Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich, believes that, as long as employees abide by a general code of conduct, they should be free to establish their own social media presence. “I don’t advocate companies maintain control of social media, just like they shouldn’t maintain control of e-mail, phone calls, and what is or isn’t said at a cocktail party at a trade show,” says Dietrich. “If there is an online code of conduct, training, and a toolkit given to all employees on how to get started and where to spend their time, social media will work the way it’s supposed to — by allowing customers, employees, and stakeholders online access to the people with whom they do business.”

Read the entire article on AllBusiness.com.

Today is from AllBusiness.com (with a few changes made from franchising to a small business).

Immensely powerful right now, social media tools are changing the ways businesses communicate with customers and the ways customers communicate with brands. With Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Google Wave, Wikipedia, Slideshare, FriendFeed, Posterous, Delicious, WordPress, oh my!, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed and wonder how in the world you’re going to keep them all straight, let alone start using them.

But take a step back for one second. I’ll help you get a grip. There are 10 advantages to using social media. It:

1. Provides international exposure
2. Attracts like-minded people
3. Speaks directly to audiences thousands of miles away
4. Helps put out fires
5. Helps start fires
6. Beefs up your knowledge
7. Enhances partnerships
8. Exposes you to different ideas
9. Allows you to test or get feedback
10. Lets you meet and converse with new audiences

As if those reasons weren’t enough, according to the Cone Business in Social Media Study, 93 percent of Americans expect companies they do business with to have a social media presence. And 85 percent believe a company should not only be present, but also interact with its customers via social media.

The one secret about mastering communication that no one ever tells you is you must spend most of your time listening. Great communicators ask a lot of questions. They really listen to what you have to say. They inquire deeply into the answers you provide.

Social media offers another way to engage in conversation. To be a master at social media communication, you must spend most of your time listening.

Please click here to read the article on AllBusiness.com for some free tools to begin listening to what people are saying online about you, your company, your industry, and your competition.

There’s been a lot of talk (and action) lately centered around “Social Media Interns.” Can you share with us the parameters for having an effective program? Some work for free. Some work remotely. Qualifications? Training required? Return-on-investment (of time/dollars).

It won’t come as a surprise to some of you that I don’t think interns should be doing your social media (sorry JC Maldonado!). It’s not that they can’t Facebook and tweet for you. It’s that they don’t have business experience to set the strategy for which tools you use, how you use them, and how you engage your customers.

Can they set you on the networks? Absolutely! Can they help you reserve your names on Name Check? For sure! Can they teach you how to use the tools. Yes!

At Arment Dietrich, we don’t hire interns until they’ve graduated from college. We learned, early on, that we were training college students the basics of communication, sending them back to school, and letting them go work for another company. If we hire them after they’ve graduated from college, we have a better chance of teaching them the basics and then hiring them full-time.

Same goes for your company.  Interns do not have business experience. Just like you wouldn’t let them pitch a new business prospect, present to the board, or (in our business) call reporters, why would you have them engage and connect with your customers, your employees, your stakeholders, and your prospects?

And Jeff? If an intern works for free…you get what you pay for.

I wrote about this topic earlier this year, as well as was interviewed about it by The Big Money. You can see the blog post here, along with A LOT of comments from interns who were doing social media work for the summer.

What do you think?

B.J. Emerson

I’m really impressed with the work B.J. does – he knows how to build a community and engage the Tasti D-Lite tribe -  but what’s most impressive is he is, by trade, an IT guy.  This flies in the face of the idea that IT guys don’t know how to engage. And that’s part of the reason I like him so much.

I always use the Tasti D-Lite case study when I speak to the franchise industry and CEOs about social media. They’ve been able to show how social media campaigns can drive traffic to stores, which answers the “What’s the ROI of social media?” question.

I recently asked B.J. how he handles it all and what his feelings are on outsourcing some of what he does. Following is our conversation.

Is it possible to effectively outsource relationships?

The critical item with any social media outsourced campaign is communication between the client and firm.  Successfully putting your relationships with your customers in someone else’s hands depends on how well you communicate your vision and values and how well the insights and information is being fed back to the organization how they are used to accomplish your objectives.

At what point should an organization consider outsourcing any or all elements of social media marketing?

