Selling Social Media to Your Boss

Unlike advertising, an expense that stops generating dividends when you stop buying it, social media is an asset, since online content has the potential to pay dividends in perpetuity. Learn to how to articulate why in this lecture on how to sell social media services.

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

Many business owners think social media is just a new mass media channel. But in mass media is about reach and frequency. Social media is about relationships. Learn how to explain how social media outperforms mass media, and how it can be used to get through filters prospects set up to block marketers from contacting them.

Unlike conventional offline marketing channels, like print collateral, print advertising and trade show exhibitions, online marketing can be found through web search and shared through social media. Learn how to sell the value of social media to the C suite in this course on How to Sell Social Media Services.

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.99

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

Poor search visibility is a great reason to implement social media communications. Learn to sell social media marketing against search visibility. Learn basic keyword discovery and keyword search volume analysis in this workshop on sellling social meida marketing services.

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media.

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

Screencast explanations on how to position social media as an extension of marketing, sales and PR.

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

Sell social media by showing clients how they can use it to conduct their existing marketing, public relations and promotions more effectively. Social media allows marketers to make offline their activities accessible online, where a much larger market awaits

Sell from a position of strength by showing your sales prospect which of thier employee's are using social meida already.  Find out how to quickly identify and surface posts by their employee's, and learn hoe to figure out which ones are the most influential. Social media marketers need a champion on the client side to be successful, so know who your candidates are before your pitch meeting.  And learn to show your prospect which of their existing employees are already social media champions.

Sell social media more effectively by tailoring your strategy to your prospect's existing corporate culture. Get Eric Schwartzman's unique methodology for building a go to market social media startegy that support your client's management culture.

Get the secrets of selling social media from Eric Schwartzman, the best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book devoted exclusively to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past nine years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace

Sell social media marketing services to clients by using advanced queries to shortcut the search for buyer activity on social networks.

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

Sell social media services by showing how mobile marketers are using apps to reach prospective customers.  See demos of how to find customers to sell social media to, as well as how to find your prospective customers competitors who are marketing via mobile devices.

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

Sell social media more effectively by tailoring your strategy to your prospect's existing corporate culture. Get Eric Schwartzman's unique methodology for building a go to market social media startegy that support your client's management culture.

Get the secrets of selling social media from Eric Schwartzman, the best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book devoted exclusively to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past nine years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

How to download the first chapter of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer" for FREE.

Get the secrets of how to sell social media from Eric Schwartzman, best-selling coauthor of "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book exclusively devoted to B2B applications of social media. 

Over the past 9 years, Eric Schwartzman has led social media training seminars at  Boeing, City National Bank, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Dept. of State, the Singapore Ministry of Health, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the US Embassies to Rome, Athens and Kuala Lumpur, NORAD, US Pacific Command, the United States Marine Corps, UCLA and dozens of small to medium sized organizations as well.

You don’t have to be a techie to take this course. If you can surf the web, point, click, drag and drop, this workshop is for you! You can pause rewind and replay the screen cast demos in this course as many times as you like and learn at your own pace.

If your job involves building the business case and winning executive buy-in for social media initiatives inside organizations, you don’t want to miss this audio discussion between Eric Schwartzman and Brian Solis. Over the last few years, Brian Solis has shot like a rocket to the top of the social media influence pyramid. His Conversation Prism has become the de facto graphic for appraising social media channels.

His latest book "Business as Usual" provides practical guidance for piloting social media initiatives inside organizations. In this audio recording, which was conducted in association with research Eric Schwartzman conducted for his book "Social Marketing to the Business Customer" on B2B social media published by Wiley, Brian shares how he wins buy-in and acceptance for social media pilot programs with corporate stakeholders inside organizations.

NOTES:

01:24 – Brian talks about the “ah-ha” and “uh-oh” moments, which usually crystallize the perceived need for social media engagement inside organizations.

02:49 – Using the Conversation Prism to collect meaningful research by searching the each of the different social media channels to uncover where the hot spots are for any given organization. And based on the findings from those queries, Brian talks about designing social media initiatives that address tangible business needs.

03:31 – Without the research that comes from a thorough investigation of who’s saying what where about a given product, brand or service, there’s no way to ask the right questions to have the “ah-ha” moment. According to Brian, it is important to understand that conversations are constantly occurring online that drive all kinds of business decisions. And unless we actually seek out and gauge in the right conversations by listening through filters those decisions will be made without us. It’s the realization that there are not just conversations taking place across the social web.

