertising agencies and public relations firms are also ramping up their social media offerings.

Working on the web doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be into social networking, tweeting or tumbling, but my advice is that you at least investigate and see what it is you’re missing

Are you still shying away from social media or do you know someone who is? What, if anything, are you doing about it?

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A few months back, I wrote about 6 Ways to Revive a Dead Social Media Channel. I wanted to revisit that and provide a few other takes on what to do when a social network account is languishing or gathering cobwebs. In that post, I assumed you wanted to bring a dead channel back to life and were ready to make a commitment to it. But what if you don’t even think you want to have the account any more?

In order to do a proper assessment of your social network accounts, you first have to find them. A quick and dirty way to do this is to use Namechk, a site that is also helpful to see if your preferred username is already taken. If you’re like me, you are probably using the same username or similar name for each profile you set up bar it being unavailable to you. You can also check your preferred username or names at How Sociable and get back a basic “ranking” to show how sociable you’re being in various popular networks.

How Are You Using Your Networks?

Create a grid with your networks and order them based on how frequently you use them. I don’t know about you, but I use three networks daily and maybe refer to another three occasionally, but I have way more than six accounts out there in the social mediasphere. Here is a very rough example of my social network account grid:

While embarrassing to admit, I also have accounts on: Bebo, hi5, virb, digg, kirtsy, Biz Sugar, Sphinn, Friendfeed, Vimeo, Viddler, Blip.tv, 12seconds.tv, Upcoming, Eventful, Xing, Photobucket, Ning, Mixx, Reddit, Tripit, blippr, Plancast, eCademy, Stumble Upon, Kwippy, Audioboo, Squidoo, last.fm, NetVibes, Gather, Jumo and GiveBac, just to name a few. I also warn you now: Do as I am about to say but not as I do. I’m currently carrying out my assessment process and will begin the clean sweep over the holidays.

Determining Your Next Steps

So now here is the tough part. Once you’ve listed them all — or at least the ones you can find or remember — you need to make some decisions about each of the networks you only visit infrequently. I’ve boiled the choices down to four:

1. Revive it. If you really have the time to make a commitment to keeping those networks alive — or if you haven’t gone overboard so only have a handful a networks to maintain — you can get some helpful tips here: 6 Ways to Revive a Dead Social Media Channel.
2. Kill it. I’ve been on the fence for a long time about whether or not to kill many of my old, tired social network presences and my feeling right now is that I won’t kill them. If the network is really dead, it won’t be an issue. If it is just barely alive, you may want to try #3 or #4 below to keep your presence going with minimal upkeep. If for nothing else, I want to keep accounts with my preferred username even on a network I don’t use; that way nobody else can take my username and create confusion.
3. Refresh it and make it a “gateway.” I like this idea because if you’re going to have presences in multiple sites, they could attract a certain (even if only small) crowd that you could then drive to the key places where you want them to be, such as your blog or your Facebook Page. I’d go for consistency and use the same or similar bio across all of these ancillary networks. After replacing your old and outdated bio with a new, concise one, you may also want to update your image to one that is the same across the board. Then make sure you can enter key links just to the core networks where you want to drive traffic. While many of these networks let you link out to dozens of other networks, resist that urge and stay focused on concentrating on driving traffic to your key presences.
4. Refresh it and feed into it. Another approach is to turn some of these minor networks into satellite presences instead of gateways; not full destinations, but sites where people can get a good feeling for who you are and what you have to say. These are the sites where you can easily import RSS feeds from other sources, like MySpace and Tumblr. For these, I’d recommend focusing on only a few feeds: my blog, Twitter feed and Facebook status updates would be what I’d bring in. The key is to make sure you provide the right balance of messaging as a “package” and then look to place that branded package of key content in the sites where you can. In your bio, you may want to identify the account as containing feeds from your main sites and encourage people to visit — and connect with you — at those.

Trying to wrangle your social network identities and accounts into some semblance of consistency will most likely take a lot of time so be prepared to tackle the process a few accounts at a time.

How many accounts do you think you have, and what are you doing to manage them?

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Facebook offers this explanation of some core changes:

Your profile begins with a quick summary of who you are, giving friends an easy way to see where you live now, where you’re working and more. A collection of recently tagged photos also shows what you’ve been up to lately.

Give a more complete picture of how you spend your time, including your projects at work, the classes you take and other activities you enjoy (like hiking or reading). You can even include the friends who share your experiences.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I believe that many of us are still struggling to find the right balance between our Facebook profiles being highly personal and only for our trusted friends, versus being more professional and safe for our work colleagues to see. I’m also assuming that many of us, like me, are not tinkering under the hood with a fine-toothed comb to make sure our privacy settings are tweaked to perfection.

