I had the pleasure of speaking with Joanne Kisling and a group of Sun people this morning about my book SocialCorp. Joanne asked me about the barriers to corporate social media adoption and how communicators can help overcome resistance from company gatekeepers. Give it a listen over on Sun.com or download the MP3!

Tags: SocialCorp, social media adoption

In my book, SocialCorp, I identify what I think are the Six Valuable Attributes that make social media a powerful tool in a corporate communications. These are:

• Authenticity – Social media lets the real voices of real people come through, allowing an intimacy never achieved before in corporate communications.

• Transparency – There are two kinds of transparency in corporate social media. The first is traditional financial transparency, the ability for shareholders and regulators to see how well a company is performing financially. The second definition, closely related, is that through company blogs, communities and other vehicles, the rest of a company’s inner workings can also be made visible to the public.

• Immediacy – Immediacy is the ability of companies, bloggers, journalists and members of the public to communicate, and to engage in online conversations at unprecedented speed. A blog post can be written, formatted and published in minutes. Twitter updates happen in the blink of an eye. Live video is now within reach of anyone with a handicam, or even a cell phone with a video camera.

• Participation – Once the domain of company authorized communicators, a useful, current definition of corporate communications recognizes that anyone can participate in the conversation, whether on the company’s blog, independent forums, personal blogs, Twitter, Slashdot, or any of a thousand places online.

• Connectedness – Through a multitude of mechanisms for sharing information, social media allows millions of connections to take place, amplifying the impact of company communications. RSS feeds allow information posted in one place to be instantly displayed in thousand of other places. Social bookmarking sites like Digg allow users to easily share stories with others.

• Accountability – While one of the characteristics of the Internet is supposedly anonymity, and this is true in some cases, people who use social media are more accountable than they might realize. Many companies, and their PR and marketing agencies, have tried to “game the system” through unethical practices like astroturfing, the practice of falsifying grassroots support for a product, company, service or point of view by having paid company representatives leave anonymous comments. Over and over again, these companies are caught and publicly vilified. Seemingly anonymous postings leave a trail of IP addresses and other clues that are detected and publicized by vigilant users.

In a recent blog post, Rob Whetzel of Rottman Creative, talked about his experience easing into participation as he learned each social network and social media tool.

Do you agree that these attributes are important? Which are the most important? What would you add?

I was quoted in today’s Launch magazine in Do’s and Don’ts of Using Social Internet Sites for Business. In the article, I offer the following advice on adding and interacting with contacts on various social networks:

“Don’t forget your manners.

While nearly all social networks have rules for participation (don’t post obscenities or copyrighted material, for example), the etiquette for adding people to each network is defined by the mores of those on the network, Postman says. He offers a few guidelines:

• Users should be particularly careful to avoid the appearance of flirtation and inappropriate comments and messages. Use the same rules as you would in the workplace.
• Don’t send blatantly commercial messages. Business networking is OK. Shameless promotion and cold calling is not.
• If the network allows, give the person you are inviting some context for the invitation.
• Do not take it badly if someone declines or ignores your invitation to connect. That’s their option.”

The full article can be found here.

Tags: Launch, Grow Utah Ventures, social network etiquette, Facebook, Twitter

One of my favorite Twitter users is PopeyesChicken. I even complimented the company in my post “Seven rules for establishing a corporate presence on Twitter” for being human and having a sense of humor. (The guy behind the account used to make inappropriate “nuggets” jokes which I really appreciated.)

But a few days ago, my romance with PopeyesChicken ended abruptly when I got a notice from Socialtoo that Popeyes had unfollowed me. I checked my followers list and verified the awful truth: dumped by a chicken. I’ve heard of people breaking up on social networks, but an unfollow has to be the unkindest click of the mouse.

Not long after, I discovered that Kentucky Fried Chicken was also on Twitter, as KFC_colonel. I guess I was on the rebound, so I decided to openly support KFC on Twitter as a way of retaliating against Popeyes for snubbing me. I promoted KFC with tweets like: “People behind @kfc_colonel are nice folks! Let’s help them out with a follow so they can achieve chicken parity on Twitter!” and “Slay the demon that is @Popeyeschicken!”

Keep in mind this was all in good fun. I don’t mind being unfollowed. OK, a little. I weep openly.

I included Popeyes in my updates hoping they would pick it up, and they did, tweeting: “I never quit following @jpostman! He must just want a piece of me. Looks like he’s gone over to the dark side.” Eventually they added me back and DM’d me that they hadn’t intentionally unfollowed. As KFC_colonel put it: “I love a story with a happy ending! Life’s too short to fight. Unless you’re fighting for the last piece of chicken in a bucket.”

