I’m not surprised, but I’m also wondering what we can all take from that. See, the problem is that our social media efforts will fail the same way. News issues and concerns hit companies all the time. How do they respond? I just went looking for a few social media people who I imagined would be responding to international news stories about their company. Not a word. So, instead of being lit up to keep relationships afloat, I’m seeing silence.

When the going gets tough, how will you respond on these new social channels? How will you use the Internet as a primary driver instead of as a bolt-on?

David Weinberger’s story points out that the Internet presence of these companies was obviously an afterthought to their telephone presence. More than two decades after companies have come to the web, they still look at their online presence as secondary.

Social media’s even newer. How will it fare?

Something to think about. Are you in? Or are you just setting up a facade?

First, understand that the best clients for this kind of business are local-ish, have some discretionary money, and are hopefully shooting for being a repeat customer (that would work best for her business).

It’s not a simple transaction business. It requires loyalty. To that end, here are my ideas for marketing a business like hers.

Search and Listen

My first effort would be to find local prospects. I’d start with Google Blogsearch, putting in local town names, to see who’s blogging in the area. I’d use Twitter Search to find some more folks. I’d look around for other sources, like local online newspapers. You can even do some clever google work. Once I had a decent list, I’d start determining who, if any of them, are actually prospects. Just because they’re local doesn’t mean they fit the other criteria. Break the list down a bit more from there.

Promotion

You need a home base. I’d recommend a blog, but even a static website is better than nothing. Then, I’d see whether or not you can get listings with any other local businesses, any local groups related to the field, possibly even the Chamber of Commerce.

Make your site a combination of explanations of your business and the value you provide, as well as a chance to get to know a bit more about you. Personalized businesses like this, especially a body works business like massage means that people want to know more about you, want to get a sense of who you are, and want to understand what matters to you.

If you’ve got a blog, consider doing video so that people can see even more about you. It’s a great way to add some promotional oomph.

From here, you might start reaching out into outposts. Facebook might be a tricky place to pick up business when starting. It’s not like a bunch of people will rush in and join the massage company fan page. That said, you can always try. Twitter might work better, insofar as people speak more openly there, there’s serendipity, there are more chances to find new people without “friending” first.

What do you do once you’re there?

I’d recommend talking about them. Them= whoever you’ve found at these outposts, the people you’ve found via these lists. As for WHAT to talk about, talk about what they’re into. Get to know them. It’s an important part of building relationships, to be there long ahead of the sale.

Newsletter

What might also work is an email newsletter, talking about other health and wellness tips, but also with a few subtle offerings from your organization. I mean subtle, too. Make it more about equipping them for success and much less about finding clients immediately. It will be a slower build, but you’ll have a better chance to build a community you can tap into when needed over time.

Sales

From here, you can work on conversions and sales. My friend who runs the massage business did a promotional event at a local arena. I think there’s an opportunity to do a few more gigs like that, even maybe calling around for corporations to offer two hour blocks of time for 10 minute chair massages (so 12 massages) at a rate of $300 (so close to the $150 an hour that a quality massage therapist gets). This is also a great lead generator for future business, so bring business cards.

Obviously, this step would be different for different types of businesses, but realizing that some kind of demo, promo, introductory offer is always a great way to seed future opportunities is the first step.

What Else?

I’ve given out a few steps, a few ideas, especially aiming towards social media and the like. What else would you tell someone looking to promote their massage therapy or similar business? How have you handled the challenge? What matters to you if you were the prospective client?

By the way, this kind of stuff is exactly what I cover in my new book, Social Media 101, should you be interested.

Here’s the video:

Delaware Social Media Initiative from Delaware Film Company on Vimeo.

Can’t see it? click here.

I’ve spent time with Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well (thanks to Tim Hayden), and what I’ve found is that state governors get the value of social media, and they understand how it opens up a lot of opportunities for the people to reconnect and help develop the state together, instead of in the old format of “governor speaks, you agree or disagree, you complain and don’t feel heard, repeat). The new way? People listen.

