I received the note below from LinkedIn and it reminded me of a handful of key strategic relationship best practices:

• We’re a visual society – we may not remember people’s names, but faces are familiar to us.  
• In a turbulent economy where people are going to constantly change jobs, titles, roles, responsibilities and geographic locations, you must keep updated information on your contacts.
• Social media is an enabler of strategic relationships, NOT a replacement of it.  Use these updates to proactively touch base with your portfolio of relationships.
• Critical that your off-line and on-line presence is in-line.  Consistently update your network with your progress, key accomplishment, questions, sharing of best practices, and unique insights.
• A fundamental value in our portfolio of relationships is our ability to connect others to one another – do this consistently without expecting anything in return

So, here are a handful of questions to ask of your portfolio of strategic relationships: Read the rest of this entry »

In an earlier blog we discussed 5 questions that will start a dialogue about social media in your organization. Here are 5 more questions to keep the conversation going:

How do we describe our corporate culture?

Do you or your employees have a clear idea of your culture? It will come out, so be prepared. If your management team is more paranoid than North Korea, don’t expect to see a rosy picture put forth to potential customers. Corporate culture is one area that definitely shows up on social media.

What is the line between personal and professional branding?

If an employee posts information concerning his or her company on a personal page, who owns the content? Can you influence what someone posts in his or her spare time about himself or herself? The short answer is that if the person shares with the world that he or she is an employee of the company, then that person is responsible to the company for protecting the brand.

What do we want the world to know about us as a company?

Your employees are ambassadors for your company, for better or worse. For many prospective buyers, their first point of introduction may be through the social interactions of an employee, whether professional or personal. If you don’t have a clear message, what do you think will happen in the market? Read the rest of this entry »

The rapid expansion of social media as a fundamental value-added service of a team or the organization in the market has created a plethora of new enterprise roles and responsibilities—from community managers to directors of social media and to chief content officers. Although their backgrounds vary greatly, I’ve found the best ones to be very well grounded in traditional marketing expertise, to have a solid understanding of the power and promise of this new medium, and to have a genuine desire to create dialogue and candid interactions with their respective constituents. One such example is a content curator.

When executing a social market leadership strategy, you have to develop digital relationships that become evangelists of your brand and quantifiable value.

To do this successfully, if you’re trying to sell more than your products and services and share unique intellectual property (IP) as part of your personal or organization’s brand as well, you’ll need to post compelling content online; this includes new videos, blog posts, tweets, and LinkedIn and Facebook status updates. The challenge is that other than a handful of exceptions, such as Butterfly Publisher, there are relatively few tools with the ability to disseminate content and help you proactively manage this deluge. Read the rest of this entry »

Want to use Enterprise Social Alignment to stay ahead of your competition? The following Top 10 Social Market Leadership tactics will help you stay ahead of the curve!

1. Develop a profile of your target buyer. Research them on LinkedIn, and create a profile of what they find of interest/value.

2. Don’t think of your interactions as a single event; instead think of them as a campaign with a focused social media effort to create awareness for the client organization.

3. In advance of each interaction, research top industry trade publications; for corporate clients, identify internal and external communication channels, such as newsletters, SharePoint sites, intranets, and private social networks.

4. Submit focused and relevant content (articles, videos, blog posts) often, driving awareness and traffic to your personal or corporate brand. Read the rest of this entry »

In several client meetings this past year, the conversation often centered on the need for a social media policy—what the organization was going to give its employees access to, what personal accounts/social networking sites were permitted, and what the employees could or could not do, say, or be online. Whether you work for a progressive organization or a conservative, risk-averse one, it seems that everyone has an opinion on the best approach. Here are four prevailing camps:

Ostrich Look-Alikes

‘‘I’m on Facebook to keep up with my teenage daughter; it has no relevance to our business, and it’s going to go away soon enough. Besides, bandwidth, viruses, and time-wasting are all good reasons for us to block complete access to any and all of it from our company.’’ Seriously? You don’t think employees are getting online with their smart phones or personal laptops, or around the corner at the coffee shop? Here is one of my favorites: A local, well-recognized brand that promotes on Facebook a payment application it developed that blocks access to Facebook for its employees! Read the rest of this entry »

Now more than ever, smart, strategic, profitable revenue growth is critical to organizations of any size. Make no mistake about it—performance trumps all. You as an individual, your team, and your organization all have to consistently deliver quality products, exceptional professional services, and an unparalleled customer experience. Otherwise, the rest is a moot point.

A strong social network can help extend the market capitalization of your performance.

Its applications are invaluable in the following three areas:

1. Within the organization where you need the support of your colleagues to deliver on the promises you make in the market
2. With distribution channel partners who can help uncover previously untapped market opportunities or extend your reach with exponential value-added services; and
3. With great customers. Social networks can help you focus on your core competencies while you explore innovative business and revenue models. Read the rest of this entry »