In November, Google launched a competitive product to Facebook’s Fan Pages, called Google+ Brand Pages. Companies can set up Brand Pages to connect with customers and affiliates in the same way that they can with Fan Pages.

Brand Pages and Fan Pages, at least in appearance, are incredibly similar. They both feature a primary image, a row of images, a collection of fans/followers, and a stream of updates that can be commented on or shared by those who visit their page.

Which is better? Is there a benefit to having both? Let’s compare the two.

1. Usage and Adoption

There are still more Facebook users than Google+ users. Depending on the brand, it’s very likely that the bulk of the fans are going to be located on Facebook. Undoubtedly, this reality will affect the time and effort placed on building up a following on Google+.

See the Southwest Airlines example below. As of this writing, Southwest had been on Google+ for over a month, and had gathered just 482 plus 1’s and was in 187 people’s circles. Meanwhile, over on Facebook, the brand is at 1.74 million fans. That’s a massive difference.

2. Engagement

Engagement will be determined primarily be usage and adoption. The more people that have a brand in their circles on Google+, the more likely there is to be engagement occurring on a page.

For example, Mashable.com, an online publication that is focused largely on technology and social media, is one Google+ brand page where you will find a fairly consistent pattern of engagement. It’s still less than their Facebook engagement level, but it is there and growing.

3. Search Benefits

One area where Google+ Brand Pages potentially outshine Facebook Fan Pages is with the Direct Connect feature offered to brand page owners. Google created this feature to allow users to add a + to the end of their search query to find Google+ pages that are relevant to their search.

The obvious drawback is that many users may not know that the Direct Connect feature exists, so brands will need to rely on Google to help promote this feature if they are to benefit from it.

One other current drawback of Google+ Brand Pages is the confusing, long URL problem that Facebook Fan Pages had not too long ago, before the ability to customize the Fan Page URL. It may be in the pipeline, but offering brands the ability to create custom URLs for their pages would be a nice feature to have, as it allows brands to use the URL everywhere and make it easier to fans to connect.

4. Measurement

Both Facebook and Google+ offer sophisticated ways in which a company can analyze their own influence in the social network and the measurement tools are not significantly different. Both services offer enough measurement tools to allow a brand account holder to understand how and when their content is being spread throughout the networks, and both offer API integration capabilities.

Google+ Brand Pages is still in its infancy, and has not caught up yet to the demographics reporting that is useful for Facebook Fan Page owners, but according to their website it is well on its way.

Result: Social Networks are What You Make of Them

Ultimately, social networks are created by the users, in this case, the brands. Brands that go out of their way to build up and promote a Google+ brand page will do well there, and eventually it will have some nice search engine benefits, plus all of the unique features Google+ has to offer to profile users.

There is no clear winner. As shown above with the Mashable and Southwest Airlines examples, it isn’t a matter of how large the brand is, but rather, what they are doing with Google+ and how familiar with Google+ their particular fans are to begin with.

At this point in time, it is probably well worth it for brands to be in both places, and then nurture the network that is most active/profitable as time goes on.

What do you think about Google+ Brand Pages? Feel free to share your thoughts!

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for various online companies including one that provides shipment inspections.

I’ve written about organizing and managing a team blog for business, and shared some pointers about how to choose the perfect authors to generate juicy content. These two posts will get you started in terms of creating original content. But unless you (or your team) is a lean, mean, content production machine, chances are you need additional material to stay involved and current. You may need to curate content from other sources.

Content curation is the much-discussed tactic of gathering, cataloging, and presenting work of potential value to others. Think museum curator, the one who arranges the inventory, stores items appropriately, and lovingly displays the work for others to see and evaluate. If you’re a community manager, content – both original and curated – matters to you because you’re charged with continually rotating the viewing rooms and inventory to satisfy the visitors. It’s your job to encourage them to return for more visits with content incentives.

You may already know some ways content can help a brand build community (and have a handle on some tools to tactically manage that new community). Beyond using Timely or another Twitter client to straight-out share links to the works of art you’ve unearthed, what are some other creative ways you can curate good content and get those patrons back for another visit?