03:46 – “There are not just conversations taking place across the social web. There are influential decision-making steps and processes and considerations that are taking place that are transpiring right now, without us. And when you can demonstrate the exact cause and effect of what’s transpiring and to what extent, then that “ah-ha” moment is pretty profound,” Brian explains.

05:54 – Successfully implementing social media initiatives inside organizations requires that the projects lead ultimately transition from champion to diplomat, because it is critical to raise awareness of what needs to be accomplished and the required resources to pull it off among the executives who can fund pilots, and who or may not be directly involved in the initiative.

06:33 – “What’s going to be important to these folks [decision makers with P&L responsibility] is that we apply information to them in a way that they’re used to measuring it. Even though this is new medium, we have to help them learn by speaking their language, and then ultimately teaching them something new, almost like learning a new language through immersion,” says Brian.

07:12 – Much as when ad agencies bid accounts on spec, in order to make the case for a social media initiative, it is necessary to invest the time and resources to figure out where the relevant conversations are taking place, and to try and determine which departments of the organization are most impacted by these conversations. Are the conversations surrounding customer service issues, engineering issues or marketing-related issues? The idea is to collect and attribute online conversations to the specific business units or departments inside the organization that they apply. For Brian, the key to winning buy-in is research, but once he’s got it completed, he’s still not done.

08:01 -- Brian takes all his research, puts into a snazzy PowerPoint deck and presents it to the C Suite business decision makers to win buy-in. It’s important that the presentation be distilled to the point where it’s not overwhelming. It must provide clear overview as to the opportunities that exist, and provide tangible suggestions of what can be done to address them and then how those efforts will be learned over time.

09:43 – When it comes to the argument about whether or not it’s necessary to justify the ROI of social media engagement, Brian takes the high road. “Change isn’t always something that’s easy to embrace. Maybe the demand for metrics or ROI is stall tactic, because there’s this fear of change or what have you. But whatever it is, don’t spend your energy and resources debating it. Just work with it,” says Brian. And social media can be measured more effectively than old school marketing and public relations.

11:21 – When it comes to measuring social media, Brian likes to establish the cost per action because in his mind, that’s the most tangible metric for determining the value of a conversation. In other words, what happened as a result of the conversation? Whether its click-throughs, links, registrations, shares, downloads or sales, cost per action focuses on the outcome of the conversations, rather than the conversation itself, but it’s important to note that sales are not the only measurable transactions that have real business value to organizations.

12:18 – The most common question Brian gets from stakeholders inside organizations about social media implementation is, “What is that we’re going to accomplish? How many people is this going to take? And what’s going to cost? And then, what does success look like? I hear that in every single conversation,” says Brian. And one way to get those answers is through research, which he has a blue print for conducting at www.conversationprism.com.

13:01 – By documenting, categorizing and quantifying the results of your research by issue and the part of the organization impacted, you build the business case. Based on the formula Brian lays out in his book Engage, finding relevant conversations, engaging whoever’s behind them, monitoring for their response and then following up takes roughly 25 minutes of someone’s time. So if you’re going to try and measure cost per action, it really comes back to the amount of time you’ve invested in a conversation to try and stimulate that action. So if it’s 25 minutes per action, you just look at the research and evaluate which conversations the organization has the organization has the most to gain by engaging, count up the number of conversations and multiply by 20 to 25 minutes per engagement, and that will give you some idea of what kind of resources you need to address that opportunity.

15:14 – In terms of where the pockets of resistance for social media engagement are inside most organizations, Brian says it’s different every time. But a lot of it has to do with where the champions for social media inside that organization are. “The thing that I’ve learned is this. If there aren’t already champions there -- and based on the research you will find that there are multiple opportunities, you just have to prioritize which one it is that you pilot based on the data that comes back – everyone has concerns, or they also have incorrect perspectives with respect to what can be accomplished through social media. So there’s a lot of education there. So having answers to all the skeptical questions that you could possibly get before you go into that meeting is going to be extremely helpful because people will ask you more questions that will postpone doing it the right way. So having those answers is what it’s going to take to get at least some, initial level of support,” says Brian. You might not get enterprise wide acceptance from the get go, but that’s okay. Focus on getting the resources for the pilot program and use that as an opportunity to demonstrate value to others inside the organization.

