As I talk with people about online marketing, one question I often hear is, “What is the deal with Twitter?” Many people are completely stumped as to what the service is good for, especially in a business setting. Usually, if I walk them through some examples of why it’s useful, the light goes on and they get it. Just explaining it, though, out of context is difficult at best.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz took on the task of explaining how to use Twitter to promote nonprofit causes in her book Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet At A Time. She does a great job taking tweeting down to its basics and helps people build a strategy around activity on the service. To make it easy to remember, she uses the word “TWEET” as the guide for her main points:

• Target
• Write
• Engage
• Explore
• Track

The book takes each of these five pieces and breaks them down into smaller parts which are easy to digest and act on. It starts with working out why you want to be on the service and what you want to accomplish, all the way through measuring results to see if you were successful. While comprehensive, the book itself is easy to read with many great real-life examples of how these concepts are used.

While Claire wrote the book with charity work in mind, here’s the best part: The concepts she teaches apply to businesses, too. The five points she outlines and the methods she describes can work very well to help anyone who wants to incorporate a Twitter strategy into their marketing and customer service efforts.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about or sharpen their Twitter efforts to make them more effective and on target. I especially believe anyone who is involved in nonprofit or charity work will benefit tremendously from the lessons in it.

Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet At A Time by Claire Diaz-Ortiz (Amazon Affiliate link, as is the cover shot above) – great guide to Twitter strategy.

You can get more information by visiting the author’s web site: clairediazortiz.com or the book’s companion web site www.Twitter4Good.com.

Disclaimer: I received the ebook version of this work free during a promotion. This is my honest opinion of the work.

Your Online Reputation, That Is
I’ve had had an ongoing conversation on Twitter with someone opening a fast food franchise outlet in the area. He’s had a rough time finding qualified and willing workers for his establishment. This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve had conversations with many food service managers in the area who tell me it’s hard to find good team members.

I feel for him, because it’s tough enough getting the construction completed, certifications, permits, supply contracts, etc. set up. You’d think with lingering unemployment lurking about he’d have no problem finding people willing to join his team. Even with many applicants, he said a challenge to find people with good attitudes he can train to do what he needs them to do.

First, only half of the people with whom he scheduled interviews even bothered to show up. That in itself is telling. Second, he pre-screened applicants, checking their online spaces, and disqualified a few applicants because of things found in their Facebook profiles.

Your Online Reputation Matters!
He mentioned one applicant entered “Smoking Big Joints” as one of his interests. Another entered “Legalize Marijuana” as his interest.

I don’t want to get into the politics of things and do believe in one’s private life being private. But, how private your life is depends a great deal on how much you post online. Smoking marijuana and taking other illegal substances is considered such a liability in employment that many companies routinely screen new applicants for drug use. Coming up positive on a pre-employment screening means automatic disqualification. Many companies even go so far as to randomly screen all employees for drug use. This being the case, it really doesn’t make sense to advertise your use of such substances in a very public forum.

My friend is certainly not alone in his use of social media to screen potential hires. Consider this Mashable article by Erica Swallow from October 2011: How Recruiters Use Social Networks to Screen Candidates. This type of search is routine now and job seekers should expect that they will be “googled” when they apply for a job.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written on this topic. After I posted that article, I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague whose daughter was getting ready to apply for teaching jobs. She went through Facebook and “untagged” herself anywhere she could find herself “tagged” – regardless whether the picture could be considered “bad” or not. She didn’t want to take any chances.

Job Seekers: Market Yourself
Whether you realize it or not, you are a brand. When seeking employment, you have to market yourself in a similar way a company markets its brand. You have to show potential employers you have skills and the right attitude to be part of the team. If your career goal is to work in a head shop, then advertising the fact that you smoke marijuana might be a positive thing. However, if you want to work somewhere else, you might want to think twice about putting that fact in a public forum.

Some may be thinking to themselves, “That’s not fair.” Whether it’s fair or not is beside the point. This is where the job market is and you need to take your overall online reputation into consideration.

