You’re closer to everyone in a social media world.

Interesting news on social media and the social graph: Facebook and Yahoo have teamed up to test the “six degrees of separation” theory using their own social connection resources, which are obviously pretty substantial.  With 750 million users, Facebook will be able to see just how interlinked people truly are, at least in the social Web, as part of an academic study.

This just makes it even more apparent how important social media marketing is for any brand, no matter what category, because your reputation and buzz are increasingly driven by the social Web.  Without you as a participant in that dialogue, you’re basically putting your good name at the mercy of the social conversation.

Even if you’re not an active participant, even if you don’t have your own Web site or Facebook page — well, first off, what’s wrong with you? — it’s worth it to drop in on a Yelp or Google your company name once in a while to check your reviews.  It’s the unsquelched rumor or malicious gossip that can drive the meme in this harrowing new social world if you’re not taking time to repair the damage.

Social media marketing is showing real payoff for small businesses.

We’ll give full props to Marketing Techblog for conducting this survey, which has an admittedly modest sample — but it demonstrates how social media is delivering visible payback for businesses that stick with the model.

70% of respondents said they saw lead generation from social media, and 6% of sales were in some way connected to social.  So the results are there, and they’re encouraging.

The usual caveats apply: SMM isn’t going to save a suck business, can absorb a great deal of time if you’re not judicious about how you’re using it, and requires a long-term investment of time and coordination.  But business owners seem to increasingly recognize how their competition are upping their own efforts in mining the social Web for results, so they’ve got to stay abreast.

It helps that this survey was conducted by a competent agency among its satisfied clients, which points to the fact that a small marketer is probably going to benefit from the investment they make in professional help in staging an effective social campaign.

Employee engagement via social media can improve retention.

Back when I worked on the McDonald’s business, we developed a campaign intended to directly address employee retention issues.  Because a typical, line-worker tenure are McDonald’s was — wait for it – six weeks.  Biased by how so many McD workers were high school kids, earning a little cash over the summer, over breaks…then walking.

Why try to figure out how to retain them for even just a little bit longer?  Because by boosting average retention by as little as two weeks, McDonald’s could save tens of millions across its networked franchises by reducing acquisition and training costs.  Not to mention get more and better work out of employees who possessed experience and enthusiasm.

Is there any Chicagoland employer out there who likes the revolving door?  So to help keep employees engaged and happy – which drives productivity, not just retention — even small to mid-sized businesses should be learning to adopt social media for the purpose.

Social media is about building networks of friends and acquaintances who share an interest. Why shouldn’t that interest be your business? Not just what the business aspects, but the community aspects.  Social networks serve to draw people more closely together, creating opportunities for communication and interaction.  Zappos gets this: they encourage employees to use Twitter liberally, so there’s an enthusiastic community of Zappos employees spreading the good word both internally and externally.  When you’re part of a group like that, why would you want to jump ship for anything but an exceptional offer?

It’s not direct response: realistic expectations of social media.

In mining the social graph, in developing stategies and tactics for making the most of SMM in the social Web, marketers often seem to think there’s a very direct and causal relationship between action and purchase.

If you’re interested in social media investments of resources and dollars spent, you’ve got to understand how the social Web works, even in the B2B realm — and how its isn’t direct response marketing.  Not even close.

That said, there are ways to pin down SMM ROI.  But some of them are outside of the box for marketers accustomed to direct and immediate results.

Every potential contact you develop in social networks isn’t just at the hub of their own network — they’re part of multiple networks, most of them their own.  Friends (real ones, not just the Facebook type), relations, schoolmates, business partners, professional communities, causes and fan clubs…it’s an infinity of overlaps.  Each of us is our own little Venn diagram, at the crux of multiple networks.

And they’re social as in, personal.  Even when they’re being used by workaday professional  types.  So while the lines between the at-large Web and the new, social Web, post-2.0, continue to blur, the user’s perception of what is permissible and what is objectionable in those channels is still very personal.  That means many of them are inherently resistant to spamming, to sales pitches.  Asking them to be a Facebook Friend for the sake of a coupon isn’t creating loyalty.  No matter how clever a direct response approach may seem when grafted onto social media marketing, it’s the wrong tactic in the wrong place, squandering the potential value at hand.  It’s not about “spent out, sales in.”  It’s a patient bet, but a certain one.

