-Transparency
-Humanism
-Authenticity
-Freedom
-Speed
-Passionate
-Engaged
-Creative

Clearly, not all of these values appeal to a company’s compliance department, legal team, finance/accounting group, or the C-Suite, but as much as these professionals wish to deny these aspects, they know they exist.

Perhaps the first value, transparency, gives a lot of companies pause.  (Of course, this is why a lot of companies are still not doing social media at all.)  But even for those companies who in recent years have jumped both feet into social media – activated the standard Twitter and Facebook identites, in addition to training employees on how to blog, and providing full, 100% access to all social media platforms and tools – transparency is still tough.  How much do you reveal?  How much do you allow your employees to reveal?  Clearly, lines need to be drawn, and transparency will continue to be a thorny issue for social media practitioners – and senior management – for years to come.

What I have observed with social media marketing is that in the quest for fresh, original content – to keep a social media audience actively engaged – a company and its employees may be quick to disseminate content that really doesn’t need to be disseminated.

Not trying to turn off the social media content engine, but ask yourselves every day, several times of day:  what is the value of sending this tweet or posting this status update?  A justified decision now can save remorse later on.

How can a marketer still prove the value of email as a communications tool when the landscape has become fragmented and dependent on a range of endpoints and devices?

MediaPost and MarketingProfs continually publish pieces on how marketers can integrate social efforts with email messaging.  For instance, customer emails should always include links to Facebook pages and vice versa, the Facebook page including a way to sign up to receive emails.  Besides the ubiquitous coupon, emails can also include results of Flickr photo contests or other social media promotions.

In efforts to control the Inbox, Facebook  announced in November 2010 the launch of Facebook email. Promising seamless messaging (not to be confused with unified communications, which combines voice, video and data in the enterprise) and a “social inbox,” it is clear that the social media companies are rewriting the rules of email and messaging.  (The social inbox is similar to Google Gmail’s Priority Inbox, which relies on an algorithm which is supposed to figure out which messages are important to you, and display them with relevance.  More on Google and social media in subsequent posts.)

However, last week’s announcement from ObjectiveMarketer reverses this trend entirely:  the social media aggregating and monitoring service announced that it is to be acquired by email marketer Emailvision.   Why would a social media company agree to be acquired by an email vendor?  I had a chance to speak with ObjectiveMarketer founder and CEO Amita Paul, who also provided me with a free demo of the software, and it clearly leapfrogs Hootsuite and other aggregation/propagation tools I’ve demo’d.

This deal shows that email marketers are not falling by the wayside, but instead are deciding to get more involved with social media, as they see it is their future.  And social media must still realize that email has about 10 years’ more experience, and is still key to reaching and managing huge audiences.

As for social media marketing tools like ObjectiveMarketer, I am happy that there is some M&A activity starting in the space.  There are way too many tools out there right now, and in order for social media to be taken seriously, we need ways to make things more efficient, bundled with solid metrics and reporting.

Today’s MediaPost Online Metrics Insider, “Why Does Marketing Have to Be So Hard?” explains that “Marketers tend to be more right-brain than left-brain. They enjoy concepts and creativity and innovation and inspiration, but not the repetitive types of analysis that tend to extract true insights from the cacophony of marketplace response.”

I’ve written before about marketing people becoming more tech savvy, and adopting the knowledge related to analytics in order to stay ahead in a field which is increasingly seeing more of a convergence of technology and creative, as well as relying on numbers to prove or validate campaigns.

Social media is no different.

At first, social media was fun:  setting up a company’s or client’s Twitter handle or Facebook page, shooting videos for YouTube, and the like.  But now that we’ve built it, has anyone come?  Our bosses and clients are now demanding ROI and validation, as we now must scramble to show some level of metrics to justify our work.
I usually advise marketers to not start from scratch:  join forces with other groups, teams, or departments in the company who are currently using some sort of metrics platform – MIS or IT, for one.

But take a look at another department you’ve usually shunned:  customer service.  The department of Customer Service, Customer Care, Contact Center, Call Center, or whatever your company calls it is rich with data, and perhaps you’re already working with them on social media tracking.  This group probably controls the CRM system, and so they would be more than happy to provide you with the insights that very few in the company actually heed.

Such folks would be thrilled to bring you into their fold, and you can build a strong bridge to capturing important feedback, necessary for providing direction for future marketing campaigns, and adding heft to your current social media efforts.

And they, in return, would love to know what’s coming down the pike in marketing and social media.  Everybody wins.

But did you hear anything back?

Companies continue to struggle with how and where social media fits in to their existing Contact Center and Customer Service operations.  Every company realizes that the need to address and respond to customer inquiries – that may not necessarily be complaints — is a growing trend.

In the new book, The Social Media Management Handbook, written and published by consultants at Accenture, the issue of social media and customer service and support takes up several chapters.  The book points out that there are two huge missteps which companies make regarding social media and the contact center:  (1) applying a one-size-fits-all customer service model across every customer service segment and response channel, including social media, and (2) trying to handle the burden of responding to every single social media message effectively themselves.

