Come find me at http://dbthomas.com/blog

I finally made the move to a self-hosted blog. It’s at http://dbthomas.com/blog. I’ll be deleting this one eventually.

Thanks!

Twitterary aspirations

This morning The Mrs and I took The Boy to the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (as I was required to write it when I was a reporter) for the North Carolina Literary Festival. The two of them went to listen to children’s book authors and I went to a panel called “Tweeting: A New Form of Writing.” The panelists were Paul Jones, Mur Lafferty and Wayne Sutton. (Clearly they did not agree on a dress code.)

Over the last year or so I’ve been in a lot of conversations about Twitter, as well as listening to panel discussions and webcasts about it. But to date I had not been to any Twitter discussions where poets ask panelists questions about accessing their unconscious.

It was a different world, and I liked being there.

Those of us who are trying to incorporate social media into marketing communications have to keep reminding ourselves, as Wayne reminded me, that social media is about community and conversation. That can be a hard message to spread through any enterprise that’s more used to delivering “messaging” than making connections.

But forget about marketing for a minute. As Wayne pointed out, tweeting helps you unlock unconscious ways of thinking that make you a more interesting communicator.

You could take that a step further and say social media can make you a more interesting person, if you work at it. The more you care about your audience and the better you understand the medium, the more likely you are to share information in a way that will be compelling, amusing or thought provoking.

Artists talk about developing their craft. That’s equally important if you’re writing a poem, a novel, a tweet or a blog post.

On a side note, it was great to see Wayne on that panel, representing those of us who some in the audience might see as the people ruining Twitter. Wayne is a perfect ambassador for social media in general and social media in the Triangle in particular. It’s inspiring to see someone at the convergence of social media and marketing being publicly recognized for doing it the right way.

Nine easy ways to write a blog post

My colleague Alison Bolen, editor of sascom magazine and the sascom voices blog, does a great job coaching our bloggers here at SAS. We had a meeting last week with a group of bloggers to help them deal with some of the issues involved in blogging regularly while at the same balancing the pesky demands of having a job. One piece of advice we both find ourselves giving people is, “Not every blog post has to be a white paper.”

So in honor of 09/09/09, here’s Alison’s list (with one or two additions from me) of nine easy ways to write a blog post.

1. Go through your sent items on Friday. Pull out anything that’s more than five paragraphs long and polish it into a blog post.
2. Go to search.twitter.com and search for two key words. Write a three-paragraph post that responds to one or more of these tweets.
3. What are you consuming? Business books, other blogs, podcasts, TV shows – anything that you’re finding especially useful and interesting? Tell people about it in two or three paragraphs.
4. Take 20 minutes at the end of the day and think about who you’ve talked to today and what you’ve learned. How can you summarize that into a 200-word post that others can learn from as well?
5. What did you explain to someone today that you’ve explained at least three times before? If you get asked often enough, others would probably love to hear the explanation too. Give it to them in a blog post.
6. What cool things are your customers doing? What have you learned from them lately? What innovative ways are they using your product or service? Can’t talk about customers without approval? Maybe you can mention them anonymously. Give details, just not names.
7. What documents or presentations are you working on right now? Can you excerpt two or three paragraphs into a quick blog post to give readers a sneak peak?
8. What are you researching? What would you like to learn more about? Ask your readers to explain it to you. Or do a Twitter search on the topic and see what you find. Link to results and share your thoughts.
9. Read the blogs on your blog roll. Find at least one to comment on. Then copy your comment on your blog and expand on it slightly. Link back to original post.

Is it bothering you that it’s nine, and not Top Ten? Okay, then:

10. Write a top 10 list.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

I’m feeling a little too connected

Six months or so ago I created a FriendFeed account, because lots of people were saying it was better than Twitter. I set it up to pull in all my accounts, including my Netflix queue (why?), then pretty much left it alone.

Earlier this week I set up a Posterous account, linked it to all my other accounts and set up all the different email addresses I could use to send posts to whatever combination of accounts I could imagine (Flickr+Blogger+Facebook, Twitter+WordPress, etc.). Then I realized I don’t really need to do that.

This morning I sent an @ reply on Twitter to Louis Gray, who I follow but don’t actually know. It was just a quick joke in response to something he’d said. I got home tonight and saw in my Gmail account a message from him, via Friendfeed, asking if I was both David and Angela. What?

I followed the link to FriendFeed where my tweets are showing up in someone else’s stream. After an hour of digging around, I think I figured it out. It’s a feed set up by someone I know to pull in SAS-related tweets around our annual user conference. But if you look at the stream, they all seem to be coming from her. Just a small peculiarity, but it seems that if you @ reply someone on Twitter who you are mutually subscribed to on FriendFeed, it compounds the confusion.

