FreshNetworks Blog

I have to admit that I have never been to an Olive Garden. In fact I only know it from an episode of Will & Grace, and only realised it was a real chain when I read an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. And not only is it a real chain, but it has a great and loyal following.

One famous brand ambassador in particular takes every opportunity to tell us about the brand. Sounds great, the kind of endorsement many brands dream of. The only problem is that this particular brand ambassador is not completely wanted by the brand.

Kendra Wilkinson, a Playboy cover model, television star and one of Hugh Hefner’s three live-in girlfriends, professes deep love for the Olive Garden Italian restaurant chain [...] To the consternation of Olive Garden’s marketers, who have spent millions crafting the franchise’s family-friendly image, the 23-year-old adult-entertainment star and aspiring real-estate mogul repeatedly uses her spotlight to rave about its midprice eateries

Ms Wilkinson’s brand advocacy is strong and she uses a mix of traditional and social media to spread her thoughts on the brand. Pictures and endorsements on her MySpace page are particularly effective as she has more than 730,000 friends. On one hand Olive Garden is getting the benefit of the kind of amplification of brand advocacy that you get in social media. But for them, this advocacy may not come from somebody they want associated with the brand.

So what should a brand do if it gets an unwanted brand ambassador, and should they even worry about who is enthusiastic about them? In reality there is very little that you can do. Brand ambassadors are great - they enjoy your product and are willing to go and tell lots and lots of people about it without you having to do a thing (except continue to give them the great product you make anyway). You can really benefit from them, we know that people are much more likely to trust real people than they are a brand and so when these real people recommend your brand the power is great.

The problem is that you do have no control over the situation. You can’t control who will really enjoy your brand, and you can’t control which of these people will be passionate enough to tell other people. So maybe you shouldn’t try. Maybe you should do what Starbucks do, and never comment publicly about who may or may not have been pictured with your product. Let them get on and do their thing and talk about your brand if they want to.

What you can do, however, is work actively to find advocates and amplify their word of mouth. Your brand advocates can be very separate from the brand itself - but they are really passionate about you and so engaging them can bring real benefits. These people truly believe in your brand, they want to belong to it and want to go and bear witness, telling other people about it. Though you can’t control them, what you can do is to equip them with the tools to do this. The means to tell people and to pass on their brand advocacy.

You can’t choose who your brand ambassadors are, but amplifying the word of mouth of all these people will be only positive for your brand. And it will mean that it is not just the more famous ambassadors who are widely associated with your brand, others will too.

Some more reading

• Olive Garden Would Prefer to No Longer be Playmate’s ‘Soul Food’ [No Accounting For Taste]
• Olive Garden Shuns Playboy Endorsement; Sticks To Breadsticks [Public Relations]
• What Happens When a Big Breasted Blonde Offers an Unsolicited Endorsement of a Family Restaurant Chain
• Playboy’s ‘Girls of Olive Garden’ Pictorial Likely to Be Served Lukewarm, In Need of Flavoring [Service With A Smile]

Earlier this week, the UK Prime Minister’s main website (www.Number10.gov.uk) was relaunched. We’ve seen recently that that Number 10 has been experimenting with the use of Twitter to send updates (follow them here) and the use of YouTube to answer questions from the public (see the YouTube channel here). The new website places social media at its core and is again an example of how the UK Government is trying new things in social media before many corporates.

The website is built on WordPress, and that should be the first indication of its mission and aim. News items look like blog posts and the feel of the site is much more social than the previous version (which felt like a traditional corporate site). When we talk about online communities at FreshNetworks, we talk about issue-centred navigation with calls to action. This kind of layout is typical of social sites, and even though the new Number10 site isn’t a community in the way that we would understand it, it does use this issue-based, call-to-action approach. The options you have are a mix of editorial content (News and History) with more social content (communicate, Meet the PM and Number 10 TV). For the user there is no distinction between the two types of content - they are presented equally and side-by-side.

This is also seen in the way the site pulls in feeds from Flickr, and Twitter on the homepage. This has the dual benefit of bringing a constantly changing source of media for the site and meaning that all the previous social media activities are being brought together.

So, do these changes mean that the site is a success? The answer is obviously not clear-cut. The building-blocks are now in place for a great, social portal into the Prime Minister’s office. The mix of editorial and social content and the use of media and feeds means that people will feel more like insiders. The website is less a place people go to to find out information and more one where they go to interact. This development is to be encouraged. The real sign of success will be how the site is managed, whether content is actively and continually created, whether the Flickr albums will update frequently and, ultimately the levels of user-interaction that are allowed. Giving people that feeling of being an insider is great; they will now want to talk to you directly.

