Is LinkedIn a waste of your time?  Not if you care about lead generation, building relationships with decision makers, and saving time and money.  LinkedIn does all of these things and in this quick short-cut series, I’m going to show you how.

First, I want to give credit to Scott Allen and his book The Virtual Handshake.  I’m lucky enough to be participating in OneCoach’s newest webinar series for small business owners called Social Media for Small Business in this article, I’m going to skip through all the lecture and just give you the LinkedIn strategy short cuts for CEOs that will help you make the most of this social networking tool.

7 BIG Reasons WHY CEOs and Small Business Owners Should Use LinkedeIn

1. It’s a self-updating contact management system.  If you’re currently using ACT or Salesforce.com in your business to manage your contacts, then you know how much time and effort it takes to maintain a clean and updated list.  I don’t use any of those – I use LinkedIn to manage my referrals, my clients and my provider contacts.  Granted you’re not going to get a sales pipeline report, but you will have all your contacts MOST CURRENT information anytime, anywhere.
2. LinkedIn lets you extend your network. Imagine that you have an opportunity at Coca Cola, but you need to get some additional information to really make that presentation a slam dunk.  You can spend hours or days calling your network and hoping to get the right person, when all along, your brother-in-law had the connection to the person you were looking for.  LinkedIn allows you to get to that person in a few keystrokes.  LinkedIn allows you to literally see who your connections are connected to.  You can search on keywords, companies and industries.
3. Find experts, suppliers, employees and resources. Think about how much time you’d save in searching for experts in your industry, suppliers or other resources.  With your network on LinkedIn, it’s easy to search on industries, specialties such as MRP/ERP software or customer satisfaction research.
4. Stay in touch with your contacts. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own world, but all CEOs know that a successful business is all about relationships.  Checking into your LinkedIn connections a couple of times a week is an easy way to stay on top of what’s the professional updates of your connections.
5. Do market research. Instead of running expensive surveys, ask your questions on LinkedIn Q&A.  You’ll be astounded and amazed at the quality of responses that you’ll find.  It’s not uncommon to uncover potential opportunities and collaborative relationships in asking questions and getting expert answers.
6. See what the competition is up to. Keep an eye on what your industry and your competitors are up to by searching on a competitors name and seeing what is posted on their updates. Look for people who are new hires at a company, or check out the current employees of a company and see their background and if they have the expertise you want, just pull them in.
7. Give and get testimonials and endorsements. Bet you didn’t know that whenever your name or your company come up in conversations, the first place people go to get the goods on you is LinkedIn.  Take about 5 minutes every time you visit LinkedIn to leave an endorsement for someone you’ve worked with – especially if they are a customer.  That person will appreciate it and they will respond with an endorsement of your work as well.

I can go on and on about how valuable LinkedIn has been in building my business and my brand.  But I wish that you would discover it for yourself.

Don’t be Afraid of Sharing

I know that you’re probably hesitant to share the contacts you’ve worked so hard to build over the years.  And the last thing you want is to have someone dig into your contacts and embarrass you or somehow.  This is possible, but unlikely.  Like every other business decision there is risk and there is reward.  And once you get accustomed to using LinkedIn to save yourself time, money and effort, you will see that the rewards FAR outweighs the risk.

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One of the things I LOVE about publishing DIYMarketers and serving as the DIY Marketing expert and resource for Small Business Trends and QuestionPro communities is that I get to explore and try programs that you might be interested in, but can’t afford to risk your time trying.

Over the next 6 weeks I’m going to be participating in the OneCoach Social Media Webinar for Small Business.

Reasons The OneCoach Social Media Webinar Series for Small Business is Time and Money Well Spent

