I recently read a really nice article by Noah Elkin at iCrossing that covered his suggestions to clients who are considering moving their brand management into the social media landscape. On the whole, I agree with his suggestions, but one item really jumped out at me:

“Also, make sure your legal team is not writing any posts or deciding what’s getting written and how. Yes, legal should be involved in crafting and signing off on the policy, but no, legal should not be taking a hands-on role (unless for some reason you’re engaging with a legal community)…”

Let me just say, reading that was nearly a “spew coffee on the keyboard” moment for me. There are people who think they should have their legal department speaking for them in social media? Once I regained my composure, I realized that for most traditional corporate clients, that might actually, on the face of it, sound like a “safe” way to engage in social media.

So in case you’re a brand marketer considering moving your company into the social media space, let me just clear this up right now: unless you’d send your lawyer to represent you on a date (or even at an industry conference or social networking event), don’t send them to represent you in the social media sphere.

It also got me thinking about other tactics that brand marketers who aren’t really familiar with social media and web 2.0 might initially (mistakenly) embrace. So with that in mind, I present to you three foolproof, ironclad ways to ruin your chances of successfully introducing your brand to social media.

1. Try to “Do it Yourself.” If you’re an in-house marketing specialist, and aren’t currently participating in social media, such as industry forums, blogs, wikis, or podcasts, then it’s likely because you’re simply not comfortable with the medium–at least not yet. Again, let’s put this in a context you’re probably already familiar with. Let’s say you have a marketing coordinator who is an amazing administrator, kicks butt at achieving objectives and completing tasks–but would rather chew a roll of tin foil than do public speaking and is allergic to meeting strangers. Is she the best person to send to conduct a seminar on your company’s core competencies? Probably not. So why would you send a person who isn’t truly comfortable participating in social media to represent you in that arena? In many ways, the social media landscape is very much like an offline networking or public speaking venue. Except it has the benefit of being mostly written communication–meaning you have the opportunity to pause, review and revise that communication briefly before it goes out into the general public domain. Which brings us to…

2. Hyper-sanitize your social media communications. Social media is understandably a scary communications vehicle for traditional brand marketers, who were weened on the mantra “control the message, control the message, control the message.” The informality, two-way dialogue and transparency that give social media its appeal can be the most intimidating aspects to companies who are entering the medium for the first time. It can be tempting to simply copy and paste your static, one-way brand communications into the social media world and hope for the best. Or to edit the content crafted for social media until it’s indistinguishable from your one-way communications. Doing so would be similar to setting up your phone systems so that only outgoing calls were permitted. Yes, it would give you more control–it would also cost you most of the usefulness of having a phone system in the first place, namely making your company accessible.

3. Avoid social media altogether. Let me share a little story with you. I was doing a little competitive research for a client interested in SEO work, investigating their existing backlinks (links that lead to their site from other sites). I ran across a link from a hobbyist discussion forum related to their industry. It was a consumer, who stated that he was looking at their brand, among others, before making a large purchase. He wanted to get some feedback from other enthusiasts before committing to a purchase.

The entire thread was a conversation among people who passionately care about the client’s industry, and covered issues like quality control, differentiating product factors, and manufacturing processes. This was a site with tens of thousands of members, and hundreds actively reading and posting at any given point in time. If we’d been monitoring social media mentions for this client, we could have given them a heads-up, and gotten some great feedback to contribute to the conversation on their behalf. What potential brand value would you place on that conversation? Among three competitors, if even one of them participated in that conversation, gave thoughtful and helpful answers, what would you consider to be the value of that conversation? Compare that to the value of ad impressions, and the real potential impact on people who are most likely to buy their products. Now bear in mind that the particular forum in question has been online since 1999. Does waiting for this whole “social web” thing to blow over and go away still seem like the best idea? Are you beginning to see the value and power of social media brand management yet?

Are there risks involved in mishandling brand management in the social media web? Absolutely–but there are also risks involved in ignoring this powerful communications medium. The best solution is to engage professionals, who are experienced and comfortable with the medium, and have them work closely with your in-house marketing staff, exactly as you do for print, radio, television and offline public relations.

Mike and Kat cover surprising interactive marketing news hidden behind obvious headlines.

 LeapCast - LFI Trends: 11.19.07 - News Of The Obvious: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The last month has been rife with both speculation and confirmation of the “side projects” the geeks at Google have been focusing on for the balance of 2007. Two big announcements involved new, open source platforms for web development in two of the hottest and fastest-growing arenas in interactive advertising: social media and mobile.

We’ve included a video with WSJ reporter Amol Sharma above. Sharma does a great job of presenting, in layman’s terms, the implications of Google’s newly-announced mobile platform, Android. Android is the real-world version of the heavily rumored “gPhone.” Rather than a hardware device, Google has announced an open-source (and presumably ad-supported) mobile application platform.