Some more reading

• Brown’s website is Web2.0tastic
• Prime Minister, meet Flickr and Twitter
• New 10 Downing Street website launched
• Number10.gov.uk Launches
• New 10 Downing Street site runs WordPress

The latest edition of the McKinsey Quarterly includes the results from their global survey of Web 2.0 in firms. The survey documents the developments that we see at FreshNetworks - more firms are using more Web 2.0 tools for more complex business purposes. McKinsey go even further, noting that a significant finding from this year’s survey is that:

Companies that are deriving business value from these tools are now shifting from using them experimentally to adopting them as part of a broader business practice.

Web 2.0 tools are starting to enter the mainstream in business, those who trial them find them beneficial and want to look at ways they can use these tools across their business, helping them meet multiple aims.

If you’re interested in some of the detail of the McKinsey study, I’d suggest you go to the article on their site here (you will need to sign-up, although it is free). However, for me the most interesting findings are:

• More community-based tools are growing in their use. In 2008, 34% of businesses studies used blogs (compared with 21% in 2007); 32% used wikis (compared with 24% in 2007)
• Web 2.0 tools are popular both for internal purposes (94% of firms studied) and for interfacing with customers (87% of firms studied). When they are being used for the latter purpose, this is primarily to improve service to existing customers and then as an acquisition tool
• Blogs were more popular in Asia-Pacific and India; social networking particularly popular in North America and China; and, mash-ups and rating more popular in Europe
• The biggest barriers to using Web 2.0 tools are a lack of understanding of the financial benefits (28% of respondents), internal cultural barriers (22%) and lack of skills (17%)

This last point, the barriers to adoption, show the areas where we as an industry need to focus our efforts to help clients. We have written before on this blog about measurement and ROI in online communities and in social media (see posts here, here and here) and it seems that this is the biggest barrier that firms need support with. Perhaps as these firms move from trialling the use of new tools, to using them for specific business purposes, the measurement of how they contribute to these will be easier.

Some more reading

• Are Social Media Jobs Here to Stay?
• Web 2.0 Design and Internet Marketing
• Analysis: McKinsey’s enterprise web 2.0 survey
• Gartner throws weight behind enterprise Web 2.0

What’s the best way to promote films with online communities?

I was pondering this last night when my friend Jim sent me the trailer for his directorial debut, Eden Lake. As the UK Marketing Director of a major film company recently told me, film promotion has some particular challenges. Speed, for one: the marketing has to be so effective that penetration in the target demographic goes from 0 to 80% in about a fortnight. Flexibility is another: with the right word of mouth, a film that starts playing in only a few cinemas can build up sufficient momentum to get country-wide distribution in a matter of days.

But while film production companies might specialise in particular genres, the film distribution arms (on which they depend hugely for successful sales and marketing) usually don’t – one week it’s art-house, the next grisly horror. Since the target audience is changing all the time, it’s no wonder that their marketing is usually highly tactical, very campaign-based, and quite traditional – mainly above-the-line promotion on TV, billboards and in cinemas. Sometimes viral campaigns are thrown in, but these tend to be short-lived, fairly hit-and-miss affairs.

So how should online communities be used to promote films? By their very nature, communities take some time to grow the social bonds that make them sustainable. So aside from the multi-film franchises, few individual films have enough time in their marketing slot to generate community on their own micro-sites.

But there is an alternative: to treat the microsite as a hub, which connects the official site to the multiple other spaces where community and conversations can form. The site of upcoming Bond release Quantum of Solace has done this successfully by mixing exclusive content with links to fan sites on social networks (like MySpace and Facebook). It also has a download section to promote cross-linking with widgets that allow consumers to add features to their own social networking or blog sites. In fact, it’s exactly the same approach that we recommend to our clients when they’re building a customer community – they should see it as a space they manage that can also integrate with the other external sites they participate in.

The other advantage of this approach is that it can help distinguish the official from the user-generated content, some of which might be well-produced enough to lead to genuine confusion. Admittedly the amusing re-edit of The Shining trailer as a romantic comedy is unlikely to mislead anyone. But well-made spoof or malicious content can have adverse effects on a brand if people think it’s genuine – ask the banks, who suffer from the many phishing emails that no doubt turn up in your spam box every day. Equally if, like my friend Jim, your film is about a gang of louts targeting a young couple, you don’t want really user-generated re-enactments as part of your marketing campaign…

So when it comes to short-lived, campaign-based marketing, a central hub that links to other sites might be more appropriate than a dedicated community site. Real community takes time to form and should be sustainable – it’s a long-term relationship, not just a one night stand.

