Comments on:

Social media at the US Dept. of Defense with Gregory Reeder, Director, Marine Corps Internal Communications at Defense Media Activity and Editor-in-Chief at Marines Magazine, United States Marine Corps.

*

SHOW 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.

01:48 - How the USMC is coping with the shift from official to unofficial communications channels.

04:27 - Gregory Reeder clarifies the USMC's decision to block access to social media from the U.S. Department of Defense's non classified computer network.

06:14 - Gregory Reeder discusses how compromising Information for Official Use only could impact operational effectiveness, even thought he information is non classified.

07:41 - How the Defense Information School is preparing service members to use social media through regimented training.

10:02 - Selling social media to the command at the top of the Pentagon.

14:43 - The DoD's new social media policy.

15:58 - The www.marines.mil website and how the USMC is doing their best to develop a common online c9ommuity for Marines to network online.

17:26 - The recently established DoD new media cell and opening access.

18:51 - Arming Marines with weapons and cameras.

21:17 - Practicing maximum disclosure with minimum delay on internet time.

23:15 - Leveraging social media without jeopardizing operational security.

24:55 - End

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

* BP Oil Spill Crisis Communications

* Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore at SXSW

* Why Doublespeak is Dangerous

ABOUT THE PODCASTER

@EricSchwartzman provides online communication training, strategy and social media governance to public relations, public affairs, corporate communications and marketing specialists. He has extensive experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications programs through public speaking, hands-on training seminars, consulting and the development of corporate policies on social media usage.

His clients have included Boeing, BYU, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Government of Singapore, Johnson & Johnson, NORAD Northcomm, Southern California Edison, UCLA, US Dept. of State, United States Army, US Embassy of Athens, the United States Marine Corps and many small to medium-sized companies and agencies.

Eric is the instructor behind PRSA’s top-rated social media and emerging treads training seminars, the Social Media Boot Camp and the Social Media Master Class, which are offered monthly in the US.

Social media at the US Dept. of Defense with Gregory Reeder, Director, Marine Corps Internal Communications at Defense Media Activity and Editor-in-Chief at Marines Magazine, United States Marine Corps.

SHOW NOTES:

01:48 - How the USMC is coping with the shift from official to unofficial communications channels.

04:27 - Gregory Reeder clarifies the USMC's decision to block access to social media from the U.S. Department of Defense's non classified computer network.

06:14 - Gregory Reeder discusses how compromising Information for Official Use only could impact operational effectiveness, even thought he information is non classified.

07:41 - How the Defense Information School is preparing service members to use social media through regimented training.

10:02 - Selling social media to the command at the top of the Pentagon.

14:43 - The DoD's new social media policy.

15:58 - The www.marines.mil website and how the USMC is doing their best to develop a common online community for Marines to network online.

17:26 - The recently established DoD new media cell and opening access. 

18:51 - Arming Marines with weapons and cameras.

21:17 - Practicing maximum disclosure with minimum delay on internet time.

23:15 - Leveraging social media without jeopardizing operational security.

24:55  - End

Image by Geoff Livingston

Korn/Ferry International 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 is Spetner's second appearance on this podcast. Last time, he discussed the public relations and corporate communications job market, the social media communication skills candidates need to compete, and strategies for job hunting in our current economy.

SHOW 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

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

* BP Oil Spill Crisis Communications

* Building a B2B Niche Social Network

* Selling Social Media into the Enterprise

ABOUT THE PODCASTER

@EricSchwartzman provides online communication training, strategy and social media governance to public relations, public affairs, corporate communications and marketing specialists. He has extensive experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications programs through public speaking, hands-on training seminars, consulting and the development of corporate policies on social media usage.

His clients have included Boeing, BYU, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Government of Singapore, Johnson & Johnson, NORAD Northcomm, Southern California Edison, UCLA, US Dept. of State, United States Army, US Embassy of Athens, the United States Marine Corps and many small to medium-sized companies and agencies.