16:42 – When Brian is doing his research, his uses the Katie Paine method of coupling words indicative of a bad customer experience with the company’s name inside all the search boxes of all the social media channels in the Conversation Prism. So he takes words like suck, or die or hate to surface those conversations with the greatest sense of urgency. Brian says this is a very powerful way to raise eyebrows and incite action.

18:43 – According to Brian, you can’t bill for educating customers to reorganize for social media. “There is a general misperception that social media is centralized. And it’s not. Because when you do the research, when you do the listening aspect of it, you will find that the more meaningful conversations directly align with divisions of your organization,” says Brian. “You can always map it perfectly to HR, sales, marketing, the executives, PR, what have you.” Brian recommends creating a chart that shows the percentages of conversations that apply to the different divisions, so the stakeholders have a sense of which parts of their company are most under siege. In order to win the support you need across the entire organization, they have to see who it impacts.

20:30 -- “The conversation takes place online. If you aren’t there to hear it, did it really happen? And once you can show that it did,” says Brian. And once you show those opportunities that were missed, you can show them what they could be doing to turn those conversations into measurable business gains. “The only reason you have skeptics and push back is because they don’t know what’s taking place. And if you can show them not only what’s happening, but what the opportunities are that lie within, you can start to bring people to the table in a collaborative format,” continues Brian.

21:15 – “Every business is going to become more not just socially but socially engaged and that is, any division of a business that’s affected by outside activity is going to have to pay attention to what’s going on, and eventually they might ask to start participating in that in order to steer it in the right direction,” says Brian. “Every division needs someone to almost be like what was a community manager for the entire organization, now has, sort of a community manager specifically for that division. You don’t just suddenly create the social media team overnight,” says Brian, who can see the day when, in the vein of a brand style guide, social style guides will be created to help community managers effectively manage a brand’s personality through social media.

25:27 – The key to overcoming pockets of resistance within the organization, especially in legal and HR, is again, the data, as well as the extent and effect it has on the organization’s goals. When it comes to measuring the influence of a conversation, Brian looks at how many people are following the person driving the conversation and how many people does the conversation touch.

26:11 – Defining a common goal is a critical first step to getting stakeholders on board. The easier you make it for others to support you, the easier it is to execute the pilot program effectively, which Brian says is often overlooked by organizations. But tools are available, they’re free and as long as you’re willing to invest the time, you’ve got a relatively good prospect of success.

27:22 – If he’s acting in the capacity of a champion, he asks himself, “What are we trying to accomplish” and then works backward to determine what type of research and metrics are indicative of opportunities. There have to be some kind of business objectives behind your social media initiative, and you have to be able to define them. If he doesn’t know what those objectives are, he’s asking probing questions to find them so he can map tools to tactics.

28:53 – Brian is hosting the Blogger Lounge with Stephanie Agresta and the Windows Phone team at SXSW this year, and they’re kicking off a party with the Tech Set on Friday night. Brian says the Windows 7 Phone looks awesome, and remarks about AT&T’s miserable phone service.

31:43 – End

Are you ready to learn how to shape the argument to convince companies to invest in six-figure social media initiatives? If so, this recording of Eric Schwartzman and former Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services EVP Pete Blackshaw (@pblackshaw) is for you.

You’ll learn:

• How to position social media as an extension of existing corporate activities.
• Which departments in the organization are spending the most on social media?
• Selling social media in an apathetic environment.
• Common red flags likely to sand bag the sales effort, and how to overcome them.
• Shuffling the org chart for more effective social media engagement.
• Analysis paralysis, word-of-mouth, Apple Computer’s marketing strategy and more.

Pete is also cofounder of the Word-of-Mouth Markting Association and author of the book “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000” is about running a business in today’s consumer driven world.

This interview was conducted as research for Eric Schwartzman’s book with Paul Gillin titled “Social Marketing to the Business Customer,” published by Wiley.

NOTES

01:35 – If you want to win buy-in for social media initiatives, don’t present it as something news. Instead, present it as a logical extension of what the organizations is doing already. Companies are already invested in public relations, customer service and investor relations. Show them how social media can help them conduct these processes more effectively and efficiently.

02:37 – Over 200 reporters at The New York Times have Twitter accounts. So if you’re already invested in resources in managing relationships with the mainstream media, then deepening those relationships via social media is a natural extension of what a company is doing already. Convincing a PR executive that they need apparatus to listen to what reporters are saying on Twitter, or a customer service executive that they need to be listening to what customers are saying is going to be the path of least resistance, since social media allows them to extend the reach of what they’re doing already. To appeal to a brand manager, you’d focus on how listening to social media can help preempt the brand from negative consumer generated content that could go viral.

