Archive for August, 2009

Michael Brito is a social media strategist and community builder at Intel. “I blog, communicate and build relationships with other people,” says Michael. “I Twitter actively. I believe that marketing is good; and if you love your customers they’ll love you back and tell people about it. I believe that business results are critical but should not be the driving force behind connecting with people.”

You can find Michael on Twitter, Facebook and his social media blog. In the following interview, we chat about Twitter best practices, why brands need to be believable and his top objectives as a social media leader at Intel.

Rick: You recently hosted a session for Synopsys’ Conversation Central at DAC where you talked about Twitter best practices. In a nutshell,  what are they?

Michael: I also wrote an article on this topic recently for Mashable (see 10 Twitter Best Practices for Brands), which are:

1. Do your research before engaging customers
2. Determine organizational goals
3. Utilize either a branded or personal profile
4. Build your Twitter equity and credibility
5. Track metrics and conversation trends
6. Don’t go overboard; less structure is better
7. Listen and observe before engaging
8. Be authentic & believable
9. Track, measure, and iterate
10. Don’t just strategize: execute!

Rick: During your Conversation Central session, you emphasized the point that brands need to be believable. Beyond producing great products and all else that one expects from leading brands, what do you mean by that?

Michael: Being authentic and believable are two different things.  I may indeed be authentic at every customer touch point, whether offline or online. But if the people I interact with and within my community don’t believe what I say, then there is an obvious disconnect. In other words, if I spend time in a community, build and foster relationships and listen, then the community will begin to trust me and believe what I have to say. So, if blog/tweet about a netbook and how awesome it is for me, the community just might believe me and maybe even go buy one.

Rick: As a social media leader at Intel, what are your most important objectives?

Michael: Great question. My most important objective is to authentically “build community” on and off of Intel.com. If I build a successful community, everything else will fall into place (i.e., metrics, user engagement, increase in sales) – basically, the stuff management values.

Rick: Finally, do you see any unique considerations or barriers within engineering communities that influence their adoption and use of social media?

Michael: I have to be honest. Dealing with the IT community, specifically engineering is new to me. I have always been focused on consumers. I do know that IT/Engineering use social media for a variety of things (research) and it’s important for brands who value that demographic to be present within these communities. It’s important to realize that “building community” doesn’t just mean to create a social network on a brand’s site.  It also means participating in external communities where the conversations are taking place.

Ron Ploof is the founder of OC New Media, LLC, a consulting firm focused on helping business leaders understand  and develop strategies for incorporating social media into their communications programs. Ron is a blogger, author, speaker, and electrical engineer. He is also a Synopsys alumnus who launched the first social media-related initiatives at Synopsys as New Media Evangelist.

Ron recently hosted a session for Synopsys’ Conversation Central at DAC titled “Objectivity is Overrated: Corporate Bloggers Aren’t Journalists, and Why They Shouldn’t Even Try.” In the following conversation, Ron shares his perspective on that and other social media topics — and chats a bit about a new book he has written about how New Media technologies can be used to increase corporate communications effectiveness while reducing costs.

Rick: How are corporate bloggers different from other online media sources, and why do you believe they shouldn’t strive for objectivity with their blogs?

Ron: There seems to be lots of emotion surrounding the whole “blogger” versus “journalist” thing. My session at  DAC was specifically targeted at corporate bloggers — communicators such as Karen Bartleson (Synopsys) or Bob Dwyer (Cadence). Since both are writing for their respective companies, I propose that there is no need to be “objective.”

By being published on their corporate sites, readers will naturally assume that their opinion is biased — and that is okay! Why would I listen to someone who doesn’t believe in their products or services? What value is it to me if a corporate blogger says something like, “our products are indistinguishable from that of our competition?” Seriously, would you stake your career on someone who didn’t believe in their own product?

Journalists are tasked with reporting news in an even-handed way. Their job is to get both sides of the story, report facts, and let the readers makeup their own minds. Since corporate bloggers aren’t under the same restrictions, they frequently become the targets of the “journalism police,” who question the validity of their content. But people love transparent biases. Although Bill Maher and Rush Limbaugh incite strong audience reactions through their openly left and right leaning opinions, their audiences appreciate the bias.

Rick: Blogs have proliferated at a staggering pace over a very short period of time. Is it possible that people are getting “blogged out?”

Ron: Most New/Social Media misconceptions stem from an inability to separate the concept of content from the channel that distributes it. Blogging is just a vehicle for delivering information, similar to a newspaper, a magazine, or broadcast channel. Newspapers have been around for many years. I dunno… was there a time when people got “newspapered out?”