Eric is the instructor behind PRSA’s top-rated social media and emerging treads training seminars, the Social Media Boot Camp and the Social Media Master Class, which are offered monthly in the US.

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 is Spetner's second appearance on this podcast.  Last time, he discussed the public relations and corporate communications job market, the social media communication skills candidates need to compete, and strategies for job hunting in our current economy.   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.

SHOW 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

Photo by Fouad Ghazizadeh on Unsplash

BP Oil Spill Crisis Communications Special. On April 20, 2010, an explosion on an oil rig licensed to BP in the Gulf of Mexico triggered an oil spill that has resulted in an ecological and financial disaster of global proportions. United States Navy Public Affairs Officer Jim Hoeft who is coordinating communications at the Official Site of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command for the Joint Command Center in Louisiana briefs on the process communicating the worst oil spill in history via social media.

Show Notes:

0:55

The state of affairs at the Joint Command Center in Louisiana, and what’s being done to communicate the scale of the disaster.

2:30

The approval process for communicating what is happening operationally.

3:15

The National Response Framework chain of command and participating agencies.

4:15

The Official Site of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command is being managed on the PIER Response System with outposts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social media sites.

5:37

How they are responding to feedback on Facebook and Twitter.

8:21

”This is the first time that the Federal Government has tried to implement social media tools in a National Crisis,” says LTC Heoft. “We didn’t have this during Kartina. We didn’t have this during 9/11. We’re learning where online communications falls in the national response framework,” he continues, suggested that trending question occurring via social media can be used to help the Unified Command respond to issues that are most important to the public.

9:35

The challenge of monitoring social media manually, since no good measurement or sentiment analysis tools exist.

11:20

Using social media trend reports to provide feedback to command about the issues people are talking about most.

13:25

Resources required to staff the social media monitoring effort and the use of Cover it Live to live blog developments.

15:23

Prioritizing social media communications channels.

19:21

Which social media channels have been most popular for disaster response?

22:14

The shortcomings of Facebook as a Government crowd sourcing tool.

24:05

The LMRP cap containment strategy, the latest effort to contain the leak.

25:31

Online communications will definitely be part of the national communications framework moving forward.

26:47

Using www.youropenbook.org to monitor public Facebook status updates.

28:45

End

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

• Social Media Crisis Comms Deep Dive with FEMA PIO John Shea

• Social Media Usage During the Virginia Tech Massacre

• Activity Streams Will Change Your Business

ABOUT THE PODCASTER

@EricSchwartzman provides online communication training, strategy and social media governance to public relations, public affairs, corporate communications and marketing specialists. He has extensive experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications programs through public speaking, hands-on training seminars, consulting and the development of corporate policies on social media usage.

His clients have included Boeing, BYU, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Government of Singapore, Johnson & Johnson, NORAD Northcomm, Southern California Edison, UCLA, US Dept. of State, United States Army, US Embassy of Athens, the United States Marine Corps and many small to medium-sized companies and agencies.

Eric is the instructor behind PRSA’s top-rated social media and emerging treads training seminars, the Social Media Boot Camp and the Social Media Master Class, which are offered monthly in the US.

An explosion on an oil rig licensed to BP in the Gulf of Mexico triggered an oil spill that has resulted in an ecological and financial disaster of global proportions. 

United States Navy Public Affairs Officer Jim Hoeft who is coordinating communications at the Official Site of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command for the Joint Command Center in Louisiana briefs on the process communicating the worst oil spill in history via social media.

The disaster response effort was known as Operation Deepwater Horizon. The explosion occurred on April 20, 2010.    

Most of the official communications sites launched have since been taken down, so this serves as an official crisis communications case study. 

SHOW NOTES

0:55 The state of affairs at the Joint Command Center in Louisiana, and what’s being done to communicate the scale of the disaster.

2:30 The approval process for communicating what is happening operationally.

3:15 The National Response Framework chain of command and participating agencies.

4:15 The Official Site of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command is being managed on the PIER Response System with outposts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social media sites.