Current Employees Also Need To Consider This
If you are already employed, you might also consider what you post online and how your management might feel it reflects on them. This past weekend I told some business-owner friends about this article which prompted them to tell me about a problem they had with a former employee. He “friended” them and “liked” their Facebook page, which is nice. But, he routinely posted profanity-laced tirades against people he felt slighted him. They were concerned about how these posts might reflect upon their business.

I’m not for businesses having the ability to muzzle their staff online. However, it is worth thinking about how your actions reflect on the people who pay you salary. Whether you realize it or not, everyone is brand ambassador. Would you want your online actions to hinder your company’s ability to do business?

Employers also need to consider this. How much is too much when it comes to your team members potential damage to your reputation? It’s a good idea to consider this and create some sensible policies for this eventuality.

What say you? Have you run into any problems hiring or getting hired because of something posted online? Have you taken steps to clean up your online reputation? Please feel free to share in the comments.

Update: 1/22/2012: Marty Weintraub shared this post on The Bookshelf  Blog: How To Totally Destroy Your Facebook Reputation (& Life…) in 10 Easy Steps! [PRINTABLE FLOWCHART]. It illustrates very nicely how you can ruin your online reputation very quickly.

photo credit: -Tripp-

Dan Zarrella

I’ve been following Dan Zarrella, the “Social Media Scientist” for a few years now. I get a lot out of his writings and webinars because his studies go beyond the “feel good” or “unicorns and rainbows” (as he puts it) ideas which go around. He attempts to put some hard numbers behind what he recommends and this gives me some great starting points to do my own experimentation and measure how things work for me and those I work for.

Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness is a compilation of many things Dan has already shared in various media, put together in a nice, easy-to-read format which can help anyone involved with web marketing get a great head start on working their own strategies.

The book is full of interesting statistics and studies of data showing:

• what may be the best time to share on Facebook and Twitter
• how timing affects email opening and click throughs
• how often one may wish to post on Facebook or Twitter
• what makes information shareable by others
• how to define goals and measure whether they were reached

All in all this is a very good work and well worth reading. If you’ve never heard Dan speak nor read any of his other work, you will find this quite interesting and full of ideas to get you thinking. If you’re already familiar with Dan’s work, this is a great reference where everything is in one place so you don’t have to hunt it down.

Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness by Dan Zarrella

Note: all links to the book in this post are Amazon Affiliate links

In the first installment of this interview, the Social Media Manager for The Henry Ford, Kate Storey, described some of the strategy behind the organization’s social media efforts. In this installment, we touch upon how it all got started and Kate gives us some highlights of upcoming things to look for at the Dearborn, Michigan museum.

When it comes to strategy, you’re the social media front person for all of this. You, obviously, must have buy-in from the higher ups in the marketing areas. Did they bring you on board to do this because they saw the need or was it something you started as you were doing other things within the organization?

I’ve been with the organization for five years now.

In fact, I just missed meeting you the last time I was here. I met Jared and the other intern who was working at that time.

Jared was fantastic helping us with our social media.

And I still talk to him from time to time.

Good. He’s doing quite well. His background is in public relations just as mine is. That’s where I started and that’s how I got started here at The Henry Ford. I was at an agency previously and came here and was doing some of the more traditional public relations work.

It actually started with an internal, grass-roots effort. There were a couple of us here in the organization who were interested in social media or who were already established on social media. Our Curator of Technology, Suzanne Fisher, is quite well-known on Twitter (@publichistorian) and through her [Public Historian] blog, especially among other curators and technology curators and people interested in the history of technology. She was a key part of the group of us who started talking over lunch, saying, “We should be doing this. Why aren’t we doing this?”

We talked to a couple of our bosses, our Chief Information Officer and my director, the Director of Media and Film Relations. We asked, “What do you think about this?” They said, “It sounds like a great idea, let’s give it a try.”

We started out rather slowly, with just the Facebook page and the Twitter handle, @thehenryford. We also had a very early attempt at a blog. That was very rough because there was nobody managing it full time. It was just all of us pitching in and adding in things as we saw them. We wrote what we thought people might be interested in. We did start to have conversations back and forth with people.

All of a sudden it started to grow. People here realized that if we want to provide the type of content people were asking for, we’d have to have someone on full time managing it. My boss and I had some conversations and I started as the social media manager this past November.

