This was a pretty popular post when I first wrote it, so I have tweaked it a bit for my Georgetown students this semester.

So…

We have all been there.  You have killer ideas that can save your company money, your competitors are all doing it — and all you need to do is get the ok from your boss to implement a blog (internal or external), a podcast, Twitter, use You Tube, Facebook, hell, even an .rss feed.

And then you get “The Look.”

We’ve all seen it.  It’s something between hearing that Santa Claus isn’t real and the look on Dan Quayle’s face when Lloyd Bentsen said “”Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”  Too often than not, when those above you (or your clients), exhibit that look, you need to think fast or watch your social media dreams go up in flames.  So here are a few tips that might help you think fast before “The Look” becomes a “no.”

1. Knowing and reacting. It’s simple and unquantifiable, but the there is likely already conversation going on about your company/clients, their products, issues, executives and value — it’s already happening.  Here’s the simple part:  you can choose to be part of it or choose to ignore it.  So when someone blogs about you, good or bad, have a monitoring system in place and rules in place for if — or even when — to engage. I have written about monitoring reputation management ad nauseum, but the first step in engaging in the conversation is to know what people are saying about you, and who really matters.  It doesn’t have to cost a ton to monitor, and even Twitter search has an .rss output now.  No excuses.And here’s a little tip to help simplify it:  if you walked out of the building and heard someone trashing our company, wouldn’t you engage that person in conversation to offer your points of view?  Would you just let it go? What we’re talking about is no different.
2. Projecting your point of view. If you are reading this blog, you probably already have a pretty good idea of the arsenal that is available to project your company’s/client’s/executives’ view into cyberspace, so I won’t spent a lot of time on the tools and tactics.  Most CEO-types are bottom-line oriented, so if you can make can intelligent case about cost-per-contact (CPC) — talked about brilliantly in Katie Payne’s book “Measuring Public Relationships,” you have a winner.  For example, let’s say so implement a Twitter feed.  The only cost, really, is your time to set it up and monitor it.  If you make $60,000 a year (plus benes and work 2,000 hours a year), that’s going to be about $45 per hour.  If you spend an hour a day on Twitter and build up a network of contact of 500 followers, your CPC is going to be about $22.50  ($11,250/500).  Compare this to advertising (which you can’t appropriately measure, only guess, earned media or paid media, which again you can’t appropriately measure) and the $22.50 cost per contact is pretty darn good.  And this is only measuring the cost per acquiring each contact and does not add in the value of the conversations that are taking place via Twitter throughout the year.  And especially in a down economy, CPC is more important than ever.And one final note:  I maintain a Twitter account for my day job and can tell you that the vast majority of the major “traditional” news outlets are on it -watching what my employer has to say.
3. You can’t always have the ROI you want. I am directly lifting this from a must-listen “For Immediate Release” podcast in which Mark Ragan led a group of social media experts through a fascinating panel in which he pretended to be the “Dumb-Ass CEO,” and Shel Holtz discussed blogging.  Mark Ragan challenged: “You better be precise.  I’m busy.  Why is it that I need to launch this blog, which I don’t even know what it is.”  Sound familiar?  Shel had a great answer.  He said that many companies still invest in things like taking key customers to golf club memberships, greens fees, etc. to build relationships, and we don’t measure that, right?  Everyone gets that you are building solid relationships with these people in the golf course, and not one ever challenges that, right? The basis of social media, like blogs, is developing relationships.  You can’t always measure everything — and you have to be at peace with that.
4. Blogging baby steps. A lot of time, you have to take steps that are not 100 percent of what you want to begin with, so there are a couple of things you can do in the meantime.  First, talk to your boss about starting an internal blog — something that is apart from that God-awful intranet that you have.  Start slowly by talking to your employees – the people who are your brand and company ambassadors, and you might discover that you are ready for prime time — taking it to the “outside world” after all.  And a tactic that I have done more often than not, start a test blog.  Mock it up, don’t make it public, but if you have just a few moments to capture the time and attention of a senior executives, pictures and clicks are worth a 1,000 arguments.  While Mr./Mrs.  CEO is clicking through the blog, you can make your case about the fact that businesses are built on relationships — and having a blogging platform is a fantastic way to have a parallel set of relationships with your internal or external audiences.
5. Beware of the roadblocks. People hate change.  Especially people who have been doing it one way for a long time.  If you are attempting a “paradigm shift” (100 points for BS bingo, which I won on the “Hobson and Holtz Report: #399), talk to the people who might try to stand in your way.  My experience tells me that there are two prospective deal-killers in an organization:  IT and legal.When the Internet was for propeller-heads, IT owned it.  It was theirs, and we “communicators” simply did not get it.  And now we want to OWN IT???  Try a quiet, discreet conversation with someone reasonable (and high up) in IT to get buy-in on a shared project.And legal?  I have climbed this mountain so many times I have no fingernails left.  But here is my two cents, and it is pretty simple.  The right way to go about is is to start the conversation with “How can we do this?”  The wrong way is “Can I do this?“  Make the question about what THEY need to do to collaborate and make this a reality and don’t give legal any maneuvering room to kill something.  Sure, there will be disclaimers (be smart and cut and paste the disclaimer statement from a competitor and bring it to your meeting), but frame and conversations in terms of HOW it can be accomplished, not IF it can be accomplished.