5:37 How they are responding to feedback on Facebook and Twitter.

8:21 ”This is the first time that the Federal Government has tried to implement social media tools in a National Crisis,” says LTC Heoft. 

“We didn’t have this during Kartina. 

We didn’t have this during 9/11. We’re learning where online communications falls in the national response framework,” he continues, suggested that trending question occurring via social media can be used to help the Unified Command respond to issues that are most important to the public.

9:35 The challenge of monitoring social media manually, since no good measurement or sentiment analysis tools exist.

11:20 Using social media trend reports to provide feedback to command about the issues people are talking about most.

13:25 Resources required to staff the social media monitoring effort and the use of Cover it Live to live blog developments.

15:23 Prioritizing social media communications channels.

19:21 Which social media channels have been most popular for disaster response?

22:14 The shortcomings of Facebook as a Government crowd sourcing tool.

24:05 The LMRP cap containment strategy, the latest effort to contain the leak.

25:31 Online communications will definitely be part of the national communications framework moving forward.

28:45 End

FohBoh is a community for restaurant owners and their suppliers. Launched in late 2007 by veteran restaurateur and entrepreneur Michael Atkinson, it has built a base of 14,000 members, most of them restaurant owners. FohBoh’s core purpose is to help restaurant owners make more money during an economic period that has been dismal for their industry. That entails a core focus on operational excellence, but also on the art of social media promotion and online visibility. In fact, FohBoh’s novel monetization strategy is to sell conversation monitoring and consulting services, with advertising making up only a minority of the revenue.

It’s been a struggle in this business environment, but FohBoh is growing and appears to have running room. “Some people say the best time to start a company is in the middle of an economic downturn,” Atkinson says. “We are a survivor. We grow our revenues every day and we're way past the point of validating our model.”

Atkinson has learned a lot about business-to-business social communities from the experience. “Context and relevance sustains a community,” he says. “You have to understand the community before you figure out how to monetize. If you don’t have domain expertise, the membership will find out immediately.”

This interview is guest hosted by Paul Gillin of Paul Giilin Communications and was conducted in association with research for an upcoming book on B2B applications of social media, to be published later thia year or early next year.

0:15 Where the idea for FohBoh came from.

2:20 The market for FohBoh. Restaurants are a highly fragmented and distributed business. Operators have few chances to connect with each other. The environment is ripe for a community.

3:15 “No vertical can be a pure advertising business and build a business that can scale.”

5:30 70% of the members are operators/owners and the rest are product/service providers. FohBoh doesn’t rigorously quality its members. Those who are interested will stay.

7:15 “A very interesting business model.” FohBoh has visitors from more than 100 countries and accumulates a wide range of content. It uses that knowledge about the audience to create products to sell to restaurant owners. The financial strategy is to help restaurants become more successful using social media tools. The company sells software for social media marketing and social marketing strategies for the business. Premier memberships are on tap.

13:00 Operating a bootstrapped b-to-b community in a market that isn’t conducive to advertising. “You can’t charge for content, so unless you can find another alternative, then you’re going to fail.” FohBoh is sustainable and “a good candidate for investment.”

18:00 Why the company started on the Ning platform and the challenges of scaling the business there. Drupal has been brought in to add utility and bridges built between the platforms.

20:30 How to drive engagement. “Social media isn’t a new thing; it’s what restaurant owners have been doing offline for years.” The challenge is attracting attention. “Old media is feeling very threatened and they’re not going to expose a direct competitor. We’ve had to resort to word of mouth.”

22:00 “We’re not building the community for today’s 15-year-old executive; we’re building it for tomorrow’s 35-year-old executive.”

24:00 “There is no rulebook on how to build a b-to-b community.”

25:00 Atkinson’s conversations with executives at Facebook and LinkedIn: “We have a lot of the same challenges. No one has cracked the code yet on how to manage a group and get beyond the 1:9:90 rule of engagement.”

26:00 “We’re very focused on quality content because it wins every time.”

27:00 Plans for a new service that invites contributions from professional journalists and rewards them for contributions.