Social Bookmarking:   tagging, feeds, social sharing

Delicious isn’t new, but that doesn’t take the shine off this completely effective, beautifully simple bookmarking tool. A community manager can set up an account expressly for the business and after establishing some content categories relevant to its audiences, start building a wealth of content readers will appreciate. I think the key here is a standardized body of tags (keywords) used to categorize and label good finds. Delicious allows you to grab RSS feeds of your tags so you (and your nifty programmer friends) can create a handy widget with which to publish the good stuff right on your website.

It’s also a handy way to access good support or reference material for your original content. When you’re writing, search for the appropriate tag, find the post you’ve bookmarked that best fits the point you’re trying to make, and link it within your blog post. Voila!

Zootool looks to be a slick way to organize content bits in a really attractive way. It takes tagging a step further by letting you group tagged content into higher-level bundles. For example, tags “HTML,” “CSS,” and “Javascript” might be bundled under “Web development,” giving you access to both granular and more general levels of information. Zootool has an iPhone app and a browser extension, and you can share your bookmarks via email, Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr.

Cool features of Zootool

Link Lists:   hashtags, posts, eNewsletters

Another way to add fresh content to your blog is to create themed posts that draw on other peoples’ good stuff. As part of your editorial planning, establish a day to publish a post on a single topic, then showcase links collected from a variety of resources (preferably some your audiences might not otherwise know about – you’ll be a hero).

Sarah Evans (@prSarahEvans) has published a list-style post of statistics drawing from tweets collected with the hashtag #commentz. Kellye Crayne (@kellyecrane) just launched an eNewsletter for PR practitioners and consultants. The first installment showcases a lot of links broken into several categories she knows her subscribers will find valuable: Tools, Feature Story, News, Worth Reading, Pro Tips. She didn’t write all the stuff she’s linked to, but she’s become a trusted source that culls great information so others don’t have to. In doing so, she’s added value to her community and stayed foremost in their minds.

If you already run a Twitter chat or dominate a hashtag, then there’s a wealth of artifacts at your fingertips. Themed blog posts and emails are two ways to get that content out in front of people who might have otherwise missed it.

Community-generated content: voting on value

There’s probably a good term for content that’s submitted by and voted on by users, but darn if I can put my finger on it. But isn’t it a beautiful concept? BizSugar is a small business website that consists entirely of content submitted by its community. An author can create an account and submit their own content to the pool, or submit a link to someone else’s good work. Readers vote on the posts (in the form of “sugars” or sugar cubes) to indicate content they liked the best. The most popular content is aggregated weekly and distributed in an email to subscribers. It’s a combination of a pull (website) and push (email) techniques.

BizSugar gives small business owners a megaphone and a platform, allowing them to reach wider audiences. Users themselves shine the light on each other through voting. From a community management perspective, it’s a gold mine of content authored by a number of different voices on different topics, all in one central place.

Authors note:  I first published this post, titled “Rethink content curation to reach reacers,” on the Oneforty blog May 27, 2011 as a contributing author. I’m cross-posting here so that Insights & Ingenuity readers might also learn and enjoy.

• Customer support
• Brand awareness
• Sales
• Thought leadership

His post touches on two important, individualized factors influencing the time equation: company size (resource availability) and level of target customers’ social savvy (profile).

You think you know but you (probably) don’t

Assuming you’re not still trying to sell your boss on the concept of social media for business, you’ve either developed (and institutionalized) profiles for your brand’s primary and secondary targets, or you currently face the task. If your business has a web site (doh!), it’s quite possible the design process included persona development (highly recommended, or turn right back around and redesign); use those as a starting point forillustrating who your social consumers are. Because really, you need to know thatbefore you wonder about how often you can join their them and their friends on the playground.

Still haven’t found what you’re looking for?

Take care not to blindly assume personas that serve to represent web site users wholly match the social consumers your brand wishes to target. Diff’rent strokes, possibly diff’rent folks. Expect similarities between persona groups, but the mental state of social consumers following a digital path to your site’s door may very well:

• have different sets of tasks they wish to accomplish than the typical site-only visitor
• hold different perceptions about the brand image (so the information scent trail should presume a certain level of familiarity and follow a definite route)
• hold expectations of external validation in the forms of testimonials, customer reviews of products, Get Satisfaction, Yelp!, or other independent rating & resource properties
• Other variables, based off entering from a different node/outpost

In other words, social consumers – regardless of the platform used – who visit your web site may be of a different frame of mind than less socially active consumers visiting your web site. (We already suspect social consumers tend to spend more; the question you need to explore at what cost can that be achieved, and with what tradeoffs ((there are always tradeoffs)).

