I’ll risk stating the obvious here because there seems to be extensive confusion around it with respect to social technologies: whether you are across the table or on Skype, LinkedIn, Twitter or the telephone, the core “activity” is relating to people. Social technologies give us more options for how we do the mechanics, but the core things remain:

• How much and under what conditions can I trust you?
• Do you care about me?
• Are you really trying to be helpful, or are you just trying to seduce me into “doing business”?

Here’s the kicker: the major difference when interacting online is that everybody sees, so our behavior harnesses the network effect. Therefore, if I’m being a faker to someone, everyone sees. If I’m genuinely helping someone, my reputation can increase quickly. Stop and think about this a minute. It is changing the world. Profoundly.

B2B Social Business Bootcamp

You can complete this bootcamp as quickly as you want, and in the order that makes the most sense to you, although I’ve organized the five modules in the order that will probably be most effective for most people. The bootcamp is based on CSRA’s client work with Fortune-50 enterprises, governments and hundreds of individual B2B executives.

1. Use the Relationship Value Map to organize your “connections,” whether they’re in your address book, LinkedIn, Goldmine, Salesforce, etc.
   • Like any undertaking, this could be daunting, but don’t let it be.
   • Do it one piece at a time. Start with LinkedIn.
   • Also, expect to tweak each vector’s milestones after you’ve used them on a couple groups.
   • It doesn’t have to be perfect.
   • If you find the Relationship Value Map too industrial strength, here’s an alternative approach that can get you to a similar destination.
   • Once you have tagged most of your Connections Q2, Q3, Q4, etc., play with the groups; select Q3 and search for keywords.
   • Note that, unfortunately, when you search your Connections in LinkedIn’s address book view, it only searches their “headlines,” not their profiles.
   • Alternatively, use Advanced Search (“people”), constrain results to 1st level Connections and type in multiple keywords. Advanced Search is Boolean, so try, “healthcare OR hospital OR pharmaceutical AND innovation”). In text edit, make a note of the people that appear; then you can create targeted groups and message people from within the address book—when you post questions in LinkedIn Answers or ask them to participate in LinkedIn Polls, for example.
2. Use LinkedIn to interact, develop relationship and increase trust.
   • By using LinkedIn’s various tools to interact meaningfully, you will increase your relevance and trust level with the people you care about—much more quickly than any other method.
   • Don’t get bogged down by trying to do too much as once; approach LinkedIn interacting in stages; it will seem like it takes a long time at first, but that’s your mental resistance talking; once you develop routines, you can expand easily.
3. Leverage your firm’s (or individual) thought leadership by blogging, which is the strong theme in Social Business Services’ B2B Case Studies. Our Executive’s Guide to Blogging will have your firm outperforming quickly.
   • Note that this is also best approached in stages, but keep the big picture in mind, so you can chart your progress.
   • All B2Bs have extensive thought leadership they can share with blogs; this is much more powerful than you probably appreciate; the very knowledge that attracts prospects the most is locked up within your “knowledge owners” and inaccessible. Blogs are perfect for sharing some of this knowledge, so prospects can discover you.
   • Our case studies bring this point home, time after time. We add more often.
4. Open up a new “micro channel” to your clients and prospects, which, in B2B usually means Twitter. Our Twitter bootcamp will have your team using Twitter like a pro.
   • Many B2B executives have been on Twitter and have abandoned it, but adoption continues. Remember, even if only 10% of your prospects are on Twitter occasionally, you can create an ultra-efficient channel with them that your competitors probably aren’t using. And more people adopt every month.
   • Twitter is also another distribution channel for your LinkedIn Answers, LinkedIn Polls, blog posts, etc.
   • Twitter helps search engines find you.
   • Most social business/networking applications and venues automatically publish to Twitter, so once you set it up, there’s no incremental work.
5. Other platforms:
   • As much as I love and use Google+, I don’t recommend it to connect with B2B executives in traditional industries. It is beyond their patience in 2012. However, if you want to connect with (Silicon) Valley thought leaders, entrepreneurs and related people, it’s exceptional. Read our posts to learn more.
   • Facebook can be very relevant, too, but it’s best used as a supplement, to get to know people better, and not as a primary channel for connecting with B2B prospects. Read our posts here to learn more.

Wrapping Up

• As I wrote in 2009, social technologies will have a profound impact on human productivity, and this guide will get you outperforming your competitors. I have attempted to chunk many of the core activities of CSRA’s client work into actionable steps you can pursue on your own; please post questions in comments below.
• One of the best metaphors I have to describe socialtech’s impact is Ford’s assembly line, which transformed how all products were made and led to immense Industrial Economy wealth. Socialtech will be the Knowledge Economy’s productivity machine because the tools digitize sociality and relationship.
• Your firm can create immense advantage by moving first.

Old habits die hard, and so it is with the ingrained assumption that “content sells.” Yes, having a current LinkedIn Profile replete with keyword combinations relevant to your High Interest Connections is very important, but it’s back seat to giving your Connections personal attention. Here I’ll address your protest that “I don’t have time!” by sharing some ultra-efficient processes for interacting on LinkedIn. Read on if you want to outperform 99% of other LinkedIn members.