Quick side note: some of my favorite learning about how the US government is using social media comes from posts by Craig Newmark (of craigslist fame). He’s doing some great stuff, and reporting some wonderful new initiatives. Me? I’m just a tourist in the Gov2.0 movement. But I’m interested, and you might be, as well. There are many more people talking about it if you read these searches on Twitter.

Where will it go next? What’s your take? Non-US folks: what’s the story where YOU are?

Here are some ways you could get the ball rolling:

First, here’s what I’d do if I started today.

It might be helpful to consider setting up a simple presence framework.

If you need the larger picture, here’s some thoughts on how outposts improve your ecosystem.

Want some blogging advice? Here are 50 blog topics marketers could write for their companies.

Those are probably some good places to start. If you want something like this that’s a bit more portable, that’s why I wrote Social Media 101, a book that gives you these kinds of posts written down on paper (81 or so of those kinds of posts) such that you can hand it over to the folks who need to know. Click the photo if you want to learn more.

Or, just hang out with me here. I’m happy either way. : )

photo shared via flickr

Methods of Engaging in Social Media

First, let’s level-set what we’re talking about here. When I talk about scaling your efforts, here are the efforts I’m talking about:

• Listening/monitoring for PR, for customer service, for marketing opportunities, for R&D opportunties.
• Customer service.
• Client relations.
• Social marketing (such as two-way sales conversations).
• Sales prospecting (including two-way conversations, but also listening).
• Publishing (blogging, video, etc).

Of these six, everything but “listening/monitoring” assumes a little bit of two-way participation, meaning that you choose to comment on the other people’s posts and statuses, etc. This takes time, as well. It’s part of the relationship-building, however, and can’t be skimped on.

Approaches to Assigning These Tasks

Listening/Monitoring – In my estimation, every social media effort has to have Listening/Monitoring at the core of it. I tried thinking of exceptions, and couldn’t (without accepting that some people choose to be scammy). That said, you can opt to split the listening/monitoring chores out such that each member of your team that will be touching the social web owns some level of the process. For instance, your PR person can use the tools to listen for crisis issues, for storytelling opportunities, etc. Your customer service team can use the tools to enhance their customer service channel. Your marketers can listen for opportunities. Thus, you’ve already looked at how to split the vast bucket of information that comes in during listening. Someone should still own it. Maybe that’s the product lead, the manager of that line of business, whoever is responsible for the bottom line. They should have their eyes on listening the whole time.

Customer Service – Some companies already have this nailed down. Dell and Comcast have built great customer service integrations using social channels. Zappos has, as well. This area seems the most important to scale. Customer service is a tireless experience, and requires prompt attention. Thus, you need a deep bench. I think Frank at Comcast has 14 people on his team at this point, to give you a sense of it. Of all the social media tasks, this is tie for the most time consuming and most important (client relations would be the other). Learning how to scale this might be nuanced and customized, but just by knowing that it’s the hardest part might be enough to get you a little further in this part.

Client Relations- I split out client relations from customer service, because I think this part includes managing things like Facebook groups, managing blog comments, etc. It’s the “there’s no problem, but I’d like to keep you warm” part of business. You sometimes see “community manager” in this role (though I see the best community managers as a blend of a few of the above topics). This is tied for first place in time-consuming with Customer Service. People want the warm touch. It’s also the hardest of the brand promises, because if you’re nice to me on Twitter, but your counter help stinks, did you really move the needle? I vote no. With time, this one requires perhaps even more special care and attention. If you start offering this to your customer base, you’ve got to maintain it. Toy with the hours spent here at your own risk.

Social Marketing – By social marketing, I mean things like finding new customers via Twitter, or coming up with YouTube challenges, things like that. This clearly falls into the marketing department of larger companies, and it falls on the shoulders of whichever of your small business partners markets the best. Like all roles in a small business environment, you should cross-train. Don’t get lulled into thinking that just because Surya has a Twitter account that he’s the only one who should do social marketing. This is probably the easiest to scale, but it’s also the one where you can see the most obvious results of marketing effort. For instance, if you build a loyalty program and you need sign-ups, you can count pretty easily how many people took advantage of your offer, so you now whether or not to add attention to it. This is probably a lot less personable than client relations and customer service, so can likely be scaled the easiest.

