Kristin Bockius of Microsoft Shares Her Social Media Expertise

How do you use social media to engage with government IT professionals? Is it even possible? Can you generate leads? Integrate social media with traditional marketing?

Well, yes, but don't take my word for it.

In the latest edition on Straight to the Point, my podcast series on BlogTalkRadio, I sat down with Kristin Bockius, the Relationship Marketing Manager at Microsoft's State and Local Government field marketing group. In a 20 minute Q&A, she shares...

• how she evaluated social media as a possible communications tool
• how she socialized the idea of social media with peers and superiors
• how she specifically rolled out social media and kept it tightly aligned with corporate messaging and sales objectives

Here is a link to the show: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JeffMajka/2009/10/08/Interview-with-Kristin-Bockius-of-Microsoft

or you can just listen to it here



What do you think? Would you market to government executives differently? What could she be doing different or better?

Covering DOD and Intel Social Media with Matt Langan: A New Straight to the Point Podcast

This month, I'm pleased that Matt Langan agreed to spend some time with me for my Straight to the Point podcast series. Matt is the Editor in Chief of GotGeoInt?, a social network for the geospatial intelligence community, founded and funded by The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation. Matt has deep firsthand experience in setting up, growing and managing a community social network.

Matt's main points:
- The intelligence community was one of the early adopters of social media and there is deep penetration throughout intelligence and defense organizations
- A blog should be the central hub around which all other social media tools are arrayed for the purpose of promoting and distributing the content
- Content is king- without educational, engaging and entertaining content, any social media strategy is doomed to failure

Here is a link to the podcast hosted on BlogTalkRadio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JeffMajka/2009/07/21/Inteview-with-Matt-Langan-Founder-of-Got-GeoInt




What do think? Should community managers run their social networks like Matt does? Is your industry already developing social networks like GotGeoInt?

What Does A Community Manager Do?

Happy Monday Morning! There is a great post by Chris Brogan about the characteristics, requirements and expectations of a community manger. Please read it immediately to get a sense of what a successful social community manager both does and how it define and measure success.

Here is a flavor:

Measurements

I’d measure my community manager on the following:

• Responsiveness to communications (blog comments, emails, twitter messages and forum threads) less than 24 hours max.
• Number of QUALITY blog posts read and shared via Google Reader.
• Number of meaningful comments (more than a few words, on topic, pertinent to the space) on appropriate blogs, videos, and other media per month.
• Overall quality of her Twitter stream ( maybe a 60/30/10 mix of industry-related / personal @ comments / and off-topic).
• Engagement on our blog/community/network. (Number of subscribers, number of comments, number of links out to other blogs from our community site).
• Number of quality blog posts and linking posts (probably a 40/60 split between original and linked, though some would argue for 30/70).
• Eventually, number of links from other sites to our blogs and media.

Success of the Project

I’d feel our community manager was a success if she accomplished the following through her efforts:

• Empower the listening ability of our organization to our community’s needs and desires.
• Build an awareness of our organization through non-marketing efforts, measured by favorable or at least non-negative mentions on other blogs, forums, and in Twitter.
• Deliver a blog and/or media platform that’s useful to the community at large, and that grows in number of subscribers as well as engaged commenters.

Overall, I believe these efforts would be measured by an increase in attendance at our face-to-face and virtual events, an increase in subscriptions to our newsletter, and a larger blog commenting community. This would be a win to our organization, and would thus be worth the expense of another salaried employee.

Chris has outlined a strong, ROI focused definition of what a company should look for in an internal employee. Read the comments section to learn about how people are objecting- mostly about the issue of measurement.