1. OneCoach consistently delivers quality, high-end, well researched content.  Scott Allen is a seasoned social media expert.  He’s been at it since the late 90’s and that’s before LinkedIn, Facebook and what we know as social media.  This means that he lends CONTEXT to the topic.  He’s had experience BEFORE social networking, during the rise of social media and now as we evolve these tools into revenue generating resources.
2. Focused on Making Money. If you’re a CEO asking yourself how any of this will make you money — Scott Allen has made this the focus of the entire program.  As a business owner, you’ll see exactly the tool he uses to analyze and measure which connections have the highest value and bring the most leverage to your business.  No fluffy social stuff for fun here.  He explains how it can be social, but doesn’t dwell there.
3. Interactive social space community for participants. You will pay several hundred dollars to be in this seminar.  But the biggest value you’ll get is the people that you will meet and interact with.  OneCoach has created a closed social space for the participant community where they can practice, interact and get to know each other better.  I’ve already connected and learned from several people and can’t wait to learn more.  This is TOTALLY worth every penny.,
4. Tips, tips and even more tips — even for experts. I’ll admit it.  I’m a social media snob.  I was worried that because so many small business CEOs were behind the curve, that the tips I would get here would be too basic.  I was wrong.  Because the sessions are SO FOCUSED on leveraging contacts for cash – I was blown away by the quality of the tips.  Here’s my favorite — “Instead of using email – work to have conversations (that aren’t private) online using Twitter and Facebook.”  This is a brilliant tip because social media sites are indexed by Google and if you’re discussing a topic that is in your area of expertise — they YOU WILL BE FOUND.  I have about 50 of these — and that’s just from Unit 1.
5. You will learn to NOT WASTE TIME. Look.  I went into this worried that I would waste an hour and a half every week for six weeks.  And if you have that thought swirling around — put it aside.  If you’ve been frustrated by the social media topic because you feel like you’re letting this low cost marketing tool go to waste — then this program would be ideal for you.

Too Bad – I think Registration is Closed

I’m not sure if you think this is good news or bad — but I’m not writing this to sell you on the social media for small business webinar because I think it might be closed now.  You can try and see if they will let you in.  If they do, it’s worth it.

What I wanted you to know from this post is that OneCoach programs are a good value.  If you’re the CEO of a million dollar company with no marketing department — then this is a great investment of time and money.  They will not waste either.

So What Can I DO?

Don’t worry.  I’m not teasing you mercilessly.  I asked the folks over at OneCoach what they would recommend for my community that missed this webinar, but might be interested in the program — they recommended that you head over to the Business Momentum Club.  I’ve been a member and would say exactly the same thing for that program as I did for this one.

In the meantime.  Stay tuned for articles that will feature content from this Social Media Webinar Series with Scott Allen.

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This article appeared on the AMEX Open Forum blog last week.   The idea for the article came out of my realizing that we spend a lot of time looking for creative ways to find and attract new customers, but often ignore doing the same thing with customers we already have.  We often get so busy servicing these customers, that we forget to treat them like opportunities.  And yet, this might actually be the easiest sales job EVER because they’ve already made the most difficult decision of all — to work with us in the first place.

Where are you spending more time; getting new customers or growing and expanding your relationship with the customers you already have?  If you’re like most companies, you’re probably spending more time and money looking for and wooing new customers than finding new opportunities within the customers you already have.

When the economy gets tough, everyone tends to go into survival mode and think that they don’t have enough customers, or that they need new customers to replace the business that they lost.    But the truth is that focusing on the customers you already have is your highest value strategy when times are tough.

If you’re afraid of losing a customer or just want to keep the customers you have loyal, here are some easy, low-cost strategies that will help you keep a customer today.

Calculate your customer net worth. The best way to inspire increase sales to existing customers is to see how much these customers have already contributed to your bottom line. The formula is actually simple: Take the total profit of your ideal customer  over the lifetime of your relationship.  Subtract all the costs associated with acquiring that customer.  That’s all there is to it.  If you’d like more detail, here’s a wonderful tool that you can use to see how much each of your ideal customers is worth.

Identify what’s most important to your customers. Focus on specific benefits that your customers are looking for such as 24/7 access to technical support instead of just service.  The best way to find out is to literally get on the phone or schedule a meeting with a handful of your best customers and simply ask them “What’s important to you when you’re buying what we’re selling?”  Then be quiet and let them just talk.  Listen for golden nuggets that may not have anything to do with WHAT you provide, but HOW you provide it.  That’s where real value lies.

Review the next customer letter you see and remove all elements of  “corporate-speak” from it. You can spot fake, empty and inauthentic language (corporate B.S.) from a mile away – so can your customer.  And they don’t like it.  Customers are drawn to real people who use plain and simple language.   Here’s how to test your document’s readability in Microsoft Word 2010: Click the File tab, and then click Options. Click Proofing. Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, make sure Check grammar with spelling is selected. Select Show readability statistics.