If you’re not conscious about this possibility and deliberately planning for it, then you risk message homogenization and loose opportunities to enable sales.

Brands should spend some time fleshing out the social personas to include data points like:

• Amount of annual online spend, by top categories
• Number of social networks currently active in
• Amount of time spent each day on those networks (via computer and handheld device)
• Ratio of personal to business use on those networks
• Participation in online reviews and ratings programs and social commerce sites
• Frequency with which they recommend or refer brands to friends, family, and peers

Remember the other half (three-fourths!)

You may also find Forrester’s Social Technographic’s Ladder helpful in segmenting customer types and building out personas. Just today a friend of mine – also a marketer, with a career that extends back into the “traditional media” days, commented “Social remains a take it/leave it entertainment and curiosity  layer for vast numbers of consumers – the very consumers that buy products and services every single day. Businesses looking to sell stuff will do well to remember the reality outside the bubble of pioneers and early adopters, and weigh their social media initiatives appropriately as part of a larger marketing and communications plan.”

Let’s get personal

Depending on your industry and how finely you wish to characterize customers, the data points that should be addressed by your personas could go on. There are probably other, more specialized criteria applicable to some niche or B2B categories that could be added. The point is to wade through the due diligence to deeply, intimately know your customers. The process probably involves also diving into sales histories or CRM systems, old-fashioned customer files, web session data like recordings and heat maps, focus groups, surveys, and (gasp!) having conversations with the sales staff, customer service folks, and anyone else who may have an opportunity to see a side of the customer. Only then will you be able to understand their values, lifestyle, and other unique drivers.

Only then does the question of “How much time should I spend?” become relevant.

The concept of community is an evolving one and may carry a variety of responsibilities at every company, depending on size and basic organization. But by overlaying the time-tested 7 deadly sins on the most general of community management job descriptions, we can build  an initial list of “Don’ts.”

The 7 deadly sins of community

Lust

1. If you long for a vibrant, active (and straight-up conversational) community like Redhead Writing’s, remember to set the desired mood. Most of us want to dance, we’re just too self-conscious to step away from the wall until we’re invited. Go Macarena, Electric Slide or Funky Chicken. Shoo!
2. Remember to focus more on causes than counts. A large subscriber base may represent a deeper well but it doesn’t account for level of interest, likelihood of engagement, propensity to share, size of personal network, affinity or any other driver affecting distributed reach. Less can be more.

Pride

1. It’s not OK to willfully neglect the squeaky wheel, or one who needs more detailed hands-on help. How you assist these (tedious) few will be seen by the masses. Be gracious.
2. Build it assuming they should (will) come. Don’t do this.

Sloth

1. Careful not to mistake self-forming for self-sustaining. All teams need leaders. Your job is to keep things bubbling while allowing for genuine free expression.
2. Remember that others have expectations that need respecting, no matter what’s on your plate. You’re beholden to the community to resolve questions, respond to complaints, and direct them to proper resources.

Gluttony

1. Avoid force-feeding your brand’s own Kool-Aid instead of a more balanced diet. Remember the food pyramid? Share and promote smaller amounts of self-serving content (top of the pyramid) and more good stuff from other sources (body of the pyramid). Haven’t got enough material to fill an editorial calendar? Here are 34 content ideas. Boom!
2. Try not to give in to your baser instincts and forget your obligation to serve as a leader to a diverse group of people. Some people find the physical humor of America’s Funniest Videos hilarious; others not so much.

Envy

1. Like the sin of Lust, community doesn’t grow where there’s envy. If you wholly ignore what a competitor is doing right with their online engagement, it’ll show.  Don’t be afraid to give props where they’re due.
2. Yeah, if you’re reading this one then you know I ran out of juice. Come up with your own idea and share it in the comments, will you? <knuckles> I’m kind of married to this meme here.