06:58 – Originally, social media initiatives were driven by progressive public relations business units, but market research has become an advocate as well. In an effort to marry social media with customer relationship management, call centers have also become interested in listening platforms.

09:22 – Marketing is a key stakeholder for winning buy-in, because marketing is where the lion’s share of the budget lies, but marketing serves different masters in different organizations. One the places social media monitoring delivers the most value is during new product launches, and again because companies are so heavily invest in launching new products, this is also a great area to implement a social media initiative, because there’s so much money riding on product launches already, it’s going to easier to find budget.

12:10 – Apathy is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to implementing a social media initiative. When things are going well, people are less inclined to allocate budget. But the brand gets slapped around publicly, or there’s a recall or a crisis on some kind, that’s an opportunity for winning buy-in and resources. Negative conversations that go viral are a wakeup call to management.

14:22 – In regulated industries, winning buy-in and resources for social media can be particularly tough, because listening is a liability.

16:29 – It’s one thing to wax poetic about conversations and dialogue, but practicing what you preach involves collapsing the wall between public relations and customer relations, because the skills required to deal with volatile, emotional customers are, with training, transferrable to the company Twitter page. If you buy-in to the notion that customer conversations are influencing the purchase funnel, you need an organizational model that centralizes customer feedback so that all business units can benefit from it. The opportunity for public relations is enormous, because listening platforms provide early warnings that can be used to circumvent a potential catastrophe. If you have the tools to figure out who the real influencers are, you can use that information to develop customer advocacy programs. But the end of the day, you’ve got be able to package that data so it’s relevant to the different business units.

23:35 – Pete doesn’t see any real distinction between monitoring social media for B2C vs. B2B companies. He says the same rules apply. In his case, given the number of self professed “social media experts,” that’s become the B2B social media channel for a service like Nielsen BrandPulse.

24:29 – The internal use social media is promoting greater free flow of information inside the organization, fulfilling what we hoped to gain from intranets in the early days of web communications.

29:23 – CRM is the most important thing for companies to be able to do. It’s more important than blogging or tweeting, because it’s the key to maintain intimacy with customers. In the case of social media, you’re dealing with customers who bring a different value to the table, like influence with other customers via social media.

31:30 – There is also the danger of being overly analytical. Analysis can lead to paralysis, and brands can forfeit opportunities if they over analyze the data.

33:02 – Apple Computer understands how winning products and great experiences drive conversation. You can preach social media or pimp for followers until the cows come home, but if your product is lacking, or service under delivers. Apple uses their website to build anticipation and they create brilliant videos that people like to share. They understand how to create content that people want to share, so they get phenomenal pass-along. But they have the core product down. They’re great products that provide great user experiences.

35:04 – “Although we romanticize everything being open and free, the reality is a lot of word-of-mouth is also driven by mystique,” says Pete Blackshaw. We want what we can’t have, and exclusivity can be leveraged in social media to create demand as well. A new website called Secret Cincinnati amassed a huge amount of traffic in a short period of time by promising to tell you something you don’t know already.

36:54 – You can also use those conventional processes that the organization is involved in already which are inefficient as opportunities to secure budget for social media initiatives. For example, running focus groups is a very expensive undertaking. For the price of a focus group you could listen to the web for an entire year, and get a real time focus group that’s always there for you for the same investment.

38:27 – For Pete, in some cases, he may be selling social media listening platforms by undermining the value of conventional platforms. But Nielsen is more sophisticated than that, he says, and certainly weren’t willing to forgo modernization to protect their existing products.

40:31 – End

Selling social media strategy to senior leadership is the topic of this audio recording with Eric Schwartzman and Charlene Li, founding partner of the Altimeter Group and bestselling author of "Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead."

NOTES

1:37 Selling social media strategy to leadership remains a significant challenge. She wrote "Open Leadership" to help leaders better understand the difference between open source software, open systems and open decision making processes and to decide just how open they need to be.

2:10 How social engagement creates a power shift that redefines the techniques and characteristics of effective leadership.

3:33 The meaning of openness and its impact on information-sharing and decision-making. Defining the ways people can be open allows more rational discussion around how open an organization needs to be.

4:34 A “throw the doors open” approach to openness is unnecessary. Leadership goals, such as competition, employee engagement and a growing dialogue with customers, determine the degree of openness needed.