Some more reading

• Social Network Retention– How to Achieve Engagement Nirvana

A few days ago, I wrote about how the 2008 Beijing Olympics should be the perfect area for social media coverage of the event itself (see post here). Social media is also being used by many big brands to capitalise upon the Games.

The very reasons we identified for social media coverage of the Games, are being capitalised upon by some big brands, whether or not they are official sponsors.

Here is a couple of some of the best:

• McDonald’s has built a viral game called The Lost Ring, where the player uncovers the history of the Olympics (adventures in Ancient Greece and all).  It’s a subtle marketing tool for McDonald’s. Their branding is not present in the game and they are pitched more as a sponsor. The terms of the game state: “McDonald’s is proud to sponsor The Lost Ring and bring the spirit of the Olympic Games to people around the world.”
• Lenovo is the more obvious backer of Voices of the Olympic Games. Their site contains blogs from some 100 athletes at this year’s Games and the branding is prominent. The product is also heavily positioned - the site stating that the athletes were provided “new [Lenovo] Ideapad laptops and video cameras to capture their experiences.”

These examples contrast very different approaches. McDonald’s are creating an experience that people will enjoy and will no doubt ensure that people know who it is that is behind the game. This is a subtle way of marketing. They capitalise upon the enthusiasm for both the Olympic Games and for social media to create and experience people will buy into and enjoy. That they may later associate it with McDonald’s is part of the strategy, but this shows social media fitting into a total marketing strategy for the brand during the Games.

Lenovo on the other hand is really branding social media activities. It has given product and a platform to some athletes and is branding their output. This approach is more overt and although it will raise awareness of the product and the brand it is not really doing anything different to it’s other sponsorship of the Games. Lenovo’s branding is all over the Games and is on the blogs too. This is less of strategic social media marketing and more a branding exercise across all media.

Both approaches will be successful. The Olympic Games are a marketers dream - the audiences are huge and the passion is great. Using social media to enhance the experience of the Games (either by providing entertainment and games, or by providing branded content) can only be a positive thing.

Some more reading

• Social media and the 2008 Olympic Games
• Why the Olympics should be the perfect social media event
• Olympics: BBC promises ‘cornucopia of content’
• Beijing Olympics: Opening ceremony fuels internet traffic surge
• How Some Covered the Opening Ceremony

I watched about an hour of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics live yesterday. It was perfectly timed to coincide with lunch in London and so I sat at my desk and watched live streaming thanks to the BBC. At the same time I was following what other people around the world thought about it on Twitter. And later in the afternoon I looked at photos on Flickr and saw what my friends thought on Facebook.

I suspect my experience was not alone - whereas in previous years my main source of Olympic news and events was the television and the thoughts and opinions of reporters and commentators. This year I suspect I will follow it more through other people and through social media.

This isn’t just because of the time difference - most of the action will be in the morning and early-afternoon UK time so I’ll be at work, in front of a computer but not a TV. This is because if there were ever a perfect candidate for coverage in social networks, online communities and social media, then the Olympics surely must be it.

From my experience with clients, the aspects that are common in successful online communities typically include:

1. A shared or common interest or goal
2. The subject may be broad but allows interest groups to form
3. A subject people are or can be passionate about
4. Enthusiasts and leaders who will help to shape the community
5. An experience that is or can be inherently social, that people want to share with others
6. A subject that can create strong opinions and passionate views
7. Regularly changing and updated content
8. Media and varying content types so different people can interact in different ways
9. You can be more interested in the issues as you are in the people you are discussing them with
10. An ability for the online experience to be supplemented with offline experience

The Olympics is one of those subjects that meets all of these criteria. People unite behind it and are enthusiastic on a number of levels - the Games as a whole, individual sports and individual countries. I like the event as a whole and what it stands for, but I also have my favourite sports (the cycling, rowing and track events probably my favourite in that order), I also obviously want to see a good performance from Team GB.

Many people will have strong and impassioned views on any or all of these levels. Some people are extremely passionate and would want to be leaders or enthusiasts online. But the experience is inherently social - you want to talk about it with others (as I saw yesterday on Twitter) and anything that allows you to do this would be seized upon.

