Your Help Requested- Planning a Small Series

March 25, 2008 · Comments

Some of you know that I’ve been writing posts within a series called The Social Media 100, started around the beginning of this year. I’m about 1/3 of the way through all 100 posts, by the way, so hopefully, they’ve been useful.

For my next “series within the series,” I want your ideas. I’ve been working on this idea that companies and organizations are ready for social media and social networking, but that they don’t necessarily know how it should/could map to their specific organization or role or the like. I’ve had lots of conversations privately and otherwise with people asking me for advice on how their company might jump into this all, and what values it offers them.

So here’s what I want from you: if you’re willing, please comment (even if you do so anonymously) and give me an idea of what kind of organization and the kinds of questions you’re asking internally with regards to it all. From there, I will craft a series of posts called: “Social Media Starter Moves For ________,” where I can give some ideas.

If you’re uncomfortable leaving this type of info in the comments, send me email: blog at chrisbrogan dot com, and just let me know what I can and can’t mention in my blog post to preserve your anonymity.

What do you think? Fair? Interesting idea?

—

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  • Hopefully I am responding properly to what you're looking for. But I have proposed to my company to let me do a documentary about the soil science department I work in. It is to help make people aware about the company and at the same time educate elementary schools and high schools about our soils management program. By doing this I have opened dialog towards the idea of starting a new position which could use video as a form of communication for my department with the clients who they hope use our soil management program. I am wondering how do I approach my company (a government wastewater treatment plant) to offer the idea of starting a podcast,video podcast, or even webisodes to go along with the newsletter they send out about new benefits, retirement news, retirees, employee achievements, company achievements, etc.? Also what's the best way to research if this is something that the employees and the tax paying public would want? Hopefully I'm not too far off from what you're asking.
  • How about a series to help break through cultural barriers?
  • Great idea Chris! I would like to know more about:

    “Social Media Starter Moves For: Non-profits”
  • How about: How do I start social intraoffice networking/media for:

    1.) Project management
    2.) Systems Administration (downtimes/upgrades/etc.)
    3.) Software release builds (alpha testing, beta testing, etc.)
    4.) HR policy
    5.) Diversity policy
    6.) Employee referral pushes

    Is this along the lines of that for which you are searching?

    Barbara
  • George Brett
    I see a challenge of how to deal with gray area between public and internal communications. How to ensure right content ends up public facing or protected. So, a notion of how to tune social media for internal facing project.

    On the other hand, I'd like to see models or "use cases" of how social media can help with community relationships in non for profit organization doing technical things.

    Thanks in advance.
  • Hi, Chris!

    Could you include material on how a work-from-home freelance consultant could best use social media to build a client base and give existing clients better value.

    Thanks.
  • Great idea Chris. I do a lot of work with these audiences so I'd love to have your best thinking on Social Media Starter Moves for 1) community coalitions 2) government agencies 3) "Digital Immigrants". I see a comment for nonprofits and "cultural barriers" both of which I ditto.
  • As a nonprofit and travel info source, I ask how I can best serve customers on the move cost-effectively and lightly (since they'll be using mobile devices more and more, especially while traveling) and how to educate new users about these "little" features I'm building.

    TheFemGeek: talk to teachers, who are very wired these days and can help you target school-age people and their families (plus, they love to teach and will probably be generous).

    Best wishes, @netd
  • Don't know if this is what you're looking for but I'm going to propose "Social Media Starter Moves Within Companies".

    There are large companies where the departments don't interact enough on a regular basis & companies that have offices located in several cities. I think both examples might benefit from this.

    Hope this is helping.
  • So many applications strike me, so I’ll focus on my own daily dilemma.

    I want to 2.0-ize my company’s sales tools.

    Fifteen years ago we would send a slick brochure full of gorgeous photos and bites of text designed to convey professionalism, success and competence. If the brochure worked, we’d get a meeting, visit the factory, establishing rapport along the way. If everything was a fit, business was born.

