Early this morning www.twitter.com/newsgang shared this article from CNN.com about how Wall Street arrived at its financial crisis and how to avoid it in the future. It highlights how short-sightedness and incentive compensation plans contributed to taking on higher risk. Another aspect of the crisis is how financially connected we are globally.

It is a long held belief of mine that some aspects of our corporate culture, finance, and legal to name two, need to change if social media is to become integrated into America’s regular business environment. Today social media is discounted by corporate executives at worst and politely accepted as a pilot project by most others. Yes there certainly are corporate leaders like Sun, Coca-Cola, GM, Ford and others, but I don’t think I’d get an argument with the statement “social media is still in an early adopter phase in corporate America.”

The connection between the Federal bailout of international financial services firms and social media is captured in some of the elements that I believe will be part of the response to this mess. Those elements are:

1) Greater transparency and disclosure – social media loves and rewards both
2) Institutional incentives that are longer term in nature – this will allow more discussion about imperfections in a company without as much hysteria of how it will impact this quarter’s investor call.
3) Accommodations for the interconnected nature of economies – social media connects individuals from different cultures all the time, perhaps we can take this from a micro level to a broader understanding without it becoming an issue of national pride, but instead one of social growth (Robert Scoble told me this is more a wish than a reality, but I’m an optimist)

Last year at the Society of New Communications Research symposium we had several excellent group conversations about the limitations placed by the finance and legal departments on social media implementation in a corporate environment. Finance is clearly concerned about monthly and quarterly impact to stock price and other metrics within its jurisdiction. Legal is concerned with that any admission on the web, direct or indirect, of imperfection would be seized upon by a zealous trial lawyer in our litigious society.

We surely have a long way to go in addressing these cultural obstacles. As the dust settles around Wall Street, the blame assessed and the remedies constructed to prevent a reoccurrence, watch for these elements of longer-term corporate perspective incentives and greater disclosure. These characteristics will help social media advocates change a corporate culture in ways that will allow the organization to see greater benefit from social media.

By the way, the next Society for New Communications Research symposium is being held in Boston, November 14, I’m sure we’ll pick up this topic and many others, here’s the social media and PR agenda.

The airline America loves to love, Southwest, is in a bit of a safety issue with the FAA and Congress. It is reported that some safety inspections were not conducted or planes not grounded. This post is to highlight Southwest’s PR handling of the situation.

As is the tradition of Southwest, they are upfront. Right on the home page of their website is a link to their statement on the story. Excellent. Some would counsel to put it in the news section, let the issue go through a 24-hour cycle and be done.

Compliments to Southwest and their entire team for their candor on the matter. In what appears to be an issue more about paperwork, bureaucracy and miscommunication instead of dangerous conditions. The language being used by media and Congress is predictably emotional: “unsafe,” “threatening safety,” and from Congressman James Oberstar, “one of the worst safety violations.”

The investigation also involves the Whistle Blower Program, which in itself creates an “us versus them” situation and not at a “Let’s see what happened here” investigation.

In addition to the Southwest statement being in position A on the website, the CEO, Gary Kelly, was on CNN this morning and made the expected rounds of media coverage. While this issue must go through its cycle, the initial round, which included Southwest airlines voluntarily disclosing missed inspections last spring, shows Southwest performing in accordance with its image of being upfront with its passengers.

P.S.: And as you’d expect, it’s on the Southwest Airlines Blog as well. Keep us posted, Southwest, and while it’s good to know your passengers are still using you to get away, your PR team is staying put to work professionally through an interesting situation.

My side comment: Blog leader Paula Berg is a class act in any situation. Great work, Paula.

I know it’s early, but can you imagine a political convention without a known nominee going in? Hot damn, that’s the best reality TV that can be. So get this, the last convention that was somewhat in doubt was 32 years ago with Reagan and Ford, however most pundits say the last true brokered convention was 56 years ago. Let’s not quibble, the fact is this year both the Democratic and Republican conventions have a chance of being decided in real time. They resemble sporting events and not coronations.

They would be the first brokered convention with mini DV cameras, live blogging, Twitter, Utterz… yipes!

Obama, Clinton, Edwards for the Democrats and McCain, Romney neck and neck with one more heavy Giuliani still poised to win a couple of big states on the Republican side.

Look I just can’t get too excited thinking about it because the chances are still slim, but indulge me for just for a moment.

Delegates will become citizen journalists and spin doctors will all of a sudden wish they had a Twitter or Utterz account. (Twitter and Utterz training available here act now!).

Sure those folks are wired with text messages and crackberries, but they will need to reach out to people that may not be in their distribution lists. They may have to reach out to someone that was the opposition just 10 minutes earlier. They may want to try and drive web users to online polls or engage them to show which candidate can motivate outside the walls of the convention hall because that’s the ultimate victory. Eegadds!

Will journalists be plugged into twitter profiles for the candidates or the candidates’ spokespeople (that is a separate conversation whether to have surrogate profiles to float trial balloons)?

Yes social media friends, a brokered convention is one part crisis, two parts breaking news, and all of it adds up to an interesting scenario for microblogging platforms. Stay tuned.

Here is some background on the convention process and brokered conventions

Election 2008 Countdown and Delegate Count

Democratic Convention Watch

Power Line News

Republican National Committee

Democratic National Committee

Time 32:16

Plenty of attention is given to participating in blogs, join the conversation, be open, be authentic, yada yada yada. The early adopters have tested the social media space with ample case studies for dozens of new books and information for panel discussions.

The hidden winners in the blogosphere who get a fraction of the fanfare are market researchers. This podcast is dedicated to the corporate executives who are skeptics of joining the conversation, but as you’ll hear here, have considerable reason to at least listen to it, it being first the podcast and then the thousands of conversations taking place on the web daily.

Look at just one segment of commentary and social media, www.tripadvisor.com, they have more than 10 million reviews of hotels. Forrester research shows that 36 percent of travelers look at reviews and of them, 73 percent report the reviews affect their choices. More from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer – It’s just the tip of the iceberg known as the blogosphere, but in reality is a bunch of people talking just like they do at parties, conference rooms, or ball games. The only difference is online, you can listen in on them.

This podcast is the second and concluding episode of a conversation with Umbria founder Howard Kaushansky. Umbria, at www.umbrialistens.com is one of a handful of companies that provide detailed insights into what people are taking about in blogs, and reviewers’ comments on the web and to a great extent who is saying it.

The bottom line is this

1) There are millions of comments being made on the web about nearly every industry or profession.
2) Even if your company has no intention of starting a blog, the comments that exist can provide significant insight into your company, your competitors, and your market.
3) Blogs and social media is not just a playground of the younger generation, middle age baby boomers use social media, blogs, and travel sites just as much as the 18 -24 year old set.

On another note, Marketing Edge listener Alison Coffey is the winner of the Join the Conversation book drawing. Our next book is Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers. To throw your name in the drawing send me an email at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with the words New Influencers in the subject line.

The following is a conversation between Al Social and Darrin Marketer, their names have been changed to protect the innocent; they are both avid Twitter users with two very different perspectives on the platform. We invite you to interrupt them with your comments.

Al Social – Twitter has done so much to enrich my life.

Darrin Marketer – yeah me too

Al Social – This summer I kept in touch with the family while kayaking the Fjords of Norway, imagine that texting from my phone to post to a blog, website and mobile while in the water.

Darrin Marketer – Yeah, I saved 20% off a computer on Dell outlet

Al Social – New ideas about global warming from Tris Hussey, social media insights from Jeremiah Owyang and Todd Defren. Santa Cause gives twitterers great places to contribute to social change.

Darrin Marketer – it’s the greatest freakin’ opt-in Ad server on the planet, these people are agreeing to follow companies just to get essentially ads pushed at them. I’ve got plenty of clients using twitter to hawk their stuff and getting people to agree to get it.

Al Social – no dude, it’s not about ads it’s about idea exchange. You are just gaming the system. It’s all about the collective of people to advance change.

Darrin Marketer – yeah right, ok I got an idea, let’s get people to follow some company that pushes the latest super bargains for that week, what’s wrong with that? It’s all about me baby, all about me.

Al Social – No no, it’s a snapshot at people’s life is not a bazaar.

Darrin Marketer – that’s where you are wrong my friend, life is a bazaar, and everyone is trying to scrap a piece of turf, a piece of attention. Twitter is just another way to pull the spotlight over to you and there is nothing wrong with that. Oh and your boy Santa Cause, he’s helping promote business, so my friend you just proved my point.

Al Social – Well you are surely not being creative, you’re slapping an old model over a new way of connecting. That’s going to ruin it.

What do you think? Is twitter an opt-in ad server, a social hang out, or both?

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, Seth Godin author of Meatball Sundae, and Steve Mann head of social media for SAP doing a webcast at noon central today. http://tinyurl.com/yutq4b I’ll live blog it here. Just the highlights please, OK

Owyang outline to consider and approach social media POST = People, Objective, Strategy, and Technology. Bottom line point – think it through for the long term. Jeremiah’s blog is http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/

Mann – excellent point about the correllation between those who engage in the community or your discussion early will be more likely to convert as the sales cycle moves forward.

Godin – Classic Godin line, you can’t be like that brother-in-law life insurance salesman at parties who only goes to hit you up for insurance. Remember that this holiday season.

Owyang refers to Lego community to embrace customers to help build new products http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/community/default.asp – He is very clear that this is not about giving away product ideas, no it’s about getting product ideas. And the pay off for them is to be a part of an inside group that then become advocates. Passion is the result of asking for opinions (that last one is my line, so if you don’t like it don’t blame Jeremiah)

Mann makes excellent point again – not every conversation is going to be positive or rosey. However, there can be positive that comes from that, whether its improvement to the product or customer service. It is so refreshing to here someone like Steve who answers to a corporate structure speak like this. It is both a reflection on him as a leader and on the management of SAP.

Godin – Social media is not for every company. I have said this for awhile (listen to Great Blog Debate November 2006) The issue for me is that some companies need to evolve into social media as opposed to “Using Social Media to Grow Your Business” which is the title of this webcast.

You gotta love this one from Owyang – An eye opener ready?

So it used to be that sales managers would take a win/loss report and marketers would pull out the wins to put in their communications. Enter social media, and buyers are taking about the every same things that are in your win/loss reports in the open. Agh! imagine that. Now what?

Companies using social media correctly

http://www.ideastorm.com/

http://www.threadless.com/

Lastly the panel was asked in a couple of words what advice would you give to companies about considering social media (I paraphrasing here on the question) And they said

Owyang – Let Go

Mann – Evolution not revolution

Godin – Be remarkable

Anyone commenting on this post we’ll have a drawing for Seth’s new book Meatball Sundae, Those of you who don’t feel lucky can get it here http://www.squidoo.com/meatballsundae

Time 12:56

The first stop for marketers who are attempting to determine how to approach social media is to listen to the conversations taking place on the web. Most executives are going to ask, what are people saying about our company or our industry? Who are they and does it matter to us?

While the numbers for social networking are mind boggling, an estimated 60 million users on Facebook alone, the perplexing issue for marketers that have must justify their spending is what is the impact to the company, will it grow sales, brand, influence? Or conversely, will not being there hurt us in some way?

In this podcast we highlight one company that can help answer those questions. Umbria, who can be found at www.umbrialistens.com. There tools search blogs, product review comments, and other social media sites looking for company mentions and more importantly context. For example, it is not good enough to learn that Starbucks was mentioned, but that a woman having a bad day found a moment of peace over an egg nog latte at Starbucks. Now that is listening. Umbria industry reports include healthcare, consumer electronics, and other industries

For those into the viral marketing concept, whether Umbria or a strategy that includes alerts and watches from Google, Technorati, Digg and others, the key is having a process that puts your ear to the ground – sorry had to use a cliché somewhere in this piece. Other tools include Sentiment Metrics and Cymfony, there are plenty of choices. Ths issue is with growing numbers of participants in social media, this tactic should be on your 2008 coporate marketing budget.

