It may have been a while, but when we decided to bring the real-time single-topic panel discussion back, we did it in a big way. We’ll be talking about influencer marketing—what’s hype, what’s legit, what works, what doesn’t—with an all-star panel that includes…

• David Armano—EVP, Global Innovation & Integration at Edelman
• Gini Dietrich—CEO at PR firm Arment Dietrich, Inc.and Spin Sucks blogger
• Andrew Grill—CEO at UK-based influence tracking firm Kred
• Zena Weist—VP of Strategy at social software company Expion

Additional panelists will be announced once we’ve locked them in.

FIR Live will take place on Saturday, June 16 at 10 a.m. Pacific, noon Eastern and 6 p.m. London. We’re still working out which platform we’ll use, but we’re leaning toward a Google Hangout On Air. We’ll be back with details when we have them, but as with all FIR Live episodes, you’ll be able to weigh in with a call or comment in the chat room. For now, be sure to mark you calendars so you won’t miss this provocative and informative discussion about a fast-growing social marketing tactic. If you’re not able to participate live, don’t worry—the segment will be made available as a regular FIR episode for listening when it’s convenient for you.

Content summary: Michael Netzley in Singapore still without voice; FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast of Neville’s PRII conference presentation is up; next FIR Live on influence marketing set for June 16; Neville speaking at Like Minds conference in Exeter this week: discount price for FIR listeners; GaggleAmp update; News That Fits: high-growth companies in Europe embrace social media says Google-sponsored survey; GM ends Facebook advertising but Ford doesn’t; Ragan promo; Dan York reports on integrating Soundcloud and Flipboard (with added comment about Player FM), an internship opportunity with the Internet Society, and more; listener comments; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; CIPR’s call to action for feedback on PR guidelines about Wikipedia engagement; TemboSocial promo; is it time for a C-level social media executive?; music from The Eisenhowers; and more.

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file29.4Mb, 73:21)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
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• Get the FIR app for your iPhone and for your Android device (visit the Android Market from your device)

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir; and TemboSocial (formerly Pollstream): helping you transform your communications goals into exciting strategies that will enable you to engage, educate and inform your customers and employees online, pollstream.com/fir/.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 21, 2012: A 73-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #652 bookmarks on Delicious

Names of blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Notes pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute time stamps – see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #652 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday May 28…

Starting today, I’m going to share some of the best links I’ve collected during the last seven days that didn’t serve as fodder for other content in this “Friday Wrap.”

Dueling Upgrades from Google and Bing

Bing was first out of the gate, announcing a redesign that, for Facebook users who were signed in, includes a social search component called Sidebar that, according to ReadWrite Web, should “send Google back to the drawing board. A number of articles and posts lauded the feature that, when expanded, shows you relevant items from your social networks. It is, in fact, a slick and useful enhancement.

But Google wasn’t far behind, unveiling the Knowledge Graph, a database of more than 500 million people, places and things that Google has been assembling for more than two years from a variety of sources. The intent is to better connect keywords to topics, summarize facts and inject serendipity into search results, according to The Huffington Post, one of a bazillion outlets reporting on the feature. “By connecting billions of disparate points of data, its search results can present users with a more coherent narrative, thus providing a better understanding of the relationships between facts,” the article says.

Both tools are being rolled out gradually. The Bing Side Bar has shown up for me but I haven’t been able to access the Knowledge Graph yet. Both signify the evolution of search.

Speaking of Google…

The “Google+ is a Ghost Town” meme continues with the introduction of new statistics. The data, released as part of a report from RJ Metrics, don’t bode well for the social network Larry page has called Google’s “social spine.” According to a Fact Company report, the average post on Google+ has less than one +1, less than one reply, and less than one reshare. About 30% of users who post something to Google+ never do it a second time, and even after publishing five items, there’s still a 15% chance that the user won’t post publicly after that. It takes 12 days for the average user who posts something to get around to posting something else, and the average number of posts from the average user declines steadily month to month.

Google has shrugged off the report, noting that the sampling is small (40,000 users) and incorporate data only from public posts, not those limited to circles. (Are most of your posts public or to a specific circle?) RJMetrics counters that the study results mirror a ComScore study from February.

