Happy New Year from all of us at WOMMA! I am honored to be serving as your Board Chair this year and looking forward to an amazing 2013.

2012 was a busy year for the organization – raising the bar on our events, upgraded educational offerings, new councils, the WOMM ROI guidebooks, and refreshed ethical and legal guidance to our practitioners, and some exciting additions to the staff. My predecessor, David Witt, set the tone across all of these efforts by focusing the organization on building brand advocacy – which has become a “true north” for us as the official trade organization for word of mouth and social media marketing.

Before I share with you our focus for 2013, I would like to contextualize it with a few sentences on my history with the organization. I was lucky enough to be present at WOMMA’s first summit in Chicago in 2005. I was a marketer at Dell and the lone member of a large department tasked with figuring out how to employ “viral marketing” for a new product launch (these were the days of Subservient Chicken, after all). At WOMMA, I not only learned the value of marketing by inspiration vs. interruption, I was more importantly given entre into a community of practice. In a medium that moves as quickly as ours, it would be impossible to stay current with simply reading industry blogs or our own experiences alone.

Over the years, WOMMA has connected me with the professionals who have given me advice that has changed my career and accelerated my own practice of WOMM. It is personal experience combined with what we learn from our respected peers that will allow us to continue to evolve WOMM as quickly as the means to spread and amplify it.

Thus, in looking at 2013, I am not here to shift our content direction, but instead to focus on HOW we as an organization, a staff, and a board serve you, the members. We want to take that amazing community feeling and valuable peer-to-peer connections of Summit & WOMM-U and extend it throughout the year and to a deeper bench of each member company’s marketers. For all of those who have approached me and wanted to get more involved, you have been heard. We will be providing many more means and opportunities throughout the year for you to take a more active role and get more value from the organization in the process.

Here’s a sampling of some new ways the WOMMA community will be extended:

• WOMMfest - On February 19, we’ll be hosting a first-of-its-kind coast to coast celebration of WOMM called WOMMfest.  In addition to three anchor events in Seattle, Chicago, and Atlanta, our friends at House Party are powering an opportunity for 50+ member companies across the country to host local WOMMA Trivia Nights. This is a chance to share your knowledge and enthusiasm with colleagues, clients, agencies, and vendors alike. Apply to host a party in your city here.
• New Member Center - First of its kind member center providing you an opportunity to access a huge library of presentations and research material to build your internal cases for WOMM, but the opportunity to connect with your WOMMA colleagues and fellow council members on a far more frequent basis.
• Better Events - Want to have a role in determining what content is shared on our event stages?  We are assembling member task forces who will determine what speaking and content proposals will make it on stage at WOMM-U and Summit. Email Sarah Stauffer at Sarah@WOMMA.org for more info.
• More Councils - Our expanding group of councils and evolving WOMM-COM programs will provide great opportunities to get more members of WOMMA companies involved by providing year round education for members at every stage of their careers.

We wake up every day hoping to make WOMMA a more valuable organization for our members.  If you have ideas or feedback, we’d love to hear from you, especially in the member center. It’s your organization, and we hope that in 2013 you’ll help us find ways to make WOMMA even better for your career, for our membership, and for the entire industry.

Start interacting and taking full advantage of your membership right now at the member center.

Happy New Year!

Wednesday night, we closed the book on another WOMMA Summit (disclosure: Spredfast is a governing member and I serve on the board).   Having now had a few hours to reflect, there were some major themes.

Back to Advocacy – In session after session, we heard a focus from brands on meeting the needs not only of their X million fans, but creating content, experiences, and value for their hard core fans.  One of the greatest examples of of approaching this came from Jackie Huba’s preview of her forthcoming 2013 book Monster Business.  Lady Gaga’s marketing strategies focus on the 1% of her fans that want to have hyper-engaged relationships with her.  The 6 Lessons of Gaga’s loyalty strategy are a fantastic reminder that this advocate strategy needs to drive platform choices instead of the tail wagging the dog.

Big Businesses are Dissolving the Social Pillar –Nestle Digital & Social Global Head (and WOMMA co-founder) Pete Blackshaw,Greg Gerik of 3M, and “Turbo” Todd Watson of IBM all shared the communications pillars of their organizations – none of which include standalone “social”.  Instead of being a siloed initiative of a few trained marketers, social has permeated the way the company communicates on all fronts.  This is a beautiful thought, but paying off on it requires investment in socially empowering hundreds of brand managers and SMEs, measuring the results of their efforts, and getting engagement and feedback data to the right places in the organization in a way that energizes the organization.

