Collaboration, though vague in definition, seems to be one of the more powerful end results of successful social media efforts. Whether it’s collaborating internally to improve business processes and efficiencies or gang-tackling a product improvement with your own customers, social media tools seem to tear down silos and connect people across disciplines for the betterment of the company.

I’ve been asked to participate in a live web-TV show next week on collaboration for BusinessWeek. New Tools for Collaboration – Best Practices for Building a Competitive Advantage will be the subject of BusinessWeek’s live video webinar on Thursday, March 18 at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT. I’ll join Bloomberg BusinessWeek Assistant Managing Editor Jim Ellis and fellow panelists Harry McCracken of the Technologizer blog and Richard Migliori, EVP and Chief Medical Officer at UnitedHealth Group for a live discussion of the world of collaborative software and practices.

While I have plenty to say on the topic, I’d love to take your ideas and examples to BusinessWeek’s program. Please jump in the comments below and tell me how your company or business uses collaborative software. What platforms and programs to you use to improve internal workflow? What examples of collaborating with external audiences can you share? How has the use of the tools and principles of collaboration improved or changed how you do business?The discussion will certainly enlighten and inform the readers and fellow commentors here. And the best examples will probably percolate to the BusinessWeek discussion next week.

Tell me your collaboration story below. Then go register for the BusinessWeek live event. Doing so means you’re collaborating with me to talk about collaborating. Now that’s pretty cool.

The comments are yours.

South by Southwest Interactive begins in ernest tomorrow as geeks from everywhere descend upon Austin, Texas. If you’ve heard of “South by,” you’ve probably been told it’s an amazing experience that is largely defined by parties and networking. Conference productivity is often tossed by the wayside at these things, but if you don’t plan for business success while attending them, then why are you going?

Conferences of any kind are only as productive as you make them. You can to to every session and learn a lot. You can go to none and do the same. If you’re goals are more business driven, the hallways and blogger lounges are where the action is, if not the exhibition floor. But you can’t just show up and be productive.

As a veteran, albeit a self-appointed title, of many a conference, summit, seminar and boot camp, here’s how I ensure the trip is worthwhile:

Have A Goal

Do you want to learn? Do you want to get in front of venture capitalists and pitch your start-up idea? Do you want to forge a relationship with an influential blogger that can help spread the word about your business? Do you want to find a new job? Know what you’re trying to accomplish so you have a litmus test for decision making. When you’re faced with the decision of going to lunch with your buddies or attending a sponsored lunch/Tweet-up where you know several willing VCs will be milling about, ask: Which will help accomplish my goal of getting funding?

Have A Plan

Whether it’s mapping out the sessions you want to attend or the parties you want to be seen at, going in blindly means you’re going to wind up following everyone else. If you do that, you get sucked into watching them accomplish their goals, if they have any. While the camaraderie and relationship building with the people you know is a big part of getting something out of a conference, it can also be a diversion from what you want to do. Sure, being flexible and going with the flow is good in some instances, but don’t fall into the, “I’ll just do it tomorrow,” trap.

Have A Pitch

Whether you have a defined business objective for the conference or are just going to soak it all in, put together an elevator speech for who you are and what you do. You’ll meet a ton of people. Don’t leave any of them wondering about you, but make your pitch short and concise. Perhaps even do one in 140 characters to force out the B.S.

“I am a speaker, educator and consultant building an online learning community for those interested in understanding social media and Internet technologies for their business.”

Have A Limit

Time will be of the essence in networking, listening to product pitches, pitching your own to as many people as possible, attending sessions and events. Unless you’re locked in to conversations with the people who are helping you get to your goal for the event, know when to step away nicely. I get pitched a lot at conferences. People want me to blog about their gizmo, tool, platform and program. I listen to each pitch, make a quick determination as to whether or not it’s something I might write about, then ask the person to email me details if it is. Some are more persistent than others, but almost everyone understands at that point, I need to move on and I will take the time to look at your thing. Worst case scenario, look at the time and say, “I’m sorry. Maybe we can catch up later? I’ve got to get to a thing. Hit me on Twitter!” It’s polite and non-committal.

