Denise Shiffman’s Engage Daily Blog

Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas created this [a new] visual model of the social media tools that can be used to create, extend and enhance conversations online. [You can find it here.] [The starfish model below was created by Robert Scoble.] This is an These are excellent visuals for use in internal presentations to management when you need to explain how all of these tools/apps/sites relate.

You can find Brian’s post here.

I’m inspired by this diagram to create one for the social media monitoring, managing, analysis tools since that’s what people ask me about most often. Jesse, Brian, would you like to help?

Update September 26, 2008. (Jesse, thanks for the corrections.)

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Historically, you had to stay up late on Saturday night to catch the sarcastic, sardonic, and down-right hilarious Saturday Night Live skits. Whether or not you watch SNL or like this type of programming, the commentary posed by their skits have much broader reach today.

The Hillary Clinton/Sarah Palin skit has been viewed online over 5 million times on NBC.com alone. Beyond that, it has been played on TV news and video-sharing sites, posted on blogs, Twitter, and social networking pages, and emailed to friends.

It’s no surprise an SNL skit would go viral. They have the writers, actors, time, and money to create extraordinary content. But online video changes SNL’s market model, in this case, their audience and who they influence. SNL’s political commentary and possible influence has reached a wider swath of Americans (including my mother) and international viewers.

Looking at your marketing budget (especially plans for next year), I believe it’s imperative for companies to determine how to take content that would normally be written and turn it into video. And beyond that, to look at their industry, customer, and company and tackle the difficult or controversial subjects with intelligence and humor. The goal is to get your point of view heard and understood, to be the influencer.

Online video has grown dramatically over the past several years. According to eMarketer, advertising related to online video will reach $5.8 billion in 5 years. Marketers and publishers are just beginning to understand the power of video and it’s more viral nature over the written word. With 81 million Net Geners living their personal and business lives online, Net video will continue to gain in it’s branding and influencing power.

Here are few ideas to create successful online videos:
1. Make sure the subject is highly relevant (personal, emotional) to your audience
2. Be original in your point of view, implementation, and subject matter
3. Upload to several video sharing sites and use appropriate tags
4. Market the video on your corporate website, blog, Twitter, Facebook pages, etc.
5. Have a landing page where viewers can go to learn more, comment, or add content
6. Measure the success of your video and incorporate your learning into the next project

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I regularly advise companies to start their new media foray with a blog. Not because I think blogs are a universal panacea. But more for the reason that a well-done, strategic blog forces a company to see what social media is about and what it takes to do it well. And a successful blog creates an open conversation with their audiences that was previously unlikely or impossible.

Although blogging software is free or fairly inexpensive, designing a high quality look and feel that is aligned with the corporate identify can cost significant dollars. Moreover, it takes time to plan and write original, interesting blog posts every week. Social media seems simple on one level, but time is money, and social media is time-intensive.

I like corporate blogs because they force executives who are still accustomed to formal corporate communications to get comfortable showing more of their personalities and revealing more about their company. They also learn to embrace interactions with readers who may say things the company often spends a lot of energy trying to keep a “secret.”

Blogs can help executives to think differently about corporate communications. But interestingly, many companies who encourage employee blogging have missed the point. HP has 60 blogs none of which is focused, original, personal or revealing. Most HP employees or executives who have started a blog don’t post regularly so their blogs don’t have a chance to gain momentum.

Why you shouldn’t start a corporate blog? I couldn’t say it any better than BL Ochman’s recent post on the subject.

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Recently, both the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek have introduced communities on their websites. I’ve played a bit with each and they are both a valuable investment of time (and we all know, social media takes up valuable time).

BusinessWeek’s Business Exchange is focused on news articles and submitting, commenting on, and interacting over news linked to the site from anywhere. BusinessWeek does a great job highlighting and giving recognition to active users.

Both platforms are intuitive and easy-to-navigate and use. Yet, it is still the early stages (beta for both systems) so activity is low (or lower than you might expect for such big brands). In short order, I would expect the communities and interactions to grow rapidly.

The WSJ community is geared more towards discussions and groups. Anyone can start a group or join a group.

Personally, I think it’s about time mainstream publications invited readers in to create a conversation and share opinions. News just begs to be talked about. It would be fun to see journalists commenting on each others articles and other news and overall joining the conversation.

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