DISQUS

Agreed. Thanks for the help in clarifying this very important point!

Oh, yes, monitoring is maintenance, and is an incredibly important part of the process. What a waste if you don't benchmark AND measure your success! Thanks for the important clarification!

Kari, you're so right. Internal culture (or even internal sub-cultures) can be roadblocks if they're not invited into the process early on. This is NOT a marketing-only program. If you don't involve IT, sales, customer service and others, you'll be missing both huge opportunities as well as huge advocates and help in streamlining processes (or even circumventing them).

More than anything, organizations must be "fit" for social media, as much as the other way around. I hope your strategy and skill building will improve internal fitness as you move forward!

Thanks Oliver - you're right, there are many, many more steps... but these big Phases seem to be the common sense glue that pulls a social media presence successfully together.

@Joe, you're right. The critical question of what your desired end result is absolutely key, and usually jump-starts the process.

And the power of social media can give a one-person company a level playing field against larger competitors, if you have a smart strategy, and do your discovery correctly... it's all about delivering a unique, compelling experience with your unique point of view.

Thanks Adrian. WOM is especially important as people become more careful with how they spend their money. We are all looking for more confirmation now that supply is scarce. That's one reason I'm bullish that social media marketing can be effective, as long as we don't lose sight that we're people, talking about products/services/etc. with people.

@E.B. - Thank you. I agree that additional virtual trainings and phone calls (Maintenance) are critical. People learn as they go along, and new questions always arise... which is why Maintenance is key.

@Jesse - You're right. Your reasons for entering into social media are explored in the Discovery and Strategy phases. Most companies enter for one of two broad categories of reasons:

1) Improving their "findability" online through better organic search results
2) Extending brand awareness for the organization and / or products

Measuring ROI for either of these goals is attainable, but one must establish baselines first - which we do in the discovery phase.

Is it possible, that with the new government in place, we'll see a change in FDA regulatory attitudes toward social media and pharma's participation? My fingers are crossed...

I'm an RSS enthusiast and a marketer. I think one of major issues companies have is that they're in a rush to *speak* online (buying social media software products and services, as you mentioned) while a pitiful few recognize the importance of *listening* for which RSS is critical.

I tell all of my clients, until you're set up to listen effectively, you're not set up to blog. I'd go out on another limb and make a positive prediction for RSS, but ask the evangelists to add that message to their quiver.

Well, the quotes are immensely compelling. I am interested in your POV that "There's a lot of fixing to be done." for which I'll download the report. I agree that the nesting phenomenon will drive people to (re)connect with a smaller social graph, and am optimistic that quality will always (and finally, in some cases) win over quantity.

It's a wonderful, wonderful time to be alive and sharing information. Whether it be with 20 or 200. Thank you for posting this report here. Cheers.

Micah, thank you for this post. I share so many of your (and your commenters') feelings, growing up gay and remembering the shock of Harvey Milk's assassination. I was 21 when it happened, and flush with the freedom of being able to be openly gay in a liberal college town. I'm afraid that shock sent me back in the closet in many ways. Your post is strong, meaningful and courageous. I'm striving to be more like that, and reading it helped. Thank you for sharing yourself in such a personal way.

One thing I learned early on about "contentapation," everyone has it.

I was taught a very cool trick by a master (Marshall Kirkpatrick over at Read Write Web) that's often been an inspiration for writers block:

Make your bookmarks to delicious or magnolia automatically go to their "popular" page(s) so you can be inspired by the collective intelligence of the moment.

Here they are:

Delicious popular
Ma.gnolia popular

I also find Twitter musings a great inspiration source. If you follow a wide range of people, you're bound to find wonderful story ideas just by checking in on your Twitter stream once in awhile.

Thanks for spawning an illustrative conversation.

Can't wait to see Engage the Gorge! And when Rick spreads the word, she'll be sitting pretty. I know there are plenty of us who will jump on as well. It's the practice of paying it forward that Rick so eloquently showcases... and keeps the rest of us reminded to do the same.

I'm fascinated by your lessons in this brand new role. I think the community manager position is going to be one of the most important, yet misunderstood roles in most organizations, and we're just now developing best practices as we fly by the seat of our pants!

Leave it to RWW to support your efforts, and thank goodness you're blogging about it. Thank you!