Get employees involved in building your brand and communicating with customers. Some companies shy away from having employees on Facebook while they are working.  But creating a social media presence and then actually encouraging employees to connect with customers and communicate with them via Blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is a terrific way to put a personal face and connection to your company.  Before you jump into this strategy, be sure to create a social media policy and clearly outline what’s acceptable and not acceptable.  Also be sure to create corporate identities for your employees i.e.  Scott Simon, the NPR personality’s Twitter ID is @nprscottsimon.

Create a “Key Account Plan” for a Critical Customer. The most profitable customers are the ones who purchase across your product and service offering.  Yet, many of us have customers who purchase one or two products or services – when they might actually have a need for (but not know about) the other products we have available.  A key account plan puts your focus on your customer and all the different ways that you can serve them – not just with products, but with other value added services.  Think of it as a marketing plan for that one target customer.  If you’re still in a bind, you can download this strategic account plan template here.

Offer an insane guarantee. BEFORE your customer starts threatening to go to a competitor, create and offer an insane guarantee.  Business owners are often afraid of offering guarantees because they think that they will lose money.  But if you’ve done the customer net worth calculation (tip #1) you will see that offering a risk-free guarantee costs NOTHING compared to what that customer has already contributed to your bottom line.

Give them the star treatment. Identify your key customers and create a “concierge” team to service their every need.  Have a member from key areas such as sales, marketing, service, production or technology serve as the customer concierge team.  Give them a broad latitude and freedom to get things done.  If this proves successful for you, think about making this an added service that other customer can subscribe to.  I know one company that added $2 million straight to their bottom line by using this strategy.

Create an advisory board. Instead of wondering what new products or services would most interest your customer – get them involved in the development process by inviting them to participate on an advisory board.  The investment in time and money in creating this engaged customer community will pay off in spades.  Create events where you educate your customer advisory board on industry trends and then ask them the questions that keep you wondering if there’s actually demand for your idea.  You can even keep these virtual with tools like GoTo Meeting that have chat screens, polls and the ability to create recorded sessions.

Monthly “Surprise Gift”. We’ve all heard of a book of the month club, how about a surprise of the month “gift” for your key customers.  I’m not necessarily talking about the kinds of gifts that get you in trouble – maybe it’s something like “This month’s order of widget “x” was on us!  Enjoy”  Again, if you look at your key customer’s net worth to your business, isn’t it better to spend your money on keeping them loyal than throwing your money away on hopes of gaining a new customer?  Reciprocity (along with quality and service) is a powerful loyalty tool.

LOVE them. When you love a hobby or another person you take an interest in what’s happening around them.  Do the same with your customers.  If you know that your customer contact is a fan of pink flamingoes and you see a postcard or figurine in a gift shop – pick it up and send it to them.  It says that you know who they are and you listen and care.  Do at least one nice, selfless thing for a customer because you love them.

This is a short list of 10 ways to keep customers.  But YOU’RE somebody’s customer too.  Why not take this opportunity to share what you’d want to see from the companies you do business with that would keep you loyal and get you singing their praises.

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This video was posted in my Facebook stream today.  It’s both humerous and sad at the same time.

This Could Be You…Unless

Here is what some PR experts around the web are giving as advice to BP.  Read these and see how you can apply these to your business today.

• 9-Steps from Matt Eventoff: This is a terrific article with great advice.  My favorite tips are those that complement BPs business and teh effect the spill has had on the community such as – contributing to animal help groups for the region.
• Since the spill, someone set up a fake Twitter account called BP Global and then started posting fake tweets that spoofed how BP was handling the situation.  If someone is satirizing your brand, the best thing you can do is take it gracefully — AND be doing the right thing.  Show your humility and humanity, anything else is heavy-handed.
• Communications Executive gives great tips for managing your reputation and your brand using social media.
• The Customer Collective has fantastic ideas that don’t just apply to BP.  I love the idea of connecting to the humanity of the BP stations which are actually small businesses that are owned by your friends and neighbors.  Also love the idea giving your audience a space to vent – rather than having them create their OWN space not controlled by you.