If current initiatives are not producing the expected results or if internal resources are stretched, it may be a good time to consider a consultation with an outside firm.

There may have a specific campaign that you could test drive with an external partner and focus internal resources on other social media objectives.

What kind of things should you look for when partnering with a social media marketing firm?

Request recent case studies of effective campaigns for other clients along with references. Look for a positive presence and reputation within the same online communities that you are considering engaging in.

What could a company be missing if everything wasn’t handled internally?
If you have the resources and appropriate talent, the experience and perspective that can be gained from firsthand virtual engagement with customers is invaluable.  If outsourced, these insights will need to be carefully communicated through the partner. If you feel out of touch with the customer, something needs to change.

Are there social networks you should not, under any circumstance, outsource?

It would really be dependent on how any given online community is being used and what the objectives are.  For example, using Twitter for collecting customer insights would be different than using it for handling customer service.  The latter would likely be more difficult to effectively outsource.  Activities involving a greater level of intimacy with the customer deserve closer management and internal control.  Both client and partner should be able to recognize these situations.

Is there anything else you’d like to ask B.J. on the topic of outsourcing social media? Comment here and we’ll see about getting your questions answered.

Imagine my surprise, then, when it started off by talking about the executives at Edelman (THE LARGEST INDEPENDENT PR FIRM IN THE WORLD) working with younger employees to understand social media. They have what they call their “Rotnem” program( which is mentor spelled backwards – in case you missed that) where 95 percent of their senior executives are mentored by Gen Y.

At first blush, it’s not a bad idea. I like that the Baby Boomer generation has decided this is not a fad and they’d better learn more about it.

What I do have a problem with is THE LARGEST INDEPENDENT PR FIRM IN THE WORLD just announced in the Chicago Tribune that the people who are supposed to be setting social media strategy in conjunction with communication strategy for their clients HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY’RE DOING!

If you haven’t read the article, you should. It’s linked above. I met Janet Cabot a few weeks ago. She’s smart. She has a big job. She’s experienced. She knows what she’s doing. And this article makes her look like an out-of-touch bufoon. I mean, come on! Her social media experience is on delish.com?? Don’t even get me started on Kathy Kregner being “so cute” with her 500 Facebook friends.

Maybe I’m a fool to think a piece of social media belongs in the communication department and with PR firms. This article certainly set back our industry a good number of years. The scary thing, though, is Edelman will still do social media for clients. They just clearly won’t have experienced communication strategy attached because 95 percent of their leaders don’t know how to use the tools or how building better relationships online can affect business growth.

Baby Boomers. Gen Xers. Senior leadership. CEOs. Entrepreneurs. Business owners. Anyone in the c-suite. And general counsel. Listen up. Social media is changing the way you relate to your customers, to your employees, to your stakeholders, to your prospects, and to your potential talent. This is not a “cute” or “fun” thing to do. It is how we all will communicate and receive our information into 2010 and beyond. It’s changing customer service, HR, sales, communication, marketing, and advertising.

Learn how the tools can help you do just that or be left wondering how your competition beat you up and stole away all of your customers without so much as an ad campaign.

Instead, however, I asked my Twitter friends what they would like me to write about and I got some great ideas!

* Brad Farris suggested how to feel like you’re in control of the business while traveling.

* From Bruce Smith: Trust.

* Scott Yurashek had an attention-grabbing idea: How the lack of public commentary has been lacking and how social media has made it interesting again.

* Troy Costlowhttp recommended how the intended message can’t be directly stated modestly.

* Several people suggested I write about how to get past writer’s block, which I guess I’m kind of doing by writing this blog post, even though I called them all smarty pants.

* And, God love her, Nancy tried to create a topic out of my wanting to veg out.

All of these are great ideas and you’ll see them as blog posts in the next few days. But this made me think…what would YOU like to see me write about?

* What kinds of conversations do you want to join?
* Is there someone you’d like me to interview?
* Is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask a CEO?
* Is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask a business owner?
* Is there anything you don’t understand about social media and need help?

The parameters are to stay within the PR industry, social media, or what it’s like to run a business.

If your idea is chosen as one of the blog posts, you’ll receive about 30 seconds of fame. And a fun surprise (which means I haven’t yet figured out what it is).