Wrath

1. You shouldn’t take a community member’s comments personally, or react with emotions on your sleeve instead with a tempered, factual response that invites further discourse. The fathead’s comment was the event; you have to be controlled enough to dig into the issue. (OK, so maybe “fathead” isn’t kind. You’re allowed to say that in your head.)
2. When a community member finds a real flaw in your product or a burp in the process, don’t get your back up. Blocking or removal is reserved for asshats, not people with legitimate concerns. Sure, it might be a little toasty with all eyes on you. Just remember you’re charged with grace under fire, and admitting to being human (flaws and all) can win you hearts and minds.

Greed

1. Don’t move into every property, every shiny object with “land grab” mentality. That’s a knee-jerk response to the natural evolution of technology. Reserve your brand’s name if you’re concerned a competitor might squat on it, but take your time evaluating the scene before moving in.
2. Don’t ask the community to pony up time to complete surveys, reply to posts, fill out profile forms when you don’t follow up or do anything with the information you glean. One-sided relationships aren’t very fulfilling. If your brand has inspired others to join it on Facebook or Twitter, don’t leave them hanging. It’s a community, not a focus group.

As always, I’m anxious to see where you’d take issue with my points, or what you’d add to make it stronger. The comments are yours, please leave ‘em!

Image courtesy of LoveThesePics.

Author’s note:  I first published this post, titled “The 7 Deadly Sins of Community,” on the Oneforty blog July 14, 2011 as a contributing author. I’m cross-posting here so that Insights & Ingenuity readers might also learn and enjoy.

The simple knowledge that your direct and indirect competition is using Twitter and Facebook is one thing. But it’s far more valuable to know who they’re developing online rapport with, and what those people need that you can potentially provide. And while you may not stumble across a blatant tweet like “I’m ready to drop $500 on a ,” with service mindfulnesss, some patience, and a little research know-how your small business can take an organic approach to prospecting through social media.

Pluck low hanging fruit on Twitter

Look closely at who’s following your competition with some Twitter research. Here are the recommend steps you should take to leverage this monitoring:

1. View the competitor’s Twitter profile within a browser (recommend Firefox).

2. Click the link to view who lists the company.

3. Highlight all the list information, paste it into BuzzStream’s free link building tool.

4. Download the CSV generated by the tool. You may have to do some file formatting clean-up, but you’ll end up with the name, Twitter handle, and Twitter URL of people who list (and presumably value) your competition.

Armed with this knowledge, you can then spend some quality time researching any interaction between the company and the follower. You may spot some problematic areas you can tuck away for future exploitation – ahem, use – or you may just learn how active and supportive the competition is with its Twitter network. Either way, information is power. And now you have a list of people inclined to have an interest in your product/service category. These people are low-hanging fruit in the sense that they have a heightened interest in your market. It’s likely you’re not starting from awareness zero. Using the same workbook, create new tabs for each competitor and repeat.

And as you can see from the example above, people can use some pretty interesting names when building Twitter lists. I think the names can also be a clue for you to tuck away because it gives insight into how the list maker categorizes or perceives the company. Don’t place too much emphasis here – some people just go crazy naming lists. But in conjunction with your other findings, list names are news you can use.

Now, if you’re committed to digging deep into Twitter to uncover insights, you could extend the value of your new CSV file by adding other columns to help categorize or further identify each prospect. By checking out someone’s profile bio you may find a link to their web site. From there you may discern if they’re a consumer, supplier/vendor, or like-minded pro in another market. Jot all this down into the spreadsheet; it may help prioritize where you spend your time and who you woo.

Be Johnny-On-the-Spot

Furthermore, if a prospect has an RSS feed for their blog, don’t forget to subscribe. File them all under a special folder in your reader for easy access when it’s time to schedule tweets that promote their content. And yes, it’s important that you share other people’s content.

Tired of the CSV file? Well, you still need it. Use SocialSeek or Social Mention to hunt the interwebs and bring back info that fits parameters you set up (your brand name, your competitor’s brand name, the category, related categories, etc.) These tools will bubble up people having conversations relevant to your business. Consider appending their information to your file and rounding out the info you’re collecting. Then reach out while the conversation is hot with a no-pressure message like “I see you’re in a spot. Can we help with that at all?” See? Nice and subtle.