These are just a few round-ups of lessons to be learned from the BP experience.  What are YOUR tips?

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It’s been three years since I’ve been back to China (see all my posts on Asia) to report on the local web scene but am now in Shanghai and have met with a handful of folks that are looking at social business within China. Don’t take this as a proper research report, but just sharing what I heard from speaking to a handful of professionals who are looking at the social web, culture, and business such as Sam Flemming, Bryce Whitwam, and hearing from Nicolas Zurstrassen of Nike present at the Social Media event where I was speaking.

Field Report: Shanghai and China’s Social Web, What I Learned:
Caveat:  Don’t take this as complete research, it’s just based on what I learned in a short period of time, you should connect with China experts who I listed out below.

• China’s online sphere already large and growing –with increased disposable income. The largest internet population in the world, 400mm of the 1.3 billion Chinese citizens are online, nearly one third and growing also with an increase in wealth. Google’s announcement of AdMob indicated they are tracking the top visited websites across the world, and wow, has the landscape changed.  See this list of the visited websites around the globe, many of them are Chinese such as Baidu (#8), Tencent QQ (#9), and Sina (#11).
• Chinese internet marketing requires a specialized approach. The Chinese online community is vastly different than the West, There are different tools, websites, behaviors, and as a result different takes.  I’ve outlined my findings from 3 years ago, if you want to see my previous field notes in this four part series.
• Brands and consumers go to Social Networking Sites (SNS) –not create their own. In the west, it’s common for brands to have their own online community that’s branded using a community platform.  Yet, from what I heard, it’s more common for brands to join customers where they are in SNS sites like QQ, in order to reach consumers.  They will often have to ‘pay to play’ the SNS sites to participate.  Secondly, I met with CIC, who paid me to speak at their event, they are a brand monitoring company that focuses specifically on the online discussion in mainland China for brands.
• Brands are getting engaged with social marketing: At the conference, Nike presented their case study, in which they’ve reached Chinese young men who are basketball players.  They created a community on QQ called “Ballers” that focuses on a lifestyle play that encourages them to connect to each other, organize, and share tips.  Also present were L’Oreal, who has had recent success with the China Luxury community.  Also, Ford has had early successes promoting their new car Fiesta, by deploying on QQ (SNS) and YouKu. (Like YouTube)
• Facebook and Twitter are basically aren’t relevant: Both of these western owned sites are blocked by the firewall (bitly, seesmic and a few others blogs I regularly read), and I was unable to access them from my hotel. I was able to access them via my iPhone using the international data plan, and all Tweets were done by SMS.  Those who really care about the social space have VPNs that can leap over the firewall.
• Consumer Brand Backlashes Occur Online: Like all markets, consumers are asserting themselves using mobile and online channels.  At the Social Media Conference, it was discussed a few times about the HP issues with products and how netizens use the web to share their concerns (see video). Also, a holiday called consumer day, netizens will assert their voices over brands, and get educated on how to protect themselves.  Was told that blackberries are still common for the business audience as they are often supplied by the employer, so you’ll need to know your mobile consumer behaviors before building platform specific apps for China.

Recommendations For Brands Entering Social Business in China

1. Know the Socialgraphics of your market: Understanding the nuances of the individual market is key.  In fact, with China being a behemoth of online netizens, a dedicated approach is required.  Just as you know the demographics and psyhographics of your online consumers, you’ll need to know how they use the social web, and that’s called socialgraphics.
2. Your Facebook Strategy Need Not Apply: Don’t expect your North American strategy in social business and marketing to work in China, you need to find experts and hire experts that understand the nuances.  You’ll need to know the specific internet memes here, how the discussions evolve, and how folks communicate with each other.  Remember, each culture has their own social networking adoption (although Facebook continues to drive global dominance, however I don’t expect that to be the case for China) so you’ll need to rethink your strategy.
3. Governance and Organizational Model Key for Social Marketing Success. Take a look at your social business organizational model and really ascertain which of the five models is best for your global business, in particular, the Coordinated, Dandelion, may be most effective, and in some cases Organic.