Did that make any sense to you? If so, I will pay you money to explain it to me. As I am writing this blog post, she and I are direct messaging back and forth on Twitter trying to figure it out.

The whole exercise made me feel kind of nuts, like having an anxiety dream where you realize you forgot to drop a class and didn’t actually graduate. (I’d been out of college for ten years before I stopped having that dream.)

I have three computers and an iPhone. I have two separate contact lists, six email addresses (not including LinkedIn and Facebook email and Twitter direct messages), and more social media/social network accounts than I could probably count. I have unread messages in something like eight different places. (My apologies to anyone I owe a reply to on BrightKite or Audioboo.) Let’s not even talk about my RSS reader. Or all the barely-touched sharing apps on my iPhone that are supposed to make all of this easier.

I need a break. This is starting to feel a bit like a compulsion. My wife, I feel comfortably certain, would not argue.

What’s the larger message here, just to try to tie this rant/cry for help back to the theme of this blog?

You don’t have to do everything.

Take a look at what other people and organizations like yours are doing, and pick a few that seem to make sense for you. These days you can’t go too far wrong by focusing on blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Concentrate on those (or just one or two to start), on getting comfortable with them, building a network and providing value in those channels.

Other than a very few people who base their reputation on being on the cutting edge of social media marketing, nobody has to be active in all the available spaces.

Keep it simple and enjoy it.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

Twitter vulnerability: beware unknown followers

One of our SAS cybersleuths just notified me that some good guys have identified a vulnerability in Twitter that could allow the bad guys to take over your Twitter account, and all you’d have to do to allow it is view a tweet. Maybe you read about it at Techcrunch. Twitter is apparently working to fix this, and as always in life and the Internet it’s probably the odds that keep you safest, but best to be extra careful in accepting follow requests, and ignore any that look dodgy. And if you automatically follow everyone who follows you, stop.

Techcrunch also suggests that using third-party apps like TweetDeck or Seesmic will give a measure of safety, and recommends avoiding twitter.com for a few days. They’ve got some other good info as well.

What do I mean by dodgy-looking? Evaluate a Twitter follow request the same way you would an email before you open the attachment. Do you know the person? If not, can you be reasonably certain they’re legitimate? Do they have some crazy made-up name like Vluella Flaminglee or Cordney Spewsterson? Are they following 10,000 people and nobody is following them? Do they have a legitimate link to a real web page in their Twitter bio? Does their photo look like a real person, or does it look like they took the picture from a dating site? Are they tweeting about real stuff like a real person? Is there some reason you can see from their info that would make them want to follow you?

Obviously no list of suggestions like this can ever be comprehensive enough to ward off a clever and determined attack if you’re one of the unlucky to get caught before reasonable countermeasures can be put in place, but common sense is always your best weapon.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

What’s your dirty little secret?

I just read a great post from David Armano called “Social Media’s Top 10 Dirty Little Secrets,” pointing out some of the things many of us are thinking but not saying. I, for one, am getting tired of the social media fishbowl where “experts” share their opinions on the necessity of cutting edge tools and techniques that those of us in the real world are nowhere near ready to adopt. I alluded to that in my “Stop telling me what to do” post.

And yes, I’m ready for a lull in new technologies. I’m already behind on figuring out Friendfeed and now I feel like I need to get on top of Posterous. In reality probably the best thing I could be doing is reading more blogs and writing more in this one. I tell people all the time that “blog posts don’t have to be white papers” and offer tips for writing more frequently, yet I’ll go a week or two (or more) without posting.

I guess you can’t call that my dirty little secret, since it’s right out here on the Internet for people to see.

What’s yours?

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

Notes from the B2B social media panel at SocialFresh

I’m in Charlotte, NC today for the Social Fresh social media conference. I’m on the Social Media B2B panel with Nathan Gilliatt and Jeff Cohen, moderated by Kipp Bodnar.

When we met a few weeks ago, we decided we wanted to share stories, engage the audience and interact with them, so we decided not to make slides. I know that’s the cutting-edge view these days but for a guy like me with a corporate background, being told we’d be presenting without slides makes me only slightly less uncomfortable than being told we’d be presenting without pants.

Since I don’t have a slide deck to share with you, here are some of the questions we identified in advance, and the answers I wrote out in preparation.

Let’s get this out of the way. What do you say to B2B folks who say their customers aren’t online?