Have Another Limit

Most people know that I enjoy a good party. In fact, my South by Southwest experience this year is largely defined by Firefly Funnel Cake Fandango, which is a social event with yummy spirits and snacks. It would be easy for me to have too much fun this week in Nashville, Little Rock and Dallas en route to Austin, then spend the weekend recovering while SXSW ensues. This is one major reason the spirits companies remind us to drink responsibly. Imagine what you want to feel like tomorrow. Base how much you drink tonight on that.

Have Play Time

The evenings at South by Southwest, and many other conferences for that matter, are filled with fun. Sometimes there are daytime events that fit that bill as well. Factor some fun into your experience, rest up for it and plan on letting loose. But schedule the fun around your business goals, not the other way around. Think about it this way, would you rather walk away from the conference with a killer new client, job opportunity or influential friend, or just a killer hangover and a tattoo you can’t explain?

Whatever your goals for South by Southwest, or other conferences you might attend, I hope you reach them. I’ve got my docket full to hit mine. See you in Austin.

Some of you know my dad, Chillie Falls, owns a funnel cake trailer. He even blogs about his adventures selling cakes all over Virginia and elsewhere. You also probably know that I’ve been known to put on a party or two in my time. And yeah, sometimes they sound like an odd combination of locations and themes, but we always wind up blowing the roof off the joint.

When Dad joined Twitter and started chatting with all the freaks and geeks in Internetland, he said, “I’d love to go to one of these conferences and meet all these folks.” Well, get ready, Dad.

Big Red, Dad and I are road trippin’ it to Austin, Texas, to bring Firefly Funnel Cake Fandango to South by Southwest. But we’re stopping along the way to make sure as many people as possible get some of that Funnel Cake Fandango magic. Make sure to follow the action on Dad’s blog where we’ll be posting video diaries of the fun … which may wind up NSFW, so ease up in the cubicle farms, if you know what I mean.

Each night, Dad will pull Big Red up to an exclusive location and serve funnel cakes to anyone willing to buy. Firefly Vodka thought the trip was a cool idea and is sponsoring our shenanigans, too. Drink specials will be had, my friends. (Not to mention, Dad’s been working on a special Firefly Vodka funnel cake glaze. So much for my diet, right?)

We’re stopping at three exclusive locations en route and we want you to join us for a Firefly Funnel Cake Fandango FEEDUP:

Tuesday, March 9
Nashville, Tennessee – Corner Pub, 2000 Broadway

RSVP FOR NASHVILLE AT TWTVITE.COM

Wednesday, March 10
Little Rock, Arkansas – Big Whiskeys – 225 E. Markham Street

RSVP FOR LITTLE ROCK AT TWTVITE.COM

Thursday, March 11
Dallas, Texas – Black Finn’s – 4440 Beltline Road – Addison

RSVP FOR DALLAS AT TWTVITE.COM

The trip culminates with our opening night in Austin, Friday, March 12, for the official Firefly Funnel Cake Fandango at Molotov on West Sixth. Check out the RSVP page on Eventbrite. Social Media Explorer and Blue Clover Studios join forces with Firefly Vodka to put on a regular hootenanny. Come see some killer augmented reality, taste test (or just taste … or test) Firefly Vodka, get one of Dad’s famous funnel cakes (special ones have the Firefly glaze) and hang with some cool cats.

Austin is nuts and parties abound on Friday night. But it doesn’t take much to swing by for a funnel cake! We’ll be there from 8:30 until 1 … or so.

Nashville … Little Rock … Dallas … Austin … We can’t wait to hang with ya. Come see Dad, me, get a funnel cake and try some Firefly. Oh … and drink responsibly. See you soon.

