If your CEO is something short of Lauzon-esque in his or her mastery of the medium, here’s the best advice we have.

1. Start with empathy.

Business is tough on us middle-aged white guys these days. We’re just cavemen. We don’t understand your “retweet,” or what all this “Like” stuff is about. Facebook is something we worry about our kids using. Your ways are strange to us.

But we’re not about to admit that to your punk-ass. Remember that odds are you’re dealing with somebody who’s just a little embarrassed to be out of the loop at this point. Make them feel at ease. Take the edge off by breaking the ice in private, offering to sit down over coffee, and just help get them “set up.”

Be helpful, and be patient. Don’t judge.

2. Build a personal channel.

Social media starts with listening, and one key to getting a CEO rolling in it is to create a feed worth listening to. We start with and focus on Twitter, just because it’s easy and the behaviors are so universal once you adopt them.

So what’s your CEO interested in? What magazines does he/she read? What celebrities is he/she into? Which competitors is he/she worried about? Ask a bunch of questions like that, sit down together at a conference table, and after creating a basic profile just start following the best sources for that information. Make it easy, demystify the process. But really focus on creating a feed they see value in, and want access to.

3. Get the plumbing sorted out.

Next up is to provide that access… from their browser, and from their phone. Not “a” browser, and not “a” phone. Modify their browser home page to drop them in every day. Add a Shareaholic plug-in to it, and make sure the username and password are stored in it. Do the same with the phone, even if it takes some fumbling and effort.

Stupid little problems with the plumbing of social media end up derailing senior people from the medium, because they hit a roadblock – a forgotten password, an unknown function – and have no idea how to get around it. Anticipate and neutralize those problems, before they happen.

4. Help do it, do not just watch it.

Remember not to show him/her how to do things, but to let him/her struggle with the little details about how to tweet, reply, DM, RT, use hashtags, indicate location, and post a picture. These things seem easy because you’ve done them a thousand times, but you’ll need to coach your CEO through them patiently, and resist the temptation to take over the keyboard.

5. Reinforce the behavioral change.

If you take this approach, I promise you’ll have a great meeting, and that all will be unicorns and rainbows at the end of it. But as is so often the case… if you don’t follow up, the fragile sprout of social proficiency will perish in the stale manure of old habit.

Promote your CEO’s new Twitter address across the company, so he/she starts to see people following. @ and D him/her periodically, and check in if you don’t get a response. Ask for questions, ask how things are going. Suggest topics, and reinforce the idea that in the end it’s just about sharing whatever he/she finds interesting during her day, in a way that benefits the people interested in her.

It ain’t rocket science, people. But it is a change in behavior, and as any Biggest Loser contestant can tell you, changing your behavior takes some work.

If you need a little more help, check out the below, which we produced for our CEO Series a few months back. And if you’d like a printed copy, hit me up on Twitter.

7 Habits of Highly Effective CEO Tweeters

This post originally appeared on bostinno.com on January 24th, 2012.

There is a constant conversation taking place between marketers, strategists, creatives, and brands about the differences between branding for B2B and branding for B2C. There is the debate about color palette. (When in doubt, go blue!) What colors feel safe? What tone feels “business-y”? Is it okay to be serious and be clever?

To us, the truth lies in answering a question different from whether you’re a B2B company or a B2C company, but rather one that focuses on the individuals comprising the Bs and the Cs. Chris has often been heard remarking about the “magic consumer transition” that we sometimes believe takes place while commuting from home to work. The underlying consideration there is whether we truly do think that a CEO thinks or responds differently to words and visuals whether he’s behind a mahogany desk or taking a call from his (or her) deck on a sunny Saturday.

Focus for a moment on social media and the effect it’s had on the formality of our communication. There are no longer ivory towers or hallowed halls, and the businesses who continue to subscribe to this method of engagement (or lack of) are quickly losing share. As people we value warmth and competency as much in our business interactions as we do in our more colloquial, consumer lives. You may be drawn to the stability of specific bank, insurance company, or institution, but your experience is determined by the individuals you encounter within that organization, whether it be a teller, mortgage broker, financial planner, teacher, professor, or administrator. Individually they may present as buttoned-up business people, but behind the pleats and tweeds they are human beings who have a significant impact on the image and engagement of a brand.

Increasingly, we find that consumer loyalty and advocacy is built upon the relationships to individuals within an organization. Restaurants provide good food and a charming ambiance, but it’s the chef who stops by or the bar tender who chats with you while you wait for your dinner date who create that experience. There is no aspect of big M marketing that isn’t influenced by the blurred line between B and C. The way you position, message, and iterate product should focus on the one thing we all share: being human. Creating value for customers– both in communication and product– hinges upon understanding human nature above the nature of business.

