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.

Don’t be one of the 64.5% of marketers who say, according to a survey from R2integrated, that their companies have not increased revenue or profited from using social media. They’re doing it wrong.

MarketingProfs said 60.1% “marketing and business professionals cite lead generation as their primary source for using social media”, followed distantly by conversation monitoring at 26.9% and keeping up with the Jones at 5.1%

Generating and monitoring conversations about your business/products/brand are both good ways to be using social media, but that’s small potatoes compared to the potential. R2integrated’s survey sample was a mere 262 professionals, but I’d be willing to guess most businesses out there aren’t thinking big picture when it comes to social media. So it’s a good thing you’re here; you’re already ahead of the game.

Today, Matt from the team at 37signals posted a quote from Merlin Mann on the company blog that I think illustrates what’s going on here:

“I really feel like that combination of little, easy motor skills and clicking combined with feeling a little less bored for a minute is completely addictive to people…if you’re not mindful about the amount of your attention that goes to thinking about and consuming those things, you’re not going to be making good stuff, either for that medium or elsewhere. That’s what I got kind of hung up on, when I finally realized that all I was doing was eating and producing potato chips all day long.”

Are you producing (and consuming?!) potato chips?

Do you spend hours of your day refreshing your Google Analytics results? Are you feeling crispy from the unfocused effort you’ve been putting into your business’s social media marketing plan without many tangible results? Instead of trolling networking sites, spamming members, and scraping the bottom of the barrel for ways to make social media pay -

• develop meaningful content and
• cultivate a community that will promote it for you;
• think about ways to use social media within your business to increase efficiency, buy-in, or morale;

And if you need it, we can help…..

As the Dialogue team ramps up for SXSW (the Super Bowl of Social Media Conferences) we’re still interviewing some great marketers out there. Mike Volpe is our featured Social Marketer today. If you haven’t already, take 30 minutes on a Friday afternoon to watch Mike and Karen Rubin talk Inbound Marketing on their weekly television show/podcast/live-streaming event, Hubspot TV

About Mike
I’m Mike Volpe, and I love Marketing! I work as VP Inbound Marketing at HubSpot, where I get to lead a team of marketers as well as create a lot of content on our blog, for our TV show, and by speaking a lot too.

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
Passion! You need to find a job that allows you to leverage your passion. I mean it’s late at night right now, but I’m having fun writing about marketing because I love it. Focusing on your passion makes everything else a lot easier.

2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do and why?
Read. I read my email. I read blogs and news in my RSS reader. I read Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. I read my reports in HubSpot analytics. You need to know what is going on before you can do something productive.

3. What makes you efficient with your day?
Seclusion time. I need at least 1 hour a day where I have zero interruptions and I just crank through all my inboxes and tasks. If not, it starts to back up and the problem gets worse. I tend to really focus in on things, and if I get distracted, I have a lot of trouble refocusing, so I need to comepletely uninterrupted time to be super productive. I actually book this time in my calendar, and if I am in the office, I will go hide someplace so no one can bother me.

4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. He recently rewrote a lot of it to update it for a new addition. The month that book came out, I sent him and email with the subject line “Our company (HubSpot) was based on your book”. While HubSpot was founded before the book came out, it was a true statement. We had lunch the next week and David and I are friends now, and he’s been a great advisor. I should also mention that “Inbound Marketing” by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah (the foreword is by David Meerman Scott) is another take ont he same subject, with probably more “how to” examples.

5. 3 things on your desk right now/3 things you can’t live without

iPhone – Not because I am in love with Apple (I don’t like them much) but because it makes me a lot more productive, I’ll replace it the second something better is available (please Google… help!)

Google Apps - I used Outlook for years, but once I converted and got used to Gmail/Gcal, I am faster and more efficient

DropBox – Having all my important files available anywhere, and collaborating with my team more easily is great

With the combination of these 3 things, I have stopped carrying a laptop and a bag except when I travel on planes. I just walk out of the office. I have a laptop that mostly stays in the office, a desktop in my house, and also a netbook for around the house and sometimes travel.