Given these factors, here are some problems with the new Facebook Profile:

1. Tagged photos take center stage. While you can modify your privacy settings to control the tagging of photos and even untag yourself from other people’s photos, you are now having to “police” the images that show up front and center on your profile page, and they aren’t images that you’ve posted yourself. Before, they were hidden behind a tab and people had to seek them out if they were truly interested in your images, which was fine with me, because the photos that other people post of me and tag aren’t usually the ones I want to showcase.
2. Work info gets pushed to the top. My Facebook profile is my personal account. The fact that I’m founder and owner of Mediaegg isn’t something I want to have at the top of my personal profile. I have a LinkedIn account that serves to showcase my professional work. If I wanted to present my work affiliation on my Facebook page, I’d also want to include that I’m also co-founder and owner of Conversify, but that isn’t an option.
3. Educational info gets pushed to the top. I don’t want to showcase my educational details on Facebook. Again, that purpose is served via LinkedIn. I don’t mind that Facebook links me with former classmates via my high school affiliation, but I went to three colleges, none of which are important connections for me. I can’t remove the education data from the top summary of my profile page without deleting it entirely. There isn’t a “show my education in my profile” checkbox option like there is for gender.
4. “Send message” button is to the right. Maybe this is just a matter of how my brain works, but having the link to send a message to someone when you are on their page should not be on the right-hand side. That link has been on the left-hand side of the page under a person’s profile photo forever. Now when I go to send a message to someone, it catches me off guard.
5. “Friends in common” is gone. Or is it? I’m not entirely certain the “friends in common” feature is entirely gone, but I can’t find it. Ironically, for a service that is about connections, this very helpful feature is not where it used to be.

So, what do I like about the new profiles? I actually don’t mind that Facebook Pages now look different from Profiles — for the time being, at least.

Change can be good, and eventually we’ll all get used to the new Facebook Profiles. But it’s disconcerting when our social networks make assumptions about what we want to reveal or showcase, especially when the changes make it even harder for us to draw distinctions between our personal and professional presences online.

What do you think of the new Facebook Profiles?

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The diagram put the big unknown of one’s social media marketing time commitment into perspective. Kanter’s diagram was by no means discouraging, but led people to say “OK, I will start with listening — that seems manageable.” And that was just what many of us advise people to do when just starting out with social media marketing: Listen.

Two years later, and things have evolved in several ways:

1. There are more tools available to help us take part in social media activities.
2. There are more best practices for newbies to find and follow.
3. There are many tips published online on how to be more efficient in one’s efforts.

I have a new presentation coming up this week to an audience at varying stages of social media adoption, but mostly on the early end of the spectrum. I’m sure I’ll once again get the question “But how long does it take?” So I played around with Kanter’s original diagram to create my own. I wanted to illustrate not only how long each activity should take, but also to identify additional tools that can be useful in each area:

This diagram is by no means perfect, but I’m striving to keep it easy to understand for the layperson. I also wanted to address some of the efficiencies we’ve worked out the more we’ve used these tools. For example, I blogged about how to mine Twitter’s wealth in 15 minutes a day. I wanted to show that you don’t need to spend hours a day on Twitter or Facebook or the like to be effective in your efforts.

I reordered “Participate” and “Generate Buzz” activities from Kanter’s original diagram, and renamed the latter “Promote.”  I reordered them because we now have tools that make promoting something (generating buzz) so much speedier. Participating — even at a cursory level of engagement — really takes more time and consideration even though useful tools are also there. The tools may make it easier for us to monitor and participate in our social media channels, but we are now monitoring and participating in many more channels than before.

What I tried to avoid was listing all of the hundreds of apps that could fit in under each category; instead I referenced the more popular and effective tools to give a sense of what one can use. The main goal of this is to show the person new to all things social media that it doesn’t have to take an unmanageable amount of time to handle your social media activities but as you want to connect more deeply and leverage your social channels more strongly, you will cumulatively rack up the need for a greater time commitment.

I hope this diagram — or a future iteration of it — becomes a useful slide in any Social Media 101 presentation. Eventually, this, too, will become obsolete or irrelevant, but until then, how can it be improved?

What is my diagram missing? Where is it off base? Where is it right on the money?

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At the time, I was using the term “satellite sites” to frame the use of things like a Twitter account or Facebook Page in addition to one’s own website or blog. I later started using the term “gateways” to suggest that Twitter and Facebook Pages weren’t necessarily meant to be destinations in and of themselves, and I used that term after struggling with the word “presences” to refer to one’s social media accounts. Today, I’m mostly using the terms “networks” or “channels,” as in “social media channels.” Better, but still not perfect.