BusinessWeek, however, wonders if it matters. Citing Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, they point out that Google+ “provides Google with crucian user data to improve its main business: search.” Even of only a million or two people are active on the site, Sullivan says, it’s still likely to be enough for Google to get out of Google+ what they want.

Yammer and Badgeville Join Forces

Yammer—the social networking/status updating tool for the enterprise—has partnered with Badgeville to bring gamification to internal social media. Badgeville has been one of the leaders in influencing behavior through gamification and reputation programs. Under the partnership, when an employee achieves a goal established using Badgeville, it’s published to the Yammer activity stream where employees can comment on it or like it. “Publicizing the achievement provides additional motivation to the achiever and encourages onlookers to earn their own recognition,” according to the press release, which notes that Deloitte is already using the integration to reward consultants for checking in about client meetings.

Companies Start Blocking Smartphone Apps

If you’re a regular here, you know I’m opposed to companies blocking employee access to social channels. (Visit my Stop Blocking site for details.) But companies are continuing down the blocking path, bringing the practice to smartphones by blacklisting apps. Some are blacklisted over security concerns (like DropBox), others because of the old bugaboo, productivity (like Angry Birds). Ken Hess, writing for ZD Net, has a divided opinion about the legitimacy of the practice. Considering something like 70% of CEOs and C-Suite execs take video game breaks during the work day—leaving them feel better equipped to deal with the challenges and stresses of work—it seems rather disingenuous to suggest that employees taking simlar breaks aren’t gaining the same benefits but, instead, are simply causing the company to suffer a drain in productivity. As for tools like DropBox, Hess notes, “If i were a thief and wanted your information, blacklisting DropBox wouldn’t deter me at all.”

Twitter Launches an Email Digest

Like you don’t already get enough email newsletters. Twitter announced on Monday that it was launching an email digest of the best tweets in your network. According to Othman Laraki, Twitter’s director of growth and international, “This new email digest also features the most engaging Tweets seen by the people you follow, even if you don’t follow those who wrote them. You can see who from your network retweeted or favorited these Tweets and click ‘View details’ to retweet, favorite, reply or view the conversation around them.”

Most of the response to the email feature has been less than flattering, but a few have pointed out that email digests are one of the best uses for email these days.

Geofeedia is Out of Private Beta

Geofeedia enables location-based searches for social media content. Type in a place name, address or outline an area on a map, and Gofeedia delivers the latest geotagged content from within that area. it draws from Twitter, instagram, Picasa, Flickr and YouTube. The Poynter Institute sees the tool as a boon for journalists: “Hear about a shooting at a high school near Cleveland? Draw a circle around the area on a map and start looking at what is being posted, pretty close to real time. From there, you can filter by keywords and time.”

Pretty nifty. You need to request an account.

On April 26, 2012, FIR co-host Neville Hobson gave a keynote presentation at this year’s annual conference of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland (PRII) in Dublin. The overall conference theme was Reputation Management in the Age of Digital.

Could we genuinely have foreseen the extent to which technological innovations would have disrupted our way of working? asked the PRII. How social and digital media, in particular, would have given rise to consumer power and citizen journalism? Or that we would face unprecedented competition from a new wave of competitors?

These are powerful themes that were touched in every presentation and discussion. The PRII video-recorded every conference session (if you’re a PRII member, you can view the videos in the member area on the PRII website). They’ve kindly agreed to the audio of Neville’s presentation - called Reputation Management at Internet Speed - being made available to you in this FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast. You’ll get the most from it if you view the presentation deck as you listen, embedded below (or, if you don’t see it, view it at Slideshare).

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 253 780 9125 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe outro music - extract from On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

Watching television, once the epitome of passive media consumption, has become an interactive activity. Instead of sinking deeper and deeper into the sofa, people are sitting forward, smartphone or tablet in hand, finding engaging content related to what they’re watching and conversing with other fans of the same show.

This week and next, the producers of the ABC series Revenge are planning a to entice people to watch the last to episodes of the season when they are aired, rather than catching it later on DVR or online, by offering a stream of activities that will be made available through the Into Now app. They’re hoping to buck the trend of on-demand viewing using the viewer’s device of choice.

While watching in real time, viewers using the IntoNow app will be able to vie for a week-long trip to the Hamptons, test their series knowledge with trivia quizzes, and access special content produced for the app, among other things. Of course, most of the social viewing apps make it easy to consume content and interact with other fans whenever you watch the show, when it’s first broadcast or later.