The Paid/Owned/Earned (and sometimes Shared) media model is here to stay as a meaningful model.  No longer is there questioning about the validity or value of WOM that gets stimulated by ad dollars as the changing dynamics of what it takes for users of social platforms to actually see a connections’ recommendation.  What does differ is how people are handling the integration of paid. Whether it is a new skill being picked up by the brand, executed through specialist agency collaboration, etc. – it is a skill set that must be added to your integrated WOMM team’s arsenal molto pronto.

Measurement is becoming more sophisticated and scrutinized.  Many of the success metrics shared in sessions were about the “quick win”.  This seems to be a result of the continued ROI pressure that social initiatives, along with the entire marketing mix face (backed up by data shared in the IBM CMO study.  But elevating social activity to “business value” needs to incorporate the value of both the quick win and the long game for which social is so uniquely designed.  Dr. Walter Carl shared some great guidance on how to look at the full value picture of social in a more holistic way – giving social credit for some of the “long game” communications objectives it achieves instead of short term sales, coupon redemptions, etc alone.  We need to move beyond activity metrics and the “short game” and start thinking about how to give social credit for the more complex role it plays including soliciting feedback, cultivating offline WOM recommendations, and developing brand advocates who will spark to action in a crisis.

The Legal Socialpocalypse – The Summit closed with some amazing and well-timed reminders from lead legal counsel/cyberlawyers for Coca-Cola, American Express, and USAA.  Reminders included the need for a higher level of rigor in terms of sharing rights-protected material to basic security in the way that social accounts are being managed by individuals in the company (personal logins to control corporate Facebook, anyone?).  Above all, the guidance was to get legal involved early and often so they become involved in shaping a program instead of the late stage “no” guys.

It’s great to see so many companies that were early pioneers in social continuing to evolve and willing to share their lessons along the way for the benefit of the entire industry!  For more details and sharable nuggets, visit WOMMA’s curated tweet and photo highlights the summit sessions: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. To see more of the WOM that took place at Summit, check out the Summit Social Hub powered by FeedMagnet.

Last week, Spredfast published our first Social Engagement Index Benchmark Report, characterizing the social accounts, organizations, activities and results of a large swath of the Spredfast user base.  As part of this, we segmented companies into Activating, Expanding, and Proliferating segments.   Data is what it is, what you draw from it, however, is a bit of a Rorschach test. Trust me – the distribution even looks like an inkblot upon close review!

It is only natural to read a study like this and be thinking, “what does this mean about me and my organization?”  Chances are, because you are reading the data through that lens, you may have only drawn 1-2 takeaways from the Social Organization data.  I am lucky enough to work closely with many of our customers and would like to share my top 5 takeaways – culled from reviewing the data wearing differing customer hats.

The Value of Internal Orchestration is Validated – If you have been trying to inspire social players across your company to get coordinated in an SMMS publishing and analytic platform, this data helps you.  As organizations begin to orchestrate across an increasing number of users and social accounts – to bring more and more of the company’s social activity into a place where it can be measured & improved, we see them working with correspondingly greater audiences and even some increased efficiency with the way those orgs engage (deeper in the data – look at Total Engagement for instance).

It’s More than Marketing – If you are being asked to work with colleagues in Care or Support, in Marketing in other countries, in Corporate Communications, Risk Management, etc., you are not alone.  With even the Activating companies coming in at a mean of 3 groups coordinating for social engagement, multiple groups in social are the rule vs. the exception.  While coordination across peer silos in an org can be a challenge without an executive mandate, many companies are successfully making it happen.

Measuring by Content Themes is Table Stakes – the benchmark shows organizations moving beyond social account as a variable to measure success.  With a mean of 94 unique content labels across the entire sample set, we see clear indication that orchestrated companies want to compare performance of social campaigns, product content, and themes.

We Have a Long Way to Go – It may have been a long strange trip thus far, but even the most active, coordinated Proliferating orgs in this study had a mean of 99 social accounts under management.  While I can’t calculate that as a percent of the total number of social accounts that represents, we know that is substantially south of the self-reported average of 178 corporate owned accounts in data collected by Altimeter.  Given that the 178 number is more than a year old and is not the result of full 3^rdparty audits, 99 is likely less than half of the total.  While the goal may not be 100%, organizations should be actively making decisions about who and what should be coordinated in social at scale.