For my 2008 presentation, I wanted to come up with terms to describe the various tools that we were starting to use to share posts and updates to our different channels. I came up with the following terms:

• Social Aggregation Broadcast Tools (SABTs): This referred to the tools that let you add your multiple social media accounts to a single account then post to all or some of them at once. I further classified these as Active SABTs. Today, I’ve heard these tools — such as HelloTxt and Ping.fm — referred to as social media dashboards or social dashboards.
• Passive SABTs: This referred to tools, such as ShareThis and AddThis, where you can install a widget in your site or blog and then let the applications work for you by empowering others to share your content with their networks. Today, these applications are often referred to as sharing platforms or sharing widgets, however, if you check out these company’s sites — including a newer competitor dlvr.it — none of them seem to refer to themselves with a singular umbrella term that sums up what they do.
• Niche SABTs: I used this term for tools that were specific to just one service, such as Tweetburner and Twhirl. Back in 2008, the idea of open APIs for web applications and the development of tools for a single network was still pretty new. Today, entire businesses are founded on leveraging another network’s API to create a new applications. Businesses are even built on aggregating those tools (see OneForty.com).
• Integrated SABTs: This referred to sites and services that were just starting to integrate social sharing tools into their functionality. Remember: This was before the prevalence of applications developed with social media sharing functions as a given, and certainly before Facebook Connect and the like. At this point, we seem to call this social media integration or sharing functionality.

I also used another acronym to refer to monitoring tools that pulled together streams from various networks so you could “listen.” These were Social Aggregation Listening Tools (SALTs). At the time, FriendFeed was the only real example of this. There were also Passive SALTs which included tools like Google Alerts as well as Integrated SALTs which were networks like Facebook that let you pull in other feeds. Today, most popular social media dashboards, such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, and HootSuite cover both listening and broadcasting, not to mention the many enterprise solutions, such as Conversation Miner from Converseon and Cisco’s SocialMiner, which take listening and broadcasting even further and let you route messages and track actions.

What are the terms that come to mind most often when you describe the social media marketing tools you use?

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Are you looking to convince a colleague or a client of the value of social networks? Or perhaps you are still not quite convinced they are actually useful for work? Here’s a list of some basic ways you can use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for specific business activities. No bells, no whistles, just business.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-oriented network. Useful networking and information gathering tools are built right into the tool that you can use immediately with good results.

1. Get answers. LinkedIn offers an integrated feature on its network, LinkedIn Answers, to help you ask questions of up to 200 of your immediate contacts. You get up to a seven days to gather answers to your question, then you rate the answers you’ve received.

2. Showcase your knowledge. The flipside of LinkedIn Answers is that you can respond to other people’s questions and get rated for the value of your answers. It’s good way to network with others while showing what you know.

3. Distribute polls. You can create and send a poll to your first degree contacts for free and feature it on your profile page using the LinkedIn Polls application. Do quick and dirty market research via your network. For a fee starting at $50, you can also send your poll to a targeted slice of the 75 million or so LinkedIn members.

4. Get (and give) recommendations. You can strengthen your network and expand your presence on LinkedIn by giving kudos to other members you know through the LinkedIn Recommendations feature. You can also solicit recommendations from colleagues and clients to add testimonials to your profile.

5. List your business. You can list your company in the LinkedIn company directory for free. You can connect your profile and the profiles of your team members to the listing and provide news updates.  Other business professionals can then follow your business to get the latest updates.

Facebook

Facebook isn’t the most straightforward business tool; it’s primarily focused on socializing. Still, you can’t beat its interconnected features and the potential reach you can have by creating a Page on the network.

6. Build a global — or local — presence. Your Facebook Page can actually be as global or as hyperlocal as you want it to be. It’s a matter of how you design it, market it and manage it. Using Facebook Social Ads, you can zero in on your ideal target audience from Facebook’s rich demographic and psychographic data. When set up strategically, you can get a lot of impact and results for a very affordable price.

7. Build a following. Understanding how to build value into your Facebook Page as well as the dynamics of building an online community are essential for building a targeted, engaged and evangelizing following. Once you hit a critical mass, your Facebook Page’s community will take off, but it will need constant guidance and strategic direction to translate into conversions to sales.

8. Identify and engage “superfans.” I’ve written before about identifying your superfans on Facebook and converting them into grassroots brand ambassadors. Actively engaging your customers in an open dialogue and providing them with the tools they can use to help you spread the word about what you do takes a great deal of thought and consideration but it’s tremendously useful when  done appropriately and effectively.

Twitter

Twitter can be a very effective business tool, but building the kind of following that is large enough and pays enough attention to what you say to be truly valuable takes time.

9. Build your brand. By tweeting relevant and useful information you can showcase your expertise, define your point of view and create a springboard for conversations. Compared to Facebook, it takes time to build a brand on Twitter, but it can prove to be just as valuable.

10. Broadcast timely information. When you have something you need to get out to the public, you can tweet it out. The response you get will be commensurate with the quality of your following, of course.

11. Drive traffic. Again, the usefulness of Twitter as a traffic driver depends on how engaged a following you’ve cultivated. It takes time, attention, and care to build real connections with your customers or potential customers. But once you have an avid following, you can include include links in your messaging to direct people to a website or blog; just make sure there is value for them when they get there.

What business uses are you finding for social media tools and channels?

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Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

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• Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking?
• Social Media in the Enterprise