Today, the internet has been taken over by the average person. MySpace and Facebook defined the social network. It is about the party. Are you invited? Are you part of the group? Are you popular? So, how many friends do you have following you anyway?

You know what is the same? The discussion of etiquette and the proper way to engage. Social media has rules. Social media is about fitting in to how it was “intended”. I think this notion of what social media is is holding us back. It might be about the conversation, but it can be so much more than that.

Here are some examples of social media being beyond a personal conversation.

ReadWriteWeb provided a review on a new social app called Yawnlog. People log their sleeping patterns and dreams and then can share them with their friends.  Maybe a nice widget addition to Facebook.  But, a real product?  Here’s the thing.  The value isn’t that you can track this and share with you friends.  It’s the potential for trials and longitudinal studies.  The application has more value for science than a gadget that I’ll use with my friends and discuss what my dream meant.

LouisGray.com talked about what Twitter is really about (see article), listening, not friend following.

“Even if you are a rabid information junkie, the constant updates from Twitter can be too much for anybody to absorb, even with a few hundred connections. To believe that I am seeing all of a friend’s updates with 6,000 connections, or that Scoble can see the updates from ten times that many, is clearly impossible. So while a small population of Twitter is using the service to follow individual’s updates, a huge number are instead using it to broadcast updates, monitor keywords, and occasionally, send direct messages to people or reply in public. Twitter is simply too much to handle as conversations are lost, people’s updates can be of any type, and the limitations of the service, including the much-discussed 140 character boundary, make it a poor foundation for exchanging ideas in a crowd.”

So, when we talk about Twitter as a social network, how can you say that when you can’t really exchange ideas through conversation.  It is bill-boarding.

I think there ia also something to the fact that in the end, 99% of people out there are watchers, not participants.  Maybe they participate in their micro networks in Facebook with real friends, but there are only a handful of people out there that are part of the social.  That leaves open a huge opportunity for social media to fill beyond “Whoever Has the Most Friends Wins” theme.  Increasingly, and you see this particularly with Twitter, that social is pushing past the confines of personal conversation.  As with the web, the value is in the topics of conversations – the information.

Let’s start considering that maybe the power of social media isn’t that it is social but that it is about linking people, experience, and ideas to move forward in a non-cyber world.  Since when did a clique do anything but hold someone back?

We all know that social media is the wave of the future.  Every marketing department is putting more effort and resources toward it.  The problem is that no one can really get their arms around how to engage the customer.

Eric Brown is on target when he says:

“If there are no comments on you blog and nothing on your facebook wall except from posts from you, You have an ELECTRONIC BILLBOARD, Which is NOT Social Media”  see article

He is right.  You are really just creating another brochure website.  Why do you want to do that?

It’s only been a few weeks since I started Brain Vibe and have found that the easiest part of the processes was getting some traction.  By leveraging social networking venues, letting friends know, commenting, and paying attention to SEO, I’m pretty happy with the results.  People are starting to subscribe and follow, bookmarking is happening, syndication is working, and I’m getting good feedback and comments.   Here’s the thing, those comments, they don’t come in how I expect.  I get emails.  People don’t comment on the post, they go to my contact page and send me an email.  I also get voted up without any feedback and commenting.

I’m not getting a ton of feedback. I’d love to get more, particularly on the articles that seem to be driving viewership, subscriptions, and bookmarking.  I do what everyone says, ask for comments, create interactive posts, put up polls.  I tried a Blog Improv to get participation as well.  Interestingly, the Improv only generated 2 comments (1 from a new professional connection and I’m extremely greatful!).  But, it drove subscriptions and traffic.  Go figure.

Particularly for business marketing, I’m finding that people have preferences in how they want to interact with you.  Social media is one of those avenues and even within it is a microcosm of conversational preferences.  How we measure our success around commenting and interaction needs to be looked at in its entirety.  If I only used direct comments on my blog to determine effectiveness, I miss out on the fact that the way people are connecting with me is through email.  Some people may only vote up your post.  Sometimes, the value is “paying it forward” through reblogging or re-tweeting.  Measuring success of your efforts early on may be looking at indicators that show traction that should lead to participation and interaction.

Look at the big picture:

• Are people sharing?
• Are people bookmarking?
• Are you receiving email comments?
• Are you receiving tweets?
• Are you getting comments in syndication but not on your site?
• Are you finding doors opening because someone saw your work?
• Are people voting you up?

If these things are happening, it is only a matter of time before people will comment and interact with each other and you.

Here’s what I’ll say about conversation and interaction.  It is something that you will need to nurture and develop.  What I’ll add to Eric’s perspective is that unless you already had a strong following and network to begin with, it is going to take time.  I’ve seen numbers ranging as high as 99% of blog readers are lurkers.  In social networks, there was usually an offline connection that helped to generate interaction on walls and blogs.  For business marketers that are trying to build networks with their customers, a different mindset is needed to get commenting and participation to happen.  You may need to seed participation by leveraging your offline relationships.  And, even then, if you are in PR, you know how hard it is just to get references.

What have you done to get comments?

Please, leave a comment… 

It really came down to a state of BEING.

It may be stating the obvious for marketing.  However, I’ve seen many a client and company fail at marketing efforts and conversion simply because they are not where the customer is.

Building relationships is hard.  Networking is hard.  Step by step guides or top tips aside, the reality is that you have to jump out of your comfort zone and put yourself on the line.  There is the direct rejection and then there is the indirect rejection of avoidance.  I think in some ways it is easier to get over the direct rejection than avoidance.  At least you know what you did.  Silence can feel alienating.

Here is how I think marketing can focus on building relationships with customers and break out of long held patterns.