Not an exclusive deal

Of course, larger organizations can take these approaches, too. They’re not exclusive to small shops. Given limited resources, though, small businesses may find real opportunity in converting leads discovered this way, particularly once the basic leg work is set up and tasks become more routine.

Do you own or help out at a small business? What are your secrets for gathering competitive intelligence and prospecting on Twitter?

Author’s note:  I first published this post, titled “How small businesses can use Twitter to get a jump on the competition,” on the Oneforty blog July 8, 2011 as a contributing author. I’m cross-posting here so that Insights & Ingenuity readers might also learn and enjoy.

Whether you’re current career is with a small entrepreneur-ish start-up or with a growing business gaining some momentum, your capacity for two things can help determine whether you ride the wave or get crushed by it. I’m talking about flexibility andaccess to smart tools.

The former is about your capacity to adapt and respond as needed; the latter impacts your effectiveness. And when you’re part of a remote team, you’d better have buckets of both.

Cramer Development:  Distributed teams at work

Josh Cramer, founder and CEO of Cramer Development, a web development company headquartered in Iowa City, IA, discovered the importance of both flexibility and smart tools when he relocated to Iowa City from Des Moines a few years ago. His Des Moines, Iowa IT consulting company was already in place when he relocated to Iowa City. Clients, workspace, the whole shebang. The move forced Cramer to adopt a distributed team style of operations in order to maintain the thriving IT business while running the company (and starting a new one) from another office two and a half hours away.

Right brain flexibility

Cramer felt some of the intrinsic pains brought about by operating in separte geographies. But as his leadership style evolved and some processes were developed, the strategic advantages created by running a location-independent company became obvious. By focusing on the skill set and fit of prospective team members, Cramer is free tohire the right person for the job, rather than the right person within a 25-mile commute radius for the job.

Depending on the project, Cramer Development remote team members may work from Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Colorado, or other corners of the US. Because each employee is in complete control of their personal work environment – Hello, Foo Fighters. Goodbye, gum-smackers – everyone can eliminate the common distractions that lead to loss of productivity while amping up personal comforts (who hasn’t gotten twisted up at work about room temperature at one time or another?).

Left brain logic

Of course, working remotely from peers requires a strong commitment to organization and central access to work products. Someone can’t drop by, point to a section of a wireframe, and start a discussion. Everyone has to be thorough, detailed, and respectful of time tables. With so many pieces in motion – multiple time zones, rolling client feedback, work flow to name a few – creative work like web and application development must take on a certain left brain structure. Yes, chillaxed as a designer may be behind his standing desk, he has to add comments to the project thread and hop on to IMs. Work does not happen in a vacuum.

These tools help CramerDev teams run smoothly:

• Redmine – project toolkit, wiki, push emails, RSS
• Google Apps – calendar, documents, email and more
• Skype – chat, video conference, phone calls
• GitHub – collaborative environment for web coding

Josh spoke about the advantages of remote teams during SxSW 2011 and during a recent Silicon Prairie News podcast.  ”At the end of the day, people should do what works for them,” said Josh. “For us, being distributed really does work best. We are competing on a national level, so for most clients it doesn’t really matter where our office is located. In fact, I’m hearing from more and more new clients that they also run distributed teams.” Seems Josh and his clients aren’t alone. Nearly 90,000 new jobs involving online work were created in May, according to oDesk.

Tools and Tips for Remote teams

Itching to be part of a remote team, but not sure if it’ll fly? Read an article from the Harvard Business Review blog about how to gain internal support for flexible work. Here at oneforty, we have these tips to add (and are anxious to hear your experiences, if you’re part of a remote team):

• Social media productivity tools like SocialBase pair up nicely with office applications to cover online communication end-to-end
• Information esources like the Citrix-owned blog Workshifting (read the recent post highlighting the many reasons to support telework) can help you immerse in the telework culture
• ZOHO collaboration and business applications are inexpensive, easy to use, and provide good functionality
• Dropbox cloud storage and file sharing rawks

Photo courtesy Alaskan Dude on Flickr.

