WASHINGTON, Aug 5, 2009 The Pentagon has launched a study of the use of social networking sites designed to help craft new policies on how the military should use services such as Facebook and Twitter.
Officials said they needed to craft rules that would allow the military to take advantage of the speedy communications without exposing sensitive information or opening computer networks to potential risks.
The answer is yes and yes, you should be studying social networking and should be integrating it into your channel/partnering business. Why?
Certainly not a surprise to get this advice, Facebook, Twitter are in your face all the time, who is buying who how does one or the other make money, yada yada yada. And many of your firms have in fact already engaged in some type of Web 2.0 activity, 88% of marketers in a recent study (Michael Stelzner, March 2009). However, 72% are new to social media in business and the vast majority have focused on generating exposure for the business. Great, good, super, however I believe that a stronger value proposition is in cost effectively tightening and expanding business relationships. Trust, transparency, frictionless access to information will lead to mutually beneficial relationships. The “life blood” of a successful channel, OEM relationship or a business development partnership.
First “Yes”, study the various social media available. It is time well spent to learn about the options and how they work, not just technically but etiquette and rituals of the community. You’re not in Kansas anymore and these are not web sites. Social media is a medium that can make you seem like a interloper at the cool people’s party in high school if you get it wrong. Each of the services have established customs. Run aground of them and your followers or friends or links, etc may turn against you. Some are established by the provider and you see these in the terms of service or use page at each site. LinkedIn prohibits you from using a cartoon as your profile picture, it is the “professional tool”, while in Facebook you will see offers to create a cartoon for you and Homer Simpson seems to have dozens of Facebook pages under many names.
The harder knowledge to gain are the codes of behavior that have grown up in the community. At Twitter for example, there is a conflict inside the community with one side saying one should primarily tell the world what you are doing at that moment and a more liberal side that supports topical Twittering. The best advice is to follow or listen to what is going on for awhile. There are a number of good books that happily teach the ins and outs of these worlds. There are many ways to have social media blow up on you and either waste your time or horror of horrors hurt your firm. One absolute across all “E” media, social or otherwise anything that looks like SPAM is a no no. When in doubt, adding value is the path to take.
What tools do you have in your bag of tricks? Tons, hundreds, gallons....a bunch to be more accurate. InsideCRM.com offers an article “50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence on” , Traffikd.com beats that with a categorized list of 400 social media sites. Interesting references go to it if you want, visit them all, who needs family interaction. However, I want to highlight a few of the sites with my opinions.
LinkedIn - This is the grand daddy of Web 2.0 professional networking sites. It is a relationship based tool vs. connection based. People must accept your invitation to join your network. LinkedIn has extended itself to offer communities from Red Sox Nation to a CIO forum.
Facebook - It is hard to escape stories about Facebook, it is the social networking giant with 250 million active users. Interesting twist here is that there are API’s that make it feasible to extend or integrate with Facebook.
Twitter - Immediate and concise. Your Tweets have to be 140 characters or less, so get to the point. This is a great tool for immediate communication to your partners. Firms can also extend and integrate Twitter.
YouTube - Video beats the heck out of power point slides and it is cheap. Heck with the Flip video cameras you can upload direct to YouTube and your partners can watch the demo rather than read the script.
Content Circles - Gotcha! this is a new one. This is an ad hoc document management system, set up a “circle”, invite partners, and develop documents together always knowing the most current version. Disclaimer, I know the team and have done work with them.
What do we do with this new Web 2.0 knowledge? We will deal with shortly