But it’s not all about me;  Tell me about your own experiences when trying to sell in new media in an old-school job.  Or if you have not tried it, tell me how you would.

Mark

Hey everyone,

just a quick note to let my readers know that I’ll be offline for about the next 10 days, spending time in the proverbial Hotel California, where apparently, you can check in any time you want, but you can never leave.  Unless of course, the employees of the Hotel California are furloughed, in which case you apparently CAN sneak out any time you want.

Mark

Just saw this tweet from Shannon Paul requesting input for the Startup Weekend Detroit blog, so I figure that the city needs some love.  So here you go, MoTown and Shannon:

1. For the last 50 years, Detroit has been the economic engine that drove our economy.
2. Foreign car manufacturers have emulated the production methods that Detroit invented.
3. People are nice – not nasty, like in New York or Washington.
4. Passion for their sports teams is unparalleled – I remember the joy when the Tigers went to the playoffs two years ago and the fans went nuts.
5. Hockey is still a real sport.
6. People from Detroit, much like those from my native New Hampshire, actually KNOW HOW TO DRIVE IN THE SNOW.
7. I had a great steak in a steakhouse that I can’t remember in Auburn Hills.
8. Sorry if this one is slightly negative, but one of the greatest moments in (my team’s) Celtics history is Robert “the Chief” Parish cold-cocking Bill Laimbeer in Game 5 of the 1987 Eastern Conference finals.
9. Kid Rock actually has some good songs.
10. I like Shannon Paul (another friend I have not met) so thought this post would be a good idea.

Mark “8 Mile” Story

Some days are better than others. Or some just plain suck. But what I have learned of late is that even when I post a random rant or comment on Twitter, I usually get a nice response back from one of my Tweeps, most of which are friends whom I have not met yet.

So no profound statements today, just a “thanks” to all my Tweeps:

Mark

I did this a few times last year, culling from Ned Lundquist’s “JOTW” or “Job of the Week.”  Given that we are now in 2010 and hopefully in an economic recovery, let’s start the year off fresh with some hot-off-the-presses job openings.

I focus the openings mainly in the Washington, DC area, because that is where my Georgetown peeps are, many of whom have that lovely sheepskin in hand and have gotten zippy help from the university.

So here goes:

About JOTW:

Ned Lundquist’s “Job of the Week” free e-mail networking newsletter and website for professional communicators has a cult following of more than 10,000 readers (the 5-digit milestone was reached October 6, 2006). The job leads are just one reason his faithful followers begin their Mondays (and sometimes Tuesdays through Fridays) with a cuppa and JOTW.