Corporate blog expert Debbie Weil has asked the question, “Should blogging be the hub of your social media efforts?” Tomorrow afternoon, Jay Baer and Chris Baggott will take a stab at answering that in a Compendium Blogware webinar of the same name. Sign up now. Seats are limited.

While Debbie has a fantastic discussion going on in the comments section of the post mentioned above, I thought it appropriate to talk a bit about the hub theory of blogging and ensure the notion is looked upon in the proper perspective.

First, we need to assume that we’re talking about blogging for business or corporations. This differs from personal/hobby or media blogs because with each you have slightly different purposes, goals and outcomes of success.

Image by base10 via Flickr

Personal blogs are ego driven. They are either personal opinion platforms for the author or the content is almost solely what the author chooses to write. Hobby blogs are much the same. Media blogs are focused on driving content around an audience’s needs or interests to draw eyeballs and increase exposure to the site’s advertising. The best corporate blogs are focused on driving business success while serving the audience’s needs.

As an example, look at Fairytale Brownies. They have a corporate blog which has a prescribed goal of winning search results around specific keywords. Their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube presences clearly drive people back to the blog for more information (along with other site-specific content that serves its respective community there). The blog is clearly their hub for connecting with customers.

If you visited their blog in February, you found specific calls to action for Valentine’s Day themed promotions. When you clicked through, you were taken to custom landing pages to buy Valentine’s Day brownies for your loved one. With similar approaches around the year (see St. Patrick’s Day ideas there now), Fairytale Brownies have driven thousands of visitors to their e-commerce site and report an impressive 13 percent conversion rate among those visitors to qualified leads. While they do not disclose specific financials, they have shared a 170 percent return on their investment in business blogging.

The reason (though I’m sure Baggott wants me to tell you it’s because they use Compendium) is because their blog is a hub for their social media efforts. They do participate genuinely on Facebook and Twitter, answering specific questions, thanking fans and the like, but continually bring the focus of the company’s social media efforts back to the blog and e-commerce opportunities. The clear focus to drive customers to the blog, thus giving them the options to click through and purchase is what drives their online success.

Can social outposts be your hubs? Sure. Are they as effective? I don’t think so. You can control you blog completely. Focusing that content on winning search results is easier to execute than on Facebook or Twitter. The more search traffic you can drive, coupled with the social media traffic you move from your outposts, the more your efforts are optimized.

For more, check out the webinar with Jay and Chris tomorrow. It’s free and will certainly be full of great information.

In the meantime, what do you think? Is a blog best used as the hub of your social media efforts? What about focusing your activities on Facebook or Twitter? The comments, as always, are yours.

Related articles by Jason Falls and Zemanta

• Corporate Blog Success Begins And Ends With Business Metrics (Social Media Explorer)
• Should a Blog or Twitter be Your Social Media Hub? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Companies Should Organize For Social Media In A Hub-And-Spoke Model (Forrester Research)

It seems like the one question I inevitably get from people around the country is, “What’s next?” There’s always an implication that they mean, “Which social network is the next Twitter or the next Facebook?” My answer is normally that I don’t know that there will be a next Facebook or Twitter. Sure, there might be, but I see the Web 2.0 boom settling down and becoming more about consolidation than more companies popping up to stake a claim on user’s time.

Instead of worrying about whether or not Foursquare is the next big thing, I think social media marketers, public relations professionals and communicators should focus on the technology. The networks and applications won’t change much. Sure, you need to watch them, understand them, and find ways to communicate, provide value to those communities and so on, but the next big thing will be predicated on function, not form.

If I had to pick one “next big thing” I would say that it’s already happening and it’s mobile. Smart phones happened fast. Because of the open source culture of the web and Apple’s ability to come to its senses and let any developer build applications for their iPhone platform, the technology got ahead of the users. Instead of playing with a machine we couldn’t visualize how to use, we suddenly had easy apps that did real things for us literally at our finger tips.