I also was able to enjoy the city, and visit the massive 2010 Expo (bigger than the Beijing Olympics, estimated costs at over 40 billion dollars) and was amazed by the British, Dutch, and many other international pavilions. Shanghai has undergone incredible growth since I was here 10 years ago, and the growing skyline was impressive.  I joined the Geeks on a Plane tour for the Shanghai events, including acceding the second tallest building in the world, the Shanghai World Financial Tower.  The recently expanded subway was clean and well run, especially compared to the aging NYC subway and SF transit in my own area.

Again, I don’t claim to be an expert in China and it’s netizens (the term used for the social web and community) so I encourage you to connect with Paul Denlinger, Yat Siu, Elliot Ng, Sam Flemming, Bryce Whitwam, Isaac Mao, Kaiser Kuo, Napoleon Biggs, Christine Lu, and Rebecca McKinnon all who I’ve spent time in person with and turn to them for information about China.

Posting will be light for the next week, (I’ll make a brief stop by Hong Kong’s Web Wednesday) I’m taking my first vacation since I started my business as a partner at the Altimeter Group, 10 months ago.  See you soon.

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This is a guest post by ICLP, which provides loyalty marketing solutions to help businesses create, retain & grow profitable relationships.

Today outsourcing has become an accepted business practice, with companies preferring to focus on their core competencies.  Accountancy, Recruitment, IT, Finance and even Human Resources are now commonly outsourced. Marketing on the other hand was always seen as something you keep in-house. After all: who would know your company’s services and products better than your own employees? And yet, with the decline of mass communications and the rise of permission marketing based on interaction and engagement, marketing has become a time-consuming activity.

Social media marketing is essential: a brand has to build a reputation online for fear of becoming obsolete and miss out on potential leads and partnerships. But all the tweeting, facebooking and updating of linked-in profiles require time and dedication. For many businesses that are poor in staff and time, the question of whether to outsource those activities becomes crucial.

If you are not an expert in social media, it may be tempting and cost-saving to call out experts or consultants that have accumulated the knowledge, resources, accounts, and contacts that can help in taking your social media campaigns to the top and generate buzz quickly. They will help you choose the right platforms through which you will broadcast your message and help you define your strategy.

There are some risks inherent to outsourcing your social marketing. Social media is about getting your voice heard so letting someone else speak for yourself can seem like a contradiction. The values conferred to social media – transparency and building relationships – might be lost. Furthermore, if you want to establish yourself as an expert in your niche, you may feel that you should be doing the talking.

A solution to the conundrum lies in finding a compromise between projecting an authentic voice in the social media sphere and being effective at engaging with your customers. You can use social media experts as teachers who will train you and your personnel: they will guide you while you are producing your first tweets, blog posts or Facebook updates, helping you avoid many pitfalls along the way. While communications and strategy can be kept in-house, reporting and statistics about social media usage, share of voice and brand visibility can be delegated to an expert.

Outsourcing your social media marketing campaigns is possible and the mechanics of it are fairly able to put in place. The best way of doing so is for you to define where you think the social media expert will bring the most value.

Related articles :

• Social Media: 3 Things to Outsource (and What You Can’t!) (socialmediatoday.com)
• 10 ways to be heard in social media (e1evation.com)
• Social Media Revolution and its Affect on Small Businesses (e1evation.com)
• Small Business News: Forget Social Media? (smallbiztrends.com)

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This is one of those important posts to forward to your marketing team, agency partners, and to Facebook themselves.

While there’s been plenty of coverage about user privacy concerns, attention on Facebook’s changes on brands hasn’t been adequately covered, this analysis is intended to unravel what’s at stake –and what brands should do.  I’ve spoken to a handful of brands and their representatives to learn what’s eating at them.

Summary:  Facebook has quietly launched ‘Community Pages’ Hampering Brands
Facebook has launched  several new policies and features since the F8 Conference ‘Crusade of Colonization’ which has resulted in a large backlash from media around user privacy.  It’s not clear if beyond the vocal media if users will leave the site in droves.  Perhaps more importantly,  Facebook launched “Facebook Community Pages” (read the official post) a feature that aggregates content from wikipedia and Facebook wall posts.  Think of it as a cross between Wikipedia with user comments –sometimes unwittingly.  These changes cause confusion for users, diminishing control for brands, and strains on the already torrid relationship between Facebook and brands.