The events themselves lend themselves to regularly updated content. With constant updates on results and real-time feeds on events as they happen. It’s also a very media rich event, with photo, video, audio and text coming together to describe and enhance your experience. Creating ways that you can share and experience these will increase reach and attract people.

The nature of the Games themselves suits online communities. In these people tend to unite round issues and themes rather than, necessarily, round individuals and their friends. You might want to discuss the performance in the Team Pursuit heats and share opinions with a variety of people who you don’t know but who are also passionate about that sport.

So, if I was evaluating the Olympics as a candidate for online communities or successful use of social media, I’d say the chances of success were high. Of course, I’ve written elsewhere about how even the most ideal candidate for an online community can fail if it is executed or managed badly. But the positive signs are there.

That’s why over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be watching and following the discussions on Twitter, the photos on Flickr, the videos on YouTube and the discussions in forums and communities across the Internet. It strikes me that Beijing 2008 is the first time that we will see mass use of social media to cover the games, and I’d expect that this brings out a higher quality and broader range of debate, information and coverage than ever before.

Some places you can follow the 2008 Beijing Olympic

• BBC Olympics coverage
• Qik 2008 Olympics
• Beijing Olympics 2008 YouTube Channel
• Real-time update of Olympics discussions on Twitter
• Athlete blogs (from Lenovo)
  

Some more reading

• Social media and the 2008 Olympic Games
• Olympics: BBC promises ‘cornucopia of content’
• Beijing Olympics: Opening ceremony fuels internet traffic surge
• How Some Covered the Opening Ceremony

I saw a really useful set of research findings today from Universal McCann, the third wave of their research into the impact of social media. The research comes from a couple of months ago but is a fantastic digest based on a large respondent base.

The slide deck is below and is very detailed and worth going through, but I thought I’d pull out three highlights that resonate with our own experiences at FreshNetworks.

• The research highlights the power and continuing rise of the Asian social media market. China has more bloggers than the US and Western Europe combined and across the region social media growth is huge. I’ve seen this for a number of years, often investigating the Asian market (especially South Korea, China and Japan) for clients wanting to know what the next thing to hit the Western Europe might be.
• Video is the fastest growing reported area with significant growth in penetration across all regions. We see this every day - a growth in the use of video on sites and of making video portable and shareable. I know that the BBC in the UK has seen a significant rise in the viewing of video in its news site since it started embedding video rather than linking to it.
• There is a measurable impact of social media on brand reputation. The research shows that 34% of people post opinions (positive or negative) about brands and that 36% feel more positive about brands that have a blog. This is an interesting finding, our recent post on brand blogging talked about how brands might get this right, this research underlines the importance of getting it right.

The slide deck below covers the full detail of the research findings and I really think it is worth your while reading it. It’s particularly useful for looking at how different regions and countries are developing in different ways.

Some more reading

• Report: Like it or not, number of bloggers growing rapidly
• UK Social Network User, Ad Spend Numbers Keep Growing
• Firms ‘miss’ social site success
• YouTube most popular network site
• Summer Social-Network Traffic Still Sizzling, but Down from ‘07

I really enoyed a post by Jim Tobin at Ignite Social Media about where social media sits in an organisation. his comments and experiences mirror very much ours at FreshNetworks. For different organisations social media sits in different places. It may be marketing, corporate communications, PR, product or proposition developers, a research team… the list can be endless.

Whilst it is true that for most organisations marketing and comms departments tend to be thinking about social media, you find that other departments are too. And some of these departments are thinking about social media in new and innovative ways.

Jim Tobin lists five areas where social media sits in his experience:

Brand managers can now use social media as an integral part of marketing campaigns.  I lead with brand managers here because getting the right social media marketing plan developed and executed is an art-one that will certainly impact brand perception.

Product developers can use social media for consumer intelligence.  The idea that you have to spend tens of thousands to get limited information from focus groups is becoming outmoded.

Public relations can look at the messages that they send and figure out how they can make them a) more interesting and b) more easily digested by the blogosphere and the networks.  Typically (a) is harder than (b) for many companies.

Customer service should be using social media to decrease call volume and increase customer satisfaction.  Paying $35 per phone call to answer the same types of questions thousands of times isn’t helping anyone.

Human resources can be using social media to convey what working at the company is all about, and they should certainly be using it to go find candidates with particular backgrounds.