Author’s note:  I first published this post, titled “How to make your remote team a success,” on the Oneforty blog July 1, 2011 as a contributing author. I’m cross-posting here so that Insights & Ingenuity readers might also learn and enjoy.

Disclosure: I’m a contributing author to the Workshifting blog. I receive no compensation or in-kind goods/courtesies for mentioning the Workshifting blog. Not an affiliate link. These are not the droids you are looking for.

• Community intelligence surrounding the category, issue, or brand
• Brand identity monitoring, including competitive intelligence
• Community discovery identifying influencers, issues, and engagement opportunities

These and other forms of BI are often accessible through social media monitoring tools, most of which have been reviewed and compared/contrasted across the interwebs. Undoubtedly you’re familiar with a few of the tools, whether freely accessible or available via subscription.

A Kansas City, MO internet monitoring company named Spiral16 seems to be performing the routine discover-and-report service you’re familiar with, plus a whole lot more.

Spiral16 built a proprietary web crawler that discovers relevant posts, pages, and sites determined by keyword criteria. Whereas many social media monitoring tools can uncover Twitter mentions, hash tag use, or Facebook status updates, Spiral16 scours the entire web including corporate and reference sites like Wikis, forums, blogs, and social media. The data pool is much larger, designed to be more comprehensive in nature to surface opportunities that might otherwise go undiscovered.

View of the sample project dashboard

Spiral16 marketing and communications manager Eric Melin spent the better part of two hours walking me through the dashboard to demonstrate the power of the platform and the user interface. At an extremely high level, the process may look like this:

1. Client consultation with project representative and the data analytics team to discuss goals and objectives.
2. Identify important, known keywords relevant to the brand and/or category.
3. Search strings assembled and queries run.
4. Human filtering of initial results to reach optimal first-run results. The first pool of results includes pages with high text counts for semantic evaluation. Based on the results deemed valuable, the system assigns a percentage-based correlation score.
5. Subsequent query results are determined by the relevancy correlation between new findings and previous ones filtered and parsed by humans.
6. Ongoing refinement based on results. Fees are based per query, not by result. Adjustments may be made at no additional cost.

A few key differences between Spiral16 and its competition:

• The web crawler examines unstructured data to identify content authors. A future version will roll in value-added information like email addresses and twitter handles to assist with influencer outreach and other strategies.
• Identifies exceptions, like spam pages and sites, so that clients don’t get bogged down with the kind of irrelevant results that may obscure gems and trends.
• The highly configurable system allows clients to set their own thresholds for results, meaning while client A accepts results with a 47% or higher correlation score, client B may only wish to see results with a 60% or higher correlation score. Organize and categorize results with custom data tags.

I’m intentionally omitting a ton of details that will fascinate the data geek in you because without direct access to sample data, I think it’s difficult to truly grasp the details and imagine the possibilities. Suffice to say, if you get a chance to use Spiral16, you’ll have a powerful resource at your disposal.

The fine print

Results are downloadable in several graphic formats including PNG, JPG, and others. While the system doesn’t integrate with Google Analytics per se, someone familiar with GA’s UI will have a relatively easy time pulling findings together from the two platforms. So if you’re pulling results from disparate systems, the information extracted from Spiral16 and GA could be presented without much fuss.

Pricing starts at $500 for five queries (separate search strings) with a six month contract. The company offers a 90-day satisfaction guarantee. The package includes setup, tech help, and as many users (with their own custom dashboards!) as you like. In addition to the system-initiated scan, clients can identify known URLs or RSS feeds to include in the process (handy if there are some sites you’d just like to outright monitor).

Have you used Spiral 16? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments!

Author’s note:  I first published this post, titled “Monitor more with Spiral16,” on the Oneforty blog June 21, 2011 as a contributing author. I’m cross-posting here so that Insights & Ingenuity readers might also learn and enjoy.

And we humans claim to be advanced mammals.

Social Media Screw-ups

Will we ever learn from the mistakes of others? Why do we continue to nod our heads and mutter “I know that’s right, um-hmm” while bashing stupid people tricks without ever holding up a mirror to our own company <waves hi to reflection>? Check your own house, people. Yes, slip-ups and gross errors in judgment can happen to you. And to your team. Admit you’re fallible, then figure out what can be done to mitigate future risk.