30:00 What motivates the audience: It’s been a tough time for the food service industry. Understanding what the diner wants is critical.

33:15 The importance of social media and customer conversations to restaurant owners; value of understanding website activity

37:30 FohBoh’s membership statistics: About 14,000 members, average members visits twice monthly; about 70% are owner/operators

38:20 Advice for prospective b-to-b community organizers. “If you don’t have domain expertise, the membership will find out immediately.”

40:00 Importance of taking a disciplined approach to managing the community

43:30 How to monetize b-to-b sites: “You can’t monetize b-to-b from advertising.”

45:30 How a community is different from a publication

46:50 About Social Shock, Michael’s forthcoming book

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

• B2B Social Networks: Driving Commerce with Imperfection and Surrender

• Social Media Investor Relations Special with Former SEC Attorneys

• Mosaic of Trust with Richard Edelman

About the Guest Host

This episode was guest hosted by Paul Gillin (@pgillin) of Paul Gillin Communications. Paul was founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget, one of the most successful technology media entities to emerge on the Internet. Before that, he was editor-in-chief and executive editor of the technology weekly Computerworld for 15 years.

He wrote The New Influencers, Secrets of Social Media Marketing and the Joy of Geocaching and is currently co-writing a book with Eric Schwartzman about business-to-business applications of social media.

Paul writes a regular column for BtoB magazine and contributes to various blogs and online publications. He’s also a Research Fellow and a member of the advisory board of the Society for New Communications Research.

FohBoh is a B2B niche social network for restaurant owners and their suppliers.

Launched in late 2007 by veteran restaurateur and entrepreneur Michael Atkinson, it has built a base of 14,000 members, most of them restaurant owners.

FohBoh's core purpose is to help restaurant owners make more money during an economic period that has been dismal for their industry. That entails a core focus on operational excellence, but also on the art of social media promotion and online visibility.

In fact, FohBoh's novel monetization strategy is to sell conversation monitoring and consulting services, with advertising making up only a minority of the revenue.

It's been a struggle in this business environment, but FohBoh is growing and appears to have running room.

Some people say the best time to start a company is in the middle of an economic downturn, Atkinson says.

We are a survivor. We grow our revenues every day and we're way past the point of validating our model.

Atkinson has learned a lot about business-to-business social communities from the experience. Context and relevance sustains a community, he says.

You have to understand the community before you figure out how to monetize. If you don't have domain expertise, the membership will find out immediately.

This interview is guest hosted by Paul Gillin of Paul Giilin Communications and was conducted as research for "Social Marketing to the Business Customer," the most comprehensive collection of best practices for B2B marketers ever assembled.

Photo by Hemant Latawa on Unsplash

Are you ready to learn the logic behind the argument that convinces companies to invest as much as six-figures into social media initiatives? If so, this episode featuring 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 my upcoming book with Paul Gillin titled “Social Marketing to the Business Customer,” to be published by Wiley early next year.

SHOW 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

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

* Corporate Social Media Policy Development

* Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore at SXSW

* What Makes Cool with Nightclub Impresario Ivan Kane

ABOUT THE PODCASTER

@EricSchwartzman provides online communication training, strategy and governance to public relations, public affairs, corporate communications and marketing specialists. He has extensive experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications programs through public speaking, hands-on training seminars, consulting and the development of corporate policies on social media usage.

His clients have included Boeing, BYU, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Government of Singapore, Johnson & Johnson, Southern California Edison, UCLA, US Dept. of State, United States Army, US Embassy of Athens, the United States Marine Corps...

Are you ready to learn the logic behind the argument that convinces companies to invest as much as six-figures into social media initiatives? 

If so, this episode featuring Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services EVP Pete Blackshaw (@pblackshaw) is for you.

Pete currently  CEO of Cintrifuse, a Cincinnati-based venture capital group that creates jobs, brings talent, attracts investment, and unlocks our region’s potential to lead innovation in a wide range of industries.

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.  

SHOW 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,