Numbers don’t lie, which is fabulous as we’re experts at lying to ourselves.   I invite you to review the benchmark again and do two things:

1. Challenge your assumptions – question your initial takeaways of the benchmark with a second hard glance, looking for opportunities where your org could be driving more value from social.
2. Find solace – To all of you doing the hard work of orchestrating social every day, you are the vanguard, and we hope you will see in the benchmark contents that your work is paying off.  Our collective Spredfast hats are off to you!

Who better to discuss the opportunities and challenges of scaling social to the edges of a large organization than 2 companies doing it in a big way, but with very different backgrounds and methodologies: Aramark and Whole Foods Market?  In early April, through a webinar hosted by Social Media Today and moderated by WCG’s Chuck Hemann, I joined co-panelists Aileen Dreibelbis (Aramark) and Natanya Anderson (Whole Foods Market) to do just that.  In the notes below, you will find some of the major takeaways around their approaches to the pillars of social at scale.  For those interested, the full hour of discussion can be downloaded here (http://info.spredfast.com/SMTwebinardownload.html)

Quick Background on the brands:

Whole Foods has incredibly high corporate brand awareness and history of locally-focused marketing in addition to what is done on the corporate and regional level.  At the risk of punning, the WFM social footprint grew “organically” with local stores having set up pages, handles, etc with little oversight from corporate.

Alternately, Aramark is a private company that (among other things) operates food services on 300+ college campuses – each  individually branded with campus-specific names.  Aramark is challenged to build & engage an ever-overturning collegiate customer base with no corporate brand social “halo” to provide cover.  Aramark is sparking much of their social activity from the corporate center.

Culture-Right Strategy – As Natanya puts it “Culture eats strategy for lunch.”  No matter how beautiful or theoretically desirable a particular social strategy might be, it can’t create value if a brand’s culture can’t absorb it. This adds some danger to the desire to copy the strategy of others without thinking through what truly works in your own organization.  Putting together a strategy that is right for YOUR organization is the foundation of any successful attempt to scale social as you will have to move past the “native” believers. Despite the differences in their journey to take social to the edges of the org, there are major lessons surrounding the pillars to social scale and how they are approaching:

Business-Meaningful Definition of Success – Notice I didn’t say ROI (which has a very crisp, narrow definition) here.  This could be driving awareness, mitigating risk, increasing collaboration, mitigating risk to your brand, improving customer service response, etc.

For both organizations, and for most of Spredfast’s install base, engagement is critical.  For Whole Foods, that manifests as activity taken within their large audiences – with special emphasis on shares.  WFM knows that highly engaged customers become advocates.  For Aramark, beginning from lower audience penetration and facing a shorter advocacy window, building audiences is a primary goal followed by driving engagement.  Critical engagement metrics for Aramark include likes shares comments and (particularly) photo uploads.

Ongoing Training – Both Aileen and Natanya are working within the training cultures of their organizations.  At Aramark, there has been great effort to detail and train campus marketers from the ground up on social – emphasizing how certification, training, and engagement fit in with their overall objectives within the organization.  WFM is able to weave social into a rigorous ongoing training regimen and existing infrastructure in the company. Both organizations treat training as continuous and weave social into the fabric of a participant’s job vs. making it “extra”.

Content Strategy – Both organizations provide some high quality content from subject matter experts from the central core, but local colleges are expected to keep up their own conversation calendars and plan at least a month in advance.  WFM empowers local store marketers to interpret content or messages from corporate in their own way and listens for gems from the local nodes to share.

Technology – Technology can play a number of different roles in operationalizing a strategy.  Even the most basic advantage of an SMMS – having a 3^rd party platform through which you can credential individuals in your organization to social accounts – can help protect you from the social risks involved with individual employees carrying native platform credentials around on their phones.  But technology can also help teams collaborate directly in a social platform, share content, route for approval or action, and respond to customer needs.

Agility & Evolution – As the organization learns & grows, and you learn what engages customers and sparks loyalty, you must be willing to frequently adjust and evolve your strategy to incorporate that data.  Aileen from Aramark lists opening up to a frequently evolving strategy as one of the most important and difficult steps in preparing for social at scale.

For more info from this group, you can follow @natanyap, @aramarknews, @chuckhemann, &@virginiamiracle. Virginia, Natanya from Whole Foods, and Tom from Aramark are also speaking at WOMM-U next week. Find out more about the event here.