So here’s a few that I found that may be of interest to my peeps in the Washington, DC area — with a big thanks to Ned to keeping this up all those years:

1. Manager of Web Communications, Institute of Medicine, Washington, DC
2. Public Affairs Associate, Growth Energy, Washington DC
3. Multimedia Associate, Growth Energy, Washington DC
4. Director/Vice President-Digital Media, crisis communications and reputation management firms, Washington, DC (agency)
5. Executive Director, ManTech International Corporation, Fairfax, VA
6. Managing Director (Public Affairs), AD-1035-2c, Department of Congressional and Public Affairs (CPA), Millennium Challenge Corporation, Washington, DC

“Mark is Feeling Snarky” Job Opening of the Week

I have posted the entire opening below for “Manager, Corporate Communications-COM00006, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Franklin Lakes, NJ.“  In its entirety.  And I can tell you, that if  you read the job description, replete with grammatical and punctuation errors as well as little ditties like “COVER LETTER” required, you’ll know how badly they need a proofreader too.  And hell, if you are local, I’ll buy lunch for the reader who can find the most grammatical errors and bullshit bingo terms.  Just put in the comments form below.  And bring your calculator.

Manager, Corporate Communications-COM00006, Becton, Dickinson and
Company, Franklin Lakes, NJ

This position supports implementation of the strategic global Corporate Communications plan. It coordinates corporate and business messages to ensure consistency and alignment with global business objectives and corporate messaging. It also has responsibilities involving work on
change management/organizational and transactional communications, crisis communications and site/facility communications for BD locations
around the world. This position is a key overseer of quality of communications material globally, helping ensure consistency and conformity with corporate guidelines. Work with the Director, Corporate Communications and Manager, Internal Communications to support strategic global Corporate Communications plan deliverable. Serve as the primary liaison with the product Public Relations team to coordinate corporate and business messages to ensure consistency and alignment with global business objectives and corporate messaging. Assist with production ofthe Company’s Annual Report and Sustainability Report. Work with various locations and departments to create or edit internal news items for global intranet; uses content management tool to post news articles and updates to intranet. Serve as a copyeditor to ensure adherence to
corporate style and identity guidelines. for announcements, newsletters and other collateral originating from regional offices, Human Resources, Diversity/Inclusion, Social Investing, Marketing, etc. Enhance and maintain department’s infrastructure for both internal and external purposes such as responses to media inquiries, presentations, surveys, awards programs, etc.

Additional responsibilities include:

• Working on change management/organizational and transactional communications, crisis communications, and site/facility communicationsfor locations around the world.
• Working closely with senior management as well as departments including
• Investor Relations, Government Relations, Regulatory Affairs andFinance.

Qualifications
REQUIRED

• Minimum of 5 years of progressively responsible communicationsexperience, including some time at a public company.
• Media relations experience, including pitching stories to national media outlets.
• Proven writing capabilities in a variety of formats, including executive speeches, press releases and other collateral materials, employee newsletters, organizational communications, video scripts and PowerPoint presentations.
• Ability to prioritize and multi-task in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent interpersonal and verbal communications skills, in addition to written skills

• Advanced editing and proofreading skills, along with extraordinary attention to detail.

• Strategic thinking and planning skills.
• Experience working globally/cross-culturally.
• Flexibility/adaptability.
• Bachelors Degree; Advanced Degree preferred.
  PREFERRED
• Communications experience in medical technology or healthcare.
• Familiarity with social media tools and fundamental graphic
  design skills.

  RESUMES SUBMITTED WITHOUT “COVER LETTERS” WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.
  Relocation Available No
  http://www.bd.com/us/careers/jobs.asp

My caveat – I know nothing about the jobs, the organizations, the salaries, etc., but encourage you to check them out. The job market is not dead, it’s just really tired.

Happy 2010.

Mark