There is no debate as to whether the rules are more stringent when you cross into B2B, but it has less to do with how people make decisions and more to do with red tape and legal constraints. The brand emerges when you find the humanity within your audience and then craft a story that appeals to them and passes the “business appropriate” test. It’s then the job of the organization to empower employees to embrace this balance and create experiences that are at once true to the brand and relevant to the customer.

Anecdotally, I live around the corner from one of the finest hotel chains in the world, the Taj. The brand stands for luxury and unparalleled experience. And while for guests this manifests in exquisite amenities and superb customer service, it’s adapted to meet the needs of the friends and neighbors of the hotel, as well. There’s no caviar offered as I pass by, but on a rainy day the staff is always ready with an umbrella, or a bottle of water when I jog by after working out. And this morning, after trying fruitlessly to hail a cab, it was a ride to work in their car service. So while I may not have the opportunity to lay my head upon those delightful pillows, or experience the luxury of tubs the size of my apartment, the luxury is tailored for me by a staff who knows my life and does everything they can to make it that much more luxurious.

Related articles

• Which Is The Best Business Model For Your Startup – B2B Or B2C? (entrepreneurs-journey.com)
• Why does B2B customer experience get the short shrift? (customerthink.com)

Our own Mike Troaino reported early on that its Google + vs. Twitter, not Facebook, Jeremiah Owyang later agreed and provided 5 Ways Google + Can become Mainstream, only to be outdone by 6 Ways Google + is Winning and Losing. Then, only a month after launch we learn that Google + hit 25 million visitors, at which point we acknowledge having Social Media Fatigue or maybe just Circle Fatigue.

The core differentiator and value proposition of Google + is circles. The idea is that I don’t want to talk or listen to everyone in my social network at once, just specific circles of individuals at a time.

It sounds easy right, make some circles put the right people in the right circles and you are ready for “real life sharing.” Not so fast.

If you have ever participated or better yet led the Information Architecture (IA) phase of a website redesign project, you will understand that defining what content goes where today is difficult. Planning for tomorrow, requires professionals. Taking from those experiences, here are a few ways to think about circles:

• + add new circles as new things come along does not require any planning but will eventually result in dozens of redundant and overlapping circles. Google already responded to this problem by adding a new feature.

• + create a circle for each of the groups in you life is easy to align to the real world today; work, friends, family, etc., but managing the overlap of the individuals within these groups will be difficult going forward.

• + create a circle for each type of content you want to share is a better approach because it is less important that I play soccer with a group, than it is that I want to share “personal” content with some individuals and “soccer” content with others.

• + limit Google + to a specific group or content type is the most common approach I have heard, probably because we have all been trained by bad Facebook experiences. It will keep things tidy, but using Google + for just a specific group or content misses the point.

There is no question that leading with circles is a big idea, but only time will tell if Google + is a revolutionary platform or just another social network.

How are you managing your Google + circles? Share your tips below.

Related articles

• Google+ Usability Shows Promise, but Still Has a Few Hitches (nytimes.com)

7 Habits of Highly Effective CEO Tweeters

Did we miss anything?

We chose “Social Media for CEOs” as the topic for our first event, and Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith opened the festivities with a few personal thoughts on the need to overcome one’s own cynicism and continually “Innovate Yourself.” Scott was also kind enough to share the story of personal growth that came from his successful bout with cancer many years ago, and it set just the right tone in getting an initially skeptical crowd to open up to some new ideas.

After that we started through the deck below, though we never made it through given the steady stream of questions, anecdotes, and other personal insights from the audience. In the end we were glad to stimulate that kind of dialog among a group of smart people just trying to figure this stuff out, and taking comfort in the fact other smart people were still struggling to do the same.

Anyway you can see the slides yourself here, please consider sharing them with you CEO if he’s someone you’re trying to get on board with the program.

Be sure and subscribe to the blog at upper right… I’ll be posting a special eBook we made for the event later, title “7 Habits of Highly Effective CEO Tweeters.”

It was a 101-type session, reinforcing the fundamentals of social media for business:

• It’s about building relationships,
• It starts with the delivery of content worthy of your target’s attention,
• It continues with an effort to help and connect people,
• Doing so builds social equity,
• That same social equity becomes an asset you can leverage in ways that deliver tangible business results.

Some entertaining tidbits and anecdotes were shared along the way, conducted beautifully by the masterful and golden voiced Anthony Silva.

Click below for video of the event, and please let me know what you think.

Related articles

• Social Media Day 2011 (mcnakblog.com)
• Social Media: a “Mission Critical” Solution for your Contact Center (avaya.com)
• Does Social Media Shape Our Lives More Than God Does? (godspace.wordpress.com)
• Happy Social Media Day – June 30th (projectmanagementessentials.wordpress.com)

1. How do you define ‘influence’ and ‘influencers’? Can influence really be measured?
2. How much time, attention and money should companies spend relative to marketing to influencers?
3. What are the specific tactics companies can use to reach influencers?
4. Which tactics used to influence customers, partners and prospects should (and/or should NOT) be used to influence influencers? Where do Influencer and Social strategies intersect – and where do they diverge?
5. Tell us about some success stories – and some failures.