We relaunched our blog at the beginning of the year. We’re trying to focus more on that so we can share more content. We want to take that behind the scenes look even further than we can on Facebook and Twitter.

Is there anything else you can think of that you might want to tell about Greenfield Village, The Henry Ford or about social media in general?

Jennifer (@jkbusy) Standing next to a Ford Model T while someone plows a field at the Firestone Farm at Greenfield Village

I love the conversations. I love being able to talk with people every day. I love that I can meet with people from all over. You came to visit from Texas and I can meet you. People come here from all over the world and it’s wonderful to have those conversations online and occasionally get to meet them in person.

I would hope that people would take the time to find out about museums or other organizations online.

The benefit of working in an organization like this is that it’s really hard to run out of content because there is so much here and so much information.

And there is so much here we don’t see. I remember reading some tweets from Scott Monty when he went into the archives. I thought, “I’d love to see that.”

Which you can do. We have our Benson Ford Research Center, which is open to the public and is somewhat like a public library. You can come in and browse though our archives. We have a very, very extensive collection of Ford Motor Company history because we are their archive center. At the same time we also have everything from a fantastic violin collection and other different elements which people can come and explore. If you want to learn about something, come here and you’re probably going to find information about it.

You can also find a lot of information from the archives through our web site. You can contact a curator or a research specialist online if you’re not able to come here in person. Of course, if you come here in person you can arrange for a tour of our archives.

 Next time I’m in town I’ll have to check that out. As a kid growing up here in the area, we’d come here quite regularly on field trips and such. People who live here may take for granted that this is here. When you leave, you realize that this museum is really unique. There are smaller versions of the Village around the country, but there is so much more to see here. I also ask people who are car buffs if they have ever visited The Henry Ford Museum. They tell me “no” and ask, “They have a museum?” I tell them they have to check it out – they have every kind of car in the world there.

And we are upgrading our automotive exhibit. It’s becoming the “Driving America” exhibit. It will open in early 2012. It’s going to be completely updated with lots of interactive displays which will help people connect with the history. That’s one of our big aims, to help people connect with different parts of our collections, even if they are not directly related. You may start with a car and we’ll show you a presentation about car safety in that era, and then we will show you a diner which may have been open at that time. We want to present this so the entire story comes together.

The text for this article was transcribed from the audio I recorded of our conversation and edited for clarity and formatting.

I first wrote about how The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan “gets” social media back in 2009 after a visit there to see the “Guitar Stars and Cars” exhibition. I’ve had the opportunity to visit again a couple of times since then; most recently a couple weeks ago. This last time, I had the foresight to contact Kate Storey, Social Media Manager for The Henry Ford, ahead of time and arrange to talk with her about how they use social media to help tell the story about this unique indoor and outdoor history museum.

In this installment of the interview, Kate describes the basic strategy she and her coworkers employ to engage people about The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village*.

I’m really interested in how The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village are using social media to get the word out about this gem of history.

We’re trying to find ways to let people know about the different things happening here.

People outside the area don’t know or may not have had a chance to visit here before. Truth be told, not many people think of Detroit as a vacation destination because, unfortunately, there are a lot of bad perceptions about the area. I think that once people come to Detroit, they will see that the city itself is really a fantastic place to visit.

The people behind the @visitdetroit Twitter handle, managed by the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, have been doing a very good job and working very hard to try to change perceptions about the area and get people to come and explore. They say “We know what you’ve heard, now come to the area and give it a try. Come see it for yourself.”

Our location and our attractions are part of this as well. We hope that as people start to explore the Detroit Metro Area they will discover us and see what we have going on here. We’re using social media to give people the inside and “behind the scenes” looks.

There is such a wide range of interests here. One misperception people have is that because it’s called “The Henry Ford” that it’s either only about Henry Ford himself or it’s just about the Ford Motor Company, or all about cars. That’s not really true.

 Right, it’s not at all. it’s really about a lot of everything

Exactly. We present many other things in many different areas. But, there are many people who want to learn more about Henry Ford, the Ford Motor Company or cars. So, we do present some of that history. At the same time we want to show many different ways Americans have innovated over the years and different ways people have helped make this country great.