    Now the brochure has been replaced by a PowerPoint presentation which is too small to be much more than a digital brochure, but becomes too large when everything pertinent is included. So now we concoct teaser PowerPoint presentations to get that first meeting and the process works pretty much the same.

    I want to send targeted, informative, intuitive, media-rich links to prospects.

    I want well produced libraries of data to be readily deliverable and accessible to my organization and to prospects.

    I want standard processes and procedures clearly outlined and deliverable in audio, video and uncluttered web pages.

    I want to bring value to my customers by bringing my global capabilities to their desk tops so they don’t have to fly to China or Brazil or Germany to see for themselves…unless they really want to.
  • I would love to know your thoughts on how both real estate brokerages and real estate agents can derive value out of social media. I know there are a lot of us out there using it, but I am sure there are aspects we are missing.
  • Wow! You guys have given me lots of great ideas to choose from. Holy cats. I have my writing and research cut out for me. : ) Thank you.
  • Maybe this is outside the scope of what you're trying to do, but I would love for an experienced blogger to hold the hand of the newbies, and share some do's and don'ts when blogging IS the business (in other words, my blog is not to enhance my core business, or drive traffic to my main site, it IS my main site, my main source of income).

    What sorts of things should bloggers focus on to build a larger reader base and subscribership? Effective use of ads? Why ad company "a" is better than ad company "b" Complimentary businesses such as t-shirts, or other merchandise sales?
  • This is probably a little off topic but an idea to contemplate nonetheless.

    How important is immediacy of the material in a blog? Does a blogged idea have a certain shelf-life and then it's done for all time, perhaps to be re-written again and given another chance at getting an audience?

    Does the amount of comments on a particular posts influence future posts?
  • What would you do as a one man show, with a limited budget, highly specialized skills and very time-consuming projects that don't allow much time for additional interests? How do you make social media work for you?
  • I would explain the role of social media intelligence across an organization.

    All too often I have found that social media is housed within a team, and only within that team. Social media is about listening, gathering intel, sharing, participating, yadda yadda yadda.

    This is not the role of a team, but the role of an organization. It would be a shame if a CRM group, a PR group, a Media team, a Research team or a brand monitoring team didn't share their learnings. Infrastructure, to my mind, is a very real strategy that needs to be addressed and understood.
  • How about social media tools for budget conscious companies. Companies seem to like the idea of social media, but in the end, ROI is king. Maybe some case studies of companies effectively deploying it would be helpful, especially companies that are not just in the tech industry.
  • Wow! Tons of stuff. Clearly, I've got a lot of work cut out for me. : ) Thanks! Keep them coming, if you want.
  • Posted the first from your requests: Social Media Starter Moves for Freelancers. Thanks to Tim Kissane for requesting it.
  • Hi Chris... from you I'd love to see “Social Media Starter Moves For Real Estate Agents”

    If you do one I promise to repost it in my real estate marketing group, 5200+ subscribers would love to read your insights and words of wisdom.
  • I'm working at a very small company, less than 10 employees. We don't have an office and instead work from our homes. This causes problems sometimes with communication. Communication with team members is sparse. It is well known that some team members are very busy most of the time, so it creates a feeling that they shouldn't be contacted at all unless absolutely necessary.

    Being immersed in the social networking flow, I'm very put off by that. I realized that I know more about people on Twitter than my own co-workers. I'd love to see what you can suggest for my situation.
  • Hi Chris,

    I know I've found this post of yours nearly over a year later, but we're still so behind in the Social Media game and I thought I'd chime in as I'm a Social Media Instructor for Continuing Education Clock Hours for Realtors in the State of Washington. And in this vertical market, we're still WAAAY behind! :-)

    But I think the early adopters, movers and shakers can still make a go and contribute something.

    So I'd like to develop a series, with your help or your input or at least give you credit, on "Social Media Starter Series For Real Estate Professionals - 90 Days to becoming a better SM user" or something shorter or better than that.

    Anyway, I retweeted this post, even though it's a year old, it still is relatively new info and I appreciate the post. Thanks Chris!

    Ed
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