Another social viewing app, Miso, encourages user-generated content, allowing fans to create material other fans might enjoy while watching a show. A Fast to Create article quotes Miso founder and CEO Somrat Niyogi’s vision is of a new market of second-screen producers, “people that are creating content specifically for the second screen. Imagine a history expert that nows more about the 1960s than anybody at (Mad Men), that can say, ‘This is accurate, this is not accurate, that product never existed.’ There are people who will follow history experts across TV, who’ll say, ‘I have to watch this show, with this person.’” Miso calls this viewer-created content—for which it has built its own publishing platform—Side Shows.

Social viewing on the rise

Social activity during primetime has jumped 193% in the last year, according to Wiredset and Trendrr CEO Mark Ghuneim, and while that’s not all attributable to people using apps designed to provide a second-screen experience—viewers can be doing anything from identifying an actor on Internet Movie Database to checking the latest pictures on Instagram—the number of users of such apps is experiencing equally dramatic growth. Even new players in the field are gaining traction. Viggle was introduced only three months ago but has been downloaded 800,000 times. Users spend an average of 93 minutes each time they use Viggle, checking into five different TV shows.

It’s a big enough trend that AdAge reports on the week’s top checked-in shows on the leading social TV app GetGlue. No less a player than Facebook is giving the trend a serious look: Speaking at AdAge’s Social Engagement/Social TV conference, the social network’s head of entertainment and media said Facebook is ready to help brands and networks extend the buzz around television events.

As for the worry that the second screen will distract viewers from what’s on the tube, a recent Nielsen report reinforces earlier research that the practice augments the viewing experience rather than pulling viewers away.

Trend watchers don’t expect the surge of new second-screen tools to last. “Many of these companies will disappear over the next year as leades emerge in the space and capital dries up for these guys,” TVplus co-founder Randy Shiozaki told a Mashable Connect audience. “The innovative ones will get acquired.”

From the living room to the meeting hall

Perhaps, but so far, the second-screen concept has been applied only to television. Marketers and communicators should be drooling over the potential for other kinds of activities as more and more people develop the second-screen habit.

While apps developed to provide in-depth information for conference-goers are plentiful (offering agendas, maps, speaker bios and the like), we have yet to see an app that can host content for a specific event. From an external communications standpoint, consider an annual general meeting, which has been as passive for attendees as watching an episode of NCIS. An event app, however, could provide access to any set of numbers a shareholder might want to call up, the text of any matters being brought to a vote, and a wealth of other material. Sitting in the audience, any shareholder can find any company information that answers a question that might arise as the company’s leaders drone on through their usual AGM agenda, and even network with others in the audience.

Internally, there’s the town hall meeting, where employees gather to listen to leaders. An app that provides access to related presentations, speaker bios, information about the products and services under discussion, and other content would not only keep employees awake during what are often dreadful meetings can help make the sessions relevant and interesting. The app could also include polls related to the current subject being discussed from the stage.

The concept extends to virtually any event where people are seated, as long as they have a smartphone or tablet with them.

Just as Miso, GetGlue, IntoNow and Viggle accommodate any TV show, an app for business-related second-screen content could provide a platform for any number of companies’ meetings (for a fee, of course), allowing the organization to populate its “show” with any content it wants.

It would be easiest for the developers of the existing TV apps to modify them and release them under a new name for corporate use. It’ll be interesting to see who is first adapting the second-screen concept to business. That somebody will is inevitable as it becomes clearer that the second screen is the best way to get people engaged in what was once a passive experience.

Content summary: FIR interview with Grantoo co-founder and CEO Dimitri Sillam is up. The Speakers & Speeches file from Neville’s talk in Dublin is coming this week. Neville recounts the talk he and Philip Sheldrake gave at the Wikimedia UK Annual General Meeting over the weekend. A discount code is available for FIR listeners interested in attending Like Minds Exeter 2012.  News That Fits: brand humanization is not a social media fad; Ragan Communications promo; the rise of social influence marketing with Klout and PeerIndex; listener comments discussion; CustomScoop’s Media Monitoring Minute; Dan York’s report addresses audio apps for the iPad and iPhone, DRM, and the 2,000-plus applications received for new gTLDs; social TV on the “second screen” evolves into content in its own right; TemboSocial promo; half of UK Internet users say online adds are worth it in exchange for free content; music from The Scarred; and more.

