Chancellor in Computerworld

A couple of weeks ago I got a request from Julie Sartain, who writes for Computerworld, to summarize what I’ve been saying about the business benefits of Facebook. I was delighted to contribute toward her article, which is available on-line today.

Here’s an excerpt:

But some companies just don’t get it. Aase compared these new opportunities for businesses to the adoption of early fax technology around 1990. Companies could suddenly receive customer purchase orders by fax instead of FedEx, a huge savings in time and dollars, and well worth the cost of the machine and the monthly charges for the additional phone lines.

If AT&T had offered all this for free, would anyone have declined? he asked. “Social networking sites like Facebook are a much more advanced communications phenomenon than the fax, but not only are many businesses failing to take advantage of these free communication services; some actively block employees from using social networks,” Aase said.

The full article is recommended reading for all SMUG students, and for anyone else looking for an overview of some of the practical business benefits of Facebook and MySpace. My Facebook friend Jeremiah Owyang also is quoted extensively…a lot more extensively than I am, but then he should since he’s a Forrester analyst.

If you’re new to Social Media University, Global, you can visit our Student Union in Facebook, or audit some classes that are part of the core curriculum. Here’s a Message from the Chancellor that gives you an overview and introduction to our educational philosophy, and you can read all of my posts related to Facebook here.

Personal and Professional Personas in Social Networks

In the Facebook 210 course I describe a way to use Facebook’s Friend lists to create a “work-safe” profile that is less likely to cause professional problems, when that high school classmate or college buddy tags you in a questionable photo or writes on your wall. This led to a thoughtful comment from Erik Giberti:

I’ve sent you a friend request and of course your on my limited profile. I find this discussion interesting because there’s a fine line between having a personal persona and a professional persona. I go back and forth on this idea, but I believe that they are really one in the same. The way I am at work is often reflected by the way I am when I’m not at work and vice versa. The reality is, many folks create an artificial “professional” persona that masks who they are in the “real world”. It has been my experience that employers and co-workers can usually tease out trends in your real life personality and spot the fake portions of the professional persona. What’s left is really something closer to your personal persona. So why not just present that first and save everyone the time?

I think Erik has a good point, and personally I don’t have a problem with anyone seeing my whole profile. My life is an open book. And I think the ethic of transparency we are coming to expect from corporations also has some implications for personal life. In fact, that’s why I like Facebook as opposed to MySpace or Second Life. In Facebook people almost always go by the name their parents gave them; in MySpace that’s not necessarily so, and in Second Life you are represented by an avatar and aren’t allowed to use your real name. (I did recently try Second Life, I think my name is Allen Atlass.)

On the other hand, even aside from the potentially problematic posts and tags from others, many people put their religious beliefs and political leanings on their Facebook profiles, and many businesses want to keep politics and religion out of the workplace. You don’t typically put that information on your business card.

LinkedIn doesn’t have anything in its personal profiles that would indicate religious or political persuasion, unless of course you have worked vocationally in religious or political pursuits. For Facebook to be an effective business alternative to LinkedIn (I use both Facebook and LinkedIn, but Facebook to a much greater extent), it needs to duplicate this functionality.

That was the point of Facebook 210 and the subsequent SMUG Research Project; creating an example of how you can avoid broadcasting this personal information to co-workers, customers or clients, but yet share it with your non-work friends.

SMUG students who read my post on religious podcasting have a window to my theological beliefs, and because of my previous career information (which is available on both my LinkedIn and Facebook profiles), they would correctly infer my political sympathies. (Hint: I don’t have a direct psychological stake in the outcome of tomorrow’s Pennsylvania contest between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama.) Which leads me to reiterate that the views expressed on this blog are mine, not those of my employer.

So Erik is right to a point; maintaining a sanitized professional persona may not be consistent with the ethic of transparency. One might even call it a matter of integrity in the literal sense. Integrity means being a single person, not having a compartmentalized life. If you’re maintaining a professional profile on LinkedIn and a personal one on Facebook, with completely different friends, you’re already creating this division. Facebook 210 just tells you how to create that separation on a single platform.

I think the key to what Erik says is that a professional persona shouldn’t “mask” who you are in real life. But there’s a difference between hiding information about yourself and not actively promoting things that might be stumbling blocks for some acquaintances.

What do you think?

Social Media Strategy

Our presenters for the session on “How to Craft a Powerful, Cost-Effective Social Media Strategy” are Sally Falkow from Expansion Plus and Brian Solis from Future Works PR. This is a standing-room-only session.

I had seen this quote before, but apparently it came from Jay Rosen: “We are the people formerly known as the audience.”

Social Media Marketing is the use of the social tools to interact with people, but it is not about technology. It is sociology. It’s about being able to create content and interact with people.

Continue reading “Social Media Strategy”

Welcome Frost & Sullivan eBulletin Readers

A few weeks ago I got a Facebook message from Caryn Brown from Frost & Sullivan, saying that she wanted to feature my blog as a “Recommended Read” in the eBulletin, a quarterly electronic publication for past participants in Sales and Marketing: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. (I guess they ordinarily feature a book in this section.) I asked Caryn to let me know when the eBulletin would be distributed, so I could welcome you properly and share links to some of the posts I’ve done about Frost & Sullivan events. She kindly obliged, so here’s a quick intro to Social Media University, Global — or SMUG.

SMUG is the University of Phoenix without the football stadium…or the tuition…or the accreditation. It’s a place for lifelong learners to get hands-on experience with social media tools, which are changing the way people communicate.

With well over 100 million blogs and upwards of 68 million active users of Facebook, I’ve said previously that for PR professionals, unfamiliarity with these tools borders on malpractice. The same is true for those involved in sales and marketing.

Especially when you can learn about them for free!

Continue reading “Welcome Frost & Sullivan eBulletin Readers”

10 Tips for Promoting Your Business Through Social Networks

Monte Enbysk, a senior editor at Microsoft Office Live, called a couple of weeks ago asking to interview me for an Office Hours column on using social networking sites to promote your business. I had a delightful conversation with Monte, and he just notified me that his article is now available online, here. Here’s an excerpt:

Are social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn the business tools of the future? Or are they a passing fad that will meet the same fate as disco music?

Time will tell. But if you run a small business circa 2008, ignore them at your own peril. Many of your competitors have already jumped on the bandwagon, and are successfully networking their way to a stronger Web presence, enhanced credibility, and more customers.

Yes, many of these sites are used for socializing by your teenaged sons and daughters. But businesses can benefit too, says Lee Aase, a veteran media relations manager. His employer, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, has put him in charge of articulating the clinic’s message through social networking sites such as Facebook.

“The way that most businesses grow is by word of mouth, by recommendations, and by peers and communities,” says Aase, who writes articles and blog posts about marketing through Facebook. “The whole concept of social media is a lot like birds of a feather flocking together” — in other words, people with a common interest or objective interacting online, he says.

I recommend that you check out the rest of the rest of the article, in which you’ll get 10 helpful tips. Monte wrote this from the perspective of a small business owner, but I believe the tips are just as applicable for larger organizations. And even if you work for a larger company, you have a personal brand to enhance, too. You should learn how you can do that effectively through social networking sites.

Others Monte interviewed included Jinger Jarrett and Leslie O’Flahavan.

For further reading, I recommend Social Media 104: Intro to Social Networking, which is part of the core curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG).