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Making a military-grade case for social media

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:16:31 +0000

Staff Sgt. Joshua Salmons is the Emerging Media Coordinator at the Defense Information School. He works to determine curriculum standards for social media instruction for public affairs officers and enlisted personnel and develops training modules and seminars for DINFOS staff. He works with emerging media outlets from across the military to make sure their social training needs are being met and serves on several steering committees and policy discussion panels regarding DOD social media policy. Why does the military need to embrace social media? It’s not a social media problem, per se. The military needs to embrace social media because it represents a remarkable change in communication. Clay Shirky calls it the “mass amateurization” of journalism — the fact that barriers of entry to mass communication are now so low that everyone has the potential to speak to the world for little more than the cost of an Internet connection. Research from the Pew groups shows a large and accelerating shift in how people get their news. The legacy news industry is dying quickly, for a number of reasons, one being a stubbornness to adapt to audience needs. I heard a reporter from CNN speaking on a panel at the 2009 Army Worldwide Public Affairs Symposium say that we, as PA personnel, will miss reporters when they are gone. She realized that, while her industry was dying, they still served a vital pure storytelling function. And I believe she is right — journalists will always be needed to put words to experiences. The problem with the legacy news industry was the resistance to change. The military faces the same dilemma. We are just lagging behind the immediate effects of the communication paradigm shift that is social media. Former Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki said, “If you dislike change, you’ll like irrelevance even less,” and I agree. Sometimes we have to change, otherwise our audience will change and leave us. I like to think of it in terms of history. If we look back at the early 20 th century, America was faced with a shift in transportation paradigm. Automobiles had been in existence since the 1700s. Then, they were steam powered. They often broke, blew up and killed people — wonderful devices. But in the early 1900s, cars became more practical. They became commercially viable. People started buying them in greater numbers. Companies, and then the government, had to make a choice: either they could continue creating products and infrastructure to cater to horses, or they could adopt new products and laws to handle the influx of these new machines. The transportation idea was the same — moving a person from point A to point B faster than walking. It’s just that cars brought along a whole new set of circumstances that had to be adapted to. Similarly, we face such a shift with communication. Companies (those who produce products, in our case, stories, photos and broadcasts) have to make a choice. We can keep making saddles for horses — because we make great saddles, right? We’ve never made better saddles. That’s not the issue. The issue is, will we be able to keep selling thousands or millions of saddles as cars take over horses as the preferred method of transportation? Nope. We can keep making saddles — great and awesome saddles – but our influence will shrink to a niche market. Our other choice is to take our existing skills and adapt them to the new paradigm. In the transportation example, that would be like a saddle company taking its expertise in leatherworking to make seats for cars. In the communications example, it’s news organizations taking their storytelling experience to produce blogs and quality social media content to engage others. All that to say, social media isn’t the issue, per se. If the military does not break out of its mold and learn to adapt, the world will move on. We will be ignored. When you first began to propose using social tools, what kinds of objections were you hearing from your commanders? There are a lot of objections. In 2005, when I was blogging in Iraq, the objections were a lot more paranoid. Commanders and OPSEC officers saw social media as a security risk. I even was told in a briefing that if I blogged, I would be killing soldiers. That sort of prejudice can’t be countered. Military bloggers kept operating in quasi-secret. Later, the culture began to shift. In 2007 I started meeting others who were pushing for the same things with social media in the military — that it was an extension and amplification of public affairs goals, not a counter to military storytelling. Last year saw a lot of DOD high-level leaders embracing social media. They were sold on the idea of it. And strategic leaders are pretty easy to convince. So long as I do my homework and research relevant statistics, any good leader will see the cost- and time-saving benefits of social media tools as good for the organization. The junior levels usually already use social media because of generational preferences. It’s the large middle chunk that is the problem. Usually those leaders have the most to lose — either they are bucking for promotion, or they know if things go south, CEOs are rarely relieved. It’s far easier to can a few middle managers. So, in regards to more “normal” objections, now that we’re largely past the “social media will lead to the zombie apocalypse” phase, many commanders still see the security vulnerabilities as a show stopper. Some cite bandwidth concerns. Some are unsure where to start and draw attention to staff shortages. I also hear that social media is nothing but a productivity waster. How did you answer those objections? Each case is different. I take a look at the organization, how they work, what their communication goals are (surprisingly, many organizations can’t articulate them), and how they might benefit from new tools in their workflow. If I can get some managers to buy off on social media, implement small changes and begin to shift workplace culture, advocating more sweeping mindset changes become easier. Internal communicators become external communicators as discussions migrate from internal wikis and blogs to Facebook and external communities. It’s like proselytizing. But, more specifically, to the charge of security vulnerabilities, I try to work through what specific vulnerabilities they are referring to. Internal hosting of tools mitigates a lot of them. Training mitigates the rest. E-mail is still the No. 1 source of viruses and worms, but we don’t throw out e-mail. It’s too crucial to our workflow. Social media has some of the same vulnerabilities, sure, but there are tools to mitigate risk just like with e-mail, computer use or the chance that a spouse will give away information on the phone. Short of locking up all employees in the basement, there will always be security risks. Social media does have its own set of vulnerabilities, but to write it off as a lost cause because of the risk is overreacting, in my opinion. When commanders cite productivity concerns, I try to point out that lazy people are lazy people, be it around a water cooler or on Facebook. It’s a management issue, not a social media issue. If someone takes a four-hour lunch, a manager reprimands the employee and takes actions to alter behavior. The manager doesn’t ban lunch. To the charge of staff shortages and not knowing where to put already stretched resources in the social media world, I try to be as encouraging as possible. I understand where they are coming from. We are all told to do more with less. I keep trying to advocate an examination of current practices, though. If 70% of a shop’s time is devoted to publishing a physical newsletter that only gets to 12% or 14% of its audience, I would ask the organization to rethink how it interfaces with its public. It’s not just a matter of doing more with the same docket of activities. Sometimes it involves rescinding old practices to better interface with the public. Do you need to separate your enthusiasm for a given technology from your pitch? How do you do that? Communication planning. As much as I might love cloud computing, the development of strong AI, augmented reality, etc; if an avenue of emerging media doesn’t meet the communication goals of the organization I’m speaking to, then it’s a time-waster. Luckily, it’s easy for me to do this as a government employee. I’m not peddling any particular product. I’m not racking up billable hours. I’m busy like everyone else. I don’t have time to go on and on. I want goals so we can develop a plan. Then we implement. Then we measure. Bam! Done. My enthusiasm for emerging technologies might increase the number of potential tools I can bring to bear on any given project, but at my current level, I’m free to explore or ignore certain sectors of emerging media without profitability standing in the way. Is it more important to have the leadership mandate it or to have the rank-and-file clamoring for access? Whose support do you need most to get an organization to adopt a new technology? Both, if possible. I use a lot of tongue-in-cheek revolutionary rhetoric, but there are a lot of parallels between the political revolutionary process and the “revolution” of workplace culture. Both deal with the disenfranchised, both desire real and sweeping changes. If the top-level leadership comes on board, then there is a bloodless coup and the new regime moves forward together. If the top-level leadership stands against it, then the rank-and-file need to clamor away until the ruckus can’t be ignored. Luckily, there aren’t too many showdowns. When dealing with overall organizational health and profitability, top-level leadership usually is open for new ideas. If, instead, they see the organization as their personal plaything and are unwilling to discuss innovation, then I put forward they are a terrible leader. In those cases, social media is probably only one of many, many problems with retention, profitability and command climate. The key element to a successful social media revolution is the middle. It’s the middle management. It’s the experienced and influential co-workers. I, as some social media champion, can rattle my saber and make fantastic briefings all I want, but if I can’t secure the hearts of the middle, any change will eventually stall and die. I see it at DINFOS. My attempts at change have been somewhat successful, but so much will fade when I leave. The school doesn’t even have any plans to replace me. We will see if any of the progress we’ve made will persist. I was unable to get enough face time and convince enough of the middle — the long-staying employees, to go along with things. I can give a briefing and get any one group of people fired up, but without the middle, it is ephemeral. I would say junior and top levels are easy. Convincing the middle is the challenge.

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Making a military-grade case for social media

Twitter is evolving and still relevant

BlogPostman — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:51:26 +0000

SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues. Last week’s poll question: With the rise of location-based platforms such as Foursquare and Gowalla, has Twitter become old hat? The new and shiny has worn off Twitter, but it’s still useful — 35.10% Perish the thought; Twitter is still very viable — 35.10% Foursquare? Gowalla? What are those? — 17.31% Yawn. Twitter is yesterday’s news — 12.50% On one hand, the new and shiny has worn off Twitter, but it is reinventing itself to maintain relevance. For example, the company recently announced a revenue model based on advertising. For the first time, Twitter has a chance to become profitable (at least to actually earn revenue). Twitter is also entering the geo-location craze with a new feature called Points of Interest . It is orienting itself to be used ubiquitously in a mobile environment. In his keynote at the recent Twitter developer conference, Chirp , company CEO Evan Williams said that as of today, only 37% of active users use Twitter on their mobile devices. He wants to see that number rise to 100%. Speaking of use, there are more than 55 million new tweets created each day, and more than 600 million search queries per day. Finally, Twitter is putting lots of emphasis on building out and shoring up its infrastructure in order to handle the growth. I won’t say that gone are the days of the “fail whale,” but the platform does seem to be much more stable than in the past. Williams says that “Twitter is evolving. The goal is to serve users. There is much left to invent.” I believe Twitter’s heyday has not yet passed. It will be with us for a long time to come. Paul Chaney is an Internet marketing consultant and speaker on the topic of social media, author of “The Digital Handshake” and a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board .

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Twitter is evolving and still relevant

Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates

BlogPostman — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:00:15 +0000

Here on Online Marketing Blog , we post a tremendous amount of insight on organic search optimization and content marketing related topics each month. But how about the site search tool on our own blog? Who’s searching for what, and why? And what are they finding? Mining the site search report from Google Analytics can be very useful since it’s an indication of what our visitors want to read more of. Here are the six most popular site search terms for Online Marketing Blog including our favorite, “pirates”. 1. Facebook With Facebook taking off as a top channel for social media marketing, it’s no wonder that them comes up as our leading search query. Just consider the recent numbers : Facebook boasts more than 400 million active users 50% of Facebook users log on during any given day More than 20 million Facebook users become fans of pages every day A quick Online Marketing Blog site search for “Facebook” yields recent posts on tools for sharing microcontent , insight on social media advertising and how to leverage channels like Facebook to take advantage of real-time search . 2. Twitter Speaking of popular social media marketing channels, Twitter takes to No. 2 spot for most common site searched on Online Marketing blog. Twitter may only have less than 106 million users compared with Facebook’s 400 million. But consider how quickly Twitter is growing and how active its users are: New users sign up at the rate of 300,000 per day 180 million unique visitors visit the site every month Users post an average of 55 million tweets a day So what can you get with a search for Twitter on Online Marketing Blog? Learn more about the role of news in blended search or find ways to electrify your social network . 3. Books Who says print is dead? “Books” turns up as our fourth most popular search term. Here on the Online Marketing Blog, we’ve posted reviews of some of latest most intriguing marketing online marketing books like “The Art of SEO.” Plus, we’ve conducted exclusive interview with some of the hottest marketing authors out there, such as David Meerman Scott , author of “The New Rules of Marketing.” We’ve even polled our readers on the best available books on SEO . 4. Social Media These days, social media isn’t just a hot topic for B2C marketers looking to connect with consumers on sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Social media is equally as relevant in the B2B world. In fact, 91% of business buyers read blogs, watch user generated video and participate in other social media, according to Forrester Research. A “social media” search on Online Marketing blog pulls up posts on setting and measuring goals for business blogging , which social media sites are the biggest time wasters and the risks of sponsored blog posts . 5. Email Marketing Contrary to predictions, RSS never did replace Email. Social media and network use and status updates or microblogging haven’t “killed” the popularity of email either. In fact, there have been reports that Email use is actually up. So it certainly makes sense that our readers are looking for more information on email marketing. A search for “email marketing” reveals some insight posts including, “ 5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010 “, 5 Tips for Effective Email Copywriting ” and “ How Social Media & Email Marketing Boost Customer Reach “. And Finally: Pirates! Few things seem less relevant to Online Marketing Blog than pirates. Yet somehow it’s one of the most searched terms on the blog. So what do pirates have to do with Internet marketing and Web 2.0? There is an answer in this social media marketing post, we promise. Hint: It has to do with Dave McClure. Are you analyzing the top search phrases on your web site? Are you using that insight to guide your site content? © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates

The Art of Self-Marketing Online – U.S. News & World Report

BlogPostman — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:01:10 +0000

The Art of Self- Marketing Online U.S. News & World Report ... and—more recently— LinkedIn and Twitter, becoming a social media maven is easier. But for the older crowd, learning self- marketing on the Internet can be ...

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The Art of Self-Marketing Online - U.S. News & World Report

Internet has revolutionalized marketing arena – Park Rapids Enterprise

BlogPostman — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:38:59 +0000

Internet has revolutionalized marketing arena Park Rapids Enterprise The field of marketing is not excluded. The Internet has brought, not just a change, but also a revolution in marketing our products and services. ...

What will growing diversity mean for social media?

BlogPostman — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:17:58 +0000

Keeping up with changing technology is a big part of being a social-media enthusiast — but we have to be careful not to let the allure of new gadgets distract us from the ways in which people are changing. The Internet will become larger and more diverse over the next four years — and that may be good news for social marketers , as we note in the lead story of today’s SmartBrief on Social Media . For some businesses, these demographic shifts may make more of an impact than mobile networks, augmented reality and geo-tagging put together. Yet as I’ve noted in the past, tackling diversity can be a minefield for business. Companies will have to come up with more-evolved social strategies if they’re going to stay on top of the ways in which the Web is changing. Advertisers have gone through shifts like this — realizing the growing buying power of children, for example — but they’ve never had to make the transition in a social environment, where engagement can spread like wildfire and every misstep is magnified. How will increasing Internet use among minorities change social media? How should marketers respond to this trend? What companies are already doing this well? Image credit, maxstockphoto , via Shutterstock

Social media careers: Education and experience are a winning combination

BlogPostman — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:32:05 +0000

SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues. Last week’s poll question: A number of business schools are adding courses on social-media marketing. How important a role does education play when hiring someone to manage your company’s social-media engagement? A combination of education and experience is ideal. 55.42% Education is important, but it’s not the only thing that matters. 22.89% I would consider only candidates who had real-world experience. 19.28% Education is the most important factor. 2.41% I guess the answer to this question was obvious, education combined with real-world experience trumps any other combination. (Of course, isn’t that the case with any type of job?) Like many of you, my social media “education” was learned via on-the-job training, often combined with additional “homework” in trial-and-error. While I’m excited to see colleges and universities include coursework (or even degree programs) on social media, I believe there are aspects of this discipline that do not lend themselves well to a classroom setting. For example, because social media is ever evolving, textbooks will be outdated almost the moment they are printed. Instructors will have to be committed to staying on top of industry trends, virtually in real-time. (Of course, the underlying tenets and principles would remain the same.) The aspect that most excites me about this is that it provides evidence that social media has, indeed , become a career path. More and more, companies are adding social media managers as part of their marketing/pr communications teams. Job boards are replete with listings of positions that contain the term “social media.” Even President Obama is looking to hire someone . Let me leave you with a couple of questions: Do you see a need for social media to be taught in the classroom? If so, what types of courses should be included? Paul Chaney is the Internet marketing director for Bizzuka , author of “The Digital Handshake” and a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board .

