On November 13th, 2008, Geoff Livingston and I quietly celebrated the bookversary of Now is Gone, one of the first books that tackled the subject of social media and new PR strategies for corporate marketers and communicators.

As Geoff pointed over out at LivingstonBuzz, the book has earned tremendous milestones:

- Thousands of people have read the book

- We’ve received hundreds of thank yous from folks who said it changed their business life

- Now Is Gone received more than 50 positive reviews

- Thanks to Scott Monty, it was cited by the Wall Street Journal as a resource for small businesses

- The book took the silver medal in the Axiom Business Book Awards

Now Is Gone helps businesses embrace Social Media realistically, intelligently, and authentically as an extension to their corporate marketing initiatives. Readers learn how to participate in social media from how to listen, how to learn and adapt, and to how to engage over time. In addition to sharing best practices, the book also features case studies that demonstrate corporate successes.

If you haven’t read the book yet, Now is Gone is available on Amazon for ~$10.

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Effectively organizing, curating, showcasing, and managing a strategically curated online personal, professional, and corporate brand is critical to how our peers, those we already know and the others we have yet to meet, perceive us in the real world.

Everything we share online, the comments we leave, the posts we publish, the pictures and videos we upload, the updates we tweet, the statuses we broadcast in social networks and lifestreams, contribute to disparate digital recreations of how people perceive us – as an individual, representative of a company, or the corporate brand we manage. While we can’t control the filters of how people ultimately assemble these pieces and assess our personality, reputation, value proposition, and expertise, we can shape and steer perception by sharing tactical and complimentary content that contributes to the brand we wish to portray and represent.

We are all, at some level, becoming brand managers.

The Social Web is a vast universe.

But don’t let its expansiveness deter your goals for creating and cultivating a strategic presence. Whether you’re new to Social Media or an experienced veteran, we are collectively tied to the evolution of the social Web simply by who we know or want to know. To stay connected with friends, family, customers, and professional peers, we join the digital communities that facilitate meaningful and relevant conversations. Evolution is natural and our existing and future relationships will dictate in which communities we remain and those we will eventually embrace.

But how do you know where to establish your online presence and secure your associated brand before it’s either spoken for or hijacked?

A good place to start is by analyzing the Conversation Prism. It provides a visual map that will guide you through the process of identifying communities and conversations related to the brand you represent.

In the era of the socialized Web, brand and reputation management is now integrated as systematic process in our daily routine. We ARE responsible for our personal brand as well as the corporate brand we represent. Securing that online brand and investing in and cultivating an impeccable and influential reputation is critical to establishing and maintaining a consistent, strategic, and complementary presence from network to network.

There is a helpful dashboard now available for brand managers to streamline the process of obtaining and creating online identities.

CheckUserNames cross references every major social network for the availability of your desired username. The results are displayed in one master dashboard, providing you with the ability to determine which networks require your attention and also a direct link to secure the username.

Whether you’re a corporate brand manager or focusing on your personal brand, securing your identity and increasing your visibility in the online communities that are important to your world is constant. Care for these brands and manage their respective reputations well and they will pay dividends in the form of more fruitful, valuable, rewarding , and in some cases, monetizable, relationships online and in the real world.

For a deeper look at the Social Web and its impact on your online persona, please read:

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part I
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part II
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part III

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I attended the Facebook f8 developer conference yesterday in San Francisco and I’m still recovering from the overwhelming experience.

Thousands of developers flocked to the San Francisco Design Center to see their Social Sherpa in person and calibrate with his vision for the next year of propagating the social graph. It’s indeed a movement and his influence can not be underestimated. Comparisons to Steve Jobs were broadcast as freely as the ideas for new apps that were exchanged in almost every conversation.

I was lucky enough to get a front row seat for Zuckerberg’s state of the social network and his plans for making Facebook more pervasive in the socialization of online content and relationships.

Facebook is evolving into our dashboard for relationships and everything we do online, creating a cohesive and simplified connection between us to change and improve how we communicate.

Their mission is no small task, “Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

One of the many announcements that was made at the company’s second annual developer conference was Facebook Connect, and it just may well be the epicenter of our social activity.