6. Habit you want to kick in 2010
Checking Twitter too much! It is usually pretty distracting, and can be addictive. And to be honest, most of the super important stuff there ends up getting to me through other channels. But, I do need to make time for it, just in a few 10 minutes chunks during the day (TweetDeck on the iPhone helps a lot with this).

7. Habit you want to form for 2010
Inbox Zero. I have been getting better… around 100 messages in my inbox on average the past few months, rather than 300-ish – but I want to really try to keep it under 10-20, and maybe even hit zero. We’ll see… I mean, I just got rid of this message!

Some data hit the interwebs last week breaking down recent trends in corporate social media use. With the amount of time we spend working with and talking about social media, it’s easy to forget not everyone thinks these tehcniques are valuable and is willing to integrate them into a larger corporate strategy. The good news is, that according to Burson-Marsteller,  most Fortune Global 100 companies are using social media platforms.

It reported Twitter as the most popular, with 65% of the largest 100 international companies having active accounts, compared with 54% on Facebook, 50% on YouTube, and just 33% with corporate blogs. That pattern was reversed in Asia. More businesses there were likely to rely on corporate blogs than Facebook pages or Twitter. The study also showed that only 20% of these companies use a combination of these platforms together.

So, progress has been made: businesses have tried these tools and sticking with them long term. The remaining challenge, then, is for companies to find a comprehensive and definitive way of defining and measuring success. That’s where Paul Gillin comes in.

Since December, Paul Gillin has been conducting his own study on multi-channel social media strategies. His quick findings are that:

• The metrics companies are using are all over the map
• Few organizations are taking a disciplined approach to measuring ROI
• There is a consensus emerging on what’s important and that companies are starting to focus on the metrics

What the Burson-Marsteller study doesn’t show(as an article on ReadWriteWeb pointed out) is if social media marketing techniques are gaining “significant corporate acceptance”. There are people at these companies using these platforms, but we’re just not sure how integrated their tactics are with the company’s overall strategy.

What interests me is the gap between the industry interest in Twitter and the low number of young users, teens and college students. According to the New York Times, and my own experience with teenagers, they prefer texting to tweeting. Will they see the light when they get older, or will we have forgotten about Twitter 10 years from now? That’s something for another day….

If you are a small business on a shoe-string budget, look no further than Duct Tape Marketing. Today’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers” continues with
the 7 Habits of John Jantsch.

About John
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
Paying attention to what’s going on around me and writing about it daily

2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do and why?
Coffee – I have a routine of sites, email, engagement, Twitter, etc that I run through – I guess it’s part of my overall systems approach

3. What makes you efficient with your day?
GTD and Central Desktop – I’ve always been a list maker

4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
The Practice of Management – Peter Drucker – although it may not seem like it, it’s the best marketing book I’ve ever read

5. 3 things on your desk right now/ 3 things you can’t live without
24″ Monitor, Moleskin notebook, Jug of green tea

6. Habit you want to kick in 2010
Coffee

7. Habit you want to form for 2010
Increase Yoga and running practices

I’ve already forgotten what interview number this is, so let’s just move on and introduce Paula! There’s a reason you’ve all heard of Southwest Airlines, and it’s probably because of the outstanding efforts of Paula Berg, who used to run Southwest’s new media. Paula’s a terrific, energetic speaker, and will get you hooked on Southwest Airlines (or social media) before you know it. She has finally returned home to place she loves in Colorado, and answers the 7 Habits questions as she stares at the Rocky Mountains out her window…

About Paula
I’m the Digital Media Lead at Linhart PR, a national public relations and corporate communications counseling firm based in Denver, CO.  (NOTE- interesting name of their corporate blog….) I earned my social media stripes at Southwest Airlines, where I served as the company’s first Manager of Emerging Media, responsible for the development of the airlines’ social media strategy and the leadership of the airline’s emerging media team.

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
Great question. I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately and looking back on all of the things that have influenced me over the years – everything from the people I’ve known to the jobs I didn’t get. I could list a hundred things, but if I had to boil it down to one, I’d say it has been being an independent thinker, a trait I attribute to my father. I can be a bit scrappy at times, a trait I attribute to my mother. I never accept ideas just because “it’s the way it has always been.” I prefer figuring things out for myself. I love a challenge and a hearty debate. And, of course, I love being right (wink). But if I’m going to be wrong, I want it to be because someone else was right and not because I was too lazy to find a better solution.