Sales Prospecting – Your sales team (or you, if you’re a company of one or two) should already be realizing the sales benefits of the social web. Every day, someone’s out there talking about their needs, and giving you a sense of how you could sell to them. It’s lots of opportunity and requires a bit of time, but not much more than old fashioned prospecting. Switch out some of your time from sifting through phone books or wherever you find your customers, and put it into using search tools on the web to find new clients. Also, for ongoing relationships, if you’re not keeping tabs on their social presence, you’re missing the opportunity to know how they’re doing before you make your important sales calls. This doesn’t take a ton of time, but requires you to build it into your process.

Publishing – Blogging, shooting videos, all that stuff – that’s where some of your time gets eaten up, and yet, that’s where a lot of the value comes from. In seeing some of the comments from my post about redrawing, a lot of people offered that maybe I should blog and tweet less. That’s where I get my revenue. This post? It will generate a query for business where someone wants me to further customize and formalize these processes for their organization. I give it away to you for free, and you can run with it, but someone will ask for that next step, and I’ll make money from that. Thus, publishing should never be considered the thing to slip. Hell, it’s the product sometimes, and other times, it’s the best advertising you could ever create. Never skimp on publishing.

Where Does That Leave You?

I’ve told you that everything’s important and that nothing can be cut back. So where do you scale?

• Spread listening/monitoring as deep as you can.
• Enhance customer service and deepen that bench internally.
• Add to client relations when you can, from internal resources. It pays off.
• Social marketing can be augmented by external help.
• Sales prospecting is a sales job, but can be augmented.
• Publishing is important, but can be augmented by external help.

That’s how I see it. Again, if you’re talking about smaller scale operations, you’ll have to find the mix. I’ve put it almost in order of importance, from top to bottom. You can shuffle it a bit. Is that how you see it?

For those complaining that social media doesn’t scale, the trick is this: we equate these tools to personal relationships. Because of that, we can’t just open a “call center” for many of the touchpoints. However, as we move forward, and these tools become the new phone, the new radio, the new TV, it’s no longer going to be a world of solo trust agents, but trust agencies.

Will you be ready?

Photo credit Bill Lapp

So today, I wanted to write about my love for blogging, and hopefully, you’ll pull from this some ideas or affirmations for what you’re doing.

I go way back, but the tech is new

I’ve blogged in one form or another since 1998. I haven’t owned my own domain for that long, and my early blogs were on WYSIWYG technology (Trellix, invented by Dan Bricklin, actually), and yes, I had a Geocities account (Area 51, baby) ,and a Tripod account, and all that old stuff before I finally got a blogspot blog, then some other tech I can’t remember, and then finally WordPress. I use WordPress because it’s got a strong developer community, because it has a lot of plugins that are useful, and because I liked the themes I could get for it. I use the Thesis theme (affiliate link) and sell it because I love it so much.

My home on the web

Blogging is like my house, or in most modern times, it’s my showplace. It’s not as messy as my mental house. I keep my blog focused on helping others do human business. If I want to write about my kids, I can do that at Dad-o-Matic. If I want to complain about air travel, I have Twitter. I keep my Facebook account as a personal-ish account.

So blogging, as it were, becomes my showplace, my storefront, my “here’s where to get the best of me” site.

Relationship Building

I love the relationships I have with the people who comment on my blog. It took me 8 years to get my first 100 readers. I cherished every one of them. I even take the occasional screenshot of how many RSS subscribers I have because I’m humble and proud each time I hit a new milestone.

And the number in and of itself isn’t interesting. What’s interesting is that so many of you are wonderful contributors to my community, to my education, and to the great pursuits that we all share.

Lead Generation

I went from a blog that only 100 folks read to being a blog in the Top 5 of Advertising Age’s Power150. It was a total lark that I joined. I forget who was kind enough to tell me there was a list. Well, the few times I’ve spent time at number 1 were fun, but to be honest, that’s only a little bit of social proof. Here’s how I get business leads from my blog.