Do you have a strategy for listening to social media? What tactics do you find helpful?

Join the Conversation Giveaway

Joseph Jaffe’s book Join the Conversation is a good one. Well worth the read. We are giving away a copy with my comments included in the margins. It’s my way of joining the conversation – email me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with Conversation in the subject line. We’ll have a drawing for the winner on December 19.

Giving Back

Every comment and email we get Provident Partners donates a food item to a St. Paul food shelter. Last month 24 items were donated. Thanks for sharing.

Time 7:58

Karen O’Brien, a partner with the Crimson Consulting Group constructs a new way for marketers to evaluate the customer landscape. O’Brien says the outdated description of acquiring customers is to acquire, retain and grow them. Web 2.0 technologies, social media and the abundance of conversations taking place on the Web about products and services have painted a new perspective of the market.

That perspective, according to O’Brien, is attract, engage and extend. Her work won the Marketing Thought Publishing contest sponsored by the Silicon Valley chapter of the American Marketing Association.

I agree with Karen — and with that change comes the uncomfortable reality for marketers, CEOs and sales people that they don’t have control of their brand, as was once thought. One can make the case that companies never controlled their brand. People talked about their negative and positive experiences just as much as they do now. The difference is the proverbial backyard fence is replaced the Web and today their opinions are received by more than the next door neighbor and Aunt Mildred. Nothing against Aunt Mildred.

In this podcast, we discuss the Forrester social media ladder and an excellent example of corporate blogging policy at Sun. O’Brien will be speaking at the Online Market World event at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on October 3.

OK, here’s a blog post about a blog post, about a…well, you get it.

The issue: Bob Lutz is the vice chairman of product development at General Motors and the chairman of GM North America. He is also one of the most prominent Fortune 500 bloggers, as he’s the leader of several contributors to GM’s Fastlane blog. Apparently he was really busy during the past couple of weeks. He didn’t post anything on his blog during that time, and some bloggers who keep a close eye on GM thought this was the beginning of the end of Lutz’s interest in blogging.

The squeaky wheel got the grease: Lutz took a couple of minutes away from his day job at one of the world’s largest auto manufacturers — dealing with global supply chains, Al Gore’s global warming alarms, and $3.50 a gallon gas prices — to remind his friendly blogosphere colleagues that, in fact, he is not bored with blogging. He’s just been tending to a few more urgent and important issues.

Now, I’m as big an advocate for new PR techniques as other folks on the social media circuit, but these kind of situations can make some execs say, “Hey, I don’t need the aggravation of blogging.” Part of me says the blogosphere can seem like the tail wagging the dog, that it’s excellent in some cases and a major distraction for many others.

Lutz’s retort was wrapped in a larger blog post, so kudos for the way he handled it. And when I get a bit cynical about the usefulness of blogs for corporations, I give Shel Holtz a read to level set on the issue. His writing about the Lutz situation inspired this post today.

My mom said, if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything. In the world of social media, I’ve taken that little maxim just one step further: If you don’t have anything worthwhile to say, listen for a while. I mean, the blogosphere shouldn’t penalize those who put quality before quantity and avoid posting just for the sake of saying something. That “something” too often ends up “nothing,” anyway.

Dozens of times I think, I’d like to post about this or that, but usually a child’s homework, a soccer game, work, driving kids around, basketball practice, workout, or a rare quiet dinner with my wife takes precedence. It’s just that simple, and because of those priorities, it seems odd that a blogger — especially one like Bob Lutz — should take flak. So again, Shel is right in this case: The unfortunate solution is to just get thicker skin and keep the faith.

In the end, there are more positives than negatives to the pursuit of blogging. Just ask Bob Lutz.

Live blogging is cool, but is it rude when you are in the middle of someone’s presentation? Hmmm, my parents would think so. Instant reaction is great theater, but should it be the stuff thoughtful blogs are made of? Are you looking for the silver-bullet marketing tactic or the next big thing? Well, you’ve come to the right place.