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (29.8 MB, 74:24)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone and for your Android device (visit the Android Market from your device)

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir; and TemboSocial (formerly Pollstream): helping you transform your communications goals into exciting strategies that will enable you to engage, educate and inform your customers and employees online, pollstream.com/fir/.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 14, 2012: A 74-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #651 bookmarks on Delicious

Names of blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Notes pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute time stamps – see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #651 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday May 21…

The best social media training effort is one that has been tailored to your organization’s requirements. Off-the-shelf training programs may cover the basics, but the basics will get you only so far. The payoff can be huge if you invest the time and effort to get the information you need to make sure your training addresses the unique circumstances of your company—and every company has unique circumstances!

That’s why research is the most important phase of the training development process.

What you need to know

Everything from the content of your training to the means by which you deliver it will be determined by the information you gather from various parts of your organization. While the nature of your business and the composition of your employee population may lead you to come up with additional questions, here’s a rundown of what you want to know:

Employee readiness

Just how steeped in social media are your employees? It’s dangerous to make assumptions. You may believe pretty much everybody in the company is on Facebook; research may prove different. Knowing what parts of the population are and aren’t using social media, and which tools they’re using, can help you determine how deep you need to go into fundamentals.

Knowing which levels of the population are and aren’t using social channels can also help with your planning. For instance, if front-line employees are engaged by managers and supervisors aren’t, you’ll know that some training targeting middle levels of the company may be appropriate.

It’s also important to know how employees are using these tools. For example, are they more likely to use social media from a mobile device than a computer?

There’s more to assessing readiness than determining employees’ social media competency, however. There’s also the matter of comfort. For instance, while they may be adept at using Facebook, they may be less comfortable sharing company information with their communities. That may be because they want to keep their personal and work lives separate, or it may be that they’re not all that engaged at work.

You may be inclined to think that your company’s employees are a mirror of the general population, but more often than not, that turns out to be a dangerous miscalculation. Company cultures can have a strong influence on behaviors and every company’s population is different to a greater or lesser degree.

Company policy

Embarking on a social media training journey starts with having a policy in place. Assuming it is, you need to review it to make sure it doesn’t serve as an inhibitor all by itself. You can make that determination just by reading it: If it is filled with a lot of don’t statements and warnings of the consequences of misbehavior, employees could read it and determine that it’s just not worth the trouble to engage, even if the company is asking them to. Asking employees about the policy can confirm that notion.

Asking employees can also determine that the policy may exist but employees are unaware of it. At one company where I helped develop a training program, only 35% of employees were aware that a policy existed. Where most employees are aware of the policy, you can devote most of the training to other topics and provide a basic overview of the policy. With 65% of the population unaware, however, the training clearly will represent the first time most mployees have been introduced to it, meaning that you’ll need to balance the training between policy and other topics.

Opportunites for engagement

Assuming your training isn’t strictly a policy review, you should devote a fair amount of the program to how employees can engage on behalf of the company and what the rules of the road are for that kind of interaction.

At the above-referenced company, it was top leadership’s commitment to its corporate social responsibility (CSR) platform that drove the training in the first place; leaders were enthusiastic about the potential of employees authentically discussing and answering questions about the company’s commitment to sustainability, talent diversity and other CSR categories.

Our research revealed that most employees—more than 60%—had already been asked questions in their social neetworks about their employer. Some dealt with CSR, some with references to the company in the mainstream media and a lot with employment opportunities and queries about what it’s like to work there.

These inquiries directed at employees via Facebook and other channels represent a singular opportunity for employees to respond to questions aleady posed that reflect the company’s values and messages. Yet the same research reflected a reluctance to respond.

You may not be fortunate enough to have a C-Suite already exicted about employees participating in social media on the company’s behalf, but there may be business initiatives or challenges where employee engagement could have a significant positive impact (assuming, of course, that employees are trained and have access to resources that help them answer accurately).

Obstacles

Research will also surface barriers to implementing training and the online employee participation the training is designed to promote.

You could, for instance, find out that front-line employees are enthusiastic about sharing company information within their communities but that their managers are opposed to it. You can also find out why they’re opposed. For example, is it that supervisors don’t want employees wasting work time on social networks that they believe have nothing to do with work, or it is a more specific issue?