Web development was the next big thing in 1998. Community development was the next big thing in 2008. Mobile development is the next big thing now, and it’s already happening.

Do yourself and your company a favor and mark down these dates and locations and send your most likely candidate to be a mobile developer to one of the MobileX conferences coming to Columbus, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville and Lexington, Ky. You (or they) will learn from some awesome mobile thinkers already doing it.

MobileX is coming to Columbus, Ohio, on March 4; Chicago, Ill., on March 5; Atlanta, Ga., on March 26; Nashville, Tenn., on March 27 and Lexington, Ky., on April 16. It’s run by my buddies Brian and Luke from Awesome, Inc., in Lexington who put together a pilot mobile event last year that produce some awesome learning and thinking. I toured Awesome, Inc., with Luke in April of last year.

The events are one-day mind-blowing learning sessions, collaborations and even contests. You get to learn, but you get to do as well. Plus you meet some talent folks to perhaps partner with down the road. For more on their pilot event, check out the recaps on the Awesome, Inc., site.

To learn more about the lineups for each of the upcoming events check out the agendas and speakers for:

• Columbus
• Chicago
• Atlanta
• Nashville
• Lexington

On each site’s page you can register to attend. Early bird pricing is only $60!

And my boys hooked me up with a little discount code, too. So when prompted drop in “ainc10″ for a 10% off deal. I don’t get anything from the sales of the tickets, but have told Brian and Luke I’ll gladly tell people about the events. I think they’re going to tell people I’m a sponsor in return, but no money is exchanging hands here. I’d recommend MobileX even if I got no benefit out of it because I think mobile is next and the collaborative nature of these events makes them invaluable.

Now it’s your turn. What do you think is next in social media? Is mobile it or is it something else? As always, the comments are yours.

The most important piece of copy you write for a blog post, an email or any other type of written communication is your headline. This is even more true now as the information overload of today’s Internet makes finding great content an exercise in headline browsing.

For example, I subscribe to the RSS feeds from about 70 blogs covering the alcohol, wine and spirits industry. Yet, I have a hard time finding good content within these blogs. Mind you, it’s not because the good content isn’t there. It’s because I also subscribe to 350 other blogs and make efficient use of my time by skimming headlines looking for an inviting post. Many people suffer from inbox overload and treat their email the same way.

The same theory holds true if you look for good content on social news sites like Digg or StumbleUpon. The posts that often make the front pages of those sites, thus receiving an influx of traffic, aren’t always posts with great content, but ones with sexy headlines.

Take a look at a snap shot of several posts in my Spirits Blogs folder from Google Reader. Scanning this list quickly, I see one post that might be worth reading, but it took me a second to find it. DrinkBoston’s “Locke-Ober – Best Boston Bars” at least teases me that I’m going to find out which bars in Boston are good. It turns out, Locke-Ober is a bar and the post is a review of it. After reading the post, I would respectfully suggest a headline like, “Drink At Locke-Ober. Teddy Roosevelt Did!” Or perhaps the more sophisticated approach of, “Why Locke-Ober Is One Of Boston’s Best, And Worst Bars.”

With the intent of being more constructive and less critical, the rest of the headlines are confusing or dull. “Islands of Scotland” doesn’t tell me what the post is about, really. I assume it’s a travel post and irrelevant to my whiskey interest. Turns out it’s a post about touring whiskey distilleries on the islands. I love Dr. Whisky, but “Malt Mission 2010 #379” tells me nothing other than he’s cataloging his posts in some numerical fashion that the casual reader doesn’t understand. His first sentence is very interesting, however:

“There is some real, old-fashioned, hand-crafted, family-run whiskey-making going on in the Hudson Valley.”

How about making the headline, “Old-Fashioned, Hand-Crafted, Family-Run Whiskey In … The Hudson Valley?” since those descriptions are more often associated with Kentucky and Tennessee distillers?

