I’ve said repeatedly that corporate social media doesn’t have its own strategy any more than Microsoft Word does. Social media is/are a set of really powerful tools, and therefore tactics, not a strategy. But that doesn’t mean a company shouldn’t be everywhere — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and maybe a couple of other places.

Wayne Gretsky said “skate where the puck’s going, not where it’s been.” The companies that are going to win in social media B2B marketing are skating to everywhere the puck has been, is now, and is going to be. It’s a challenge, but the field is still new enough and dynamic enough that winning companies have to have a culture of awareness of the latest social media trends and a willingness to experiment and get out in front of everyone else.

In 2008, I gave a presentation to a group of Forrester analysts on Twitter as an up-and-coming tool for B2B social customer engagement and support, citing the work of Frank Eliason* (then @ComcastCares on Twitter) as an example of highly effective corporate use of Twitter. At that time, at least half the people sitting at the table were still in the “Twitter is a joke; who cares what you had for breakfast?” stage of skepticism.

Location-based services, like early leader Brightkite and then ubiquitous foursquare were met with a hailstorm of derision and fears of people being burglarized because they had divulged the fact they were leaving home via foursquare. Then foursquare went on to ink deals with Bravo, Starbucks, American Express, Zagat and others. Starbucks for crying out loud! Every marketing exec for every app and service going back to Visicalc has cooked up a Starbucks user scenario, but foursquare actually landed them!

I’ve jumped on the new social media bashing bandwagon several times, because it’s good fun and let’s face it, there are plenty of really lame social sites and services. (Can you say, “Blippy?”)

But I digress. My point is, don’t ignore emerging social media channels. Every one of them might have something useful for you. And every one of them, including Facebook and Twitter, was mocked in its early days.

The surge in Pinterest use earlier this year is a perfect example of the adoption curve of a new social media tool. Pinterest was first thought of as a social network for girls, because its interface lent itself to posting of pretty pictures, and we all know pretty things are only for girls. (Seriously…marketers should know better than to stereotype and subsequently ignore target audiences.) Then interest grew and marketing uses emerged. Did you know that Pinterest is driving significant business to eBay and Amazon through affiliate links? And it’s become a great marketing tool unto its own for airlines, personal care products, clothing, home furnishings and more. So go ahead and make fun of it as the Pottery Barn of social networks while others are generating demand and revenue.

My point is this (mixing up sports metaphors which I rarely use): If you build it, and if you use it correctly on a regular basis, they will come. With the possible exception of Second Life (just sayin’), there is almost no harm or risk, and minimal cost to exploring new social media for B2B marketing. Here are a few tips for doing that:

• Be a personal user first. Learn the interface, the etiquette and how people are using it
• Keep an open mind
• Investigate negative reports you hear about a given tool (Pinterest and potential copyright issues, for example), and factor them in your use, but don’t let them distract you from adopting a potentially awesome marketing tool’
• Be authentic and engaging
• Add value
• Try everything once. Or twice
• Think of unique ways your company can benefit from an environment

Obviously, a marketing strategy that includes social media is a complex thing and cannot be defined in a hundred blog posts. I’m not trying to do that here. What I’m trying to do is suggest a strategy of being open-minded about emerging social media to be sure your company takes advantage of every tool at its disposal. Be assured, your competitors are.

* Be sure to check out Frank’s excellent new book At Your Service: How to Attract New Customers, Increase Sales, and Grow Your Business Using Simple Customer Service Techniques.

Tags: pinterest, foursquare, facebook, twitter, social media adoption

The recent news that Thomas Langenbach, a VP at SAP Labs Integration and Certification Center, has been accused of faking bar codes to buy Lego brand building blocks at a discount and then resell them on eBay presents an interesting crisis communications case study. Or does it? A key responsibility of corporate crisis communications is to step in when unusual and extreme news can seriously affect a company’s reputation, and timely communications can minimize the damage done and allow the company’s official point of view to be known.

But should every “executive crisis” get a plan? If a company official is accused of malfeasance in direct connection with his or her duties, say, for insider trading or misappropriation of company funds, that affects the company’s stock and its public perception, and therefore its brand equity as well. It only makes sense that the company would develop a plan for responding to the incident, and would communicate its intentions to do so.

But what about situations in which a company officer commits an act that has nothing to do with his or her role in the company? To come out with a public statement about such a situation might cause the company to be dragged into a story the company doesn’t belong in, causing the company to be associated with the executive’s independent, irrelevant and possibly outrageous behavior.

I don’t know what’s going on inside SAP. It’s impossible to completely set aside Langenbach’s conduct as independent. He is after all a company officer and it is expected that he would behave ethically inside and outside of the company’s corporate offices and within both his career and personal lives.

Certainly Langenbach violated certain company standards of business conduct, and I would expect the company to use this as an opportunity to reinforce its ethical standards. But might the company (pending the outcome of the investigation of Langenbach) sever its relationship with Langenbach and take a simple stand that this conduct won’t be tolerated? It might be the best course.

Tags: crisis communications, sap, lego, ebay, langenbach

Lots of fuss about Facebook’s poor initial stock performance a few days after its IPO. It just goes to show that maybe the stock market isn’t meant to be evaluated on the basis of just a few days’ performance. In fact, if you bought AOL stock on April 5 of this year, you would have paid $18.45 a share, which you could then have dumped on April 9, just two trading days later, for $26.40, a gain of over 43 per cent.

As Facebook prepares for its IPO later this week, the question of valuation, and the role of its gigantic (even by global geopolitical standards) user base is among the most contested issues.

Not everyone agrees on how many users Facebook has. Like most networks/media sites, the company has various ways of looking at users. Facebook reported 901 million monthly active users last month. It reported 483 million daily active users in its IPO filing.

And one person’s “active” user may be another person’s dormant or even spurious account. “Facebook’s IPO documents define ‘active’ users and finds that many of them may never visit the site. Facebook counts you as ‘active’ if your only involvement with the service is setting it up to republish your Twitter feed, or if you click ‘Like’ buttons but never log in to the actual service,” writes Cory Doctorow on boingboing, accusing the company of using “funny accounting” in its IPO documents.

Why does it matter? It matters to investors who want to buy and sell the stock and make money on it. Network valuations are heavily based on number of subscribers (number of people to sell advertising to.) That’s what makes a media company. For the same reason it also matters to advertisers, none of whom intend to reach anything like Facebook’s entire user base, but see the number as consumer validation of the importance of the platform.

Tags: facebook, ipo, active, daily, monthly, users

Facebook recently announced that they are testing a service whereby, for $2, users could highlight their status updates so they stand out from the other updates in the timeline.

This has created a fuss among some people who have called this shameless self promotion (a tautology if there ever was one) and social media douchebaggery.

I’m no douche bag and I don’t consider myself a brand either, but isn’t Facebook the brand mecca? Twitter has promoted tweets, promoted trending topics and promoted accounts. Brands are all over Facebook and which ones wouldn’t want to highlight all or some of their status updates?

What’s so shocking about Facebook doing the same? Facebook isn’t a social network. It’s a personal and business communications environment FUNDED BY ADVERTISING ALONE. If Facebook has nothing to sell it has no way to continue to provide this service that we all apparently value and use daily.

Tags: facebook, promoted, status update, highlighted