Research can also help you determine if those managers objecting to social media are open to learning or are digging in their heels.

Research will also identify whether employees are uncomfortable—or even downright afraid—to mention work in their networks. If that’s the case, you’ll now now why and can address those issues in the training. In the case of the client previously mentioned, front-line employees uniformly felt more comfortable sharing links to official resources that contained authoritative answers than they were in crafting answers in their own words. The problem was, they didn’t know where to find those pages, given the company’s multitude of websites. As a result, the company worked with a taxonomist to develop a one-page listing of links to the various categories of information employees were most likely to need when responding to a query from the community. The training introduced them to the resource.

In other companies, research has determined that employees were more likely to share tweets and status updates prepared by the company (and disclosing the source) than in creating original comemntary.

Leadership/management buy-in. (Unofficial spokespesons) Fear and discomfort (concern over what people might say about comments). Lack of knowledge (e.g., where to find correct information). Lack of resources (e.g., no material available for sharing).

Between the interviews and focus groups, and the identification of obstacles, you should also be able to figure out whether a voluntary or mandatory training program is most appropriate. For example, in a highly engaged workplace, a voluntary program is probably adequate since most employees would be inclined to take it. If your company has employees who are mostly actively disengaged, you’d be better off with a mandatory program, since few employees would be inclined to go out of their way to make that discretionary effort on behalf of their employer.

The training environment

A lot of organizations are inclined to make assumptions about the nature of the training they will deliver. For example, you may think it’s a no-brainer to put the training online. But what if a significant portion of your population works in a factory and is unionized with a contract stipulation that they are not required to engage in any work activities outside of contracted hours? And what if plant managers oppose giving employees an hour away from the line to participate in training?

Even if your employees can access online training modules, do you have a learning management system (LMS) that will accommodate training? You’ll need one if, for example, your training or HR department insist that your training include a quiz, recording the results to determine who has completed the training and how well they absorbed the material. What’s more, some LMSs handle multimedia better than others.

If your training is face-to-face, is it classroom style or, as it is at Dell, more of an open forum?

How to get the answers you need

To assemble all the information you need to develop your training program, consider the following four distinct activities:

• Review existing data—Your company may have already conducted some research, ranging from employee engagement surveys to technology audits. Get your hands on them and review them. Read the policy—and all related policies—and ask around for any other resources that can help you better understand the environment.
  
• Interviews—The more interviews you can do, the better. Your goal is to learn everything you can about the policy, the reservations that key players might have that could torpedo your effort, the training environment, perceptions and opportunities. At a minimum, talk to the head of training, Human Resources, legal, IT, customer service, compliance and PR/communications. Ideally, you’ll also be able to talk to key C-suite members, the head of sales and marketing leadership.
  Focus groups—Focus groups have gotten a bad rap lately, but as an internal communications research tool, they remain invaluable. Asking straight-ahead questions about employee use of social media, how they use it related to their jobs and what their concerns are will raise categories of feedback you can test in a survey.
  
• Survey—You never know until you ask. Surveying a representative sample of employees will produce statistics you can use not only to guide the development of your training effort, but to convince leadership that the approach is appropriate. After all, leadership loves numbers.

Post-training research

One other benefit of reserach is the establishment of baseline metrics for determining just how effective your training was.

I was heavily involved in the research leading up to the development of a training program for PepsiCo (as well as developing the training itself). That effort will be honored at the IABC World Conference next month with two international Gold Quill awards. Among the results PepsiCo was able to demonstrate:

• Ninety-eight percent of those who took the training said they understood the social media policy (compared to 34.5% who reported they understood it before taking the course). A majority added that the training gave them the permission to participateb based on their new appreciation for their obligation to be transparent, ethical and honest in their online dealings when talking about work.
  
• By incorporating a feedback mechanism into the training, PepsiCo was able to identify 2,000 employees who wanted to learn more and/or get more involved. The training thus served as a recruiting channel for the company’s evolving ambassador program. Those who sought only additional information said they felt empowered with their new knowledge to supplement discussions with consumers, friends and family with the information the company made accessible to them.
  
• Eighty-four percent of those who completed the trainingsaid they would be willing to share PepsiCo information with their social communities at least monthly. This group of employees wanted additional information on products, social media and nutrition, suggesting they would be better equipped with this information to engage to the company’s benefit with their social networks.