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Social media careers: Education and experience are a winning combination

Marketing Products and Services Through the Use of Social Media – TransWorldNews (press release)

BlogPostman — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:01:32 +0000

Marketing Products and Services Through the Use of Social Media TransWorldNews (press release) Social Networks provide a single location on the internet where a user can go and hang out, rather than having to travel from one different website to the ... Advisors skeptical of US social media site Advisor.ca Next Generation Social Media: Bringing the World Together TransWorldNews (press release) all 5 news articles

What will it take to make Twitter great?

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:46:50 +0000

It’s amazing how quickly our ideas of convenience change. Think about the early days of the Internet: Remember dial-up modem noises and sluggish connections? Remember those clunky, almost paleolithic Web pages? Remember how maddeningly useless early search engines were? I don’t know about you, but I was totally blown away by it all. Sure, it could tough to navigate, but using the Web was so much more convenient than heading to the mall, the library or the post office to run errands that I didn’t even notice all the technology’s many shortcomings. Would I go back to that world now? Not a chance. Now think about Twitter. Sure, it’s all kinds of convenient and useful, but it’s filled with little imperfections we’ve trained ourselves not to notice. In the lead story of today’s SmartBrief on Social Media , Fred Wilson does an admirable job of reminding us of all the little hoops we jump through just to make the service work the way it should. Wilson is calling for a killer app to take the network to the next level. But I think first we need to get a network that recognizes what level its users are actually on. We don’t need a killer app. We need a killer network. Friendster gave way to MySpace, which passed the torch to Facebook. Each of these services improved upon the stability, popularity and feature set of its predecessor. So how is that Twitter has stood unchallenged on the field of micro-blogging for more than three years? The platform is unreliable, ungainly and seems patently uninterested in making life easier for its users. Why is it still dominant? How much longer can that last? The obvious answer is say that Twitter’s user base is too large. But then, no one thought a college-only network would someday unseat MySpace. My guess is that whatever unseats Twitter will come from a similar niche market. Wherever it comes from, it will build on the mistakes and the omissions Twitter has made. Users shouldn’t have to rely on killer apps to get the most out of a platform; the platform needs to evolve to meet the users’ needs. If Twitter hasn’t addressed its own shortcomings by the time competition does pop up, it may never get the chance. What do you think? Is Twitter lacking a killer app? Does the network need a total overhaul? Would users be better served by a competing network? Image credit, kovacevic via Shutterstock

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What will it take to make Twitter great?

Poll: Readers skeptical on use of location-based social networks

BlogPostman — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:29:57 +0000

SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social-media practices and issues. Last week’s poll question: Are you currently using location-based social networks such as Foursquare, Gowalla or MyTown? I haven’t started using them, and I don’t plan to. 43.84% I haven’t started using them, but I’m interested. 25.36% Yes, I regularly check in to places I go. 15.94% I’m using them, but not frequently. 14.86% I’m somewhat taken aback by the strong response from those who say they have no plan to use location-based social networks such as Foursquare or Gowalla. It causes me to wonder if the response is based on a lack of knowledge about their use in a business context, whether the respondents represent more of a business-to-business orientation, or whether it’s a lack of interest in newer forms of social networking altogether — or none of the above. My take on these new platforms is that they can have great relevance for retail-oriented bricks-and-mortar businesses, and perhaps that’s stating the obvious. Less apparent are the soon-coming benefits to using geolocation, many of which have yet to be discerned. As participation increases and people adapt the use of these apps to better suit their needs, I expect to see more benefits accrue, within the retail and business-to-business spaces. As Daniel Ionescu puts it : “Facebook wants to know, ‘What’s on your mind?’ Twitter asks, ‘What’s happening?’ But that’s getting old already. The burning question for the next wave of social networking is, ‘Where are you?’” We don’t yet know the impact of that question on business, but I’m betting it’s significant. Perhaps a good follow-up question to the one above should be, “What business benefits do you see location-based social networks providing?” Why don’t you go ahead and respond now by leaving a comment. Paul Chaney is the Internet marketing director for Bizzuka , author of “The Digital Handshake,” and a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board .

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Poll: Readers skeptical on use of location-based social networks