Also featured was Tristan Jutras, M2O Digital Agency‘s Director of Marketing & Business Development, who addressed growing concerns about Facebook’s privacy policies, while Brad provided insights into online privacy in general.

M2O is the digital agency of record for eCrypt Technologies.

Click here to view the Facebook news story on CTV’s website.

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So far I’ve only read Outliers, but the rest of his books are on my “want to read” list. I had a chance to speak at Massive last year, maybe I can twist Lindsay’s arm to to speak again. I would love to have a chance to speak with Malcolm.

I should probably get in line, eh?

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15 Best Practices of Social Media Implemented by the Top 100 Brands
1. Deputize people throughout the organization.
2. Understand how each channel provides a different dimension of engagement
3. Centralize coordination
4. Find champions who can explain and mitigate risk.
5. Be in it for the long haul
6. Pick channels carefully.
7. Spread engagement to employees beyond the social media team.
8. Open the platform to anyone and everyone.Encourage employees to tap into social media to get work done.
9. Engage in new channels where people already are
10. Support engagement as an extension of the company culture.Be conversational from the start.
11. Be conversational from the start.
12. Make social media part of the job, just like email
13. Modularize and synchronize content across channels
14. To scale engagement, make social media part of everyone’s job.
15. Emphasize quality, not just quantity.

link: Report Reveals:15 Best Practices of Social Media Implemented by the Top 100 Brands « Jeffbullas’s Blog

Before you start thinking “oh come on, these are obvious…” trust me, they aren’t. I’ve seen many programs fail because only one person was responsible for “doing social media” in the company, and that person has other tasks that are considered more important than social media. Lots of new media/social media endeavors start out with great ideas and tons of energy, only to fail because upper management didn’t understand that nothing happens overnight and sometimes that most important “measures” can’t be measured.

Is social media a fad? Yes, using the term social media is a fad. Just like “internet marketing”, “new media”, “business blogging” were all “fads”. The terms fade away, thankfully, but the ideas remain. We still have websites (more and more actually), write (aka blog), and continue to find more and more ways to interact with each other, our customers, clients, and business partners.

So while none of these 15 best mindsets are magic bullets to success, if you don’t employ them your chances of success are greatly reduced.

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I kept this mindset for many years, then it finally hit me–I hate doing little text updates for clients. At the time I was kinda stuck, blog engines hadn’t really matured to a point that you could run a “website” with them. A really spiffy blog, sure, but a “website” with a static front page and such. Yeah that wasn’t working out so well (not that I didn’t try). Now things are different and for the better. Very much for the better.

One of my favourite examples of teaching the client to blog is YVR Connections:

The folks in the YVR Communications team had a problem. The Olympics were coming and they really wanted to not only tap into social media, but also be able to shorten the time it took to get a message out, and finally be able to do it all themselves. They didn’t want the world, they just wanted to tap into the latest technologies to make it easier for them (the Communications department) to communicate with people (seems like a good idea to me).

What we did for YVR was to build YVR Connections for them. After we seeded it with content and the latest social media goodies, we sat down and showed them how to use the site and …

We let them.

Yep, for the most part they run the site. Sure I do the server updates and such, that’s cool I’m usually in the servers anyway working on other administration, but that’s pretty much it. They write their own content, take their own pictures, and post everything up themselves.

And it’s fantastic.

When YVR calls us it isn’t for a “could you update these three words on this page…” it’s for something much cooler.

Honestly I think letting the client blog was one of the best business decisions we made.

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What Is Next For b5Media? Riddle me this…What is a media company with no sales? Answer…no much! Nothing has been confirmed yet, but my money is on b5Media being put on the selling block. I don’t think another blog network will purchase it as the original model of blog networks is all but dead, traditional newspapers are all struggling on both sides of the border, but I can’t think of who’d be interested in a network of blog based on the current market condition and online advertising sales suffering from the recession.

link: Chad Randall Exits b5Media, Will b5Media Keep The Doors With No Sales? | Profectio

Not a ringing endorsement of the business model, so I have to ponder what is the right way to earn money from content online. Creating great content (written, audio, video, imagery) take a lot of time, effort, skill, and creativity. If you want great content, it has to be paid for somehow. If the purely ad-supported model doesn’t seem to work, could we syndicate the content to other outlets?

Would someone pay for a certain number of posts per week to build up content for the site?

Frankly I’m not sure what content play might work, but I honestly think some form of paid syndication is going to play a role.

[As a note of disclosure, I worked at b5media, know all the founders (and count them as friends), and know Chad as well.]

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As you may have seen in the news, NowPublic has been acquired by Examiner.com. This is great news for the company, our readers and all of our contributors. Some of you may know Examiner.com but if you don’t already you’ll be seeing more of them soon. Like NowPublic, they are re-writing the rules about how news gets made. They’ve got thousands of Examiners in cities across the US writing and reporting on everything from nightlife, sports and business to technology news and education issues. This means that there will be some great opportunities for all NowPublicans to get news out to an even larger audience. Stay tuned for details on how to get involved.

link: NowPublic Acquired by Examiner.com | NowPublic News Coverage

This is a bittersweet piece of news. It’s fantastic for the folks at NowPublic. They’ve created something amazing, something tremendously powerful, something new, and something that is helping to reshape how we think about news. They must be proud beyond measure. Of course on the other side of the coin, NP was scooped up by an American company. I hope that given NP and Examiner.com are going to still run independently that NP maintains its base in Vancouver and (I think) a very international/Canadian feel to it.