People will always seek the best information from the best sources. If that information comes in the form of a blog, then so be it. If that information comes in the form of a podcast, online video, a magazine, a radio show or a teleconference, then that’s okay too!

Rick: What do companies that embrace social media understand that others don’t?

Ron: Companies embracing New/Social Media understand that the days of controlling the message are gone forever. In the past, one could write a press release or buy an advertisement — essentially holding a monopoly on their brand. Today, with the advent of blogging, podcasting, online video, Facebook and Twitter, those days are gone forever. Today, anyone with Internet access can tell their story in their own words, something that strikes fear into the hearts of traditional PR professionals and marketeers who can’t stand the thought of someone else talking loosely about their brand.

Companies that embrace these new communications vehicles trust that the quality of their products and services will speak for themselves. If my company has the best product on the market and someone trashes it online, I have faith that my fans will defend it in their own words. On the other hand, if my product is crappy, then it doesn’t matter how much time, effort, spin, or advertising dollars that I throw at it — the product will still be crappy.

The definition of hell is being a marketing manager for a crappy product in the age of social media.

Rick: You’re in the process of publishing a new book called “Read This First” – what’s it about and why did you write it?

Ron: Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media – from blogs to social networks presents an executive-level conversation that describes how New Media technologies can be used to simultaneously increase the effectiveness of corporate communications while reducing costs. It should be hitting the shelves in the fall.

I’ve had the chance to speak with hundreds of executives over the past few years and have learned that most don’t understand the basics of social media. I wrote Read This First to give executives a step-by-step way to evaluate these new communications vehicles. Instead of looking at the problem from a traditional marketing or public relations perspective, I chose to approach the topic from the customer’s perspective. By looking at the problem from the other side, my book aims to put companies into the proper mindset to create content that helps their customers instead of the traditional way — interrupting them!

Have you attended a keynote presentation or panel discussion lately? If so, you’re probably aware of the emergence of the so-called “Back Channel” – the real-time Twitter-enabled discourse that is becoming increasingly popular among conference attendees.

The concept is simple: anyone with a Twitter account and an Internet-connected device (BlackBerry, iPhone, laptop, etc.) can tweet freely from any location at any given moment. If that location happens to be a seat in the audience at a trade show event, comments from the stage or observations about the event itself can (and often do) appear instantly in the worldwide Twitter stream.

This phenomenon is described in more detail in a blog post titled How to Present While People are Twittering. The back channel offers “huge benefits to the individual members of the audience and to the overall output of a conference or meeting,” says presentations and speaking expert Olivia Mitchell, including 1) Twitter helps audience members focus, 2) the audience gets more content, 3) audience members can get questions answered on the fly, and 4) the audience can innovate as well as participate.

All well and good. But what does it mean to “participate?” Beyond the ability to interact and join the conversation, participation can also include the power to form an opinion or make an assessment (about the speakers, the topic, or anything else that crosses one’s mind) and instantly share that perspective with the person three rows over and five rows back – and everyone else in the room half listening while monitoring their email and social media feeds of choice.

Such was the case at the Futures for EDA: the CEO View event at the recent Design Automation Conference (#46dac). As questions were presented to the CEO panelists (Aart de Geus, Wally Rhines and Lip-Bu Tan) by Juan-Antonio Carballo of IBM, an audience member tweeted that “the whole thing was canned” and thereby initiated a rumor that developed traction and began spreading through the audience as the event was actively underway.

The rumor, as it turns out, was completely false. So says Andrew B. Kahng (General Chair, 46th DAC) who personally fielded the questions presented to the panelists from the following sources: four were pre-agreed and originated from the EDA companies themselves, one was pre-agreed and originated from Juan-Antonio, two were pre-agreed and originated from a web survey and seven questions were text-messaged real-time during the panel discussion.

All the world’s a stage and false rumors come and go. On the other hand, to the extent that this event contributed something positive to the health and self-understanding of the industry, the erroneous Twitter chatter was an unfortunate distraction to DAC organizers, panelists and audience members alike.

Like all things social media, instant reach and visibility are powerful commodities that come wrapped in a bunch of interesting questions.

Do people who create content on Twitter and other social media platforms have a responsibility to check facts or confirm their beliefs before blasting them around the world? As a speaker or panelist, how does an increasingly Internet-connected audience influence the way you think about presenting content from a stage? (You sure can’t stop it or control it.) As a content consumer, how do you decide what to read and whom you can trust?

What do you think?