The one-size-fits-all model worked well for many companies and contact centers, when fax, email, and the Internet joined the good ole’ telephone in keeping up with customer inquiries.  But social media is a different animal, and requires a new set of technologies and a type of agent with different skill sets to handle the deluge of questions, comments, complaints, and the like.  Social CRM or the Social Media Service Channel may at first seem like a great way to reduce the number of agents on the phone, but the volume of incoming messages dwarfs any existing call volume.

Companies also need to be predictive about the nature of incoming social messages, and the profile of those clients who take to the social networks.  For example, detailed inquiries requiring complex financial services transactions or health issues most likely will not – and cannot – be posted via Facebook or Twitter, and most likely, those who use the social networks to air a grievance or opinion will be within a certain age group.  Being predictive about messages coming in through the Social Media Service Channel will help a company in planning and maintenance.

In fact, at the onset, there needs to be much investment in Social CRM – in time and training — in order for there to be rewards later on.

The other misstep with social media and the contact center is that companies wish to handle everything on their own.  The reason why this cannot be is that the potential volume of incoming messages is crushing compared to that of traditional contact center communications (phone, email , website, etc.), and the growing complexity of products and services, mostly in technology and personal communications (smartphones, tablet PCs, etc.) make it impossible for a set of agents to know it all.

The most successful companies have realized the value of ramping up their online communities, creating forums and searchable topics, with answers and opinions given to customers by fellow customers – free of charge.   Companies like AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Research in Motion have recognized the value of these die-hard evangelists, who don’t even accept monetary compensation for helping fellow customers. (Yes, apparently there are people with time on their hands who simply want to do the right thing.  Who said the best advice isn’t free?) Vendors like Lithium Technologies are changing the game, providing online content and community platforms which not only serve as a social CRM solution, but also manage to provide deeper insight into potential product management and development for marketers and the C-suite.

According to a case study in the Accenture book, Microsoft customer care agents have sometimes actually used the company’s own community forums to ask a question on a customer’s behalf when the agent did not know the answer.  Now that’s putting a lot of power into the hands of the community.

There have been several articles predicting social media metrics for 2011, including one from MediaPost this week. The author, Pat LaPointe, makes some interesting prognostications, including that there will be rapid maturation and predictive value – I agree. Companies are realizing that social media must progress beyond the state of “We set up our Facebook page and now have 10,000 Like’s,” to “What does this mean for the business?” Each business has different goals – just as each business assigns different goals to its marketing and communications departments – but the need to reach or surpass that goal will be very significant in the coming year. Compensation plans will invariably be tied to these goals as well.

Expect more and more case studies on ROI to pop up in your Inbox.

Sure, we all know that there exist both paid and free social media measurement and tracking services. But for the social media practitioner just starting or trying to justify ROI before senior management can approve a budget, what to do?

Some social media monitoring vendors, like Radian6, start at less than $1,000 per month. Others, like Sysomos’ Media Analysis Platform (MAP) and Infegy’s Social Radar, are almost three times this price. Curious to determine why – and moving beyond a toe-to-toe comparison of features — it appears that the more data-rich providers are targeted for the public relations agency or marketing firm that can provide a social media monitoring service as part of its monthly or project-based social media marketing services. What a concept! As such, if you are currently buying or are in the market for PR agency services, ask them if they currently have a monitoring solution, for which you can receive this as part of your service package. It’s clearly a win-win for everyone: the vendor, the agency, and the client.

Mr. LaPointe’s additional prediction of the merging of online and offline will continue – and for some companies, they have abandoned offline almost completely. With the advent of Groupon and Foursquare, even small businesses have simply stopped buying print and outdoor advertising, preferring to invest in the scale, creativity, and tracking delivered by these online services.

In some ways, mobile marketing has become the new outdoor or “out-of-home” advertising vehicle – reaching consumers and end-users wherever they may be – only in a manner that is a lot more efficient and measurable than that of any billboard or bus shelter.

During Will It Blend – The Convergence of Marketing & Public Relations, Michael Pranikoff, Director of Emerging Media for PR Newswire, explained how the news cycle has changed and will continue to change – and marketers must stay on the bleeding edge or else they will yield mindshare – which in some industries, is marketshare – to competitors.

Indeed, demonstrating such media and technology savvy to one’s paymasters – bosses and clients – can keep the communicator at the top of the go-to list.

During a session on Integrating Offline Advertising with Online, Lindsay Jacaman, Director of Multimedia Sales for venerable media brand, the Wall Street Journal, presented a case study of Lexus, and how the luxury brand developed a multi-platform campaign using both print AND mobile – specifically, with the WSJ’s Blackberry app.  When selecting a mobile partner, clearly it’s not only the app, but also the device – in this case, business-preferred brand Blackberry, that comes into consideration.  Would that all of us have a marketing budget the size of Lexus, or work for a five-star media brand like the Wall Street Journal – for we know that whatever we would do to create engagement, we’d be sure to end up in case studies delivered at marketing meetings and conferences for years to come.