With just a bit of code, Facebook Connect enables seamless integration between Web sites, pages, communities, and networks and the Facebook identity system. For example, if you’re commenting on a blog hosted on the Moveable Type platform, you can now login with your Facebook details and not only will your comment and link to your Facebook profile appear on the blog, the activity of commenting is also linked back into your activity feed for your friends and colleagues to see. Digg, another example that was shared on stage, also supports FB Connect, making it possible for Diggers to log on using their centralized Facebook ID and for each story they digg, the activity is documented back on their profile.

Facebook Connect partners include Amiando, CBS.com, CitySearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC, Evite, Flock, Hulu, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo and Xobni.

Yes, it’s practically a direct competitor to the important OpenID system that has invested over the years in the education and development of unifying the social web and personal identities – with one login. FB Connect however, assumes that you want a profile in its proprietary social network, which may or may not be a bad thing. It’s ambitious to say the least. And, unlike OpenID, Facebook is not only the keeper of your online identity, but as I’ve written about for two years, it is also an ideal hub for your online brand. If Facebook is listening, I’m not alone in suggesting that the company should also integrate OpenID. It would be the right, and most promising, thing to do.

FB Connect transforms the social network into a portable profile that travels with you across the Web, placing you and your brand at the center of the experience.

This announcement is significant in my opinion, not just for the opportunity it represents today, but for the implementations and opportunities next month, next quarter, next year, and beyond.

The ongoing integration of support for social services in the Facebook NewsFeed is aggregating and expediting personal lifestreams and quickly becoming representative of our true online activity, painting a vivid picture of who we are and what we represent online and in the real world. With FB Connect the previously isolated silo distributes your identity and creates a direct link back to your profile, which ultimately, is a bright, powerful, and distributed beacon for your personal brand.

Facebook Connect also further socializes and unites the Web.

Now, for example, static Websites can socialize, creating a dynamic link between content and people. Businesses and communities can now directly connect corporate brands with personal brands, and more notable, the people behind them. Social networks can build and leverage expertise and reputation and carry thought leadership, preferences, causes, and relationships from community to community. Facebook Connect is a powerful catalyst for investing in and increasing Social Capital.

Remember, Facebook “public” profiles are indexed in online search engines and can be among the top results when your name is searched.

In the real world, your online reputation proceeds you.

For more on the subject, please read:

Jeremiah Owyang

For more pictures from Facebook, please visit bub.blicio.us or the following albums on flickr:

Mark Zuckerberg Keynote

f8

Mark Zuckerberg Press Conference

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Sam Lawrence lit a fire under those in Social Media and PR today by sharing a story about whether or not his PR agency of record should blog about working with Jive Software.

Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan, Strumpette, and many others discussed it on Twitter (my favorite place for listening to and joining amazing and insightful conversations.)

Sam’s headline says it all, “I want our new PR Agency to blog about us but they don’t want to.”

He’s certainly no stranger to corporate blogging. The Jive blog is rich with community spirit, information, and ideas.

Lawrence continued, “Before we hired them, I told them I thought it would be cool if they blogged about their experiences working on our business. They told me it was a bad idea. I told them I wouldn’t stop asking.”

The agency contends that:
- They don’t want to say anything that could damage relationships with the press or with clients
- They believe an PR Agency should be invisible
- They’re not clear who the target reader would be

Just so we’re clear…his agency’s concerns are not invalid nor are they alone in their thinking.

Lawrence wants his agency to blog because he believes that they have a lot of interesting insight to share. His sense is that their real challenge is not too different than most companies, they’re just not sure how to open up the kimono.

To say the least, Sam just called them out. A perfect first post in response could be, “Why we don’t want to blog about working with Jive Software;” even if it’s their first and last blog post.

I find this conversation very interesting because usually these days, it’s the other way around. Agencies are begging clients to start blogging as a way of listening to, embracing, and conversing with customers.

After much personal research and experience, I’ve found that a genuine, helpful, humanized blog, combined with the art of cultivating and building relationships, can forge real connections, shape perception, improve customer service, and also enhance brand loyalty, reach, and resonance.

This discussion is symbolic and relevant for many reasons.

First and foremost, not everyone needs to, or should blog.

Some people just don’t have anything interesting to say and that’s OK. Not everyone needs to write a book, skydive, or sing karaoke either.