I am kicking off my second week of growing Spredfast’s professional services offerings to drive customer success and reduce time to value.  It is a perfect fit for me – I’ve spent the last 10 years in roles on both the brand (Dell) and the consulting (Ogilvy) side helping organizations adopt Word of Mouth Marketing and, later, social in a way that makes sense strategically and can be executed well tactically.   Early in the journey, my time was spent was spent convincing organizations that they needed to start listening and get involved.  Later on, the bulk of my work progressed to actually putting together well-organized corporate presences and campaigns while, in many cases, cleaning up some social media driftwood cluttering the ecosystem.  In the last year, however, we have seen complexity explode.  Now instead of simply trying to stem social voice proliferation, we see strategies where the whole company can truly benefit from more and more parts of the organization being heard.  But how can you manage a proliferation of voices – Continents, Countries, Brands, Products, Regions, States, Reps – and NOT confuse the customers who want to find us in their social spaces?

That’s why I’m here.  2012 is the year to tackle this complexity at scale and Social Media Management Systems (great Altimeter review on the space here) will play a critical role for those organizations serious about being able to get a handle on their social footprint – from governance to real time, rolled up analytics – and be able to prove that they are making progress against social business goals.  Getting to that point, however, takes more than great technology configured correctly.  It takes clear articulation of goals, KPIs and strategy.  It takes savvy understanding of organizational dynamics.  And perhaps most challenging – it requires behavior change.   That’s when the fun begins.

As our journey progresses and my knowledge grows about traits of those brands successfully scaling the social business hill, I’ll update this space with some of the broadly applicable lessons.  I hope you’ll join in – “network learning” will get us all further faster.

Image by John Moore @brandautopsy

On a panel last week for a WOMMA event at Chicago’s Social Media Week, I had the pleasure of sitting with Keller Fay’s Ed Keller, Brains on Fire’s Robbin Phillips, and Social Media Today’s Robin Carey to discuss social media measurement under the heading of “Is WOM worth it?”.  In the context of that discussion, I talked about the siren song of social media counting (vs. measurement) and the trap that we too-frequently see: social media “cases” that end by rattling off 20 different social media metrics that do not track to a meaningful business metric.  To illustrate, I mentioned that no CEO is not banging the table looking for more tweets (which BrandAutopsy riffed into the above), he’s looking for shareholder value – sales, market share, preference, purchase intent and a legion of other measures that can not be ripped off the back of Facebook insights.

So, with that in mind and the voices of my esteemed co-presenters in my head, I put together a list of 4 potential measurement pitfalls that can kill your social media measurement program before the horses have left the stable:

1) Setting the wrong objectives.  This sounds silly, but often an activity or “client brief” will be mis-translated as an objective.  For example, “run a high-impact event” is an activity, but “increase consideration and share of voice among X audience” attending that event is an objective.  TEST: Can it be measured?  If the answer is no, it isn’t an objective.

2) Determine the meaningful (vs. diagnostic) KPIs before you begin:  Chances are, meaningful KPI’s will require measurement techniques beyond simple, spoon-fed social media metrics like likes and shares.  Take a walk through our Conversation Impact(TM) white paper to determine how to craft meaningful Reach, Preference, or Action KPIs.

3) Find where your audience is interacting on a relevant topic: Yes, Facebook has 800 million people and likely some of them are in your desired “audience” but they may not be on Facebook to discuss their mother’s prescriptions or whatever topic that you may have value to add.  The important second step to “going where the party” is already happening is not just determining where your audience is, but how they are using social media for different things – where do they share recipes vs. look for snowboot recommendations?  While they could light up for FB, Twitter, Flickr, etc it will be critical to understand the relevance of those platforms to their lives to put together a measurable strategy.

4) Plan to measure: If you put together a measurement plan after you’ve already begun, you have lost your chance at a baseline and being able to know the true impact of your efforts.  Ed Keller admitted that he often gets calls halfway through campaigns at which point, there are limitations on the types of measurements that can be taken.  The baseline is going to be the key to your “winning” metric such as “Increased purchase consideration by 45%”.  That is the type of metric that CEOs do care about and will keep your social media efforts on strategy and in budget in 2012.

Archisand sculpts the Intel logo at BlogHer '11

Its been a long hot (hottest on record in Austin) summer and its nowhere close to over.

But it has been rich in experiences and inspiration.  The launch of Google+?  The fundamental change in the way we experience earthquakes and hurricanes due to social media?  Interesting enough to get me to follow @irene, but definitely not over the inspiration bar.