Motives: Facebook Must Go Open To Increase Monetization Inventory
Facebook continues to leap ahead of their competitors in terms of innovation, however that often comes with risks to their community.  Here’s why they are making these moves:

• At Facebook, Innovation Means Asking For Forgiveness Later. This is a pattern.  Facebook believes in their vision and launches innovative products (by innovation, I mean features others have not dared to do first) and then asks for forgiveness later.  They often move faster than their community is ready, from going for .edu to public, exposing wall posts features, to Beacon, they push forward in the name of innovation.
• Aggregation is a Cheap and Effective Way of Creating New Content. It’s a brilliant model to repurpose existing content from other sites, as it’s low-cost for Facebook.  However, the downside is that content aggregated from Facebook members wall pages may not have been intended to be created as public.
• Resulting in More Content Inventory for Advertising Opportunities. Facebook knows that in order to compete with massive Google, they need more content to be public. As a default, most features and content types are now being published in public, and you’re seeing why they’re aggregating existing Wikipedia content to drive up SEO and advertising revenue.  They must be open to win the end game of monetization.

Matrix: How Facebook’s ‘Community Pages’ and Privacy Changes Impact Brands

Facebook has Diminished Relationship with Brands
For the last few years, Facebook has told brands to invest in their relationship through advertising, Facebook Pages, and connecting with applications –yet recent moves erode the relationship.

• The Trend Continues: Power Shifts Away From Brands. Nothing new, more of the same: power continues to shift away from brands, read how some colleges are ‘freaking out’ by the lack of control. However what’s different is that in the past the ‘Groundswell’ as an unstoppable force from customers, brands weren’t expecting their power to be eroded from their media partner, Facebook.
• Brands Frustrated As Community Pages Outnumber Official Page. Facebook must become more open, and expect community pages to continue to be created.  (see Tweet testimonial) I’m told that Facebook will migrate community pages to your official Facebook page, but more community pages are continuing to be created.
• Burning The Bridge To Revenue Island Will Take Considerable Repairs. Because these Community Pages were launched without the consent or preview from brands, skepticism has emerged on trust of these new features.  If the long term strategy of Facebook is to generate revenues from brands (I know of a 7 figure deal in the works that could be re-evaluated) due to these changes.   It’s important that Facebook go back to the core values that communication foster trust, which fosters relationships, which fosters partnerships, which fosters revenues moving.

What Brands Should Do:
Although I like what Dave Fleet has had to say, there’s little advice has been offered to brands, here’s how companies should approach these changes:

1. Work as a Collective. Nothing like using the power of community in order to influence a community that has power of you.  Brands should connect to each other to both share intelligence, develop a common voice.  Start with GasPedal’s Peer to Peer ‘Social Media Business Council‘ and the WOMMA trade organization, you’ll also find like-minded marketers in Marketing Profs, who may also offer an SMB perspective the others do not.   By joining with your peers and approaching with a common voice, brands will be able to force their hand.  You’ll have to work together.
2. Monitor Your Brand on New Assets. If you already have a PR agency gleaning insights or have a listening platform in place, turn the listening devices towards Wikipedia and the newly minted community platforms.  Setup alerting systems as changes on Wikipedia will now impact Facebook Community Pages.  We’ve listed out the listening vendors in our latest report, Social Marketing Analytics.
3. Spread Bets, Bring Community Closer To You. With power diminishing, brands shouldn’t place all their bets in just a few social networks. Instead, conduct socialgraphics to find out where your customers are, then invest in other networks.  Furthermore, start analysis on building your own community off your corporate website for customers, advocates, and lifestyle communities.  Give customers a choice to interact with others on your own properties rather than relegating to Facebook alone.  Look at vendors like Mzinga, Awareness, Lithium, Kickapps, Telligent, Jive, Pluck, Liveworld, and beyond.
4. Develop An Advocacy Program Now. I strongly insist that advocacy programs are key for today’s brand.  They may have access to update Wikipedia pages, influence prospects, and become brand advocates when companies are unable to scale.   Use this advocacy program checklist to get started now.  See how vendors like Zuberance, Expo TV, and in some form, Bazaarvoice can spur forward advocates voices and aggregate.

