Arment Dietrich SmartTalk eNewsletter

By 2010, Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers....96 percent of them already have joined a social network.
Eighty percent of companies use LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees.
The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65
year-old females.
Generation Y and Z consider email passé...In 2009,
Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to incoming freshmen.
The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube.
People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them.
In the near future, we will no longer search for products and services; they will find us via social media.
More than 1.5 million pieces of content (Web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook...daily.
Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than
traditional advertisers.
Successful companies in social media act more like
Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy - listening first, selling second.

Quick Tips:
Develop Goals While Listening

It's no secret our social media philosophy hinges on relationships. We believe it's about connecting and engaging one-on-one with your current and prospective customers, employees, candidates, influencers, and other stakeholders, not about the tools. So forget about the tools, right now. How can you develop better relationships around you? How can you provide better customer service?

The one secret about mastering communication that people don't tell you is you must spend most of your time listening. Think of the historically great communicators. They ask a lot of questions. They really listen to what you have to say. They inquire deeply into the answers you provide. And then they provide advice, counsel, and coaching. These master communicators are better at listening than they are at talking.

Social media is no different. It's another way to communicate through listening and engaging in conversation. To be a master at social media communication, you must spend most of your time listening.

In our last eNewsletter, we gave you tools to create e-mail alerts and RSS feeds in order to listen to your audiences every day. In this issue, we provide tools to develop very specific goals during your listening phase.

Twendz is a reputation management tool that looks at how people feel about a brand or topic. It measures Twitter, specifically, on positive, neutral, or negative tweets. Use this tool to measure people's sentiments and set benchmarks and goals. Pay attention to how people are talking about the company, your leadership, key employees, your products/services, and your customers.
The media landscape has changed and print journalists are no longer the only ones with influence. Some bloggers have immense influence and you cannot afford to ignore them. Learn which bloggers care about you, your products/services, and your customers. Use tools such as Technorati or Google Blog Search to determine which bloggers are already talking about you, then target them in your goal-planning.
Collect case studies of social media success in your industry, in your category, and from companies and people you admire. Use Delicious to bookmark the case studies in one location so you can refer back to them while you develop your goals and plan your next steps.
There is nothing better for real-time data than Twitter search. Even if you don't have a Twitter account, it's a MUST to listen to the conversations here. While we believe everyone should have their own Twitter handle in order to fully understand and take advantage of the wide range of services, you can subscribe to the RSS feed directly on the Twitter search site without an account.
Right now, go to Web site grader and bookmark the page. Now type in your Web site URL. What's your grade? Is it 100 percent? No? Scroll down. HubSpot, the creator of the site, tells you exactly what you have to do to increase your grade. Add deadlines beside each deliverable, assign it to someone, and get your grade to 100 percent! After you make an adjustment, check your grade again and watch it climb. It's exciting and motivating.
Do the same thing for your blog, if you have one, by visiting Blog Grader.
Now go to Compete. Enter your Web site URL and two of your competitor's sites. This site then creates a graph, comparing you and your competition. See how you stack up and use the new information to develop goals for improving your Web site and beating out your opponents.
Do you look at your Web analytics at least weekly? If not, do it. It will help you track where people are visiting from and which accounts are home or corporate Web sites or blogs. If you find visitors coming from blogs, add those sites to your RSS feeds, comment on the blog posts, and develop relationships with the bloggers. Having an insider understanding of your visitor demographics will allow you to easily identify your target demographic for your goals.

PR in practice

The September Franchise Times article, "Whose social media program comes first?" is written for the franchise industry, but it can work for any business. It discusses ways to keep consistent branding among all offices, employees, and global networks. The tips provided vary from creating a social media policy to developing materials, so everyone can use a consistent voice.

Our new autumn, four-part Webinar series begins Sept. 17. Learn how to assess the current social media landscape, create and execute a social media program, and develop a social media crisis plan. It's every Thursday for four weeks. Cost is $195 and anyone is welcome! Register here.