This summer, I have had a number of seemingly chance encounters with what I have come to know as “sandsculpting”.  It began when my best friend took her sand work on our annual beach trip just a bit more seriously this year – constructing the “Sand Turtle” still discussed by my 4 year old.  But I don’t think I consciously knew that sandsculpting a professional pursuit until it was out in force at BlogHer’11 (see above).

But it was not the beauty of the creations, but the reasons for pursuing sandsculpting that inspired me to find a renewed love of my own work.  In addition to doing their thing at BlogHer, Archisand had recently built a huge display of scenes from Sydney Harbor at the US Open of Surfing earlier in the week (Video Here).  A colleague who had spoken to them there told me their unofficial story. They were a group of talented architects who got burnt out on what they were using their talents on at work and started making extreme sand castles to blow off steam and flex their creativity.  Eventually some of them were able to turn it into a fiscally responsible pursuit.

This got me thinking about the limiting mindset that much of solid social strategy is “block and tackle”.  The relentless pursuit of relationship and connection can be tedious and exhausting – if we let it.  But good strategy doesn’t have to be “eating your wheaties” alone.  While the basics must be done, it is doing them beautifully that will inspire yourself and those around you.  I have found new inspiration in big, creative sandcastles of ideas (built on the firm base of solid strategy) and insodoing have reawakened my love of my own profession.

If your social strategy has been in motion for a year or more without a second opinion or a new shot of creativity, use your knowledge the weekend eyes of an architect to sandsculpt it into something new that re-inspires you and will be more likely to inspire your customers.

Listen to your compass, not your clock – When Andrea Jung was passed over for CEO of Avon in 19997, it made headlines.  She was offered 2 other CEO positions at other companies.  It would have been easy to feel slighted or embarrassed and hop companies to earn the next checkmark on her resume.  But Avon’s mission of economically empowering women inspires and connects with her.  And staying true to that compass is what laid the ground work for a more meaningful, long term success to flourish.

You can’t reinvent your company if you can’t reinvent yourself -After missing earnings and falling out of favor with Wall Street, Andrea knew she was at risk of being fired in a quarter or 2.  a coach advised her to “fire herself” and walk in the next day as if it was her first day at a new job.  She could then approach and assess the company’s situation with fresh eyes and energy and start anew.

Proceed ethically – As Thomas Jefferson, “In matters of style, swim with the current.  In matters of principle, stand like a rock.”  So many business leaders have found themselves at the core of corporate scandal.  They tend to be shorter lived and their shareholder value returned far lower.

“Communities have never needed companies more” – Choosing to be in the private sector does not mean you are opting out of a live of service.  The public sector can not meet the needs of our country or the world – and it is up to corporate citizens to stand up and do their part for the benefit of all.

Prioritize, and be present – So many working parents are constantly making micro daily tradeoffs about family and work.  They are difficult and constant.  Prioritize, make your decisions and then drop the guilt.  Once you are in the most important place for you to be present, you owe it to your companions to fully be there.

So much of this has direct applicability to our little social media corner of the world:

• Because we’re moving so quickly, career focus often is on quick hops and ticking title boxes instead of finding a company, team, mentor, client, mission or purpose that gives you passion.  Once you’ve found that the rest will follow.
• The WOMMA ethics code is just one incarnation of a way to make sure you are swimming on the straight and narrow of the social media current.
• Social media has brought with it a massive case of divided attention syndrome.  The temptation to live tweet/Facebook/document your life instead of focusing on the humans around you is very strong!  Be present and see what happens…

The promise of Austin turning into Silicon Hills seemed optimistic even to a gullible college graduate, but I have to admit, it has pretty much come true exactly that way.  Stalwart tech hardware employers like Dell, AMD & Freescale spawned many of the entrepreneurs who went on to found & fund here in Austin launching companies like Bazaarvoice, HomeAway, & Spredfast to name a few.  And this success only attracted more like minds to the city.

Ogilvy doesn’t have a current physical office here and yet, you could say the whole city is our office.  We hold meetings at Shady Grove, Texas Honey Ham, learn about new companies at Dominican Joe’s and I can learn more about what is cracking in town at a barbecue or a shopping trip than I could in a month of conference calls.  Beyond the individuals who work for our company alone, we are part of a thriving community of like-minded social professionals who have chosen for one of a host of reasons to make Austin home.

In the words of Kate Neiderhoffer, Quality of life in Austin is simply higher than in the more fast-paced, cut-throat, nail-biting enclaves of the US. Austin is the perfect mix of intellect, athleticism, family-friendliness, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit. And like attracts like: this unique combination makes us the most ripe breeding ground for social business – thinkers and doers. You won’t believe the people you run into at Whole Foods headquarters… People often dream of moving to NYC. Living in today’s Austin makes me wonder whether people will soon dream of someday making it in Austin with the same tenacity.