Social isn’t about individual sales. It’s not about targeting individuals or client companies at all, in fact.  It’s about generating tides of interest and buzz, about seeding connections by dealing with users authentically.  Sales will result, thanks to buzz, earned loyalty, association, referral, lifetime value and reputation management.

How “agencies of the future” are dinosaur bait.

Remember Enfatico?  The “agency of the future” that was a quick burnout. Now the latest self-proclaimed “agency of the future” has been bitten hard by the desertion of a billion dollars or so in global billings, as SC Johbnson has parted ways with DraftFCB.

As a former FCBer myself, it’s actually hard to summon up any sympathy here, because the big agency/holding company hubris on display at Howard Draft’s shop has become the kind of rising gorge you just sort of learn to ignore, having been there when the culture wasn’t quite so taken with itself.   But now the reality has hit home, and it’ll hit a lot of hard-working people right in the pocketbook as up to 300 staffers find themselves looking for work.  So now’s not the time to pile on.

Instead, let’s realize that the “agency of the future” badge, as applied to large, all-in-one shops, may be oxymoronic in that context.  Why should a client need one-stop-shopping nowadays anyway?  We’re in an age where intelligence and talent are distributed virally, available digitally, and can be marshalled and coordinated through any number of platforms.  The “agency of the future” may well be the network, not a single entity, that can deliver better and quicker results than the old-fashioned mega-shop.

That said, it looks like SCJ will use another big agency – or two – to address its business.  That’s to be expected, considering their global reach and innate conservatism of approach.  But don’t be surprised to someday see a client of this scale go looking for other, more virtual solutions to its marketing needs…answers that leverage the new reality of how talent is available and accustomed to delivering work faster, more efficiently, and more proactively than the dinosaurs we’re watching die.

The great Twitterface billboard

A billboard “powered” by Twitter — or, rather, by the mood of the Twittersphere, based on the number and type of emoticons tweeted over time.  As those Guiness characters would say (and I miss that campaign), “Brilliant!”

This might not be strictly applicable, in and of itself, to the immediate needs of small to mid-sized marketers, or to their B2B needs.  But in a profound kind of way it is, because it represents more than just a sophisticated execution with a good-sized budget.  It demonstrates — once again — that in a marketing/media age founded on digital tools, all you have to do is imagine something, and you can probably build it.

There’s nothing like good conversation in social media. Are you having any?

Connecting with people takes time, and money. Yet those business owners who have doubts about using social media marketing (SMM) to build a personal or business network and do prospecting need to remember they’re already doing it – in their everyday sales and networking efforts.  And the same truths about how to socialize properly apply to social media as apply to a business mixer or sales meeting. Conversation is king: Don’t talk at people – many novice SMM users think that posting alone is enough to spur online growth.  But unless you build in feedback mechanisms and opportunities for dialogue, like activated Comment areas, you’re not driving dialogue.  Go out and talk to people on industry sites, or in your own Comment stacks – tag commenters or other posters and create one-on-one exchanges with them.  On Facebook and Twitter this is particularly important. Get out and group:Visit social sites and forums and get into the discussion and make your presence known.  Join social groups on sites like LinkedIn – and then make sure to stay a contributor to those conversations.  But don’t jabber away for its own sake: remember that the smarter, more insightful a contributor you are, the better the buzz you’ll create around yourself and your company. Post with value: It’s not about posting jokes and errata that’s not relevant to your industry or business, just to have “presence.”  Solid SMM means valuable content – not generating more static.  Serious users of the business Web are looking for serious information, insight and intel, and if you’re the one putting it out there, you’re the one who’ll drawn their attention.  This doesn’t preclude doing purely social or collegial things – but remember to prioritize your actions for maximum impact! Learn to listen: This goes to good conversation, to being truly engaged and responsive with prospects and the community…but listening to the social Web also means paying attention to the totality of the conversation out there.  Are there trends being discussed?  Can surveying the macro-conversation that’s going on at any one time help you identify particulars that can be relevant to your business?  Using social media audit tools like Klout and Twitter searches and more can help you stay on top of the overall conversation that’s happening around your category. Ask for business, but not too early: Of course people visiting the social Web as business-focused sites or industry pages know why everybody is there – to land leads!  But there’s an etiquette involved that boils down to a few simple points: 1) Try to establish a dialogue first with prospects, or at least a social presence; don’t go in just blindly spamming for business; 2) Have 3-4 actual conversations with a promising lead, giving them valuable tips and insight, before offering your services or products as an answer (this is simply smart prospect qualification, too); 3) Follow up with the same solicitude and engagement you showed during your SMM dialogue…don’t suddenly shoot from true dialogue to a one-sided hard sell.