According to Brian Clark in his fantastic piece about writing magnetic headlines, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. With the majority of web readers skimming rather than reading and aggregation services becoming the preferred source for today’s news, the key to great blog traffic is your headline.

Here’s hoping the spirits bloggers take the suggestion to heart. You should too.

And in case you want some good spirits blogs to read in addition to the above, I recommend Accidental Hedonist, What Does John Know, Dowd on Drinks, The Chuck Cowdery Blog, BBQ and Bourbon and The Intoxicologist. There are a ton more and I’ll probably get some grief for leaving a few out. My most recent list can be found in my spirits blogs OPML file here. Download it, import it to your feed reader and your Spirits folder will have the good stuff.

Yesterday was a whirlwind of reactions, mostly overreactions, to Google’s latest concoction, Google Buzz. I posted a quick video tour to help people know how to get started before spending the day busy with client meetings. When I was finally able to catch up to the blog posts, Twitter pronouncements and, yes, the Buzz itself, I needed a couple of hours to soak in all the information and do a gut-check to make sure I was the only sane person left.

The biggest “WTF” moment for me has been all the talk that Google now is suddenly a social network and is a Facebook killer. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I see nothing Facebook-like about Buzz, Google has always had a loosely structured social network underlying its communications utilities and both platforms serve different primary purposes. In essence, when people like Jason Calacanis declare Facebook’s value dropping in half because Google suddenly now has a social network, I have to wonder how many stock options he’s got and whether or not on that day he had all his marbles.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Jason a lot. But his “Breaking News” was more sensationalistic and irrational than weather reporters spelling the end of the world because a few inches of snow is predicted for the area.

Google is a communications utility built on an organizational structure of search. This is why Google applications like Gmail and Google Reader are never-ending scrolls of information. The Google mindset is not to scroll, hunt and peck like the majority of the free world. The Google brain says, “I know what I want to find here. Let’s just use the search box at the top of the page.” The user experience is driven by the search box. Because most people want to browse around and find what they’re looking for, Google is too much information, not organized well and often overwhelming. Buzz takes that quality and magnifies it because so much social information is coming in at hyper speed.

Facebook is a social network built on connections with people you know, trust or want to. Communications in Facebook is mostly public, which is a relatively new phenomenon and still the shiny, new object in most people’s minds. Because its infrastructure is built on connections and its functionality forces people’s actions to be mostly public and shared with their friends, it is an intrinsically viral platform as well.

Google is a communications utility. Facebook is a social network.

What Google Buzz accomplishes is that it amplifies social functionality within that underlying, but long-existing Google network. It is a nice bell/whistle to drive more social connectivity in the Google platform. But it does not replace Facebook or Twitter nor does it have to.

You don’t play Mafia Wars in Google. You don’t email anyone you want, regardless of network, in Facebook. (Yeah, I know they’re announcing that, but you get the point.)

Both are borrowing nice ideas from each other and making their platforms better for the users, but I don’t see Buzz as a Facebook killer. In fact, I see it as proof that Google’s search-first mindset continues to baffle the majority of users who want to navigate and (ironically) find things easier. Don’t throw information at us like seeds at pigeons, Google. That’s what Buzz is doing.

Some Finer Points On Buzz

After watching Buzz for a few hours yesterday, I did a couple of things I would recommend you do. First, I disconnected the ability for my Twitter posts to be imported into Buzz. I have conversations with people on Twitter and having those same messages posted on Buzz would mean I now have to monitor two places to engage with people reacting to my posts. Not paying attention to the reactions on Buzz is disingenuous to my network there. It’s the same reason I don’t auto-post my Tweets to Facebook. I don’t monitor Facebook as regularly and would then do that group of friends a disservice by ignoring their reactions to the auto-posts. I’m considering not posting SME items on Buzz for the same reason, but am monitoring it to see.

