anyone who fears social media (gag me) should be looking for a job in newspapers because newspapers are dead and so is their future job potential

And i’m not sure who classed Pink in the punk genre, but i’d love to hear the rationalisation for that one…

Evaluate:

Trolls – dedicated to bashing and degrading others = avoid responding, aka don’t feed the trolls
Rager – posts rants, rages, jokes or comments satirical in nature = see above
Misguided – are there erroneous facts in the posting = fix the facts
Unhappy customer – is the posting a result of a negative experience = restoration

I will let others decide on what classification ‘Lance from Neighbours’ fits in….

blahblahblahblah talk about liking the look of their own words.

Agreed that most CEOs don’t have time to tweet or maintain Facebook pages but failing to create and/or update professional social media references such as LinkedIn or Wiki entries is not excusable.

After all, the information required to keep these entries current would be part of most press releases announcing a senior executives appointment, an annual report or other such document and take a very short amount of time to copy and paste.

When the results from the US are put next to:

“But in Australia, journo-tweeting is largely unregulated by media outlets. None of the 25 Australian journalists I interviewed for this study (from Fairfax, News Ltd, ABC, ACP, Sky News and a range of smaller outlets) was aware of such a policy in their workplace.

According to some of the interviewees, management ignorance could account for the absence of such policies. When asked why he thought his Australian employer didn’t have a policy like the WSJ, one journalist responded, “They just don’t get it.”"

This was the third in a series of articles by Julie Posetti. This article can be found here: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/.....er170.html

A picture starts to be painted that SNM/SM is not as widely understood or embraced as some people think.

Totally agree with @Martin “Now, I will contradict the above by saying that if a CEO does not fully support the principles of digital marketing, ie. the world has moved from the old era of information asymmetry to information democracy then that can be a barrier to developing and successfully executing SIM programs.”

Which, to bring the topic back to where it started, analogies such as the one this topic is about – while maybe not perfect or a fit for every situation – helps bring the topic into a perspective that some people can understand.

At least almost all the very major global companies are in social influence marketing (SIM) in some way albeit it they might not be executing fully baked social marketing programs yet but at least they are listening using TruCast, Radian6 and or Buzzmetrics etc.

Now, I will contradict the above by saying that if a CEO does not fully support the principles of digital marketing, ie. the world has moved from the old era of information asymmetry to information democracy then that can be a barrier to developing and successfully executing SIM programs. But, that doesn’t mean they have to be on Twitter, Facebook or have a blog.

There are already many case studies of companies which have attempted SIM programs and failed because they did not have the full support (relinquish control principles) of the CEO.

Microsoft is a case in point where there is no blog by the CEO but that does not mean that Microsoft is not executing strategic SIM programs. They are fully embracing SIM around Windows 7 and the Windows brand. There are many blogs by many employees and in most cases these are mid-level managers having open conversations with customers not senior execs or CEO’s.

Depending upon what your goals and objectives are, a blog by the CEO might not be a good tactic / technology to use. It all depends upon the technical profile (socialtechnographics profile) of your customers, what the issues / opportunities are and what your objective is etc.

The same can be said for CEO’s being on Twitter. Why should they? It all depends on your objectives. I am getting really tired of people saying that a company should be on Twitter or needs a Facebook page just because these channels exist. If a practitioner or CEO is not on Twitter or Facebook or does not have a blog this also doesn’t mean that ‘they don’t get social media’. Asking why company X or Y is not on these channels is not the right question to be asking and in no way infers whether a company ‘gets social media’.

As I stated previously, the key challenge to me is not walking in the door and pitching social media to CEO’s as channels or technologies where the company should be because ‘that is where the activity and reach is’. The key issue is more concerning in that marketers don’t yet understand that this is fundamental shift in customer behaviour, it occurred 2 years ago and it is not a recent fad. Then it is about changing the behaviour of well entrenched marketing practices and practitioners and introducing them to processes, training, analytics, playbooks, policies, roles & responsibilities specific to their company / organisation in a way they can understand and operationalise. You can then demonstrate the benefits of the channels and platforms through listening platforms like TruCast but this must be done again in context of their situation. I was recently approached by a very high level government office for advice on Social Influence Marketing as well as a few government departments and the appetite is there but the skills and insight to operationalize it aren’t and the agencies that have approached them generally have no clue as they only see SIM in the context of campaigns. In other words they don’t know enough to bring all of these disciplines together across SIM; PR, marketing, legal, sales, customer service, HR, product management and general management.

One final point, I was at a very high level roundtable including the heads of Australia’s largest online publishers and some of Australia’s largest companies and one company (to my disbelief) said that they are still only investing around 6% of their annual marketing budget on digital. So, I think there is still some way to go around integrated digital marketing in Australia let alone SIM in isolation.

Getting paid millions a year to run a company, maybe it is a good idea CEOs aren’t f–king around in Facebook or Twitter. Lets face it, maintaining social profiles/networks/conversations is time consuming and can affect your work productivity. See Doonesbury: http://images.ucomics.com/comi.....090624.gif

No one argues CEOs are not out of touch with SM. You’re preaching to the converted in a blog like Mumbrella. Maybe a more pertenant question is how else do you get senior executives to learn a medium that is best understood through trial and usage?

Research conducted by the blog UberCEO.com looked at Fortune’s 2009 list of the top 100 CEOs to determine how many were using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, or had a blog — and found they were mostly absent from the rapidly growing social media community.

The study found only two CEOs had Twitter accounts and 81 percent of CEOs did not have a personal Facebook page.

Only 13 CEOs had profiles on the professional networking site LinkedIn. Three CEOs stood out with more than 80 connections but they were all from technology companies — Michael Dell from computer maker Dell Inc., Gregory Spierkel from technology products distributor Ingram Micro Inc., and John Chambers from Cisco Systems Ltd.

Three quarters of the CEOs did have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those had limited or outdated information such as incorrect titles, or lacked sources.

Not one Fortune 100 CEO had a blog.

The full report can be found here:
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/art.....ook:-study

But the whole point of punk was to tell the CEO’s to eff off – not get into bed with them.

Personally I have no interest at all in a CEO or their opinion. They already have far too much influence, power and money.

I’d actually be happier if CEOs remain terrified of social media and see it as something they can never control and never co-opt.

That would actually be more “punk”.

It’s an analogy, which is meant to be a simple concept people can relate to, to understand something more concretely. It’s not meant to be perfect nor is any analogy going to work on every single angle you look at it. I don’t see anyone else with anything better to explain it to those CEO’s so they’ll actually listen…