• Be available for customers when they are ready.
• Be open to customers for dialogue.
• Be there, where the customer is.

If you follow these simple rules and start every marketing effort with BEING, whatever you want to communicate to your customer will get there.  If there is a fit between the value you have to offer and their need, just the fact that you are there will make you successful.

Marketing has shifting from one way company/product centric communications to customers calling the shots on how you need to connect with them.  You want them to attend events, listen to webinars, read your blogs and articles, buy your products.  However, if you are not there in availability, openness, and state, you will not connect.

Even as information is democratized in China, the pace at which it is happening is creating chaos in a marketer’s ability to get the message out in traditional tried and true mechanisms.  Social media marketing is really the key and future of marketing in China.

For three years I was managing customer data globally for a multi-national software company.  The biggest challenge was the integration and management of global databases and maintaining local language.  Outside of process and technical logistics, China was particularly challenging.  You could almost directly map China’s eco-data system to disruptive technology adoption.

• Huge choice and competition
• Constant churn
• Lack of standards
• New is better
• Jones-ing – “I want what he has”

This is China culture, from technology to everyday life.  Even as our social media usage in the US is beginning to mature, or at least become mainstream, China is still slightly behind.  The biggest reason I see is due to the fast rate of economic growth in individual wealth and fast emergence of a capitalist market.  The other aspect is that the Chinese are much more aware of each other and their relationships to each other making them more apt to shift and adapt.

You may think that this is the reason to avoid social media marketing in China but, I think the opposite is true.  It allows you to transcend targeting issues you are plagued with in traditional CRM or customer data management.

Issues with traditional CRM and Customer Data Management in China

• Emails continually acquired and discarded
• Non-stardard names mixing east and west and English and Chinese
• Mailing address changes, undocumented,  or too new to have consistent delivery
• Businesses go in and out of business in 6 months
• Lack of centralized reliable digital data repositories for reference
• Phone churn, landlines being forfeited for more reliable mobile phone service

What social media marketing offers is the ability to transcend and extend our communications to the China market overcoming issues with traditional communication sources.  The fact that the Chinese are adopting and embracing mobile technology and web interaction aligns the marketer to the customer.  This is not to say that traditional methods are obsolete.  There just may be a shift of how it is used and how it could integrate with China’s preferred method of communication and information gathering.  For instance, billboard usage and signage can be better connected to social media by providing SMS text to mobile phones for discounts or product sources instead of emailing an article or coupon to click and download.

At the heart of Chinese communication is social media.  Blogging and Twitter are pushing out news faster than journalists and the government can react.  New social networking sites are being created daily and gaining members fast.  It is the most reliable and pervasive form of connecting Chinese to Chinese and businesses to their Chinese customers.  Marketing models that don’t weight their communication strategies towards social media will not be positioned to capture the market and create loyal customer bases.

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If all you B2B marketers thought I was crazy when I wrote about giving up control of social media to sales, this one will really take you into the Twilight Zone. 

Imagine if instead of designing your website your customers did.

You provide the template and content.  Your customers choose what content is in the space, like a Facebook page or Google dashboard. Think about it.  Your customer enters your website today and has to drill into the content that suits them best.  If you are a solutions company, they may click into specific solutions, industry, or even your support area.

For all intents and purposes, your website today is a controlled environment not too unlike a printed brochure.  How traditional!  How boring!

If you use cookies and can track at some level who is coming to your site, maybe after the first entry you customize content based on their previous traffic and interests.  It could be as simple as the type of news alerts scroll on the main page.  You could also customize forums and discussion groups to align them with similar profiles or interests.  For something more sophisticated, you could provide a custom start page that is specific to them: articles, solutions, news, forums and discussions.  But, that is old web thinking.

Ultimately, I would love to see us be able to allow customers to design their experience.  We could provide categories of content and allow customers to drag and drop them.  We could allow them to choose the feeds they want be it offers, events, or product updates.  We could allow them access to discussions with other similar customers for support or ideas on product use.

Personalization has been the holy grail of marketing.  Social networks have provided a straw man of sorts to consider ways we can interact with customers outside of our traditional ways.  We should not be afraid to loosen our grip on our message and the view we give to our customers.  In the end, customers are already making choices on what they are interested in, how they want to interact with us, and if we provide value.  Let’s make it easier for them.

Let the customer create their experience, we could learn a lot about them and they will learn about us.

The age old issue with ROI for B2B direct marketing is the difficulty in linking to a dollar amount.   Social media marketing hinges on connecting directly with the customer and conversing.  This is more of a B2B sales role and responsibility.  It is at this stage that you see ROI.

Marketing’s expertise is in the creation of content or assets defining brand and credibility.  Communications from PR to direct marketing spreading the word in a peanut butter approach.  Social media, while in some perspectives a great tool to reach out to the masses, also creates the conundrum of personal connections so that a broad message is impersonal and too vague for a person to connect to.

How about creating mechanisms for sales to engage with customers through networks?

• Marketing provides sales with content that is appropriate to send out using Twitter such as time limited offers, event notices, service renewals, and upgrade notices.
• Salespeople have community pages to hold forums or presentations
• Community pages could act as portals to connect customers, sales, and partners for collaborative solution-ing
• Customers could influence content on sales community pages by rating or voting in topics and solutions that best apply

There is some precedent for this today.  Collaborative solutions exist from CRM companies that allow for internal social/professional networks.  As sales is becoming comfortable in these environments, it can be an easy leap to expand beyond internal and allow for external customer facing interactions.

Where is the ROI?  Sales touts the benefits, closure rates increase, increased sales.