Everybody needs to be the expert in their own market, so if you tell me your customers aren’t online, I’m not going to stand here and tell you you’re wrong. But these days in nearly every business, at least some of your customers are going to be online. If they aren’t yet, they will be sooner than you think. And even if you don’t think your customers are online, are your competitors?

What are some successful practices you have seen or used to ensure that your social media strategy aligned with business objectives?

You need to think of social media as a set of tools, not as a strategy in themselves. Presumably you already have established objectives for your business, and you probably also have a marketing and communications plan. Don’t think, “What is our social media strategy?” Think, “What is our established marketing strategy and how can social media support that?”

Don’t just get on Twitter for the sake of being on Twitter. Look at your marketing campaigns and see if Twitter can support them.

Are you going to a trade show? Do you have a goal of getting a certain number of people to your booth? That’s a measurable goal and something you can support with social media. Does the show have a hashtag? Is there a Facebook event page for the show? Those become other avenues, in addition to the ones that have been successful in the past, that you can pursue.

Social media isn’t always the best option from a marketing standpoint. How do you define the ROI before you decide to execute?

Don’t abandon anything that’s working for you in favor of social media. Think of social media as another tool. Make sure you have a measurable objective before you start. “We want to increase web traffic to our marketing campaign landing page by 30 percent over the next quarter.” That’s a measurable objective.

What social media tools are you going to use and how are you going to track them? Once you establish the metrics and the method of measurement, and if you take the time to do it in a comprehensive manner, you’ll see what kind of results you get. Then you’ve established a benchmark. And let’s not underestimate the importance of establishing benchmarks.

If you’re just getting started in social media, then “Establish a benchmark” is a valid objective.

The big question: Who should “own” social media in an organization?

I have two answers for that. The first is, it should be owned by the person or people who are most enthusiastic about social media; the ones who are champing at the bit to get started. Because if you force it down the throat of someone who doesn’t know or care about social media, it’s just going to become another chore, and you won’t see any progress.

Now that’s not always practical, so my politic answer is, “It depends,” both on the size and type of your organization, and what you hope to accomplish with social media. Ultimately you want to make social media tools available to everyone in your organization who has a role in communicating a message.

Marketing folks should be in charge of how they use social media to support marketing campaigns and generate leads. The external comms or PR folks should be responsible for the reputation monitoring and management aspects. Your sales folks should be using social media tools for prospecting, getting market information and building and maintaining relatioships. Your tech support and customer service folks need to take responsibility for doing those tasks in social media.

But if you have to start with overall responsibility in one place, my bias is toward the marketing communications or PR folks, because they should have an overall view of your branding, messaging and communications objectives.

Is there value in allocating resources to educate customers about social media?

Absolutely. If your customers are interested in social media and want to get started, if you show them how to do it, you’re creating a built-in audience for your message. My father jokes that he’s a Mac guy because the first computer he ever used at work was a Mac, and he imprinted on it the way a baby bird imprints on the first thing it sees when it comes out of the shell. If your customers learn how to use Twitter because you teach them, you can be pretty sure they’re going to follow you.

If you’re worried that your information isn’t getting through the noise to your customers, create a campaign to show them how to use RSS feeds, and make your feeds easy for them to get.

And even if you’re not very active yourself yet, I think there’s a tremendous value in saying, “Are you curious about social media? So are we. Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our blog, and we’ll figure it out together.”

When is social media wrong for B2B?

Again, everyone needs to be the expert in their own market. If you’re not sure if social media is right for your audience, you need to do some research, whether it’s web research and reading analyst reports, or just asking your customers directly.

But it’s true there are times when social media isn’t going to be a viable option. If you have a lot of customers in government, for instance, you might find they can’t use social networks at work. If you’re in a very traditional industry and your major customers block access to YouTube, for instance, you wouldn’t put a lot of time and effort into a video campaign.

Do I ask for permission or forgiveness?

That depends on your company and your boss, but speaking as someone who works for a company of 11,000 people, it’s much easier for me to do my job when I have consensus, and when I have a reputation for being someone who can be trusted to take all the relevant factors into consideration before beginning an initiative.

What is the most important thing companies should know about starting a B2B focused blog?

Find someone to write it who is really excited by the prospect, not someone who should do it based on their title or position and isn’t really interested. Ideally it would be someone who already has a blog about your industry. Then make it a part of his or her job and make sure it’s built into that person’s job description, so they can make it a priority and keep it active. Because I still believe a dormant blog is worse than no blog at all.

What should folks read to stay current on social media and thoughts on its marketing applications?

ChrisBrogan.com, mashable.com, socialmediab2b.com, ConversationsMatter.org, socialmediatoday.com, the Marketing Over Coffee podcast.