I also un-followed over 100 people. Buzz is simply a fire hose of information that is impossible to follow, filter or organize because Google thinks you’ll just search for what you want to find rather than browse for what might catch your eye. In order for Buzz to be useful, then, you really have to limit who you follow to the small group of people you either want to engage with more frequently or who provide you the greatest value in what they share, post, etc., on Buzz.

It’s Still New

Keep in mind Buzz is less than 48 hours old at this writing. Initial reactions are going to be extreme one way or the other to get attention, drive traffic and tabloid-ify the news of the day. What Buzz will be for you is exactly what you make of it. If it’s too much, too fast, you won’t use it. If you get in an poke around and set it so that you are seeing a manageable amount of information and interacting meaningfully with those providing it, you’ll like it a lot.

But apparently not as much as Jason Calacanis. Heh.

A penny for your thoughts. The comments are yours.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Bites Into Social Media With Google Buzz (thoughtpick.com)
• Brands Wasting No Time With Google Buzz. This Could Get Annoying. (techcrunch.com)
• Microsoft and Yahoo! bitch and moan about Google Buzz (pheedcontent.com)
• Google Officially Announces Google Buzz – A Google Approach To Sharing (thenextweb.com)
• Google Buzz: The Missing Features (readwriteweb.com)
• Google’s Social Move With Google Buzz-Google Is Going Social (techgenuine.com)

I was thinking about a post, but figured I’d just give you a tour. Enjoy!

Google Buzz Set-Up Video Tour from Jason Falls on Vimeo.

A social media policy is a company’s first line of defense against risk in social media marketing. Shockingly, only one in three companies has a social media policy in place. While I’m sure that the majority of marketing managers and decision-makers who read Social Media Explorer are ahead of the curve, there’s a good chance your company doesn’t have a written policy.

*UPDATE* – eMarketer published a story and research on companies without social networking policies just hours after we went live with this post. 69% of American companies do not have social networking policies for employees.

Part of the problem is that a social media policy is a misnomer. Your company should have social media policies. It’s not just making rules for who can blog and say they work for you. It’s more than just telling employees what they can and cannot do on company computers. Here’s a list of some social media policies you should consider:

• Employee Code of Conduct for Online Communications
• Employee Code of Conduct for Company Representation in Online Communications
• Employee Blogging Disclosure Policy
• Employee Facebook Usage Policy
• Employee Personal Blog Policy
• Employee Personal Social Network Policy
• Employee Personal Twitter Policy
• Employee LinkedIn Policy
• Corporate Blogging Policy
• Corporate Blog Use Policy
• Corporate Blog Post Approval Process
• Corporate Blog Commenting Policy
• Corporate Facebook Brand Page Usage Policy
• Corporate Facebook Public Comment/Messaging Policy
• Corporate Twitter Account Policy
• Corporate YouTube Policy
• Corporate YouTube Public Comment Policy
• Company Password Policy

While it may seem frivolous to spell out policies for every social network, that’s not quite the point. Different networks have different implications for different companies. YouTube, for instance, is a fertile ground for anonymous commentors and lets-see-if-I-can-say-the-eff-word fodder. If your company or employees have reason to be on YouTube, it might be best to have a policy to prevent any future embarrassment if they’re outed as an employee while behaving like the crowds.

By having written policies for your employees in personal and company use, your customers or audience in their behavior in interacting with your company and processes in place for handling social media content production and user-generated content handling, you mitigate risk and keep your lawyers happy. In my experience, when policies are in place, the “no”s you are used to hearing from legal and compliance suddenly become “yes”es.

While there are several excellent pieces of advice from around the web on what you should include in a policy or how to write your own (see below), I was recently asked to review a product called the Social Media Policies Toolkit offered by Toolkit Cafe. The Toolkit features templates for many of above types of policies. With them, you can either plug your company name in and go, or use as a basis for your policy creation.