The part that no one would could have predicted was the fact that beyond “tech”, Austin would attract and develop a huge amount of social business talent (maybe Silicon Hills was meant to become Social Hills).  I am proud to be part of the next phase of Austin’s growth and development into the World Social Business hub.  And I’m especially excited for the coming week – when the rest of the social practitioners from around the world join us for margaritas, inspiration, and a slice of the Austin experience at SXSW.  On behalf of all of us who have gone “all in” on social & Austin, Welcome Home.

This post part of a blog ring of social business leaders from around town, check the links below for the takes of:

Kathy Mandelstein, of IBM and Austin’s Social Media Club

Peter Kim, Dachis Group via Forrester

Aaron Strout, head of location based marketing for WCG and the “stroutmeister”

Greg “Chimoose” Matthews of WCG

“Turbo” Todd Watson of IBM

And brother Spike Jones, of Fleishman-Hillard

This being cross-posted from Ogilvy’s Fresh Influence blog.

Silos have long been bemoaned as preventing the optimization of everything from enterprise resource planning to cohesive customer experience.  If Phase 1 of corporate social media development is scattered maverick experimentation and Phase 2 is creating integrated strategy, chances are Phase 3 is likely defining silo-based roles & responsibilities.  For example, Corp Comm could own Facebook, Consumer Marketing owns Twitter,  Care runs branded communities, and Recruiting runs LinkedIn (although we often see platform ownership split by business unit focus in marketing as well) .  There is a very real reason for doing this.  Clear ownership assures great responsiveness and allow for organizations to get appropriate social staffing and funding approved.  It is also true that the different social platforms have different audiences and dynamics (what & how you share) that are likely more appropriate for one part of your org than another.  It is safe to assume that this is not going away…so let’s make it work.

Whenever you get to the point of splitting platform responsibility between different departments, you run the risk of creating a new set of silos.  6 months in, you may find your boss praising what you’re doing in LinkedIn and questioning the way Facebook is being run.  You may read something posted on Twitter and realize it would have been perfect for you to capture video around for the YouTube & Facebook audience if only you’d known!  Here are 5 suggestions to systematize collaboration and prevent those silo walls from re-growing around you:

1) Group Governance – If you are not installing a hierarchical leader over your distributed channel plan, we do recommend that governance over decisions like adding channels, brand voice, changing policies, or cross-platform initiatives be discussed at a cross functional steering committee.  This can successfully be done in a somewhat informal manner or highly formal group with a charter, etc.  But the discussion that these decisions will spark can create trust and shared understanding among the partners.  It is likely that your friends from legal and HR should be a part of this as well.

2) Share Measurement - As a platform manager, it is easy to dive a mile deep on your own metrics and have only a glancing understanding of anyone else’s.  Because metrics are guideposts to measure progress on a strategy, they are a great way to re-ground your colleagues in exactly the role your platform plays in your company’s success.  A monthly measurement snapshot that you put together with the rest of your council is a great way to share learnings, troubleshoot issues, and will create a great artifact to be circulated around the company or management team.

3) Collaborative Content Plannng - Managing a social platform means taming the beast’s insatiable hunger for content.  Content is gold and chances are, it is often appropriate across multiple channels.  By sharing conversation calendars – not just at the top of every month but as news happens and circumstances change will be the ultimate show of respect for your colleagues and the customer experience and will futher support the trust you are building.

4) Fight Social Silos with Internal Social Media - Beth Kanter wrote a great post on how silos impact non-profit social media where she expresses the social media mandate to be able to “Work Wikily“.  You may not be able to change your whole organization, but sharing your planning docs and measurement documents on a wiki, discussing ad hoc opportunities on Yammer, or even using a shared document platform to edit the next version of your employee policess help bake collaboration into your working group.

5) Evolve Together – The plan that you created in 2009 or 2010 may no longer be working or at the very least may have room for optimization.  Instead of firing suggestions over the wall, institutionalize evolution around your plan.  Quarterly meetings of your working group that are either offsite to at least lengthier will help you review progress and ask the tough questions about what needs to change and when.  Going through that process together can foster strategic discussion and veer away from channel analysis or criticism becoming a land grab.

Go forth and bust those silos for the good of your customer and your own career!  If you have other tools that you  have seen successfully work, please add in the comments.