I’ve spent a few days sorting this out, and reading as much as I could, however if you’ve got more to add, please leave a comment with your observation, or suggestion for brands below.  Update:  I’d like to thank LaSandra Brill, a strategist at corporate who was a great source of information. I rely on her for her perspective, and I think you should too, follow her on Twitter. I like how Peter Friedman has made clear points on how Facebook must live with their world, both in comments and his latest post.

Update May 27th: Roy Young, the head of Marketing Profs, has conducted a survey of users and marketers about Facebook’s changes in privacy, which are related to the community pages changes. Their findings indicate that trust has eroded in Facebook, and Marketers were more concerned over privacy than consumers. The most important findings is that marketers will ’somewhat increase’ their investments in Facebook in next 3 months.

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Social Software Is In the “Cambrian Explosion” Era
Last weekend, I visited New York’s Museum of Natural History and Sciences.  I’m always fascinated by the dawn of life, and often draw a lot of parallels from the era of many new organisms and how many evolved and many who didn’t adapt to their environment.   In fact, the metaphor works very well in the fast moving social software space, as we’re currently in the Cambrian Explosion, where many new species are appearing (I’ve mapped over 100 community platform vendors, and E&Y has found over 125 social monitoring firms).  The barriers are so low for entry, and with a recession in place, we’re seeing an explosion of new firms.  Those that combine and create new value evolve and will eventually move to land, those that don’t make the right partnerships or develop sophisticated solutions for enterprise buyers will become the extinct “Trilobites”

Community Platforms and Listening Platforms Combine To Create SCRM Suites
Lithium, a community platform, has announced their acquisition of social media measurement company Scoutlabs.  This combination paves the way for social point ware software to evolve into a greater suite of enterprise social software which can evolve to Social CRM.  Expect more of these acquisitions and partnerships to occur over the coming year.  Ray Wang, my business partner, maps out what the Lithium and Scoutlabs acquisition means.

Next Generation Consulting Firms Will Rival Complacent Incumbents
On a similar note, Dachis Group, which has a hefty war chest of $50mm backed by Austin Ventures, has made some strategic acqustions in the social business arena.  Aside from key hires from Forrester Research  (like Peter Kim, Tom Cummings, and Cynthia Pflaum) have joined the team along with Caroline Dangson, Dion’s enterprise consulting group, Xplane, Headshift, and most recently the Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Council, a group of end user pioneers.  This star team has the makings of a next generation consulting firm, and can have a powerful impact as they go to market.

Many Social Software Providers Will Become Extinct “Trilobites” –Avoid Them Now
This is just the start, expect more consolidation, and market changes, to protect your bets from investing in a Trilobite, it’s important you pay attention to the trends at hand.

• Continued acquisition of social point products to build SCRM Suites. Expect more VC funding into this space for point product social software firms to acquire supplementary vendors to increase user base, and increase the number of SCRM use cases.  Lithium wasn’t the first, Jive Software acquired Filtrbox, a social monitoring firm, but they didn’t have the large enterprise footprint that Scoutlabs currently does.  We also saw Twitter client CoTweet be acquired by direct/email marketing firm Exact Target. Tip: Watch for the investment pattern at the VC level to see how they pull their portfolio together.  It’s commonly known that VCs will make introductions between their portfolio investments and encourage them to partner and eventually align.
• Expect a new class of social business consulting firms to emerge. Dachis Group has assembled the right team, and has first mover opportunity to beat McKinsey, Deloitte, and system integrators to the punch.  They have thought leadership, research, strategy, implementation, and support.  What’s missing?  Expect them to acquire or build an enterprise software suite that connects disparate systems together (much like Salesforce Chatter).  Despite their huge talent draw, their biggest challenge won’t be going to market (it’s mainly green playing field) but the internal culture strife as many independent voices, egos, and styles are forced to work together.  I must say, if they can pull it off, then they can help their customers with the same problem.
• Don’t expect a Social CRM suite to emerge that “does it all”. Expect many vendors to line up behind the Social CRM monikor, but don’t expect them to be successful.  In fact, as a buyer, you must ask them “how many times have you integrated your existing systems with a SCRM system” to find out how successful they really are.  Use The Altimeter Research Report on Social CRM to find out about the roadmap, use cases, and vendor short list.  We published it at no-cost under creative commons, and it’s already received over 41k views (says slideshare).