Yes, so openness and transparency are “the new black.” But don’t take it at face value. Think about it first.

Contrary to popular belief, sometimes being open can hurt your brand. It’s just that simple and a reflection and reminder that we are all open to public interpretation and response. Social Media is a powerful medium and it can not be underestimated, taken for granted, or leveraged only because it’s the new, hot trend.

The easy, and most important, answer on whether or not Sam’s agency, or any agency or company should blog is, “it depends.”

Yes, it depends on your customers. It depends on who you want to reach and why. It depends on where your customers go for information. It depends on whether or not doing so will benefit your community.

Instead of insisting that his agency blog, the real question for Sam to ask is, “Will blogging about the experience working with us enrich and improve or cheapen and distract the Jive community…”

The questions for Jive’s agency to ask are, “Will blogging about this or other relationships benefit existing or potential clients? Will we establish thought leadership or give away our ideas. Are we capable of writing authentically and not like most PR people? Will this blog hurt or help relationships with media, analysts and bloggers?”

The process of thinking about this will yield invaluable insight, which can only help companies create a relevant and specific roadmap to define content, readers, format, and approach. I guess I should say, that this process is an absolute must before any company decides to blog, otherwise they’re just blogging to blog (blah blah blah blah) – and that’s never a good idea in the world of real business.

This discussion also highlights another interesting and significant point. Do most traditional PR agencies understand the dynamics of the blogosphere, let alone the task of writing and maintaining a blog?

The answer is profoundly, “NO!”

It is the source of the rising undercurrent of professional bloggers and “people who blog” who publicly flog offending individuals and complain openly about the PR industry. There’s a reason why it is garnering so much attention and also frightening the sh!t out of PR pros .

Blogging, and Social Media in general, change everything and it has the power to create tremendous attention, whether you want it or not.

Traditional PR wasn’t ready to contend with something it can not control. It is this fear that has PR scrambling to learn how to engage and also intimidates many away from blogging. The industry is learning, almost through a baptism by fire, that you just can’t take the same mechanical approach to working with bloggers the way it has with journalists and analysts for so many years. And, you simply can’t just acquire intellectual capital of those who do get it to instantly adapt. It requires a re-examination and reconstruction of the architecture of Public Rela
tions, with an emphasis placed on
“relations.”

At the same time, the majority of writing that defines PR has been dominated by buzz words, hyperbole, and “messages” or defined by ghost-written articles and quotes that place contrived, insincere statements in the mouths of executives and spokespersons.

While it worked for years to generate reasonable success, whether you like it or not, the democratization of content creates and new playing field.

The industry has a lot to learn before it starts pushing content out through today’s social channels. Some get it. Some don’t. Others are learning. The point is that we can all contribute to and learn from this conversation in order to apply relevant principles and lessons-learned to our individual communications strategies.

This entire discussion, and process of exploration and discovery, is forcing the evolution of PR for the better.

This is about being authentic and building trust.

Now, whether Jive’s agency, or all agencies, should blog about client experiences, the answer is, “it depends.”

Here’s what others have to say about the subject:

Craig Cmehil, Jive customer, “As a customer of Jive or any product really I would very much enjoy hearing what PR agency or any group that is working together with the company to improve it, enhance it, grow it, etc.”

Darryl Siry, marketing expert, “I think your customers/community might care about what you have to say but why would they give a damn what your PR agency has to say? It would be a good sign that your PR agency “gets” blogging if they had a blog of their own that was relevant and interesting to their community but getting them to blog about working with you seems like a waste of time and money and wouldn’t really do anything for you or your community. I agree with your agency that if they do their job well they should be invisible.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick, one of my favorite bloggers, “I wonder if they are afraid of being made fun of for not doing a good job of it. I think most PR people believe they have a vested interest in looking supremely professional at all times and that’s not easy to do with a new medium based largely on authenticity. Especially when you’re in PR. Some of my favorite people are in PR, I swear. I actually don’t think everyone needs to blog, either. Some folks just aren’t good at it and would be better of doing their jobs.”

I also received a few responses on Twitter:

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Pierre Far has a thoughtful post asking whether or not Social Media is the final frontier of marketing.

He concludes that if you could answer the question, then you might be the next Seth Godin.