In a mobile marketing panel presentation, Aaron Strout, CMO of digital agency Powered, stressed anything and everything LBS and mobile-app related, including SMS (yep, text) messaging.  I raised my hand and asked how Twitter, with its more-stringent 140-character limit would play into the idea of sponsored marketing messages.  All agreed that more will be on the way, as marketers find out what works and discover what ROI they are comfortable with. (For now, most marketers are not sold on sponsored tweets.)

I was a panelist in one of the two last sessions of the day, a social media best practices panel, joined by Allie Herzog of IntegratePR, Chris Baccus, Executive Director of Digital and Social Media for AT&T, Leigh Mutert, Social Media Manager for HR Block (“Imagine marketing a product for an event that takes place only once a year,” Mutert told us), and Mike Merrill, Director of Marketing for ReachLocal and also President of the Social Media Club of Dallas.  All of us stressed the need to find the right mix of metrics that demonstrate ROI – and that social provides the flexibility and scale to test various campaigns.  We also stressed the need to find those other than CorpComm or marketing – customer service, human resources – to join the social media efforts within an organization and help fight the fight, one tweet or blogpost at a time.

The Integrated Marketing Summit will continue its conference series into next year.

Flashcouponing, crowdsourced bargain purveyor Groupon is finally having the last laugh:  according to the New York Times, Mashable, and other sources, it is in the midst of a nearly $6 billion deal to sell itself to Google.

I’ve written on Groupon before, and the phenomenon of the service has caught the attention of journalists, analysts, investors, entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and consumers everywhere.  Groupon has proven the concept that communities can be built instantly, drawing on emotion to create instant sales, and empowering the local business that seemed to be previously left out of the social media marketing game.  Here’s my take on why Google is ready to pay as much as 17 times earnings for the startup, which was virtually unknown three years ago, and why it makes sense:

Hyperlocal ad targeting.  After selling more than 13 million Groupons, and a purported waiting list of 35,000 merchants waiting for their daily coupon, Groupon clearly has deep knowledge of local market tastes and contacts with local businesses that rival the YellowPages, SuperPages, YellowBook, and all of those old-school local directories combined.  Google can bundle AdWords , Display Network, and other advertising products with a Groupon so as to retain and deepen its existing advertiser relationships.

More and more data. Google’s Analytics products will receive a boon from the 13.7 million subscribers in the Groupon database, providing deep insight on consumer buying habits and demographics.

Integration with Checkout and other merchant services. Google can integrate its Checkout product with Groupon, validating that service and perhaps even giving preference if consumers choose Checkout over Visa, MasterCard, or – heaven forbid — PayPal.  With Checkout, a merchant does not have to have a relationship with a card processor, so Google-Groupon can tap small independents or individual consultants who otherwise would be locked out.

Did someone say Android? Google’s location-based services (LBS) come in handy:  Groupon can now become its own Android-only app, relying heavily on location.  When a user enters a particular neighborhood, an alert can flash across the screen with information about a Groupon of the day.  Hopefully, the buyer will be interested, tap the screen a few times, and receive an unexpected discount.

Not often thought of as early adopters of bleeding-edge communications channels, B2B marketers have a golden opportunity to take the lead and demonstrate how social media can reach their target buyer and affect their companies’ bottom line.  Social media is actually better suited for B2B, for several reasons:
It’s all about thought leadership.  Content is the backbone of the social networks; without content, nothing can be found, like’d, shared, tweeted, retweeted, and the like.  Companies look to the Web for articles, research, and data related to leadership – how to sell more, recruit more qualified candidates, run companies more effectively, and the like.  Social media is perfectly suited for these types of interactions, because it has given regular professionals the ability to share insights and best practices with an audience eager to find and read.

Sales leads, the ultimate proof of ROI.  Social media allows the reader or user the capability to send messages directly to the author in a convenient, actionable way (as compared to reading a print magazine or newspaper article).  Capturing individual contact information as a lead is perhaps the strongest proof of a social media marketing program – much stronger than views, downloads, embeds, like’s, tweets, or re-tweets.

Supplement existing campaigns. A website, email campaign, speaking schedule, even direct mail:  all are separate elements of perhaps an “integrated” campaign, but social ties it all together.  Each marketing activity can include the company’s Twitter handle, the Facebook logo, and mentions of where else to find the company on the social Web, drawing and building an audience from various efforts all at once.

Tap specialized communities and networks.  While Facebook might be considered too large for a company to hope that it will find its core B2B buyer, other specialized business networks exist and are growing exponentially.  Professional network LinkedIn now boasts 85 million members globally, and PowerPoint powerhouse SlideShare, with 70 million monthly page views, currently holds an Alexa Traffic Rank of 280.  Clearly, B2B has taken to social, and it continues to grow.

Contributing Author Jake Wengroff, Twitter: @JakeWengroff