2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do and why?
I roll over, pick up my phone and check my online channels – email, text, Twitter, Facebook and news. Then I try to go back to sleep for 10 -30 minutes, but that never works. Scanning everything as soon as I wake up allows me to visualize my day and start thinking about what I need to accomplish so I can hit the ground running when I get to the office.

3. What makes you efficient with your day?
I’m not sure if I am efficient with my day…honestly, I’m all over the place. I’m extremely organized, but I often say that my work style is a bit like George Washington’s teeth – you don’t want to see it. Any tool that allows me to be online and connected 24 hours a day so I can obtain information, reach colleagues, document ideas when they come together, or figure out where I need to be helps.

4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
I’m going to give a shout out to my former employer and say Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Success. The airline’s unorthodox approach to business and customer relations fits my style and illustrates how a little bit of independent thinking can overcome challenges, revolutionize an industry, and even change the world.

5. 3 things on your desk right now/3 things you can’t live without
Water bottle, iphone, and a small pad of paper that goes with me everywhere (for those times I can’t be online). And, chapstick. I’m never without chapstick.

6. Habit you want to kick in 2010
I recently kicked several bad habits and then decided that life is a lot more fun when you’re naughty. So, I’ve taken them up again. But I still feel guilty about them sometimes, so I guess I’m trying to kick the desire to kick bad habits and just roll with it.

7. Habit you want to form for 2010
I spend so much time online these days, I was thinking I’d like to try writing some letters – old school style with pen, paper and stamps.

Ok, Interview #5 of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers” series. Today’s interview is with none other than Jim Long, NBC cameraman for the White House.

About Jim
Jim is a self described “new media soul trapped in an old media body” or a “human satellite truck.”  When he’s not flying around the world covering the President and White House News, he’s running his own business, Verge New Media. If you happen to track him down, ask him about his hair-rising trips to Afghanistan aboard one  of the Air Force’s “doomsday planes.

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
I don’t know if I can peg my success today on just one trait.  I believe that it is my persistence, my fierce dedication to my craft and client, and the faith that exceptional work will lead you to personal success – it’s these qualities that have gotten me where I am today.

2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do?
The start of my day is linked to the ebb and flow of news.  Some days are planned out, other days we’re putting out fires.  I’ve learned to expect the unexpected, but i generally start my day loading up my camera, then logging in to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare

3. What makes you efficient with your day?
Efficiencies in my newsgathering role are less dependent on web technologies than many other jobs;  yet every assignment requires that I make judgements about how much, and what type of gear I need to bring to bear to the task.   Paramount in this process is the question: “Could I get on the air with what I have with me?”  Beyond the camera, blackberry has become indispensable.

4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
The Long Tail”  has put the current state of my business in perspective, putting a fine point on the opportunity and uncertainty media and other businesses face.

5. 3 things on your desk right now/ 3 things you can’t live without
Sony HDW F900r Video Camera
iPhone 3G, Blackberry World Edition
Powermac G4 1.67Ghz

6. Habit you want to kick in 2009
I’m terribly disorganized,  I need to work on that.

7. Habit you’d like to form for 2010

NOTE: for those of you who know Jim well, suggestions for a new habit for New Media Jim?

Ok, Interview #4 of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers” series. A big thank you to Todd for participating!

About Todd
I am a principal at SHIFT Communications, a national Social Media and PR agency, working with clients such as Canadian Club Whisky, J&J, Virgin Mobile, and numerous B2B brands.  I blog at www.pr-squared.com.

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
The trait I’d point to is a competitive spirit.  Some might call it paranoia, but I’m all about the positive spin.  When I speak of a competitive spirit, it’s not in a “rub-it-in-your-face” way so much as it’s about proving to myself that I can overcome an obstacle.  On those days when I feel like I am doing my job right, it’s when I sense that my colleagues at SHIFT also embrace that sense of mission, that “sticktoitiveness” to deliver unexpected achievements.