We talked a lot about both monitoring and measuring social media, but one of the points that kept coming up was “how do I sell this to my executive team, including our general counsel?”

A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post about that very topic and you can read it here, but I thought yesterday had some great material to add to the conversation.

* Do an analysis of what your competition is doing and show that to your executive team. It’s pretty amazing what happens when you show the CEO that his/her competition is using social media successfully. Suddenly you no longer have to sell the idea!

* Create not just share of voice or volume share charts, but also share of conversation to show the c-suite that social media is not only driving traffic (eyeballs) but also that it’s contributing to the conversation, in terms of referrals or recommendations. Companies such as Radian6 can help you with this, pretty inexpensively.

* Go to the Arment Dietrich Delicious page, where we’ve bookmarked social media policies for all types of businesses. Download the ones most like your company and share them with your general counsel.

* Demonstrate your knowledge of how social media affects the entire company, including human resources, customer service, marketing, communication, sales, and the executive team. Show case studies on how each department, even if they’re not using social media directly, benefit from the company’s use of it…from a dollars and cents position.

* Provide the executive team with a real analysis of how social media will increase sales. This happens through increased online sales, better and qualified leads, a referral network from your community, and/or sampling.

* Know which buttons make your executives excited and use those to your advantage. Some CEOs are egomaniacs (did I say some? I mean most!) and think seeing their name in lights is going to help increase sales. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But if you can help create an expert of your chief executive through the social media channels, show him/her how it will benefit the business, as well as stroke their ego.

* Be prepared. Have a plan. Develop a strategy. And don’t forget the benchmarks. It’s OK if your benchmark is zero or if you have to create a new benchmark that has never been there before. Just make sure you have something, with goals for increasing in 30 days, 90 days, six months, and a year.

What other ideas do you have? What has/has not worked for you?

Guy #1: What do you do?

Guy #2: Business process investigation.

Guy #1: I see.

Guy #2: What do you do?

Guy #1: I am part-owner in one company and full owner in another. We do disinfecting and decontamination of large businesses.

Guy #2: That’s very interesting.

Are you kidding me?! Business process investigation? Disinfecting and decontamination of large businesses?

Does anyone know what either of these guys do for a living?

One of the things we work on with clients, especially in today’s age of text messaging and social media, is how to deliver their elevator pitch so they quickly gain interest from their audience – reporters, customers, prospects, candidates, even someone just checking out your Twitter bio, trying to decide if they’re interesting enough to dive deeper.

Can you imagine if these guys were on the news? What if this is what their Twitter profile said?  Would you have any inclination of wanting to learn more?

What if, instead, the conversation went like this?

Guy #1: What do you do?

Guy #2: I go into businesses to help them streamline the processes they use for operations and sales so their people are able to go home and have dinner with their families every night.

What are you compelled to do if the guy sitting next to you says that? Do you want to learn more? Ask questions about what it is he does and how he can make sure you’re home with your family every night in time for dinner?

Turns out that’s what business process investigation means.

Guy #2: What do you do?

Guy #1: We go into locker rooms before and after every game to disinfect the floor, the lockers, the showers, and the walls in order to keep germs and viruses at bay. One of our clients is the NFL and, as you can imagine, it’s really important the players not get sick. It’s our job to make sure they don’t.

I know, if the guy sitting next to me says that, I want to learn more about which locker rooms he’s been in and which teams he works with. Likely I’m not going to hire him, but I am interested enough to have a conversation and, perhaps, refer him to businesses I know who would use his services.

Keep this in mind not only when you’re networking at in-person events, but also in the way you present yourself in everything from your Twitter profile to the “about us” on your Web site. The name of the game is to encourage people to want to learn more, not use vague sentences and large vocabulary because you think it makes you sound smart.

Some people are master networkers and use even plane time to prospect for new business. If either of these guys changed the way they introduced what they do for a living, they likely would have exchanged business cards at the end of the flight.

How can you become a master networker, both offline and on?

The time in the early life of social media has come where people are beginning to question if it’s valuable. Many of our clients, friends, and peers have mentioned to us that they don’t see it working and are about to give up.

But wait! Don’t give up yet!

The one thing we see in common with those telling us social media doesn’t work is they haven’t yet built their community.  Community, you ask?  Why do I need a community?