6:09 United States Army Public Affairs Specialist asks Don Manuszewski if it is necessary to maintain a website or is it possible to achieve one’s goals by eliminating a website and utilizing social media sites exclusively.

7:56 Facebook vs Google for decision-making. Google dominates quick, early stage research while Facebook social network queries are important as the decision point gets closers. We consulting Facebook vs. Google for information, it is critical to understand that Google helps you build the short list, and Facebook helps you make a final purchasing decision.

10:57 Whether Facebook is at a disadvantage because they hired out their hardware and infrastructure. A discussion of the different information-processing needs of Facebook, Google and Twitter.

12:58 Too often, business communicators sell social media to leaders who don’t understand the basics because they simply aren’t engaged. Charlene Li shares tips for selling social media executives are most likely to respond to. When you’re selling social media to the boss, steer clear of technology and focus on business goals.

13:32 Organizational challenges can be addressed through better dialogue, better listening and better innovation with the use of social networking tools. CEOs can learn to be more open and share more easily to achieve the business growth they need. 18:48 Engaging in social media involves embracing failure. Leaders can use social media engagement to prepare for and recover from the inevitable failures that happen in business.

21:05 The importance of using social media as dialogue and not merely for broadcasting. Lessons the brandjacking of Nestlé’s Facebook page by Greenpeace, and how they unwittingly aggravated the situation further, and played directly into the hand of their adversary.

22:59 Altimeter’s recent eport, Eight Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing, which guides organizations through best practices for marketing through a Facebook Page.

23:38 Dell, Comcast, United Airlines and other companies have adopted active social media strategies following huge online embarrassments. The best companies adopt a clear strategy and exhibit the willingness to be more open.

26:11 Market competitiveness can affect a company’s willingness to engage in social media. Altimeter’s Facebook study shows that companies often rely on older promotion-based models when greater rewards come to those who invest in open-ended relationships with depth and meaning.

28:43 B2B B2C differences with respect to social media marketing.

30:49 How social media listening can be incorporated into the corporate structure and the productivity gains that can result.

33:55 Charlene Li talks about her influencers, which include Gabe Rivera’s Tech Meme and mainstream media outlets.

36:59 End

Korn/Ferry International [NYSE:KFY] Executive Vice-President of Corporate Affairs Don Spetner and Eric Schwartzman discuss the impact of Linkedin on the executive recruiting industry, nurturing contacts using social media and how social media killed the cold call.

This interview was conducted as research for Eric Schwartzman’s book with Paul Gillin "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book about B2B social media marketing published by Wiley.

NOTES:

02:52 - Impact of Linkedin on the executive recruiting industry.

05:07 - How social networks solved the single, biggest challenge of recruiting, the hard lesson Korn Ferry learned with Future Step and Linkedin's ability to give recruiters and hirers access to passive candidates who are not actively searching for a job.

07:35 - Impact of Linkedin on Korn Ferry's business.

12:45 - “We think the finding of candidates is becoming commoditized,” says Don. “The real value comes in helping clients assess the fit of a candidate and follow in services to help them retain and maximize the performance of the candidate.” Korn Ferry is the only search firm with an online assessment tool designed to analyze how candidates think, and their emotional make-up.

18:27 - The art of nurturing and maintaining contacts using social media.

21:04 - How Linkedin has replaced the cold call in the recruiting business.

24:20 - Where Korn Ferry is headed. 25:30 - Advice to those seeking high-profile jobs.

26:50 - Can job seekers use social media too aggressively?

31:19 - End

Considering launching a B2B social networking site for your organization? You've come to the right place.

In this audio recording, Mark Yolton, Sr. V.P. of SAP Community Network covers everything you need to know about what it takes to build the business case for hosting a B2B social network.

The SAP Community Network -- a B2B social networking initiative nearly 2,000,000 members strong and growing at a monthly pace of 30,000 new members spanning 200 countries and territories worldwide -- has been recognized by the Altimeter Group and SiteIQ as one of the most successful business-to-business social networking sites in the world.

Yoltan reveals SAP's winning B2B online social networking formula that has resulted in 6000 posts per day, 1 million unique visitors per month and 200,000 contributions by celebrating imperfection, profiting from surrender, improving product performance through user ratings and building deeper professional relationships through personal interactions.

NOTES

01:42 -- Using a social network to deliver value to different stakeholder groups including customers, partners, the sponsoring company and individuals.