We hope that through social media we are sharing those stories so that people understand, for instance, we have a fantastic design collection in the Henry Ford Museum; great examples of furniture and industrial design and many other things.

And out here in Greenfield Village we have all these different buildings which tell different parts of America’s history. One can visit the Wright Brothers home and their bicycle shop where they built the first airplane. We also have Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory. Many people come here and say, “I didn’t know you had those things.” They had no idea, and either thought the buildings were still in their original locations or that they didn’t exist any more.

Henry Ford had the foresight to preserve those buildings and bring them here. We continue to keep them up and present them today in the hope that people will make those connections between the past and the present.

I know you have a blog and that you’re very active on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve conversed on Twitter many times. How do you as the social media person incorporate those things together in presenting the story? What kind of strategy do you have to spread the word out about The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village on social media? 

It’s all about conversations on social media; it’s all about making those connections with people. Our effort is really just an online version of what we do here every day. We try to connect with people and share in their passions and their excitement over a particular artifact or with a program we’ve presented. Part of my strategy is to help bring that excitement and passion online and to spark those conversations which a presenter might have here in Greenfield Village with a visitor as the person might say “I didn’t know you had this here.” Or they might say, “Tell me more about this point in history.” We’re really hoping to bring those types of conversations online and to be able to share them more broadly so more people can take part. It’s not just a one to one interaction; now it’s with everybody.

It helps us to learn as well. It helps us to understand what types of programs people would like to see or do here. Perhaps it means we should do more video content or more stories on our blog. Perhaps they would like to just have a “here’s what’s happening right this minute in Greenfield Village” kind of thing. Perhaps it’s a quick snapshot or tips about how to make your visit more interesting. We might even help people who are doing research or who are interested in trains, for instance, and they want to get a little more information. We can answer questions like “At what point were steam engines still widely in use?” We can answer many questions like that.

Part of our strategy is to help share those conversations and that excitement.

The Weaving and Pottery Shops in the Liberty Craftworks Area in Greenfield Village

 Do you have a YouTube Channel?

We do.

OK. I just haven’t seen it yet. I was just in the Glass Shop and was taking some Bloggie shots and thought to myself “They must have a YouTube channel; I just haven’t seen it yet.”

Yes, we do have a YouTube Channel. I’ve put up several videos recently about our Liberty Craftworks area. We did a 3-part video series about firing our salt kiln outside our pottery shop.

I did see the blog post about that. I was just telling my mom, “Hey, I know how that works because I read about it on their blog.”

That’s so good. Farther down in the blog post there is a link which takes you to the video where we show how it works.

I’m also getting ready to post one about the glass shop. Our glass artisans were changing out the crucibles in the glass shop. As part of that they had to remove all the molten glass which has accumulated over the past several months. It looks like lava just pouring out of it; it’s very cool looking. That will be coming soon.

Click here for the next installment in which Kate will describe how The Henry Ford’s social media efforts got started and some new things coming to the museum.

* I transcribed this from the audio I recorded of our conversation and edited for clarity and formatting.

Every so often, I read an article in which the author claims Twitter is a waste of time for marketers compared to Facebook. The chief reason usually given is Twitter’s user numbers are much smaller in comparison to Facebook. While Twitter’s numbers certainly are smaller, I don’t think numbers alone paint the whole picture. Something I recently read confirmed that in my mind.

There’s been a lot of chatter about Twitter’s recent acquisition of Tweetdeck, a very popular (and my favorite) Twitter client. For now, I”m taking a “wait and see” stance on the whole thing. I like Tweetdeck as-is, so I hope it won’t change too much. Josh Bernoff feels this further proves his theory of the Splinternet, and illustrates why in his post entitled “Twitter + Tweetdeck = Another splinter in the splinternet.” While he makes some excellent arguments supporting this, I haven’t completely decided if I totally agree with him.

While I don’t want to cover the Splinternet just yet, there’s one line in Josh’s post which caught my attention, right smack in the middle:

But what does this mean for marketers? Our [Forrester's] research shows that about 10% of the influence people have on each other around products and services within social networks takes place in Twitter — where is this important platform going?