What is the first thing you do when you go to a networking event? And don’t say get a drink…that’s assumed.  If you know someone, you walk up to that person and let them introduce you to the people with whom they’re talking, right?  You find something in common with those people and you engage in conversation. At some point during the conversation, you decide if these people are going to refer business to you (or vice versa), if you’re going to do business together, or if you are going to become friends.

The same philosophy works in social media. You are building your community in order to gain referral sources, prospect for new business, recruit talent, and find like-minded people who help your knowledge base and wisdom grow.

With direct precision you can find your target audiences, your competitors, or industry experts.  Following are some tools to begin to build your community, by finding the right people to follow.

* Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you. Once you register, you can update your profile and categories, add links to your other social media profiles, and create an extended bio. You can also search for people in your city, state, region, industry, or by job title.

* With MrTweet, you can discover people, enhance your existing relationships, and be discovered by other people who are naturally relevant to you.

* If your target audiences are business owners and leaders, then ExecTweets is the tool for you to use. It allows you to search by industry and follow people who are on Twitter that are good targets for you.

* WeFollow allows you to type in different tags that help you find people who are great targets for you. For instance, you can search by company, industry, title, or interest/hobbies.

* If you haven’t already, download a desktop application, such as TweetDeck, PeopleBrowsr, or Hootsuite. As you begin to follow people, you’ll create groups to keep track of them. Your groups may include competitors, industry reporters, employees, your referral network, clients/customers, vendors, and/0r industry organizations.

By using these tools, following 10-30  at a time (then, after they follow you back, follow another 10-30), and beginning to network, you’ll be building your community one day at a time.  Most people say to us, “But no one is paying attention to what I’m saying!” Then we go to their Twitter stream and see that everything they’re posting is all about them and there aren’t any conversations happening.

If you look at this less as a way to get the word out about the great things you’re doing (initially) and more as a way to network and find new relationships in order to meet your business goals, you’ll see the value of social media in a month or less. You’ll be building a community of friends who want to help spread the word about the great things you’re doing.

What have I missed that you would include for those wanting to build their online communities?

Not the point. The point is, the Wall Street Journal last week wrote a story about entrepreneurs hiring outside consultants to help them with their social media. Then Beth Harte wrote a blog post about having someone else tweet for her during the PR 2.0 chat on Twitter.

And it all has me thinking.

For the past two years, I’ve been saying that the point of social media is to have one-on-one relationships with your customers, not to have someone doing it for you. I know this philosophy eventually works me out of a job, unless I can continue to stay ahead of the curve and teach people how to have those conversations using the newest tools available. Which, by-the-way,  is the strategy.

Why is this different, the above mentioned articles ask, than writing a speech for the President, ghost-writing a column for your CEO, or writing a review about a product you received, free-of-charge?

The difference is this: All of those examples have an approval process. They all have “canned” PR messages. The person whose name goes on each of the pieces has the opportunity to review, make changes to fit their own voice, and post as their own.

Social media is instant. It’s immediate and there isn’t an approval process. There isn’t time. It happens in real-time. It’s not your slick marketing brochure. It’s not canned PR messages. If someone is pretending to be the CEO on any of the networks, people eventually are going to find out.

That being said, the person  (or people) handling social media doesn’t necessarily have to be the CEO. But it has to be someone who has the ability to speak on behalf of the organization without having to get approvals. If that’s your internal communication department, great. If it’s your external PR firm, great. But you have to give up control to that person(s) in order to be transparent and authentic.

People want to have relationships with the people who work inside organizations. That’s why, when companies do it really well, people are more inclined to work with certain brands more than others.

So think about it less on using the tools, and more about who you want representing your brand. Who is the best person to turn your detractors into buzz agents? Who is the best person to build your community, intuitively? Who is the best person to work with your brand ambassadors and turn them into referral network? Who is the best person who will be as passionate about your business as the stakeholders, online and offline?

If that’s an external consultant, expert, or company and you’re willing to give up control, that’s great. But be ready to let them do their jobs and ask for forgiveness if they have to make a real-time decision. And be transparent about it – let people know they’re talking to someone who doesn’t work within your four walls. It can work. If done correctly and honestly.

What do you think?