03:54 -- Building brand loyalty through social networks and more compelling business benefits of sponsoring a social network. 04:20 -- Why customer-to-customer communications is a significant benefit of social networks for business-to-business applications and the key to stimulating peer-to-peer activity.

06:34 -- How to determine what type of information is appropriate for sharing within a B2B social network without compromising the sponsoring company's competitive edge.

08:42 -- Why a corporate social media policy tailored to the sophistication of the employee base is a critical component of effective business-to-business social networking. SAP has published their Forum Rules of Engagement and Blog/Community Guidelines.

11:21 -- Using a wiki to include employees in the development of a corporate social media policy.

12:24 -- The strategic criteria by which SAP decided between establishing a branded B2B social networking community versus a public B2B social networking community. Note: While SAP used their own software, branded communities can also be built using tools such as Ning, while public communities are commonly hosted on Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

15:35 -- Deepening business relationships through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and B2B social networks as adjunct to a core, branded, B2B social networking site.

16:25 -- The advantages of branded communities over Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and which companies are not candidates for managing their own branded, B2B social networking community.

19:04 -- The types of roles or job functions within the organization and generations predisposed to participating in a social networking B2B environment.

21:10 -- How to decide which sections of a B2B social networking site should be public, and which areas should be private.

24:33 -- Conducting edge work through mentors, who are nominated by the community and do not work for SAP. The use of exclusive access and private areas to seed information within the community through influential community members.

28:38 -- How active contributors benefit from participating in the SAP B2B social networking site through lead generation and reputation management.

30:28 -- The business benefits of relinquishing control of the conversation to your customers and exactly what it takes to drive active discussion amongst customers, resellers, partners, and other channel sales participants in a social networking B2B environment.

32:06 -- The intangible benefits of online social networking to B2B online social networking community members.

36:33 -- The use of friends or contacts in an online social network to filter important, relevant information through recommendations.

37:58 -- Staffing requirements for managing, weeding and farming B2B social networking sites.

40:29 -- Using star ratings and user reviews inside B2B social networking site to promote sales and improve product performance.

41:25 -- The specific skills that make for on exceptional B2B social networking community manager.

44:41 -- The relationship between a B2B social networking site community manager's willingness to reveal at least some aspects of their personal lives with their business colleagues, their effectiveness at shepherding conversations within a social networking B2B environment and why imperfections and human flaws are essential to driving conversations.

45:39 -- The use of Facebook, Twitter and object-oriented social networking sites to deepen personal relationships, which are sustained primarily in a branded, B2B social networking environment.

47:06 -- The relationship between user ratings and product sales within a B2B social networking site, why perfect ratings are not usually good for sales and how low ratings can be used to improve product performance.

50:03 -- Integrating proprietary and open source software to power a B2B social network initiative and dealing with potential tension between open-source platforms and licensed proprietary software.

55:39 -- End

NOTES

28:11 -- End

Use this template to frame the business case for winning new social media marketing account business. All the graphics presented in the course are included and available for commercial use under a Creative Commons license.

Korn/Ferry International [NYSE:KFY] Executive Vice-President of Corporate Affairs Don Spetner talks about the impact of Linkedin on the executive recruiting industry, nurturing contacts using social media and the death of the cold call.

This interview was conducted as research for the my upcoming book with Paul Gillin "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the first book about B2B social media marketing.

Topics addressed:

02:52 - Impact of Linkedin on the executive recruiting industry.

05:07 - How social networks solved the single, biggest challenge of recruiting, the hard lesson Korn Ferry learned with Future Step and Linkedin's ability to give recruiters and hirers access to passive candidates who are not actively searching for a job.

07:35 - Impact of Linkedin on Korn Ferry's business.

12:45 - “We think the finding of candidates is becoming commoditized,” says Don.  “The real value comes in helping clients assess the fit of a candidate and follow in services to help them retain and maximize the performance of the candidate.” Korn Ferry is the only search firm with an online assessment tool designed to analyze how candidates think, and their emotional make-up.

18:27 - The art of nurturing and maintaining contacts using social media.

21:04 - How Linkedin has replaced the cold call in the recruiting business.

24:20 - Where Korn Ferry is headed.

25:30 - Advice to those seeking high-profile jobs.

26:50 - Can job seekers use social media too aggressively?

31:19 - End

Find out what previous attendees of Eric Schwartzman's social media trainings have to say about his courses.

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