This got me thinking about how we look at influence. While other social networks may have more users and more activity, this statistic tells me that those active Twitter users wield quite a bit of influence. This would seem much more than mere numbers might lead us to believe.

Ian McKee, in a post on socialmediatoday, did some research into Twitters numbers. Citing an unnamed source who has full access to Twitter’s API, Ian writes that of the 175 million Twitter users, only 56 million accounts follow 8 or more others on the service:

How many such “active” Twitter users are there? Our source’s API data shows that there are 56 million accounts on Twitter following 8 or more accounts. There are only 38 million following 16, and just 12 million following 64.

Ian goes on to point out that Facebook claims 600 million people visit the site at least monthly, and of those half go to the site daily.

To look at another stat, Twitter claims 140 million tweets per day while an unverified stat shows Facebook updates to be around 60.5 million per day (this doesn’t appear to count comments, photo or video posts, though). I don’t know how old that number is, but it seems rather small to me.

As you can see, it’s really hard to compare Twitter and Facebook just based on the numbers. Both publicly claim a certain amount of usage based on metrics they think are important, but for us are an apples versus oranges comparison.

Regardless of how you slice it, I think it’s still safe to say that Twitter is not a waste of time for marketers. Even though their numbers are smaller, those who are on the platform are very active and plugged in. If you can build and engage with a good audience there, you can have quite a bit of success. Twitter is also helpful in link-building strategies for SEO.

What say you? Do you think Twitter is a waste of time versus Facebook – or plain just a waste of time? What has your experience been? Please feel free to share in the comments.

Over the past several months I’ve been working with a team of talented folks in my area to start a Social Media Breakfast (SMB) group here in Central Texas.

I had been thinking about this for a while because of the great experience I’ve had with the Waco SMB group. I love the Waco group, but it’s very hard for me to get up there on a regular basis on week days. There’s another group which meets in Killeen, which is a little closer, but still hard get to on workday mornings.

What finally got me moving on this was the conversation I had with my mechanic about the web site and pay-per-click campaign he was offered by a marketing company. Because he wasn’t educated in web marketing stuff, he wasn’t quite sure if he should purchase that package. As you can read in my account of that chat, I didn’t think it would have done him much good. I figured, if he was having this trouble, I’m sure there are more small business operators in the area which might need some help with information and education about web marketing, and social media in particular.

The people joining me in this endeavor have a broad range of experience in social. The one thing we have in common is that we want to share knowledge and ideas as well as learn from others in our community who are using or looking to use social to help attract and interact with customers.

If you’re in the area, please join us for our first meeting, which will be on Friday, June 6th at 7am at The Historic Cotton Exchange, 116 S. 1st Street in Temple, TX. It’s free and open to the public (though we wouldn’t mind if you’d RSVP by getting a free ticket on Eventbrite).

For more information:

• SMB Temple/Belton Web Site
• Facebook Page
• Follow us on Twitter

A couple weeks ago, I signed up for Empire Avenue after I read about it in Alicia Arenas’ post on her Sanera blog entitled “Why I Joined Empire Avenue.” While the game part of EmpAve rather pulled me in, it’s the potential for vetting social media influence which really intrigues me.

Perhaps the best (and funniest) description of the site came from Kate Buck of KBJOnline in a Facebook conversation we had yesterday about EmpAve. She wrote “… it’s a social game – like if Farmville and Klout had a baby.” As humorous as her comment is, there is quite a bit of truth to it.

EmpAve is a social media game set up rather like a stock market. The shares of each member are valued based on:

• the supply and demand of shares bought and sold in the exchange, and,
• the value of each member’s participation in various social media spaces: Twitter, Facebook profiles and pages, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube as well as the Empire Avenue site itself.Note: letting EmpAve track your participation those other sites is voluntary and you must give specific permission for them to do so.

Each individual social media space also has its own grade, which is viewable on the upper right of a person’s profile page.

As stocks rise and fall, they can be bought and sold for EmpAve’s currency, which is called Eaves. Dividends and other valuations are paid out based on participation in the social media spaces listed previously. A person’s (or brand’s) influence can be measured by stock price as well as dividend yield.