I think it’s awesome that two “corporate spokespeople” can provide a useful customer service and have some fun while doing it. So if you’re on Twitter, follow them both if you don’t already. I’m going to chicken out and not say which one I prefer. I’ll just say they’re equally entertaining.

Update April 28, 2009: I just learned from a post by J C Lamkin on the Technically Speaking Radio blog http://is.gd/v8eK that Church’s Chicken is now on Twitter. Let the great Twitter chicken wars continue!

Rian ONeill Named Winner of February Promotion for a Signed Copy of SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate

Comments are still open on this post, but the promotion to leave a comment below to win a free copy of SocialCorp has ended. Rian ONeill is the winner! Congratulations Rian! Many thanks to everyone who commented and especially to @KFC_colonel and @PopeyesChicken for being tremendous good sports and great company spokespeople on Twitter!

Tags: Twitter, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Popeyes Chicken, unfollow, follow, Socialtoo

(20:00 PST, Feb 10, 2009, Updated, see below)

Twitterland is chirping with this morning’s news that Twitter has announced its intention to start charging commercial users of the service. If anything good comes to Web 2.0 out of the economic downturn it’s the realization that the “free” (don’t get me started on free) business model is not sustainable and actually hurts users.

The report appeared in a piece by Fiona Ramsay in Twitter to Begin Charging Brands for Commercial Use* in Marketing Magazine (UK), in which Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said, “We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.” Stone did not elaborate on what those ways are, or what kind of charges might be assessed. He also gave his assurance that individuals would not be charged for Twitter.

Why It’s Good News

The announcement is great news. First, Twitter could use the revenue to build more reliable IT infrastructure. Service interruptions, unpredictable availability of features and spotty performance are chronic Twitter problems. The monthly service charges probably wouldn’t fund a new data center, but the validation that Twitter can make money would increase its valuation and attract more investment. Ultimately, a commercial model will bring new reliability and new functionality to all users.

The other important outcome of this was touched on by Chris Anderson in The Economics of Giving it Away in the February 2 Wall Street Journal:

“Free is not enough. It also has to be matched with Paid … today’s Web entrepreneurs have to not just invent products that people love, but also those that they will pay for. Not all of the people or even most of them — free is still great marketing and bits are still too cheap to meter — but enough to pay the bills. Free may be the best price, but it can’t be the only one.”

By making the move to at least a partially commercial model, Twitter is sending a signal that the service has worth (and costs). Not everything in the online world wants to be free, nor can it be.

I know it sounds like I am arguing against my own best interests when I advocate the transition from free to paid for the services and content I use. But when I consider the alternative, a world in which everything is “paid for” with spam, contextual crap advertising, and phony informational content that is not so subtly marketing a product or service, I am glad to pay for a few choice things.

What Is a Twitter Account Worth to a Large Business?

Along with HTML and the web browser, e-mail, and instant messaging, I doubt there is anything that has changed the way people use the Internet, and the way they communicate, more than Twitter has. But just what is Twitter worth to a business? Twitter hasn’t made any such announcement, but let’s assume that “commercial users” are companies over a certain size, say, 100 people. (I would hate to see my good friends at House of Jerky or Etsy craft people charged to use Twitter, for example. That would certainly drive them off the site.) How much does a large corporation pay to keep up its web site home page, and what are the comparable benefits of using Twitter?

I have no idea what Twitter is thinking about this, but $20 a month or even $100 seems like nothing to GM (no bailout joke intended here), Dell or Comcast.  And speaking of Dell, according to the Marketing  piece “Bob Pearson, vice-president of communities and conversations at Dell, said: ‘If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere.’” Where Bob, Plurk? Pownce? If you’re a consumer business and you find benefit to being on Twitter, there is no elsewhere.

This raises a number of questions. Is the move is a good thing for individual users? For businesses? What criteria should be used in identifying “commercial” Twitter use? Would the term apply to anyone selling a product or service? How much should Twitter charge for commercial use?

Update: Apparently the Marketing UK reporter misinterpreted Biz Stone’s remarks. According to a blog post by Stone, ideas for how Twitter might make money have been “shared publicly for quite some time,” and there is nothing new to report.

* Why do marketers refer to corporate entities as “brands”? They’re businesses, not brands, in this instance. Stop the industry doublespeak madness!

Tags: Twitter, Biz Stone, commercial use, paid, charge