Crisis plans are an absolute necessity. A well-planned protocol created by cool heads with the luxury of time and the foresight to plan appropriate responses and contingency actions can mean the difference between getting singed and flaming out. But I think real due diligence begins way before a social media manager gets active in the field, and certainly before a crisis ever hits the Twitter stream.

It happens long before a new hire gets plugged into the social media manager slot.

After your company spends several hundred dollars in advertising (or thousands if there’s a headhunter in the mix), and six weeks evaluating resumes and interviewing candidates to select the perfect social media manager, it should keep investing in the Chosen One in the form of training before she’s ever given the user names and passwords to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, YouTube, and the like (go ahead, give her the keys to MySpace. Who cares?).

Readiness to handle the social media reigns

The fact that she has 742 Facebook friends, a 6-month old blog and wracks up 2,000 texts a month does not constitute readiness to take over the brand reigns in a very public (and often volatile) channel.

What does constitute readiness in my book is deliberate employee onboarding that layers the technical with the cultural, the experiential with expectations, and the external with the internal for a holistic view of the brand and its stakeholders.

Prepare the Social Media Manager for success

Pros train and run drills

Every company is different; different culture, organizational dynamics, products, process, resources, and certainly different levels of concern regarding risk in social media. The items listed below should serve asthought-starters to setting up your company’s own framework for onboarding and preparing employees on the front line of social media.

Brand bible:   Should have full knowledge of guidelines involving identity/logo use, typography, approved lifestyle and product photography and illustration styles, content tone and voice, primary brand messages, and current published assets like reports or papers.

Brand immersion:   Actual classroom-style training discussing: founding pillars, values, mission, vision, history, executive bios, organizational chart, annual strategic plans, investors reports, press center, reviews of recent failures, reviews of recent successes, tour of factory, call center, warehouse, introductory meetings with cross-functional department heads, staff or status meetings, testing products/services, reviewing customer feedback from surveys, observing inbound customer care calls, overviews of prior and current marketing and advertising campaigns, details about any strategic partnerships or alliances.

FAQ:   Reference documents outlining essential policies and procedures, standard language glossary, contact information, mock scenarios and appropriate resolutions, escalation procedures, methods for documenting or reporting issues, product specifications or data sheets, etc.

Product or service training: Hands-on, in-depth instructional training on the company’s salable products or services.

Social media guidelines:    Pam Sahota gave some great examples of social media policies in a recent oneforty post.

Crisis plan: Mock scenario run-throughs, putting elements of the crisis communications plan in place in a controlled environment. Drew McLellan recently wrote a good post reviewing some basics to remember.

A good social media manager lives the brand through word, tweet, and deed. How well prepared is your company’s social media staff?

Author’s note:  I first published this post, titled “Social media training is about preparation, not tools,” on the Oneforty blog June 10, 2011 as a contributing author. I’m cross-posting here so that Insights & Ingenuity readers might also learn and enjoy.

• Planning is something we need to do more of, and less time talking about doing soon.
• Schedules can make you feel like a hamster on a wheel, but at the end of the day at least you got somewhere. Probably even on time.
• Schedule for tomorrow in hand, spend today tearing down assumptions, barriers, and institutionalized dogma. Put your crayon to paper and ask “What if…” Note: this will make someone in the room uncomfortable, be prepared.
• There’s no time like the present to step back into the fringe of business (or promotion, campaign, or stage of development cycle) to quietly monitor the customer and competition activity going on. You may see something new from your perspective on the outskirts.
• There is no “off” season. There are only times when attention shifts and interest takes a soft right turn. Keep playing your best game no matter what size you think the audience is.
• There are very few solo acts. Your best efforts rest on the attention and support others give you. Embrace collaborative opportunities for what they are – genuine interest in making your widget (or kid) the best. It really is possible that someone else wants it (or him) to succeed as much as you do.
• Send a thank-you card. Handwritten. In the mail.
• Think about your favorite customers and what makes them so. Then think about your troublesome customers. What’s in the way of them being more like the former? A misunderstanding? Old baggage you can help toss out?
• Some competitors may not put in their summer training time. They still may be allowed to play in the game. No matter. You sweated; you want it more and your drive to be the best will show through.
• There will be peanut butter (or something equally as sticky) in someplace you’d never expect. Learn to live through the peanut butter with grace and style.