Well, not even Google can help me turn up the consensus on the subject. However, the Holy Grail of marketing is an active discussion.

To be fair, Pierre’s path to staging the original question and exploring potential answers is interesting and insightful.

The history of marketing, as presented, is incomplete however.

But, let’s focus on answering the question he proposed, as I believe that’s where we can be most productive.

Let’s cut to it.

The answer is no.

Social Media is not the final frontier of marketing and it’s premature and even a bit shortsighted to make this conclusion.

Pierre does stop short of making such a bold claim. But there are still a few points of contention. For example, “With the new powerful feedback mechanism implemented in social media, the loop is closed: the communication becomes two-way.”

This is assuming of course that the cycle of communication and closing the loop between customers back to companies was the Holy Grail of marketing. And, it implies, that the cycle of communication wasn’t two-way until now.

First, closing the loop between people and companies isn’t the Holy Grail nor is it the Final Frontier. Furthermore, companies and customers have shared a two-way street over the years, with the only difference between now and then, are the tools and popular psychology and philosophies behind their implementation.

Pierre then aligns Social Media and the Web with the ability to dictate company success or failure, “People have the internet, and anyone can write up his or her thoughts – good or bad – and get thousands of people to read them. If a product is bad, there will be enough people raising their concerns loudly enough that companies have no option but to react very quickly: a few bad reviews could kill a product launch.”

Yes, this is absolutely relevant, and in some cases true.

Could a few bad reviews kill a product?

Unfortunately not.

If so, markets would be rich with fantastic products supported by glowing reviews.

But, let’s be clear and not get too drunk on the Social Media Kool- Aid.

Pierre surmises, “Again, by no means is this new. There is no re-invention of marketing or public relations. That’s not the point. The point is that consumers now have a more potent aggregate power: someone with a problem can now reach others with the same problem faster, build a community around this sharffsed problem easily, and mobilize lots of people behind the common cause more efficiently. That’s what’s new: a significant leap in efficiency. This gives consumers a loud voice that companies have to listen to.”

Customers have always had a voice, drove peer-to-peer influence, and leveraged paths to talk directly to companies. They simply used the tools of time. And, the more savvy customers used traditional PR and the very mediums many companies employed to reach them in order to garner attention, public support, and solutions. Certain companies listened, others did not…and still don’t.

In 1994-5’ish with the popularization of the Web, we saw some of the earliest forms of online Social Media (user groups, enthusiasts sites, forums, bulleting boards, etc.) emerge. Although back then, we called it New Media and, it was around the same time I started talking about PR 2.0 and how the Web would change the entire landscape for marketing and PR.

If anything Social Media, as it exists today, has simply created a more efficient platform which amplified and organized people’s voices as well as democratized content, and in doing so, collectively built a foundation for a new level influence between companies, traditional media, influencers, and people in general.

Social Media doesn’t necessarily replace traditional marketing. Everything is concentric. Everything should work together.

Companies > Influencers > Customers
Companies > People
People > People
People > Companies

Quite simply, the way I define Social Media and Social Media marketing is as follows:

Social Media is anything on the Web that facilitates conversations.

Whereas, Social Media Marketing is the use of social tools to discover, listen to, and engage customers in meaningful, two way conversations.

Remember, there’s a difference between the cultures of the communities that populate Social Networks, the channels that define Social Media, and the tools and technologies people use to communicate.

What strings everything together is listening, understanding, respect, and trust. The rest is just technology.

So in no way is Social Media the final frontier. We’re human. We evolve. Along with it, so the tools and channels for influence.

For example, reaching niche markets, the “Long Tail of PR” as I call it, still proves elusive. Connecting local services to customers online has yet to be conquered. Levera
ging “new media”
to transform people into brand ambassadors without encroaching on blatant advertising or infringing on personal privacy is only experimental now. Facebook had the right idea, for example, but poor execution.

These are all areas that could also be considered the final frontiers of marketing, but they are simply, new opportunities for engagement.

Customer behavior will evolve. And, along with it, new challenges will emerge and present new frontiers for marketing to conquer. Marketing, as always, will be forced to adapt.

Social Media is only the latest catalyst to humanize marketing and shed the traditional approach of positioning faceless companies to speak in messages at nameless audiences while plugging their ears and covering their eyes.

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