This is not dissimilar to our own experiences although I would add a couple of other areas:

• Research or insight teams make use of social media to monitor or probe customer opinions, watch how their brand and their competitors are being discussed, understand more about customer lives and habits and even ask specific questions. This can either be done passively (observing what others are saying in social media) but is much more effective if done actively, with organisations setting up their own online research communities.
• Senior managers should be using social media as a way of them connecting directly with consumers. Too often in organisations the traditional approach has seen customers sitting outside the organisation. They may not be actually engage directly with the organisation - rather they will buy the product through an intermediary and any research or other contact will be done through a third party. Social media makes it easier for the whole business to engage directly with customers.

Where social media sits probably depends on the current business or strategy needs of an organisation. In truth all firms could benefit from effective use of social media across each of these places (and probably even more). Where social media will sit will depend upon what their need is now. Is it reducing customer service costs or finding out more about how their customers discuss their brand? If is about conveying a corporate image or getting insight into product development?

Too often people can automatically think of social media as a marketing tool. It is undoubtedly effective as this. But it can be so much more. It is really about using new ways of communicating and new ways of sharing and working together to solve business problems. Which problems these are and where social media sits will depend on the business. It might be all of these places, some of them, or just one. In many cases it probably should be more than it is.

Some more reading

• Where does Social Media live in the organization?
• New Communication Theory and the New Roles for the New World of Marketing
• Social Media 101: How to Get Your Business Involved
• Who should take charge of Social Media?
• Social Media is a communications channel and not a marketing tactic
• The Five Questions Companies Ask About Social Media
• The statesman, the lawyer and the marketer

I read a good post from LouisGray about the social rules of social networks. Who do you follow and why? Who don’t you follow and why not?

The online etiquette of social networks and online communities is an interesting and emerging area, and one that tools such as OpenSocial will only influence. For instance, I have profiles on a range of sites, from LinkedIn and Facebook, to Twitter and FriendFeed, to niche industry social networks and ones of people with similar interests to me. I often have different friends on each of these and in fact probably use each one for very different reasons.

These reasons are worth investigating. Some people choose to become friends with only their close circle of real-world friends, or conversely may accept every friend request they get. As LouisGray points out:

Suddenly, the issue of friending became less about wanting to actually follow real friends, or peers, and instead, became an arms race - to get the most followers, to follow the most people, to rise up a leaderboard, or feel some kind of achievement because you could claim a friend as a household name.

So whether you have your close friends, your wider friendship group, or as many friends as you can lay your hands on, you have a set of social media manners that define who you invite when.

Some people talk about having social network friends. I think this is a misnomer - you don’t have social network friends, but rather have Facebook friends, LinkedIn friends, Twitter friends and so forth. Not everybody I follow on Twitter are friends on LinkedIn, and I probably wouldn’t one some LinkedIn connections to follow me on Facebook.

Social media manners are actually quite advanced and getting more so as people adopt more networks and communities. I have decided that I want to use Facebook for certain purposes and so invite appropriate people; LinkedIn I’ve decided is for other purposes and so invite a different mix of people. The distinction isn’t clear-cut with a lot of overlap, so these friendship groups become blurred.

I would imagine that everybody has slightly different groups of friends on each different social network or online community they are a member of. I would also expect that their is blurring between them. Social networks are developing, rather than having distinct and distinguishing brand identities and so mean different things to different people. This means that the policy I have for using LinkedIn and making friends there is probably different to the one everybody else has.

This is where the real blurring is. Social networks are centred on me and so I decide how and why I use it. I develop my own social media manners and then develop and test these. The world of social media is changing and developing all the time, and we are helping to shape this by the mere fact of using them.

Some more reading

• You Are Not My Friend
• Choose Wisely: Scrutinizing Your Social Network Connections
• Facebook Facelift Targets Aging Users and New Competitors
• Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media - Part III
• The Intangible Risk and Opportunity: Your Network
• What are your tips for using your social networking profile for professional work?
• What are your tips for using your social networking profile for professional work?

I think this is the first time that I’ve reblogged somebody else’s content, but this post from [chrisbrogan.com] is really good and throws up a number of great ideas and interesting issues. I will post my thoughts on theses and also some examples of clients who have faced similar issues or used similar ideas later.

The full original post was here: 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing.

As Chris says:

Here’s a list of 50 ideas (in no particular order) to help move the conversation along. Note: I mix PR and Marketing. They should get back together again.

1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.

Some more reading

• 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
• How Brands Will Use FriendFeed