Companies large and small are using social media not by spending big bucks on viral campaigns or contests, but by simply participating in the conversation and connecting with bloggers.

Cartier and Mulberry among other high fashion brands are courting bloggers to get them excited about products but also to better explain costs and respond to complaints.

Up to this point, high fashion has considered itself above social media. Now, companies are digging in. Thanks Andrea for pointing me to this article on the fashion industry.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, a start-up mom and pop pet food company has built it’s revenues to $2.5 million solely on plain old word of mouth. Without hawking their brand, the owners of K9 Cuisine have logged onto a variety of social networks and joined the conversation about pets. Their passion for the health and safety of the animals they love has given them a fast following.

K9 Cuisine also blogs and maintains Twitter and Facebook accounts. This way they can initiate the conversation, optimize their content for search engines and develop a core following.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Those 20-somethings won’t join companies that ban Facebook on company time. Executives that don’t allow texting during a meeting are considered out of touch. Companies that don’t blog have missed out on the conversation that is the marketplace (their customers, prospects, and even competitors).

Wake up! It’s a new world.

Web 2.0 and social media are here to stay. These tools, technologies, features and Web platforms have forever changed user behavior online, as well as user expectations of the companies they purchase from. It is important for companies to understand and participate in this new Web.

Social media offers new opportunities to engage customers directly, influence the marketplace, increase brand awareness and affinity, build a better customer experience, and collect market intelligence. Now, why would you want to ignore that?

Learn and Apply

Today user-generated content (UGC) in blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks, communities, virtual worlds, product reviews/comments, and videos is fast becoming the bulk of content on the Web. No longer can corporate websites, branding activities, and mainstream press programs alone drive the conversation online.

The vast amount of information created by customers, prospects, and industry bloggers through these new media vehicles can help employees gain a better grasp of trends, customer sentiment, competitor activities and product and service requirements. So encourage all of your employees to get online and learn!

In addition, employees can enhance and extend the company’s customer experience by creating and distributing content that adds value, and learning from and applying information created by external audiences. In the old-fashioned, hierarchical workplace, executives want absolute control over information going out of the company. That’s understandable assuming there are some crown jewels to protect.

But the wholesale rejection of employee blogging or interacting with social media as a part of their job is a grave error in judgment. The opportunity cost to a company can be huge. To meet the needs of both sides, there must be rules in place that guide employees through their online interactions.

Responsible Participation

Social media interactions and blogging by employees should be designed to build relationships with customers, partners, and bloggers, attract prospects, initiate or add value to the public discourse and embrace outside interaction. Employees can be encouraged to interact responsibly on social media such as blogs, wikis and through comments.

Getting involved in social media should be the choice of each employee. Anyone with a passion or interest should be encouraged to create a blog or participate in a group blog. Start with internal blogs to get a feel for how it works. And make sure you have written social media guidelines that every employee reads in advance. I’ve written in the past about specific guidelines that help employees make good decisions.

It’s critical at this point that you don’t let fear of the unknown hold you back. It’s okay to take baby steps. At least you’ll be walking in the right direction.

Popularity: 11% [?]

According to John Hingley, CEO at Andiamo Systems, you can. Andiamo, launched in January, targets small to medium-size companies that want to see the results of their social media activities (or just track mentions of their brand). What makes Andiamo stand out from the pack? They’ve made their online buzz monitoring system near real-time, easily accessible, and in a price range most companies can afford.

It’s not the sophisticated linguistics-based text-analysis system you would find from Attensity, but Andiamo’s system is intuitive and easy to use. It puts monitoring blogs and user comments in the hands of the client. As with all social media monitoring systems, Andiamo requires hands on analysis from people inside the company. Most of the junk and repetitive links get filtered out, but since the data has to be “cleaned” it’s a little less real-time than a fully automated system would be.

According to John, “Google Alerts can give you a 3-8 day delay for results and sends out a lot of junk. Andiamo gets 30-40% more hits.” He added, “I believe Andiamo gets 80-85% of what’s on the Web” and it’s getting better with each release. A PR manager from one company I spoke with that was running a test using Andiamo said that he could find many more hits on his brand using Google search. And John is the first to admit that he can’t beat Google’s search algorithms. However, an automated service that finds most of the comments on your brand is a good start.

Andiamo’s best feature is their sentiment ratings. At a quick glance you can see if the overall comments are negative, positive, or neutral. This feature is a great early warning system. And several Andiamo customers have found product, security, and service issues they hadn’t known about previously.

If you’re going to launch a brand on a budget, or you want to test out social media monitoring to prove its value to your boss, Andiamo may just be the way to go. Version 2.0 is coming out soon and it will have some nifty new features such as email alerts to your PC or cell phone to notify you if sentiment is going sour.

Some of the company’s clients include Vertical Response (where John Hingley is one of the founders), Icon Estates, BullsEye Media, and Access Public Relations.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Several people have asked me lately if they should implement social Web tools for their sales force. I can think of few organizations that would reap more reward from social media than the sales group.

There are several different ways to look at this. First, it’s difficult for sales reps to have any real-time knowledge about what’s happening in marketing and with the products they’re selling. Second, sales reps provide a treasure trove of information and feedback for marketing and product development but rarely have a good outlet to get their ideas heard.

Internal and secure blogs, wikis, and social networks can help. An internal blog can be used by product marketing to keep sales reps up to date on new features, product delays, and product issues in development or in the field. Commenting allows both organizations to understand each other better and as well as the impact of their decisions.

A product wiki enables sales reps to provide input early on a product or have an impact on the evolution of the product. Good ideas can come from anywhere, and sales reps who spend a great deal of time with their customers just might have some innovative thoughts.

Implementing a Web site with social profiles enables sales reps to determine where expertise exists in the organization so that they can tap into it. It also allows for an easy exchange of ideas of what works and doesn’t work in specific types of accounts. The social conversation can be monitored and mined (using text-analysis) so that themes, issues, and best-in-class ideas can be analyzed and acted on.

Popularity: 24% [?]