What did you learn this summer that you can apply to business or work? Life’s too short for lessons to be fleeting.

So I’ll ask you readers (plugged-in people yourself): Do you ever not feel overloaded with to-do items? Is your work day spent snuffing out campfire after blazing inferno after false alarm?

Let’s see if we can fix that.

If you’re a community or social media manager, or if the functions of either of those two positions are subsets of a broader role for you, then the best place to start getting a handle on your time and output is to start with your boss.

• Confirm that (at least in general terms), you’re spending your time in the areas he/she wants. It may sound simple, but don’t take this for granted, and definitely don’t wait until year-end review time. The boss may simply be wrapped up in his own calendar and not yet set aside the time necessary to go over things with you. Meanwhile, he’s making mental notes about how you’re off the mark.
• Take out your job description 3 to 4 times a year and force yourself to read the stuff written by someone in league with Charlie Brown’s teacher. Yes, job descriptions are usually full of stuffy language and lofty expectations. It’s those formal expectations you’ll be measured against come review time, when your uber cool boss takes a plumb job elsewhere, or when the suits take over. If the job description doesn’t mesh with A) what you do and B) what your boss has actually tasked you with, that should be a major Will Robinson moment for you. Back slowly away from the vehicle and call a meeting, pronto. Jot down changes or additions on a continual basis to keep the description current with reality, then get official sign off.

Okay, now that you and the boss man are copacetic about what he wants, what you’ll be measured against, and what you’re actually spending time on (mileage may vary), it’s time to crank up your effectiveness.

Time Management

• Citrix Online, the company that owns of GoToMeeting and other SaaS platforms, runs a blog called Workshifting. If you’re not familiar with this concept outright, chances are it’s something you do now, anyway, in one form or another. Workshifters are those who simply get work stuff done in one non-traditional (8 to 5) fashion or another. It may mean M-W-F in one office and Tu-Thur in the field; it may mean working remotely, away from headquarters. Take a look at the time management category of the blog to read up on some great lessons from their great stable of authors.
• Other tactical things I’ve tried include:
  • the Pomodoro technique
  • drawing detailed project/task grids on whiteboards (make use of colored markers to delineate between priorities or categories)
  • maintaining recurring status reports
  • Teuxdeux, a great little browser app (also available for the iPhone) that lets you make really flexible to-do lists that can be shared with other team mates
  • the oneforty SocialBase, a sweet tool that helps you schedule social media tasks so you free up some gray matter to do other things

The Pomodoro trick will require great discipline to master your own entrenched habits and environmental forces (we typically bite off way more than we can actually chew, plus we underestimate the time needed to get a unit of work done), but can be very effective even if you have to modify part of the format to suit your own personal situation. I’m a visual person, so the colored white boards keep me centered because I can glance up over my computer anytime and know definitively what’s to be done (it helps that others can see it, too – another measure of accountability). Status reports may seem “junior,” but fact is, once you develop a format you like the process of completing the report each week brings into sharp relief your tangible progress and outputs.

Efficiency

• Spend a week or two doing what you do while keeping a detailed notebook of where each 15-minute increment is spent (meetings, routine tasks, pulling reports, synthesizing raw data, writing, tweeting, reading blog posts, etc.) This list can serve as your baseline, what it currently takes you to complete things. Then start using a tool like e.ggtimer to monitor your speed on those same tasks moving forward.

• The point isn’t to develop a “race” mentality (although the gaming aspect of trying to beat the timer an be fun), but rather to raise your consciousness about how long you’re spending on things. If you’re anything like me, two hours can go by and you’re still writing that blog post… Do good work, but remember you gotta ship things too.

What do you do to ensure you keep a finger on the pulse of the community without losing sight of the bigger picture?

Author’s note:  I first published this post, titled “How to be a more efficient social media manager,” on the Oneforty blog June 3, 2011 as a contributing author. I’m cross-posting here so that Insights & Ingenuity readers might also learn and enjoy.