Resistance is not futile

You may feel some pressure to opt for an off-the-shelf training solution based solely on cost. You should be able to resist based on a business case for equipping your employees to engage on behalf of your company—with the positive results employee engagement can accure—rather than simply provide a generic introduction to social media.

Have you conducted research about employees and social media at your organization? What did you learn that surprised you or led you to adjust your training in a way you didn’t expect?

Social Media Training Series

• Part 1: Introducing a series on social media training
• Part 2: Getting buy-in for social media training

Aside from the link-bait headline, it was the last item that led to my dismay. Under the label, “Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations Agencies That Have Hung a Social Media Shingle,” author Tim Judd writes…

It doesn’t mean they understand content that engages, promotes, or converts prospects to customers. “There are very few experts in social media,” (Killer Facebook Ads author Marty) Weintraub said. “It takes a lot of time and work to develop such expertise, especially now that social communities are turning off the ability to market to anyone other than friends.”

In its blurb linking to the article, the Smart Brief on Social Media added, “Self-described social media “experts” often don’t know what they’re talking about, so it’s important to keep a close eye on whoever is running your social strategy.”

Why the dismay? If you have to be told this about any contractor, you have no business being in business.

Once you have established a relationship and built a bond of trust, of course, you can ease off your oversight. But when a relationship is new, it doesn’t matter if you’ve hired a social media expert, an accountant, a graphic designer or an engineer. It doesn’t matter how sparkling the references were, how impressive the resume was or how blown away you were by their presentation or proposal. You can’t rely entirely on the due diligence you performed, allowing the contractor to work in a vacuum.

It’s your brand and yours and your organization’s reputation that are at stake. Monitoring the activities of any agency, freelancer or contractor is a fundamental obligation for anybody working in the world of business. (Recognizing this from my own days managing communications departments and consulting practices, I always build regular project reviews into the timeline of any proposal. If the people you’re hiring haven’t done that, insist that they do.)

This issue has bugged me ever since the social media consultant bashing began several years ago. Are those tasked with social media really so lacking in basic business skills that they can’t figure this out? If you can’t evaluate a contractor’s capabilities before hiring him, how in the world did you get hired into a position that requires you to make such decisions in the first place? As it is in the consumer world, caveat emptor: buyer beware.

Student loan debt in the U.S. has reached $1 trillion. Charitable organizations are suffering, but young cash-strapped students haven’t developed a giving habit. Organizations invest considerable sums in corporate social responsibility initiatives for which they get little recognition. Companies want to grow their levels of engagement with important young-adult audiences but struggle for relevance. Wouldn’t it be awesome if all of these issues could be addressed with a casual social game?

In fact, they have. In this FIR Interview, FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz speak with Dimitri Sillam, co-founder and CEO of Grantoo, which blends all of the issues listed above in a single game-playing environment. Playing in tournaments, students can win money for tuition while getting into the habit of donating to charities that hold meaning for them. Meanwhile, organizations can channel their philanthropic dollars into a cause that engages the organization with an important demographic while raising their CSR profile.

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Dimitri Sillam is a seasoned and successful entrepreneur. He founded OrientalPeople.com, the first dating site focused on the Middle East/ North Africa region (MENA). After selling the site to Moroc Telecom (Morocco), he founded LAZEO, a French beauty/health care franchise. Now, Dimitri is co-founder and CEO of Grantoo, where his experience in social media and consumer marketing will “help students play their tuition bills.” Dimitri is 26, French with Tunisian and Russian roots. He holds a BA in Economics from America’s Brandeis University and completed a program on Negotiation and Strategy from Harvard Law School.

Connect with Dimitri via LinkedIn.

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I follow so many blogs from PR, marketing and advertising agencies that I was taken aback when the headline Agencies Ditch Blogs cross my feeds. The Digiday post by staff writer Jack Marshall suggests that agencies “are increasingly turning their backs on blogs in favor of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and newer kids on the block like Instagram and Facebook.”

A lot of agencies do maintain blogs, Marshall observes, but largely so they can shine a spotlight on themselves when they win awards, make a noteworthy hire or issue a press release. But because blogs don’t contribute to reputation or brand, some agencies are dumping them. The post quotes Sam Weston, communications director at Huge, a digital agency, arguing that “Nobody reads agency blogs.” The agency has back-burnered its own blog while they try to figure out what to do with it.