Here’s a recording, you can grab the podcast at the link.

Focus Marketing Roundtable: Influencer Marketing – The Key To Social ROI? by miketrap

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• Worth the read: Identifying Influencers on Twitter (cuene.com)
• Content Marketing Case Study: Eloqua $2.5m Sales Boost With Grande Guides (pr.typepad.com)
• Social Media – Influence, Importance and Identification (visibletechnologies.com)

Hence the need for a kind of “minimum protocol” for Facebook marketing, a clear and specific list of the absolute bare minimum you’re going to need to do within the Facebook ecosystem to have a Facebook fan page that does more than check the box in terms of accessibility to your target audience.

Let’s start with the basics… it’s important to get your Facebook profile right and promote your page once you’ve launched it. These issues are pretty well covered on the links above.

As for the protocol itself, here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

I’d like to give props to Michelle McCormack and eMarketer, both of whom helped shaped our thinking on this.

We’re having pretty good luck with this approach so far…what’s your take? What would you add, and what would you take away?

Related articles

• Laziness: The Facebook Brand Page Killer (blogs.forbes.com)
• Garin Kilpatrick: How To Implement Facebook Open Graph Protocol On your Website Or WordPress Blog | Website Design & Development (websitedesign411.com)
• Don’t double down on social media content (convonix.com)
• How To: Customize The Way Your Facebook Like’s Look (facebookflow.com)
• Adding the Facebook Like Button Revisited (ducttapemarketing.com)
• Facebook Now Allows Profile Pages to Become Business Pages (hubspot.com)

It was good advice. Advice that taught generations of us to dig a little deeper and find out more about everything from books to jobs and people. And now that advice is bunk. It’s been thrown by the wayside with everything else that social media has massacred: traditional advertising, old school marketing, and human dignity and discretion.

These days, you judge a book by it’s Facebook page. And if you were thinking that recruiters and HR entities were turning a blind eye to the information so readily available via the interwebs, you would be mistaken.

In their new book, The Web 2.0 Job Finder, Brenda Greene and Coleen Byrne offer insights and recommendations from recruiters and HR departments on how to leverage social media to help find new opportunity, not kill it. They’ve called upon experts and insiders to give sage advice to those looking to navigate the market and build a fruitful network in this expressive and boundary-less new world.

And you’ll never guess which social media man they tapped… Our very own Mike Troiano.

Seeing as how Mike doesn’t even know where HR sits around here, he is able to bring a fresh and human perspective to the book:

“Invest some time in your profile. Upload a picture, for God’s sake. Add a bio. Create some content to give people a sense of who you are, what you can contribute, what you’ll be looking for. Then start to reach out to the people you know. Connect with them, and start the dialogue.”

It sounds so simple, but it seems that when creating our “professional” persona, we freeze up, certain that any modicum of personality or individualism will raise a red flag. But it’s our belief that now is the time that who you are and what you’re about is what gives you an edge. We’re marketing ourselves in an age of full disclosure. By providing too little, you’re polarizing. Too much and you’re a liability. You need to find a balance, and from there you need to leverage your online presence to build a network that brings opportunities to you, while starting conversations that leave a lingering impression on those with whom you’re connected. That’s just what this book is about.

The Web 2.0 Job Finder will be available April 15th. You can preorder from Amazon.com here.

Related articles

• Web 2.0 Is Now Social Media (web2.sys-con.com)
• McKinsey: Web 2.0 Satisfies (customerthink.com)

You got your Twitter handle, and you finally figured out how to create a Facebook page. The blog is ready to go and… now what? Resisting the urge to use social media sites for self-promotional content is hard, but necessary. So how do you find that sweet spot between interesting and relevant content to your audience, that also makes them want to reach out?

Join Mike Tuesday at 8:00 am as he moderates a MITX panel on creating branded content and its value in building customer relationships. Mike will be joined by Carissa Caramanis O’Brien, President at Red Box Communications, Eric Oliver, Director of Digital Brand Communications at Converse, and Matt Drinkwater, Senior Director at Yahoo!. The panel will discuss questions like:

• How does “branded content” work?
• How does the approach compare to conventional forms?
• How does branded content work on portals and social media sites, where control of the context is not in the hands of your brand?

Learn more and sign up on the MITX event page here. What are your thoughts on what kind of content “clicks” for brands?

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• Is branded content the great equalizer? (econsultancy.com)
• Content Marketing continues to grow (thewayoftheweb.net)
• Content and Social Media Marketing Success Secret: Create Your Core Branded Destination (admaven.blogspot.com)