The old-style smarts you need for new-fangled marketing automation.

Marketing automation is no cure for all marketing ills. Technology can, yes, simplify a lot of things in life – if deployed correctly.  But that doesn’t mean it’s simple to deploy.  As with social media programs, the first thing we warn marketers about in co-opting automation tools is that there’s a lot of sweat equity that needs to go into the earliest stages.

There are challenges even after kickoff, because every aspect of an automated program starts with a human decision. The parameters of your effort need to be clearly set: the marketing and sales teams need to put their heads together early and often to make sure they’re on the same page, or else that vaunted salesforce.com or Promoboxx program you’re running out make create more headaches than profit, if you suddenly find different camps had different expectations from the initiative.

There are a few basic points that need to be agreed upon as “common ground” before launching any marketing automation strategy within your organization.  They may seem obvious as heck — but you’d be surprised how many marketing/sales organizations don’t reach alignment on these before launching a program, and suffer as a result:

• What will constitute a quality lead?
• How many of them do we want per week, month, year?
• How many do we want to convert into qualified opportunities?
• How many of those do we want to close?

In other words — start with conventional wisdom and conventional goals, regardless of the tech or tactic you’re adopting. Begin by getting internal consensus against these questions – and you’ll find the rest of your decisions shake out easily.  And you’ll have the benchmarks to judge the success or failure of your programs…automated or not.

Social media recommendations drive higher spending!

This story from Futurelab ratifies what would seem to be simple common sense: in a social milieu of any kind, let alone the Web, good recommendations drive sales.  In this case they’re referencing fCommerce, which is growing by leaps and bounds.

Facebook is an opportunity for B2B marketers, not just consumer-directed brands.  There are already a host of tips and tricks out there intended to help marketers leverage the opportunity.

As we’ve pointed out before, B2B marketers have an immediate advantage in exploiting social media tools, because they usually understand the importance of relationship-building in ways mass marketers may not.

In Chicago, is there a new brand in town?

We’d wager no American city has been as associated with an individual’s name down through the years as Chicago.  ”Daley” is inextricably bound to Chicago, part of its “brand.”  Never mind New York, where Michael Bloomberg (or any NYC mayor, for that matter), for all his wealth and Letterman references, will never be so tied into the mythology of a place as the Daleys are here.

His successor, Rahm Emanuel, is faced with a difficult situation and tough choices, and a set of dynamics that — as in any city — will evolve over the years.  Does the change at the top, a new era overseen by a new personality with a supposedly new agenda, mean that Chicago will present a different brand face to the world?

If we had to sum up the previous persona, it would include the vaunted and laudable — “windy” (though it’s not, an FYI for all you out-of-towners), voluble, blue-collar, the “city of big shoulders,” the “city that works,” the architectural gem of the Midwest, if not the entire nation.

The less-laudable aspects of the brand? A city that’s corrupt, where machine politics are still in force, if more mutedly, and where many residents still suffer from the outrages of poverty, diminished opportunity and murder.

As the Murdoch empire is finding out, so much of your public identity is linked to the personality of your leader that you’re stuck, for good or ill, with the perceptions around that individual, much as Daley (the younger) was saddled with the legacy of his dad.  Daley — a classic Chicagoan through-and-through, an emblematic son of Bridgeport, is quite different from Emanuel, the adept power broker with national credentials and visibility.

But there’s still something ineffably Chicago about Emanuel. You couldn’t imagine a politico from L.A. or even New York threatening to delete body parts from those with the gall to oppose him.  New Jersey…maybe.

It may take some time to see what Mr. Emanuel represents for the “Chicago brand.”  It may be he’s simply giving the aggressive, can-d0 gumption of the city a new and somewhat more technocratic face.   Here’s hoping he and his handlers realize the breadth and power of Chicago’s national and international identity, and manage it wisely, for the betterment of its citizens and its future.