There is a huge game factor in EmpAve which Scott Monty wrote about in his post called “The Gamification of Social Media” over on his web site. You “win” at the game by earning more Eaves through your shrewed buying and selling of stock in those people and brands you find valuable. You can also earn many and varied achievements through participation on EmpAve and on the social sites they monitor.

Here’s what I like about EmpAve:

• It offers a way to evaluate social media participants for their possible influence. It reasons that those with high value as well as good numbers in the individual social media categories will be more influential than those who have lower values and numbers.
• Because it offers a more comprehensive view of social media participation, one can get a more accurate idea of influence than on other services like, perhaps, Klout.
• Because there is a limited number of shares available and money must be earned (unless a person opts to purchase more Eaves for real cash), it looks like it’s harder to “game” the system.
• It’s also harder to spam the system. Those limited resources may cause people to pause and think before they “follow” or “buy” someone’s stock.

Here’s what I don’t like about EmpAve:

• This has the potential to be a huge time suck. It’s really rather fun and could be addictive. I can imagine people “day trading” to gain influence and Eaves, but this wouldn’t be a good way to spend a lot of your time.
• It could turn into a spam engine. I already notice with the few early adopters on the site that the ads purchased and chat invites seem to consist mostly from people trying to buy influence. I have a feeling this won’t be very successful for them.
• While there are forums on EmpAve – you can join ones set up for localities and interests – I don’t see that becoming a big factor in any success EmpAve may acheive. People are already engaged on Facebook and Twitter, so I don’t imagine a lot of people spending a lot of time in these forums.

I think EmpAve’s biggest success will come if they can become the standard in social media influence measurement. To be sure, Klout and the others do a pretty good job, but I think they lack the large view approach EmpAve seems to be aiming for – namely EmpAve measures more spaces than many of the others. Only time will tell if I they are able to achieve this.

What say you? Have you tried Empire Avenue? What do you think about it? Do you agree or disagree with my observations? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Last week, Jay Baer posted an article on his Convince & Convert blog which he called “Is Twitter Massively Overrated?” In it, he points to some survey data from Edison Research and Arbitron which shows the usage of different media. The results of that survey are quite interesting.

At the top of the list, for probably the umpteenth year since its invention, was watching TV, followed closely by listening to AM/FM radio. The rest of the list (with the exception of watching on-demand video and listening to satellite radio) are all web-based activities. Particularly telling are the numbers of people who watch online video and YouTube (54% and 49%) and use Facebook (51%). Those are some staggering numbers. Jay’s main point in his article is that Twitter is rather low on the usage scale, coming in at only 8%.

The temptation here is to look at Twitter’s numbers and discount them as a platform for communicating with customers. That may be the wrong choice, though many of us are tempted to go this way when confronted with this type of statistic. It would be a mistake to make a knee-jerk reaction based merely on the number. The reason: there is no one-size-fits-all formula for communicating with your customers.

Jay provided a quote from Tom Webster, author of the Edison study, which I think is the most important takeaway from the article. I quote it again here:

The temptation, I think, will be to see Twitter as smaller, and therefore less important, than Facebook. Certainly, Facebook is the gateway to the masses, since it now reaches the majority. For brands and businesses, however, the differential character of Facebook users and Twitter users means that for some products and companies, Twitter might indeed be the best channel for outreach and customer communications, while for others…it might be terrible. It’s imperative for companies to cut past the hype, do their own research, and be where their users are, not where the noise is.

I couldn’t have put it any better. While Facebook has sheer numbers, Twitter users tend to be more active, more connected and share more. Both are valid platforms for your business, and one may very well be more fruitful for you than the other.

The point is: You have to do research into your customers, your clients, your audience and find out where they are most active. That information will tell you where you need to focus more of your online efforts. If you are running around hoping to attract an audience which isn’t already there, you may in for a long wait. And, you shouldn’t discount a platform merely because your audience isn’t there numerically. Those numbers could change and you’ll be playing “catch up” if you’re not in that space already (think MySpace versus Facebook over the past few years).