Blogs, SEO and thought leadership

The assertion that nobody reads agency blogs came as a surprise to Niall Cook, one of the architects of Hill & Knowlton‘s blogging initiative. Cook left H&K last year to start his own consultancy—Sociagility—but says that by the time he left, the agency’s blogs “were generating more traffic and higher search engine rankings than the corporate website.” The website, he says, cost considerly more than the few thousand dollars invested in getting the blogs up and running.

“Even today, there are way more links to blogs.hillandknowlton.com than to http://www.hillandknowlton.com or www.hkstrategies.com,” Cook says. His new company’s blog covers topics like why there will never be a standardized social media ROI metric. There isn’t a new-hire or we-won-an-award post to be seen.

In fact, those self-promoting blogs Marshall seems to think characterize agency efforts don’t represent the best agency blogging. Agency blogs that produce the kinds of results H&K has achieved spotlight thought leadership, not awards and new-hires. The ain’t-we-great style of blog—whether from an agency or a company—never appealed to anybody, a fact reinforced by Forrester research that dates back 3-1/2 years.

When I asked study author Josh Bernoff about the Digiday article, he asked, “Did (agency blogs) have anything to say in the first place? Blogs are for thought leaders.” Which is exactly how Forrester approaches blogging. “Only Forrester analysts blog,” he points out, “and they are all, by definition, trying to be thought leaders.”

Good content isn’t easy

H&K has taken the same approach from the start, but “it took 3-4 years to create a sustainable community of conversation and content that demonstrated experience far better than a talking heads video,” according to Cook.

David Jones agrees. Jones, vice president of Social Strategy ad advertising agency Proximity Canada, points out that there are no shortcuts. “Building your ecosystem and filling it with content is hard work. You get out what you put in.”

While engagement with audiences on social channels like Facebook or Twitter and maintaining a blog aren’t mutually exclusive activities, you have to wonder about those who can’t figure out blogging and abandon it for other channels. As Gini Dietrich, CEO of PR agency Arment Dietrich, put it, “You have to have content to post on Facebook and Twitter. Why would you choose to post content that doesn’t drive (traffic) to something you own?”

Dietrich has made the most out of blogging as the lead writer for Arment Dietrich widely-read SpinSucks blog. If SpinSucks has ever been used to announce an award, it was slipped in between torrents of thoughtful posts that produce high levels of engagement. For example, Gini posted an item two days ago on press releases that has generated some 70 comments. Not too long ago, Dietrich launched SpinSucks Pro, a fee-based version of the blog that not only generaes revenue but drives people to deeper levels of content, such as webinars, white papers and more.

Asking the right questions

Dietrich’s success with blogging aligns perfectly with Jones’ and Cook’s views that success requires focus and effort. The same is true at Edelman, the world’s largest PR agency. Edelman Digital VP Phil Gomes says, “In terms of thought leadership and lead-generation, EdelmanDigital.Com does a great job.” Edelman Digital’s website is a blog featuring posts by recognized thought leaders like CEO Richard Edelman, cross-posted from his Edelman Speak Up blog, and David Armano, whose contributions are cross-posted from his personal blog.

Edelman also gains visibility and reputation through its Fellows blogs, where nine employees from around the world share their experiences working and living in markets dramatically different from the ones in which they grew up. As with SpinSucks, the engagement level on Edelman’s blogs is high.

“(I’m) not sure the DigiDay piece is asking the right questions,” says Gomes.

Thornley Fallis CEO Joseph Thornley found irony in the fact that the Digiday article appeared just one day after his agency relaunched its website on the WordPress platform, which supports blogging integrated seamlessly into the other content the site offers.

Ultimately, agency blogs used for self-promotion have always been ill-advised and most likely should be ditched. Does that mean agencies should shy away from blogging? The number of influential agency blogs—from SHIFT Communications, Peppercom, Voce Communications, Twist Imagethe agencies noted above and scads of others—demonstrates how absurd the notion is.

It could well be that the strategic planning and hard are required for successful blogging is driving some agencies to what they perceive as the simpler worlds of Facebook and Twitter. Says Cook, “It’s just another demonstration of the fact that they really don’t understand what social engagement is.”