To learn more about Social CRM, join the SCRM pioneers Google Group, where we’re having an active and thriving discussion on pain points, use cases, early practices, and even guest speaker interviews (like Comcastcares).  Disclosure:  Lithium, Jive are clients of Altimeter, we hope that you’ll trust us more by our disclosure policy.

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It’s OK. No one is watching you here.  It’s completely safe to say that you’re overwhelmed by social media.  You are not alone.  I’ll be that you sometimes feel like a smoker stranded out in the cold puffing away on your traditional marketing strategy while those hip and trendy marketing folks are laughing it up about the latest Twitter tool.  Now see how you can get in on the scoop in just minutes a day!

Bizmore, the Question and Answer site for small business owners has launched their latest feature called “The Small Business (Idiot’s) Guide to Social Media”  I’ve taken a few minutes to go through some of the articles and what I think you’ll really like is that this isn’t a book.  It’s a series of nice, easy to read articles that have strategies and tips that you can literally apply in your business today.

Each article also features some of the best experts in the field that you should pay attention to.  Like DIYMarketers — Bizmore’s Guide to Social Media is a Cliff’s Notes version of everything and everyone that’s worth knowing and the actions worth taking a look at.  Take a peek and tell me what you think.

A Few More Bits of Reading:

• Small Business News: Crazy for Social Media (smallbiztrends.com)
• 3 Things to Search for Before Using Twitter (kylelacy.com)
• Defining the Social Marketing Compass – How Will It Guide Your Marketing? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Developing a social media marketing strategy (b2bemailmarketing.com)
• Social Media for Demand Generation…Is it more of a B2C than a B2B phenomenon? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Small Business Owners Discover How To Twitter Their Way To The Top (prweb.com)
• Facebook Changes Relationship Marketing, Again (socialmediatoday.com)
• Don’t Let Strategy Be An Excuse (ducttapemarketing.com)
• Handy social media planning checklist (e1evation.com)

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Yesterday’s webinar, you can view all slides (including these graphics below, and recording) on getting your company ready for social included a section on organizational models. I wanted to share more in the usual web strategy matrix style as 5 minutes on a webinar isn’t really enough to do a complicated topic justice. Interestingly enough, I’m often called into companies that are moving out of organic and into coordinated, or dandelion model as a central team needs help working with various business units and setting up the internal program. I plan to do a detailed research report on this topic in Q3, to find out how companies are organizing. First, let’s take a look at the different models that exist to provide blanked education to the market:

Organic: Notice that the dots (those using social tools) are inconsistent in size and one set of employees are not directly connected to others.

Centralized: Notice that a central group initiates and represents business units, funneling up the social strategy to one group.

Coordinated: Notice how a central group will help to provide an equal experience to other business units.

Multiple hub & spoke “Dandelion” notice how each business unit may have semi-autonomy with an over arching tie back to a central group.

Holistic “Honeycomb” notice how each individual in the organization is social enabled, yet in a consistent, organized pattern.

Conduct Internal Analysis Of Your Company
We focus on providing pragmatic advice to our clients, and it shouldn’t stop with this blog. This blog post should be shared with internal teams and then undergo this discussion:

• First, identify which organizational model you’re in. Companies should forward this post to the internal teams to have a discussion on which model they think they are in. What’s interesting is that I often ask internal teams to vote on which model they think they are, and most often not everyone agrees, savvy executives should just observe. The dialog that ensues afterwards is most key.
• Next, discuss which model is your company’s desired state. Companies must evolve to respond to the social customer, yet their current state may be different than the desired needs.  This decision can’t be made in a vacuum various business units, geographical locations, product teams and support and service groups must be considered –this isn’t about marketing alone, instead, put your customer’s experience first.
• Recognize this isn’t an org chart, it’s a cultural change. Executives and their employees must realize the social web is forcing companies to undergo a cultural change as customers connect directly to each other bypassing companies. As a result, don’t expect these changes to happen quickly or without change management programs.

Thanks to Richard Binhammer at Dell who recently at 2010 SXSW shared with me Dell’s “enlightened” state of organic, and Christine Tran, Altimeter Researcher for aid in these graphics. Update: David Armano from Edelman has shared some of his models, great work.

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