Okay, that’s a minor point. This is fantastically great for NP and yet another example of how the Vancouver tech scene is not only one of Canada’s, but also North America’s, hottest and innovative places to be.

Congrats guys.

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Today we heard from the Privacy Commissioner again about Facebook, this time with good news–Facebook to make privacy changes and BBC NEWS | Technology | Facebook changes privacy policy–news that should be welcomed not only by Canadians, but Facebook users world-wide.

The two biggest changes, and greatest victories for us as users, are that Facebook will make it very clear what the difference is between disabling your account and deleting your account (the latter ensuring that your information is deleted, the former it will stay around) and the people who make Facebook applications will have a much, much smaller amount of personal data they can get their hands on without your consent.

For the non-Facebook users–which I am often tempted to become–Facebook will limit the data needed and kept if you’re invited to look at an event or something (for example your email address).

The best part of this? These changes are world-wide changes. Granted it will take a year to make changes to the application issues (which the Privacy Commissioner is fine with), the rest will start coming into play very shortly.

Chalk one up for Canada. We might be polite, but we know when to make a stink.

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The thing is that while blogging isn’t a fad and isn’t going away, many business jumped on the business blog bandwagon when it seemed like the “cool thing to do”. Today many of those business blogs are languishing or sitting idle in the dusty corners of the Internet. Why? Sometimes it’s as simple as this: just like all new communications tools blogging isn’t a quick fix or magic wand. Never was, never will be.

I was reminded of this reality with this post from Smashing Magazine:

I have reached the conclusion that most organizations have a blog simply because they feel they should. Many marketing departments fail to “get” blogging and have poorly visited blogs with few comments. Because their blog fails to perform, they conclude that blogging is an ineffective marketing tool and either remove it entirely or leave it to languish.

link: 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging | How-To | Smashing Magazine

If your business blog isn’t doing well, these truths (and I agree with all of them except not putting press releases on the blog, I think there should be a section for them) should be welcome comfort. You can look at these 10 realities almost as tips in reverse. Are you doing any of these things? Stop.

If you’re just starting your business blog, these are true. They are the cold, hard facts. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

However, it’s not the end of the world.

Let’s take business blogs not getting huge amounts of traffic. Honestly, that’s okay and normal. Your business serves a niche. Niches are not the entire population, they are a segment. If you serve a small segment of the population, your traffic will also be lower.

Putting up a blog is communications tool for the long haul. It’s something that is like having email addresses and phone numbers. People will use them. It’s just part of business.

And neither of those tools are magic either, are they?

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As far as I, and ReadWriteWeb as well, are concerned it’s Canada’s Globe & Mail that has the best social media strategy:

We would love to see Preston fill a role similar to what Mathew Ingram does at the Toronto Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest daily paper. Ingram’s position is “Communities Editor” but he interfaces with social media activities both on and off of the paper’s site. In a recent interview we did with Ingram he explained that “The transition from one-way to two-way media is not something that newspapers are used to doing. It’s a big change.”
Social media at newspapers doesn’t have to be about promotion or damage control, it’s also a real resource. “One thing I want to encourage more is writers responding to comments and using comments as a resource,” Ingram says. “That’s commenting 2.0, I think…One of the biggest things we need to do is identify and encourage members of the community who are thoughtful, intelligent, and produce comments of value — encouraging them to contribute more, elevating what they do and suppressing some of the noise.”

link: NYTimes Appoints First Social Media Editor

I chafe at seeing “social media” pulled out as separate from “other media”, social media is comprised of a set of tools that help people communicate, share information, and connect. These aren’t new activities by any means, we’re just able to do it all faster now.

What all forms of media just need to realize is that they just need to learn about the tools, see how they fit into their niche, and apply them.

This isn’t rocket science or something that requires secret incantations to make work. It takes work to make it work. It means sitting down with people who know how to leverage the various social media tools in different scenarios and being open to applying them.

Just as your business will not be saved or magically transformed the moment you start blogging, nor will it become an instant sensation on Twitter or Facebook the moment you sign in there either.

Appointing a Chief Social Media Officer or Social Media Editor, belies the fact we all need to adopt and learn social media tools and tactics in our day-to-day work. We don’t get a pass with a C-level person at the helm, we get a personal challenge to step up to the plate and do it.

Do you think your company needs a specific person in charge of social media or a base level of understanding and expanded savvy/skill set in social media?

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But, on to the big news – Google announced their latest innovation – Wave – today. Techcrunch has a great write up on it. If it’s half as good as they say it is – I can’t wait. It sounds like it’ll be taking the best of the Instant Messaging and Email worlds and enhances them with an interesting interface. Can’t wait.

And with Bing – Microsoft is trying to get back in the search game. There is lots of room to improve in the search world – so, I wouldn’t count them out yet.

Enjoy your day.

P

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