Frankly, I was so impressed by the templates, I asked the Toolkit Cafe folks if I could not only recommend their product, but use it and even participate in any affiliate program they might have. You may have noticed their advertisement in my sidebar recently. I do recommend this product and will use it as a basis of policy creation for clients in the future. As always, I recommend the policies be customized and catered to each specific client’s needs, but the bases and best practices are covered with these templates. The kit is available for $149.00.

And yes, I do profit if you purchase after clicking on the ad or the links above. If you wish me to not profit from the recommendation, you can visit http://toolkitcafe.com and purchase free of the affiliation. Regardless, if you’re working on or planning to work on policies for your organization or clients, you should have this tool in your arsenal.

The Toolkit Cafe products (they also offer similar kits for Six Sigma, Budget & Finance, Telecommuting, Windows 7 and IT Governance) are geared toward Information Technology managers and directors, but are wholly useful to other disciplines.

And, as if snooping around my brain to land in this post, Seyfarth Shaw Attorneys emailed me last night to let me know of a webinar they are producing tomorrow, Feb. 4, at 1 p.m. ET, called “Untangling Web 2.0: Understanding The Implications of Social Media In The Workplace.” The webinar is free for the firm’s clients and $100 for non-clients. I plan on attending to see what Seyfarth Shaw labor and employment attorney Devjani Mishra has to say about risk and social media. The webinar is scheduled to include tips for implementing an effective social media policy, best practices for the use of social media to attract and screen job applicants and special consideration for employer-sponsored social media activity.

While I know little about Mrs. Mishra or Seyfarth Shaw and cannot endorse the information they’ll present (I’ve not seen it), the legal perspective will be good to hear. I promise to report back … likely live on Twitter.

Does your company have a written policy? Does it include all or part of the above listing? What challenges did you find writing it? If you haven’t written one yet, what specific company challenges are you concerned about. Share if you can and let’s discuss in the comments.

Related articles by Jason Falls and Zemanta

• Social Media Policies Needn’t Be Draconian. But You Do Need One (Shel Holtz)
• Businesses Need To Formalize Their Social Media Policies (ReadWriteWeb)
• The Need For Corporate Social Media Policies (Sysomos Blog)
• The Other Side Of Social Media Policies: Employees Rights (Mizz Information)
• The Right Way For Media Companies To Create Social Media Policies (MediaShift)
• 3 Great Social Media Policies To Steal From (Mashable)

Once upon a time, e-mail marketing was considered intrusive, at best. Sure, there were plenty of people willing to sign up to get coupons and discounts from their favorite business, but if you were an “e-mail marketer” you were just a rung or two above a telemarketer on the scale of professions people didn’t like.

The factor that gradually changed the environment of e-mail marketing in the last 10 years is content. Companies today are focusing more on relevant content aimed at consumers who opt-in to the messaging. It’s no longer an e-mail “blast.” It’s a gift-wrapped package of goodness the receiver wanted in the first place.

You can thank the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 for a lot of that. But I think you can also thank the consumer demand that produced a shift toward a content-centric web, the immediate precursor to what we call social media. Content is king. If you deliver good stuff, people will consume it.

I’ve called myself an e-mail marketer for a mere four months now. Sure, I’ve helped clients with their e-mail efforts, too, but I started my own e-newsletter in October. Thanks to my e-mail partners at Blue Sky Factory, I’ve learned a graduate degree’s worth of information about e-mail in that short time. That, along with my previous experiences, leads me to one firm conclusion: Social media is critical to modern e-mail marketing.

It’s All About The Content

A good e-newsletter is like a series of very useful, short blog posts put together in a fashion that serves the audience good information in bite-size portions, then perhaps directs them to where they can find more. Coupons and discounts still serve a purpose, but if you spit out 300 words or so of just company news that doesn’t resonate with the subscribers, you soon won’t have many. The same content rules apply in blogs and social media outposts. The content has to be good.

