RonAmok!

The biggest struggle that C-Suites have with social media is trying to figure out how it fits within their organizations. For example, if you’re a specialist in marketing, they understand what you do. If you’re an expert in PR, they can tell you where your desk is located. But if you’re skilled in the art of social media, C-Suites scratch their heads while determining where to pencil your name onto an org chart. Do you belong in sales? Customer support? Information Technology? Product development? HR? Accounting? Legal? Since social media cuts across all of these organizations, the answer is frequently the subject of debate.

I don’t blame them for their confusion. It seems that whenever they ask about social media, the explanation involves unfamiliar terms (blogging, podcasting, twittering, Facebook wall entries) rather than the long term objectives that these activities support. C-Suites want to invest time and money into social media, but won’t until someone can explain the business case using terms that are more than ten years old.

Recently, I’ve been searching for a tall thin concept that helps C-Suites understand the role that social media plays within their organizations. If I’m successful, it will answer all of the lingering questions, including those such as ROI, objective, strategy, goals, and tactics.

My research has oriented me toward Audience is an Asset–a concept that an audience built through social media channels is a corporate asset with real financial value.

Over the next few posts I’ll be sharing with you some of the insights that I’ve been gathering while studying the balance sheets of traditional media companies.

In the mean time, I’d love your thoughts.

Photo Credit: a r b o

Tags: audience is an asset audience as an asset ron ploof executive executives c-suite financial balance sheet

The toughest part of my job is explaining to executives that they’ve been ripped off. From last week’s meeting with the Executive Director of a nonprofit (who is paying $2800 per year to “maintain” her static-html website) to a local company’s gorgeous, flash-based (yet SEO-inept) website which requires a complete overhaul, it’s clear that most C-levels are clueless when it comes to understanding their corporate communications expenditures.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon yet another sad example to prove my point. For the seventh day in a row, I had been notified that “Scott Morris” was following me on Twitter:

The picture above indicates one of two things: either “Scott” suffers from TIFS (twitchy index finger syndrome) or he’s using an automated bot to scam-up his follower count–a strategy commonly used by pornographers and Viagra dealers.

But “Scott’s” profile didn’t contain the sleaziness I was expecting. Instead, it contained a link to a SoCal-based online medical community. Something just didn’t add up.

That’s when it hit me. Had I just found yet another example of a corporate social media strategy left in the hands of an intern or a drunk at the party? So, I called the company to find out.

My call went immediately to voicemail, so I left a message, asking Scott Morris to return my call.  A few minutes later, the president of the company, a physician, called instead.

“Thank you for calling,” I said, “but I was looking for Scott Morris.”

The doctor explained that he didn’t know a Scott Morris.

“Well, someone by that name is Twittering on your company’s behalf,” I said.

“I don’t know how to use Twitter,” he admitted, explaining that someone else does it for him. He then began asking questions about his company’s Twitter activities. As I explained my suspicions, I could hear the concern in his voice.  He thanked me for bringing the matter to his attention and promised to look into it.

About a half hour later, he called with an update.

“I checked and discovered that one of my marketing people was doing this. I told them to stop.” He also decided to take over the twittering from now on–a decision that I applauded him for.

The lesson of this story cannot be understated. When it comes to corporate reputations, Social Media channels are quickly becoming more powerful than traditional media. Until C-levels understand the true impact of social media responsibilities, they’ll continue to blindly put their online reputation into the hands of the unprepared.

Tags: Ron Ploof Orange County Executive Read This First Online Reputation

The US government is collecting the answer to 10 census questions in 2010. Once answered, the data will be collected, sliced, diced, and analyzed to determine any mass population changes.

Businesses can learn from the US census, because it’s important to step back and consider where we came from in order to determine where we must go. And so, that got me to thinking. What if we performed our own census–from a business communications perspective? What if we studied the differences between how our customers got their business information in 2000 and how they get it now? What if we offered a New Media Census?

In 2000, our customers went to the Yellow Pages to find a local business. They read newspapers, trade magazines, and in some cases, they even read direct mail. “On demand” movies came from one of two places: the cinema or the video rental store. And if our customers wanted to time-shift their television content, they needed either a degree in computer science or a middle-schooler to program their VCR.

In 2000, our customers didn’t have smartphones, therefore couldn’t read email, connect to the Web, or run apps while away from the office. They didn’t have iTunes to manage their music collections or to help them listen to our company’s audio and video podcasts. YouTube hadn’t been invented yet, so the only way they had access to our demonstration videos was to request a DVD.

They had no access to communities, such as LinkedIn for business professionals, or a Facebook fan page for “business casual.” If a customer wanted independent reviews of local businesses, they created a poll at the office water cooler. Today, they go to Yelp. And the only way for customers in the year 2000 to get “real-time” information was to have CNN running in the background. Today, Twitter seems to have taken that spot.

In just ten years, it’s clear that our customers are migrating from physical media to a plethora of other online choices.

Unfortunately, most marketing and public relations professionals are still stuck in 2000. Most believe that the only way to deliver corporate messages is through advertising, staffing trade show booths, building micro sites or pummeling an ever-dwindling number of journalists with press releases.

Does your company understand the mass migratory patterns of its customers? If not, consider tapping your social network for a job, because your company probably won’t be around for the 2020 census.

Photo credit: Library of Congress on Flickr