2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do and why?
I fire up my email and my browser.  I scan email for any fires but usually am on the Web pretty quickly.  I have two starting tabs: Google Reader and Memeorandum, because my two greatest cares outside my family are my job and my country.  Google Reader is set up to show me the top Social Media/PR/Business blogs, where I scan for competitive intelligence and ideas; Memeorandum tracks the trending political topics of the day.  Basically, Google Reader makes me paranoid and Memeorandum makes me mad, so I start my mornings pretty juiced up!

3. What makes you efficient with your day?
No magic here, sorry to say.  I use ReadItLater to save articles that I want to ponder when I have more time; I use Outlook “flags” to remind me of to-do’s in my email.  I track ideas for blog posts and my business in my ever-present black notebook.

4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
I still swear by Good to Great by Jim Collins.  Concepts such as “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” and “getting the right people on the bus,” in particular, resonate with me even these many years after first reading Collins’s seminal work.  Interestingly, I’ve found that it’s also the book that comes up the most often in conversations with business leaders I respect.  Highly recommended.

5. 3 things on your desk right now /3 things you can’t live without
Pictures of my family.  Print-outs of articles that make me paranoid, i.e., they contain good ideas that I want to notate and absorb.  And, two “action figures” – one of Barack Obama and one Pig-With-Wings: both remind me to be audacious, to accept no limits, to dream big.

6. Habit you want to kick in 2009
I want to kick the habit of bundling up in the winter time: that’s why I’m planning to return to living in California this year!

7. Habit you want to form for 2010
I’ve done a pretty good job with reforming my diet over the past year or so; I weigh what I did in High School. Now I gotta start hitting the gym again.  And with our son away at college, my daughter and I plan to take up rock climbing once we’re back in Cali: though I’ll miss my boy, I am looking forward to having some adventures with my daughter…

NOTE: couldn’t resist adding this photo of the pig from Todd’s desk- thanks Todd!

I recently redeemed some leftover frequent flier miles for a year long print subscription to the Wall Street Journal. This cost me about 2,800 points. So, some immediate reactions and a suggestion to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

This is a GREAT deal.  The Newsstand price would have a value of at least a couple hundred dollars. If you were to go online today and order a year-long print subscription to the WSJ, it would cost you $110.

So, for  2,800 airline miles you are getting a year full of great WSJ content ($110) for a value of about .04 per mile. Let’s compare that to some other things you can get for roughly the same amount of miles…

A $25 GAP gift card from American Express’s Membership Rewards= 2500 points or  .01 per mile
A $17 bottle of Oreck Pet Stain Remover = 2400 points or .007 cents per mile
Dirt from Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox) =  2400 points or .007 cents per mile

Now, we can have fun answering the following questions…

• Isn’t DIRT from Fenway Park worth more than a bottle of Pet Cleaner? (Yankees/Red Sox fans will have fun with this one)
• A 4 year subscription to the WSJ is worth 100 bucks at the Gap.
• And my personal favorite , some dirt from Fenway Park is less valuable than a year long subscription to the WSJ..

And, ask ourselves the following questions….

How do we value the offline (print only) edition of the Wall Street Journal? And for that matter, the value of any other newspaper/publication struggling with their business model now?

And my favorite question
The Mags for Miles program currently only allows print subscriptions to the WSJ and select magazines. With the WSJ and now the NYT soon charging for online content, why isn’t an online subscription available? It’s a terrific opportunity to engage a new audience and use us some of those leftover points…

Here in Boston, a television station just went social- real social. They already had a good fan base on Facebook, some followers on Twitter and were actively promoting their “socialness” online.  But where it really shines through is in their newly redesigned website.

WHDH, whether you like it or not, is going to make you understand social by simply visiting their website. Check out the quick (2 minute video) below.

What I really like is that the entire team has bought into the concept. Their weather team hops online and blogs on a regular basis and really brings their news to life. Weather can be boring- for them it’s not. WHDH brings a bit of personality and context to the news they deliver and share online, which in this day and age, is a good thing…