Growing Your List Is Now About Sharing

You can’t just buy lists and add them to yours anymore. Legalities aside, your audience won’t appreciate the practice and you’ll be labeled a spammer. Promoting your list is a great jump-start, but the way you’ll grow qualified, interested audience members is when your current readers share your content. Whether it’s the “Forward To A Friend” button or social media sharing on sites like Twitter and Facebook, your readers will grow your list for you so long as you provide them both reason and motivation to do so.

Great content (the hub, if you will, of social media) begets great sharing (one way you build trust in social media) which grows your audience and helps you build a community (often the aspiration of social media marketing). And that community is a collection of people who voluntarily signed up to be in your tribe. They are your influencers, your fans, your ambassadors.

The area I’ve focused most of my studying upon recently is the Share With Your Network (SWYN) effect. In fact, D.J. Waldow and I have prepared a free webinar on the SWYN effect. We’ll present it as one of Blue Sky Factory’s free webinars at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT Wednesday. You can sign up to attend here. And if you’re occupied at that time, Blue Sky will have it available shortly after at their webinar archives.

As a bit of a teaser, here are some interesting items you’ll learn more about in the webinar:

• Exploring Social Media (my newsletter) saw a reach increase of an astonishing 107 percent from November’s newsletter.
• With good SWYN metrics, you can tell which singular subscriber spreads your message to more people, helping you identify your biggest brand influencers.
• Incentivizing sharing produces real results that grow your list to people who want to be on it.

And if you think e-mail is sooooo 2006, we’ll help you understand why it’s not.

In the meantime, tell me how you use e-mail marketing, or how you would if you don’t currently. What challenges and questions do you have about e-mail marketing that either I, or your fellow readers can help with. The comments are yours.

I sat in the audience at SOBCon last May astonished at the presentation given by Glenda Watson Hyatt on accessibility and social media. Glenda, who has cerebral palsy — and I say “has” instead of “suffers from” because if you’ve ever met her, you know damn well she doesn’t suffer from anything — is probably the leading authority on technology and accessibility. I learned that day that for all the people Social Media Explorer serves, it doesn’t serve everyone well. Today, it takes a step closer to doing so thanks to BuzzVoice.

You’ll notice the sidebar now includes a widget, just under the search box, that says, “This Site Talks!” Hit play and you can listen to real time, text-to-voice processing of the posts here. Let it run and you can listen to post after post in reverse chronological order. While the posts as podcasts (yeah, you can even subscribe in iTunes) feature is cool, the reason I’m so excited to be a part of BuzzVoice’s Real Time Radio beta is because it gives a level of accessibility to those with visual impairments.

BuzzVoice, formerly known as PimpMyNews, has been offering their technology up for a couple of years now, but with a primary consumer focus. Their product essentially allowed you to subscribe to your favorite RSS feeds as podcasts. I use BuzzVoice’s iPhone app to listen to my top 6-8 blogs via podcast as I commute to work. While I could certainly take the SME RSS feed and reposition it as a podcast, but making all that work and look nice would probably require more brain power than I have.

Enter BuzzVoice’s new publisher focus with the real time radio widgets. The platform provides real-time audio translations (and the voices aren’t even all that awkward) of your blog to give your audience the ability to enjoy the blog on the go … or if they have visual impairments. The widget allows your blog to become a streaming radio station, of sorts. You can stream live, subscribe to the podcast version in iTunes, access it via the BuzzVoice iPhone app and even grab the widget to share on other sites.

Give it a test drive. BuzzVoice is in beta with the publisher’s platform right now and wants your feedback. Drop them in the comments below or email publishers@buzzvoice.com.

While there are just a handful of publishers who are a part of the Beta program, they go live to enable everyone to have their blog offered in real time radio format next month. To ensure your site is in the offering, email them your site’s RSS feed URL at publishers@buzzvoice.com.

And they’ve given me 10 private Beta invites to hand out. If you’re interested, drop a request in the comments below. I have to choose the 10 based on some prescribed criteria, but let me know if you’re interested and I’ll reach out if there’s an invite left.

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