I write about the way I see things, bits about how I might implement it, and ideas that companies can see themselves considering. Companies then reach out to me to either speak or bring New Marketing Labs in and do work for them. The blog got me the book deals for Trust Agents and Social Media 101. So, it’s really paid off well, my time in blogging mixed with my ideas on new ways to do business.

Homebases and Outposts

My blog is my home base. It’s where I want you to go when you find me on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/wherever. Because it’s the biggest part of understanding who I am and what I know how to do. I give you a “Best Of” page so you can find some of the meat of what I believe in an easy-instead-of-chronological way.

My outposts are things like Twitter, Google Wave, Facebook. Those are places where I connect and do something, but it’s not to replace the homebase. I think all these posterous and tumblr side projects can be cool, but rest assured that they detract from the value of growing a solid community. Outposts are where you meet people in the commons. The homebase is where you derive most value.

The Blogging Practice

I write all the time. Blogging helps me with this. I wrote about the writing practice not to long ago, and I write about writing often. It’s not that blogging is hard. It’s that blogging is a lot like going to the gym and it requires a constant practice, like playing the horn, like drawing, like dating. Meaning, it’s a verb. The more you do it, the better it can get.

Blogging as a Storefront

I sell things via this blog sometimes. For instance (and much of this is affiliate links):

Thesis WordPress theme
Third Tribe Marketing (our members-only marketing forum).
Beyond Blogging, an ebook I participated in.
Trust Agents, my book with Julien.
Social Media 101, my own book.
Countless books on Amazon.com, as I read and review quite often.

You don’t have to sell on your blog. It’s just an option that’s there if you want. Those projects above have helped me go to events that I otherwise couldn’t attend, and they’re helping me save for a new home for my family. Blogging gave me that, too.

My Own Magazine/Show/Media Empire

Growing up, none of us had the opportunity to “really” make our own media. We could do magazines by photocopying stuff. We could waste all the ink in our deskjet printers and pretend we were doing desktop publishing. We could record wav files and email them to our friends if we had a week.

But these days, you can be a podcaster, a videoblogger, a blogger, and you can make your own media. You maybe didn’t think of it this way, but the Huffington Post is what “feels” like a mainstream newspaper put together with blogging technology. It’s grown to be bigger than lots of newspapers, a top blog for years running, and yet, it’s just what we’re doing, done bigger.

Meaning, you can be whatever you want. You win on a huge mix of things, but you CAN do it. Distribution is free. Opportunity is nearly free. It just takes a powerful plan and a lot of execution and refinement.

I Love Blogging

And I hope you continue to do what you’re doing. We don’t need fewer blogs. We need more passionate blogs. We need more blogs that educate and inform and instruct and give us what we want. We need more Copyblogger and more Jon Swanson and more The Oatmeal.

And we need you.

You in?

But there are lots of ways to use it. Do you need to find more case studies? Here’s a simple search for case studies: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”case+study”+filter:links

Do you want to know who’s talking about burgers near San Francisco? http://search.twitter.com/search?q=burger+near:SF+filter:links”

Want some negative proof? I sniffed around for “site sucks” – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”site+sucks” – to see who’s saying what about bad websites (note: don’t forget to speak the way your tweeters would speak).

Maybe you’re in pharma? I checked out “allergies plus meds OR medication – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=allergies+medication+OR+meds”

There are lots more opportunities to consider. One of my favorites? http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”looking+for”. It’s like permission to sell. Right there. (If you’re not a jerk.)

Oh that Twitter. Such a silly tool. Why even bother? (Keep telling yourself that.)

Bonus Round

Save your searches. Cook them up and put them in your Google Reader or your Seesmic Desktop or your Tweetdeck. Build STATIONS around these kinds of searches. Build response protocols for them. (I’ve barely scratched the surface, but wanted to start somewhere).

And you? Success stories?

If you can’t see it, click here.