Great post with very practical tips, Jacob, thank you. I knew LinkedIN was going to be a key business tool when I met the guy who headed up Microsoft's east coast recruiting at an event a few years back, and he was a hugely enthusiastic proponent.

It's moved well beyond a recruiting tool, though, as you've noted, into a marketing tool for your own work. Regardless of your profession. I'm inspired to go out there and start answering questions...

I like the new design, but it really bugs me that they threw the search feature at the bottom of the page in the links section. I don't think it's the best from a usability perspective, when all the other control features are at the top of the page.

What do you think of that? Lame or make sense?

Thanks, @kv, for the excellent instructions, and helpful suggestions. I should comb through your site for more, but what prompted the move for you? I've got a client (who knows a guy...) who is interested in MyST precisely because of the SEO.

I've never been a fan of hosted sites, because I had some (unaware) IT "help" in moving a site four years ago and we lost every link. Painful. I always tell people to start with the end in mind...

Anyway, why did you move? Brand? More control?

Thanks again.

Also - quick tip: if you do a search on deleting names at SnapNames, you may be able to find some very cool "pre-owned" domain names that are great for business.

Hi Robert - it's worth your reader's time to look at Attensa again... my favorite thing about Attensa's managed enterprise RSS toolkit today? The social networking elements they've built right in - synchronizing tags with my del.icio.us account, and the capability to post responses to persisitent search blog discoveries like this, from within my Attensa application... great productivity enhancers... (I'm biased, they're a client of mine).

The developers (Eric and team) over at Attensa pay attention to the smallest detail from a UI perspective - that's something Crag Barnes always brought to the party - and it lives on beyond him.

I love the fact that you write about recession tips from a conference you're covering for the rest of us, and your [excellent] post generates 75 comments within the first 18 hours.

That's the difference in the world today - people can hear it through you: five Nobel economists weighing in, and you're translating... which causes a discussion and more tips.

In our globally-interconnected world, we have a lot to learn from each other. Thank you for sparking the conversation, Robert. Here's to you.

Thanks for the RSS coverage, Doug. Attensa is a client of mine, and I picked this up in my Outlook feed - I couldn't do my job (as a marketing and technology consultant) without their excellent RSS suite of products.

Hey, I especially like your idea of "buy me a bucks" - how's that going for you? I have not put any ads yet on my blog, but that's one that feels useful to me...

Cheers. Janet

Thanks for the great post, and excellent list.

However, Attensa (http://www.attensa.com) has an entire enterprise RSS platform that will get the right information to the right person at the right time - whether you want your feeds on Outlook (as you mentioned) or in IM (Sametime), via the web or from your Blackberry.

The Attensa Feed Server is intended to create a secure, scalable, enterprise RSS environment that integrates seamlessly behind the firewall.

I think it's most important to note that the Attensa RSS readers are built on a common platform and designed with a consistent user interface and provide seamless synchronization so subscriptions and articles are kept up to date no matter where they are accessed.

These additional desktop readers are available:

* Attensa for Windows
* Attensa for Mac
* Attensa for Notes

One of the cool things you can do with these readers and the Attensa feed server is to publish to blogs and forward articles to others as easily as sending an email.

And you can keep feeds and articles organized with Tagging and Categories.

Attensa also offers a secure web-based RSS reader.

I like getting my feeds on my BlackBerry - and they offer an enterprise-quality (read very secure) RSS reader for BlackBerry when paired with the Attensa Feed Server, and has significant speed, security and usability advantages over other mobile RSS readers.

Too slow for you to get your feeds in any of the above ways? Attensa offers Attensa for Sametime where you can get and share secure RSS feeds in the gold standard for enterprise instant messaging.

Attensa has developed an entire Enterprise RSS platform - not just an Outlook reader.

Thanks for the link Niklas!

Believe me, we'll have high engagement in the political process in the next year over here... and I hope there will be great change.

Sad news from Oregon, James Kim's body has been found in the wilderness.

It's a sad day for the world.

Robert,

It was great to be in your presence again at the summit. I'm serious when I say that. Your sessions with Maryam were especially fun. It gave many of us a further glimpse into the Way of the Blog. (If there is such a thing for any one person.)

Cheers, and thanks for being willing to share so much of yourself with your readers.