What should folks tell their boss about what they learn from this panel?

If you think you don’t have time to get involved in social media, look at all the information you share every day either through email, on the phone, in conversation, in meetings, the articles you forward to you friends. You could be sharing all of that on a blog, on Twitter or in a social network. Once you get started and develop your “social media muscle,” you’ll start finding more and more to share.

You don’t have to do everything, but you can’t do nothing, so do something.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

Five steps for getting started on Twitter

I got a lot of positive comments on my Four Step Plan for Getting Started in Social Media. It reminded me that people are at all different levels of knowledge and interest in social media. When you spend all day thinking about it and using it, it’s easy to forget that lots of people still want the basics.

So, here are some basic steps for getting started on Twitter:

What Twitter is good for

• Many of the advantages of blogging in a short, quick format.
• You can support your other communications channels and activities by promoting them on Twitter.
• Hashtags allow you to gain a presence in and around events, conferences and issues.
• Twitter search can show you who’s talking about what.
• It’s still a relatively small community in many professions, allowing you to make connections.

What Twitter is not good for

• Twitter is a tool, not a strategy.
• You have to be interesting to get followers; it’s not the place for heavy-handed sales pitches.
• It’s a firehose, and it’s getting worse. You need filtering tools to find the value (TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, Hootsuite).

Getting started on Twitter

• Create an account, using your real name, and set up your profile.
• Use the search function to find people to follow in your industry, and follow who they’re following.
• Get to know the standards of the community and the way people use it.
• Think about all the useful and interesting information you encounter every day.
• Start contributing.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

Four-step plan for getting started in social media

Because of my job as social media manager at SAS, a lot of people ask me how to get started in social media. I’m working on several different resources to help our sales, marketing and communications folks understand how to integrate social media into their activities and provide bottom-line value. Some are done, some will be ready soon, some are still in the pipeline.

But I get frustrated. Sometimes I just want to shout, “Here! Go do this!”

So here it is, my bare-bones Four-Step Plan for Getting Started in Social Media. Is it perfect? No. Does it cover every base? Not even close. Will it get you started and help you figure out what’s useful for you and how to move forward?

Yes.

Ready? Here we go:

1. Join LinkedIn, create your profile and search for groups relevant to your professional activities.

2. Do that on Facebook, too.

3. Use Google Blog Search to find the most important blogs in your industry, and set up an RSS reader like Google Reader to help you quickly and easily follow them.

4. Join Twitter, set up your profile and use the search function to find people talking about things relevant to you. Follow them and see what they talk about.

There. Go do that and come back and tell me how it went.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

Stop telling me what to do

If you’re active in social media, especially if it’s part of your job, you’ve probably gotten used to the feeling that you’re doing everything wrong, or that you aren’t doing enough. In the past few weeks, I’ve been told – directly or indirectly – that a Facebook fan page is vital to our brand and we need to get one ASAP, that we’re using Twitter wrong, that we need a much more aggressive video strategy in social media, that we need to radically expand our blogging program and that I shouldn’t be allowed to have my job because I moderate comments on this blog, instead of making them open. I’m sure I could think of more.

That’s one of the hazards of reading the social media thought leaders, and the people who, for whatever reason, can do whatever they want in social media. If you, like me, are trying to integrate social media into a large company, you have a lot more factors to consider than a startup with five people or a small company with a one- or two-person marketing department.

We have 11,000 employees around the world. We have a marketing division, a legal department, an HR department, an IT organization, an external communications team, an internal communications team, a creative services department, and others who have a vested interest in how we communicate, how we present ourselves as a brand, and how we behave online.

Things don’t happen overnight.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have a sense of urgency, or that we don’t understand the value of social media. But it does mean that it takes some time to make major changes.

I try to keep that in mind when I read about the next big thing we aren’t doing yet, or just as accurately the next big thing from six months ago we’re still investigating. Or the thing we’re doing wrong, or that we aren’t pushing hard enough. We have to set priorities and address what makes the most sense for us, and that means we’ll never be doing everything we could, or doing everything the way we’re “supposed” to be.

If you’ve never worked in a big corporate environment, it’s easy to say, “Just go for it and see what happens.” If you’re in it on a daily basis, you know that consensus takes time but yields the strongest results.

Feel free to accuse me of making excuses. But I’m not speaking to the mavericks and the consultants and the gurus and the startups. I’m speaking to the people who have jobs like mine in companies like mine.

There are a lot of experts out there who will tell you what you need to do. Read what they have to say. Study the success stories and case studies from companies like yours. Keep up to date with the news and trends and tech.

But only you can decide what will work best in your organization.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog