Think your company is too big, bureaucratic, and important to dabble in social media? That increased accessibility from customers poses too much of a risk to justify the potential rewards?

Think again.

The US government is using social media to improve operations and provide greater transparency. In fact, according to BizReport, 66% of US Government agencies are using social networking tools.

Last year, Mark Drapeau (Director of Innovative Social Engagement at Microsoft U.S. Public Sector) started an ongoing column at Mashable talking about the federal government and social media. In outlining a theory of social media use for the federal government,  he explained the ultimate goal should be to make it easier for agencies within the government to communicate.

This internal use of social media is exactly what your big, bureaucratic, and reactive business should consider as well.

We spend a lot of time talking about social media as a marketing, branding, and advertising tool but often don’t acknowledge the benefits of using social media platforms to improve internal operations. That’s because today, social media is hard enough sell when you’re talking about visible increases to the bottom line in the form of sales; its harder to specifically quantify the benefits to an organization thanks to internal social media tools.

Amy Mengel at Mengel Musings wrote about a recent event in Albany where the New York State Senate’s CIO office explained how it is using social media to “pull the state government out of the DOS-ages”. (Love that description!) They focused on external uses of social media, which are also very important in the public sector: transparency, participation, and collaboration. New York State, like the White House itself, is even using open-source software so, as Mengal said, citizens can access information about their government whatever way works best for them.

But consider the example highlighted in a Harvard Business Review article last week of using social media internally. In one example, a company used it to revise a classroom training program more efficiently and effectively. The article mentioned micoblogging specifically, but the tips it contained, and those generated by the comments, are useful in the adoption of any social media tool:

• Have specific goals,
• Lead by example (ie, get the top executives involved),
• Provide training.

Bottom line here:  If the Department of Defense can handle social media, so can your business.  So, get educated on what tools are available, develop a plan, and start small.

Photo Credit: Flickr

(This blog post brought to you by friend, content strategist and speaker at this years SXSW Festival, Margot Bloomstein. You can find her on Twitter at @mbloomstein)

What’s the connection between social media and content strategy? Well, for one, you can’t have social media strategy without content strategy.

Nope, this isn’t a way to carve up more of the project budget; in fact, content strategy may just help your social media budget stretch further by reducing rework and unsuccessful campaigns.

Let’s back up to some definitions:

Content strategy is planning for the creation, aggregation, governance, and expiration of useful, usable, and appropriate content within an experience. It stems from a message architecture, or hierarchy of key communication goals. Moving forward, it comes to life through

Content audit-what do we have and how well is it working?
Prescriptive content matrix -what do we need, how much, in what structure, who will create or find it, and at what frequency?
Editorial style guidelines-what’s the appropriate style and tone to convey the message architecture?
Editorial calendar- to coordinate all the moving parts in a predictable, manageable way.

Notice how I didn’t mention copywriting? Though you’ll need copy to express your ideas, it’s just one small and tactical component of your strategy–which may also address user-generated content, imagery, and sound.

So back to social media–you know, the line item more and more businesses are prioritizing as they see the benefits their competitors experience. Positive interactions between brands and their target audiences drive loyalty, purchasing, donations, involvement, and visibility. So how can you ensure the time and money you invest in social media will result in those positive interactions? A social media strategy can ensure you’re using different channels–e.g., Facebook, Twitter, blogs, online forums–to their respective benefits. Strategy can also help you address consistency and frequency of interactions–two necessary components to ensure your brand is creating positive experiences across all its touchpoints, not undermining its own work, and building something worthwhile, not embarrassing. You know those CEO blogs that boast only one or two posts–and the last one was six months ago and didn’t receive any comments anyhow? That’s embarrassing. And depending on your industry, it may be more embarrassing than the keg stand pictures also featuring your CEO.

So where do content strategy and social media strategy intersect to benefit each other, and the clients they serve?

As content strategy first addresses the most important topics to communicate–documenting them in the message architecture–it can directly answer the elephant-in-the-room question of most social media campaigns: what should we blog/tweet/post, anyhow? As a content strategist, I often work with social media strategists (or wear that hat myself) to prioritize blog/tweet/Facebook topics and help writers evoke brand voice in an editorial style that consistently supports those themes. If it’s most important for your brand to communicate its innovation, long sentences laced with passive voice will undercut that goal. Style matters–even in the 140-character world of Twitter. I counsel my clients on how to create a unique, brand-appropriate voice they can “translate” between Twitter, Facebook, and longer-form blog posts. I’ll also explore tools like an editorial calendar to help them synchronize themes across social media channels.

In short, partnership between content strategy and social media strategy answers a lot of questions: done right, no one should ever ask “Wait–what should I be writing about, and for when?!” again.

No, it’s not a cousin of the ipad, and it’s pronounced  ”eye- paaaydio”, not “i -patio”.

It’s a terrific new technology that I love, and talked about a few weeks ago here. But I thought I’d dive a bit deeper and learn more. Earlier this morning, I interviewed the CEO of ipadio, Mark Smith. (good friend Aaron Strout also did a nice review of ipadio here as well)

Have a listen below. (if anything, us Yankees will love his English accent)

We talk about:

• The resurgence of audio use with mobile phones. How businesses and individuals can gather  and share real-time content using ipadio. (think news and sports reporting- you instantly produce and share interviews and updates. ESPN, CNN, NYTimes, take notice
• Quite simply, audiocasting, or as they call it, “phlogging”, is a easier, and much more efficient and and inexpensive alternative to video.
• Geo-location and ipadio.  The topic du jour. You’ll notice that this podcast originated in the UK.
• Everyone has a smartphone, why not use the smartphone for what it is optimized for?
• And take a peek at Mark’s favorite pastime- how does he fit into this car?!!!

I continue to be fascinated by the struggle of mainstream news media and the explosion of local media

Some really interesting statistics for you here, courtesy of Paul Gillin . He gave a terrific (and very well received) presentation at last week’s Inbound Marketing Summit. ( For a link to his presentation on slideshare- click here)

The average age of a US Daily Newspaper is 57 years old
Average age of a network evening news viewer- 63 years old
US Newsrooms staffs have been reduced 45% since 1991

Or as Paul put it very well,  “It’s not the newspapers that are dying, it is the readers!”

So, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a the hyper-local social media movement. Citizen journalists are now blogging their news from every small town across the country, and big-time old-school establishments are now taking notice. Companies are popping up that seek to collect and aggregate local content from local bloggers onto a consistent platform.

So, I did a little digging, and found the following four companies (and there are plenty more) who are making a go of it.

www.patch.com- NY/NJ/CT- tri state area so far. (Founded by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong) Nice intuitive, easy interface. My favorite so far.
www.everyblock.com- as the NY Times calls it- “the most ambitious hyperlocal sites out there” It’s got a nice iphone App, but I don’t consider this service hyperlocal at all. They simply focus on big cities (for now) and not their surrounding communities. I’d did a quick search for my local community- nothing came up.
www.topix.com- They certainly get local, but not impressed with all the google ads. A really messy page bombarding you with ads for my credit score, viagra, and refinancing.
www.backfence.com. They’re gettin’ there- now it looks like a virtual yellow pages. No content- yet.

So, this leaves us with a final question. What’s going to happen to the local blogger? Should I start blogging for my local town?

My friend Rachel Happe from The Community Roundtable suggested to make a go of it. I can videotape local businesses, post content, tell stories, and well, see what happens. I’m tempted to, but will www.patch.com swoop in and take over?

Hmmmm….