The next step is to sit down and work out some goals for your social activity. Goals could be more visits to the web site, more sales leads, more purchases of a product, or what have you. Then, work out ways to measure how you are reaching those goals. Sometimes people will tell you one thing in a poll, but actually do quite another (not that they’re lying, they just don’t realize how much they use one platform over another). Use the statistical measurement to validate your survey and see what’s really going on. That, too, will help you make better decisions.

What say you? What is your opinion on this topic? Please feel free to share in the comments, or jump over to Jay’s post and join in the conversation already taking place there.

Last week I read two excellent articles on IT and Marketing working together (or not) which got me thinking quite a bit. The first was “IT + Marketing: Innovation Through Collaboration in B2B Software Companies” by Julie Hunt, the other was “I own the technology, you own the content” by Eric D. Brown.  Go check them out because each writer makes some excellent points.

Let Me Put On My IT Hat
Those of us who read Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” comics are familiar with the character “Mordac, The Preventer of Information Services.” While we can laugh at the silliness of those comic situations, there is a bit of tongue in cheek truth to what is portrayed.

Often, we IT folks are looked at as spoilers and inhibitors. What I often hear and read from those frustrated people is like a line from the old Five Man Electrical Band song: “All we hear is ‘Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the signs?’” In this case the signs come in the form of a policy document or a banner across the monitor screen of someone trying to accomplish their mission. Their frustration goes up and out come the comparisons to Mordac.

Unfortunately, what these people don’t realize is that we’re just doing the job delegated to us. We’re tasked with making sure the enterprise’s network and data remain secure. No one wants to go through the nightmare of a T.J. Maxx or Epsilon security breach. Many IT Departments are understaffed, overworked and looked at as merely a cost center and not a business multiplier. In this type of environment, the easiest way to head off security issues is to raise the shields and plug up any holes found in the perimeter.

Switch To The Marketing Hat
What marketers really need are flexible systems which allow them to reach out to customers wherever they are.  They need to be able to reach out via email, web sites and social media spaces. While IT development shops dabble in Agile Development, marketing shops need and want to get into what Scott Binker calls Agile Marketing. When we run into what looks like an IT roadblock, we get frustrated and don’t feel protected or secure. We just want to get our mission accomplished.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?
So, how do we get going in the right direction? Is there any skipping along arm in arm down the yellow brick road? I think there can be. It’ll take some work and a whole lot of communication, but it is possible for all sides to accomplish their individual missions while still working together to bring about success for the overall organization.

Department Ambassadors
I once worked in an organization where work was divided into different “shops.” Each shop had its own mission, leadership and way of doing things. Work was supposed to flow from front to middle to back. The front and back offices were supposed to react to priorities based on guidance from the home office while the middle shop had a supporting role in helping the work flow between all three shops. In reality, though, this rarely worked out. What usually ended up happening was the front and back shops argued over what the home office meant by priorities while the middle shop sat back out of the fray and waited for the dust to settle.

The leadership of the front and back shops decided to smooth things out. Instead of two committees of people interpreting home office directives each shop appointed a liaison to work with the other office. All communication was funneled between these two. They made the decisions how home office directives were to be interpreted and those decisions could only be overridden by the managers of their respective shops.

To be sure, it took a little time to work out the kinks in this system. After a few weeks of working things out, though, work flowed much more smoothly. Production went up and arguments went way down. Everyone benefited from this arrangement – even the home office took notice.

There is a lesson to be learned. I propose those IT and Marketing departments who find themselves in disagreement consider having an in-house technology summit. At this meeting, sit down and discuss the challenges each side faces in an open and honest way. At the end, with guidance and direction in hand, appoint a person from each side to be the liaison who will be empowered to communicate and help make decisions on behalf of their department. Let those two work out the priorities and permissions and bring the results to their respective departments.

Oh, and don’t pick the new person to do this. The one tasked with this job needs to be taken seriously. Appoint your best and brightest so the job will get done right.

And don’t forget: You’re all on the same team. In the end, overall success of the organization benefits everyone.

What about you? How do you smooth out communication between departments. Do you think a “Department Ambassador” program will work at your shop? Please feel free to share in the comments.