In this podcast, I chat with Greg Verdino, VP of emerging channels at Digitas and digital marketing seer (yup, a thoughtful guy and it’s not because he has the same hairline as Seth Godin) about dealing with these issues.

Bottom line for Greg: Every company needs to have a deliberate social-media strategy. These venues — blogs, podcasts, and all the other next big-thing things — are not something to be treated as one-off pilot projects. They should be considered as part of a holistic approach, one that seeks first to understand how the individuals that make up a company’s market are using the new media and then to understand what benefits can be reaped by the company from using some or all of them.

Greg is the author of the informative blog found at www.gregverdino.typepad.com.

Greg and I will be speaking at the Business Smart Tools conference on May 15. So will other marketers from General Motors, Xerox, and answerYES Interactive, among others. Provident Partners is giving away two more passes to this event. E-mail us at MarketingEdge@providentpartners.net. The senders of the first two e-mails we receive will be as lucky as Scott Monty of Boston, who won a pass to the conference in last week’s drawing.

We’re also giving away Seth Godin’s latest literary gem on marketing, The Dip. We will name names of the winners soon, and the book is due out May 10. For every e-mail we receive for these giveaways, and for every comment on our blog, Provident Partners will give a food item to a local food shelter.

Podcast length: 9:38

Deloitte –- you may also know them as Deloitte & Touche –- is a global business consulting firm with deep expertise in audit, tax, consulting, financial advisory. Its main asset is knowledge, and it has an integrated approach to how it distributes that asset.

In this Marketing Edge segment, you’ll meet Pat Harkin, national director of marketing for Deloitte Tax. Here is a marketer who combines traditional communications theory with new technologies that embrace his client base, using Deloitte’s greatest asset: knowledge. That knowledge gives the firm’s clients the confidence to move forward toward their business objectives.

As you’d expect, a conservative consulting practice like Deloitte is not Twittering away its assets or blogging just because it can (although they do have some blogs, like its Women’s Initiative WIN Blog).

Deloitte is, however, implementing audio and video formats in a controlled environment, guiding its viewers, readers and listeners through the shoals of their areas of expertise. Deloitte also implements several RSS feeds. One of their podcasts is called Deloitte Insights.

Also in this podcast, the Marketing Edge is giving away a copy of Seth Godin’s new book, The Dip. It’s not available yet, but we’ve pre-ordered and you can learn more about the book at www.squidoo.com/theDipBook.

Why do you want The Dip? It will help you figure out if you can quit what you are doing now and pursue a more rewarding experience. Know when to hold to ’em, know when to fold ’em. The Dip comes out May 10, and you can be one of the first to get a copy by e-mailing marketingedge@providentpartners.net or calling 651-695-0174. The first e-mail or call we get gets the book. For all other e-mails and calls, Provident Partners will donate a food item to a local food shelf (up to 100 items per month; I still have five kids to feed, too).

Podcast length: 12:25

Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall in the conversation between a big company’s CMO and the general counsel on whether the company should have a blog? I would love it. You have that chance by listening to David Ritter’s presentation at Social Media 2007, a conference for marketers and corporate communication leaders sponsored by Business Capital Edge. The conference takes place April 5 and 6 at the Sheraton in downtown Chicago.

David is an attorney with the firm Neal Gerber and Eisenberg. His presentation — “My employees are blogging: What do I do next?” — has received excellent reviews, and he is our guest on this episode of the Marketing Edge. I’m a cautious counselor on blogging, and David’s presentation is a must for any marketer approaching the “blog now!” Kool-Aid punch bowl. This podcast outlines some of the many parameters marketers need to consider before even approaching a conversation with other senior managers about blogging. There is also room in this debate for those responsible for human resources, as well.

Also, be sure to register for our contest. We’re giving away two full-ride registrations to Social Media 2007. Just complete this quick seven-question form.

Here are a few excellent sites and resources for corporate/employee blog policies, just to whet your appetite:

• IBM’s blogging policy
• Plaxo’s blogging policy
• Sun’s blogging policy
• Business Blog Wire: general articles on the topic
• “The Corporate Blogging Book” by Debbie Weil