Mobile advertising has been a major buzz item in interactive advertising circles for most of 2007, however, it has also mostly failed to live up to the hype surrounding it. U.S. numbers for mobile web access continue to lag far behind Asia and Europe.

While the prospect of a near-universal, open source development platform means that interactive developers have a new foothold in getting their applications onto the mobile web, it doesn’t guarantee that there will be an audience to monetize once they arrive. It also seems unlikely that an influx of new “cool mobile apps” from independent publishers and developers will significantly increase the number of Americans accessing the web via their mobile devices.

However, as is often the case, the saving grace for mobile may be more traditional media channels, most notably the television, film and music industries. If the new Android platform lowers the cost and time-frame for mobile applications enough that these industries begin releasing more highly-sought mobile-only content (such as mobisodes for extremely popular shows Heroes and Lost).

For folks in search engine marketing, it’s like a new model year in the automotive industry. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all upgraded their search marketing tools and dashboards in the last year, and search marketers have been taking these new interfaces and features out for a test drive and learning how they handle.

Near the beginning of the year, Yahoo released the most recent iteration of its Search Marketing program, Panama. Retooled with a new formula for ad placement and new features such as geotargeting and campaign dayparting, the newest version of Yahoo’s paid placement offering is now, at least in terms of features, on a little more level footing with top search engine Google.

Over the summer, Microsoft opened up Project Gatineau, their own Analytics program, in a closed beta. While the product is still in a beta release, new features including custom taxonomies, funnel reports, and ROI reports that cover email, banner and even offline campaigns have generated a lot of excitement and buzz among search marketers.

Most recently Google, the undisputed king of search engines and paid search ads, updated their Adwords Website Optimizer with a raft of new and useful features. The most significant new additions include the ability to perform A/B Split testing on landing pages, access to the Optimizer directly through the Client Center dashboard, and some additional sorting/organizing functionality for experiments.

With all this continuous change and improvement, it’s been a big learning year for those responsible for garnering the tightest ROI out of paid search media spend dollars.

Join Mike and Katina as they discuss assessing your content for viral potential, and the rules of engagement for social media and online public relations.

 LFI University November 2007: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Clients and developers alike are far too familiar with software delivery that works, is on time, and within budget but doesn’t actually solve the problem that the client was trying to solve (http://www.projectcartoon.com/cartoon/2). This situation typically arises from misunderstandings that occur early on in a project through no fault of any one person or any participating organization. These misunderstandings would have been easy to correct for had they been identified early. Project teams spend countless hours communicating with each other in an attempt to have as complete a picture of a project as possible. They begin software architecture and design work now heavy with all this great information, but despite their best intentions, the damage may already be done.

Rather than jumping into all the technical details and intricacies of the project first, planning and design should begin with some good old fashioned journalism. The answers to who, what, where, when, and why will ultimately provide the answer to how.

Who (will be using the software)?
What audience is your software for? Is the software for internal users on your intranet or will it be a customer facing? More often than not, an application for internal use or business partners will be larger to write than one for external users/customers.

What (should be built)?
This question is the one where the misunderstandings typically come from. A client may ask for a fully-integrated B2C communications portlet when what they really needed was a contact form. This question is still very important because the answer to this question was derived from the answer to “Why?” It helps both sides at least start off in the same ballpark as one another.

Where (will the application/web site/software be deployed)?
This is the question that establishes the deployment environment which will dictate how the problem is solved. Answering “where” will determine the following variables:

• Where will the application be hosted?
• What languages are supported?
• What development frameworks can be used?
• What operating system?
• What application server/servers, if any?
• What database server?
• What email server?
• What web server?

When (does it need to be done)?
This answer will determine if a realistic timeline can be established or whether scope must be cut to meet primary goals. What other constraints must be worked in/around/on/under?

Why (are we doing this)?
Finally, we have reached the “y” of the journalism questions world. Without a doubt, this is the most important question! This question transcends “what are we trying to build” because it forces us to identify (in no uncertain terms!) the problem that must be solved. This is absolutely the guiding principle that must be kept in mind by all participants at all times. If things are happening that don’t directly help solve the problem, their value to the project probably needs to be assessed. It was a problem that lead the client to seek help (”People can’t currently see account information when they log in” or “Our web site doesn’t have a pricing tool that would make us competitive”) and it should be the developers’ responsibility to solve that problem. If you can’t say “the problem is solved” at the end of the project, the team likely lost direction, possibly from the very start!

Projects that are completed under budget and early can be failures if they don’t emphatically answer, “YES!” to the “is the problem solved?” question.

How?

Fortunately, we’ve been good stewards of software journalism and have all of the information now to answer this question so that it accomplishes our primary goal of solving the client’s problem. All the answers to Who?, What?, Where?, When?, and Why? provide us with the information necessary to forge ahead towards the successful completion of the project (read: problem solved!)