You’re New Here

In business, we are all new again. All the major car companies can’t assume anything about their customers. Banks aren’t guaranteed to be there forever. Cornerstone institutions are rolling up, sailing away, moving into new modes that don’t benefit us any more. We can’t count on anything. Oh, and on the business side, your customers are losing jobs, merging, consolidating, changing the rules.

Accept that you’re new here. What do you need? You need eyes, ears, intuition, intent, and anthropology.

Your Eyes And Ears

Listening tools abound. You can now see people’s intentions writ large on these various social networks. No, not everyone is out there voicing their opinions, but you can start with the people who are. Use the searching tools to see what people are saying on blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook. Listen around in forums. Google yourself blue. And then process this.

Listening is deafness if you do nothing with it.

Intuition

Want to change the world? Ask thousands of questions. Ask the same handful of questions thousands of times. Ask yourself, “How can I help my customers during these tough times?” Toyota is giving free maintenance for two years as a way to win back sales and customers. It’s a solution that will benefit both sides of the equation. How is your bank treating you during these economic woes? What have you said about it? What will you do?

Intuition about what others need is a powerful tool in this world without maps.

Intent

Do you really care about your customers/prospects? If not, it will show. Do you value them? Show it. Demonstrate it with intent. Make decisions that don’t always benefit you as much as they do the customer. You don’t have to sink the business, but just by showing more intentions to the positive of your customers, you’ll win more opportunity.

What do your actions say about your intent?

Anthropology

You’re looking to better understand the social and cultural development of humans. It’s all we have left, because all the history we had attached to us before has shaken itself off, or it’s clinging to our backs like a prison.

Why are we sending kids to schools that train them to be industrial cogs? What are we doing to help them rebel? How are we reshaping the world, now that the unit of measure is knowledge/information? In a world where we don’t all have to work side by side in a factory, why are we building so many offices?

If you dig into this area, if you start looking for new trends, whispers of what curves are coming next, you see the big stuff. You see the boomer generation growing huge. You see India taking over the creative side of the stick to go along with their dominance of engineering and process management. You see shifts in who’s spending, where we’re paying attention, and more.

This one’s the biggest to consider in that world without maps. Because we need to understand the people more than we need to understand the systems. If you’re trying to re-rig your marketing tech to account for these new territories, you’re wasting time by not starting with understanding the shifts in what humans want/need/are moving towards.

Is This Crazy Talk?

Anyone who just nodded yes, I’ll see you a few years from now and we can talk more. Those of you who get a glimpse of this, who see that we’ve got a new opportunity to really take meaningful action, let’s work in that direction.

What’s your first move? What have you already been doing? What will you do next?

Without maps, where will the lay of the land take you?

Sometimes, I go on Twitter to share information. I push some of it through my @chrisbrogan account. I have a more “pure” feed at @broganmedia.

Other times, I go on Twitter to connect with people and build/strengthen relationships. I go on there to read what they’re saying. I spend a little time “showing up,” because in business, just showing up is important.

Part of what I do on Twitter – maybe most of what I do on Twitter – is work-related. Even if I’m chit-chatting, it’s because that’s part of my job, part of my role as someone in the space. This is the important thing to think about.

I’m not there because I’m taking a break. I’m not there because I’m bored. I’m not there because I’ve got some extra time for a phone call or to check out your video. It’s still part of my job.

Now, I’m not complaining when I say this. I’m explaining. I’m telling you that what I’m doing looks quite often like it’s leisurely. But it’s not. And there’s a lesson/opportunity in explaining all this.

Business isn’t always about the sale. Business isn’t always (is it ever?) a straight line. Business is sometimes a conversation long before I need the sale. Business is sometimes just connecting to stay on the human side of the fence.

And leisure isn’t always how we use these tools.

A Request

Here’s something new that happens:

1. You email me.
2. You then tweet me to tell me you emailed me.

Doing this right after emailing me just eats up more cycles of my time. My inbox happens to increment just fine. No need to tweet or use other communications channels to underscore your contact with me.

Acceptable: a few days after you sent it, if I’ve not yet replied, then you can check via any channel you want.

Not as acceptable: the double-tap.

Your Take

How do you see it? How are you using these communications channels? What’s working or not for you?