“I Don’t Have Time!”

Let me tell you a secret. I don’t have time to write this post. But it’s important to someone who is important to me, so rather than sending him an email, I’m posting my advice here. Here’s how to deal with the time conundrum:

• Get your priorities in order. This will make some people uncomfortable, but you need to rank your LI Connections in order of importance to your goals. More on that here.
• The fact is, that we all make time for some people but not others, based on what’s most important to us at the time.
• I’ve yet to meet a LI member (who’s not a client ;^) with a clear idea of his/her priorities for LI Connections.
• Without an honest assessment of who’s most important to you and why, you’re overwhelmed, you have sporadic LinkedIn activity, and you probably have lackluster results.
• Use the Relationship Value Map to organize your network quickly.

Inter-Action

I’m sure you’ve been reading that we’re in the “attention economy” as it’s been around since the 1990s. The fact is, time is finite and one of the most precious things we can give another person. In business, that means individual attention. High opportunity cost. Meanwhile, social networks give us interesting ways to slice/dice attention and sprinkle some digital seasoning on it (as I’m doing here, for example).

In case you’re not convinced about the power of interacting, let’s review how the network effect works on LinkedIn:

• The Relationship Value Map describes how most effective businesspeople work, albeit unconsciously, so once you think about it, you probably have a mix of people in your LI Connections that rank high on the Trust Vector or the Interest Vector. So does everyone else. Most people on LI have tighter networks (i.e. they “know” people). So that means that when you interact on LinkedIn, LinkedIn broadcasts that interaction to your network, according to its algorithms. That means relevant people see the interaction.
• Think about it another way. I’ll wager that 95% of your LI Connections haven’t seen your Profile in over a year. But most of them have seen your interactions this week or month, in their Activity Streams. I’m proposing to help you make your Activity Stream tantalizing for your High Interest Connections. Here’s how to do it practically.

LinkedIn Hierarchy of Interactions

Here is a rough hierarchy of social actions/interactions in LinkedIn, from the least commitment to the most commitment (time).

Respond to updates for High Interest Connections

• If you are on Twitter, you probably recognize that many people update their LinkedIn Activity Streams with Twitter; if you aren’t on Twitter, or you have multiple Twitter accounts, you’ve probably been frustrated by LinkedIn’s Twitter integration (as I have).
  

  Native LinkedIn Update

• You can minimize this issue by distinguishing between updates that people make from within LinkedIn (“native”) from updates that come into LinkedIn from Twitter. You care because you can easily respond to native LinkedIn updates and can’t respond to Twitter updates (LinkedIn requires you to log in to Twitter).
• Click the thumbnails right to see the difference; the Twitter ones have the star “favorite”; LinkedIn’s look different. Look at the bottom. This just saved you some time and frustration.
  

  Syndicated from Twitter

• Roughly speaking, about 20-30% of your LI Connections should be High Interest. Depending on their habits, that may translate into many LI updates, but probably not too many if you have a B2B executive network as I do.
• Most important, when you respond, ask a question or share a related thought or link; don’t just say, “Wow, that sounds great!” You need to add value, even though your comment will only be a sentence. If you have organized your Connections, this will be easy because these are High Interest Connections.
• Make this a habit; remember, your interactions are seen by all your connections and theirs unless one of you has restrictive privacy settings.

Write updates relevant to High Interest Connections

• This is easy to organize because there are many tools for scheduling updates for most platforms, including LinkedIn. In other words, you can tee up a week’s worth of updates on Sunday evening.
• Most B2B execs should be on Twitter by now, but most don’t know how to use it; that’s okay, head over to the Guide to Twitter to tune up. Twitter is not required for LinkedIn updates, but it does increase leverage. Twitter in 2012 is like a website in 2000.
• Here are some tools that enable you to schedule updates ahead of time: Buffer | Hootsuite | Pingfm | Even more
• The number of updates you schedule depends on your High Interest Connections; you don’t want to overwhelm them; for most B2B execs, relevant updates are appreciated, anywhere from one per day to one per week.
• Write your updates at the same time; here are some ideas: share thoughts, links, questions; your updates can also tell a story, so do one a day during the week on the same theme, but make it super relevant; if you blog, consider lifting your topic sentences from a current post and using them as updates.
• Most important, though: these should be unusual and relevant to you and your High Interest Connections. What topics would you like to talk with them about over lunch or a drink?

Use Polls and share them for free to all your Connections, but make them most relevant to High Interest Connections

• LinkedIn Polls is a fun and useful way to communicate with your LI Connections and LI overall; once you learn how to use Polls, it only takes five minutes to create one.
• The value here is asking High Interest Connections about things that are important, to you and to them. You could also use results in blog posts or elsewhere.
• Write the “question” and up to five “response choices”; even better, write four responses and use the fifth one to invite people to use the comments below to answer “other”; that enables you to correspond with them in LinkedIn, even if you aren’t Connections. Here’s an example.
• You will get more value from this if you take its URL and email it to people or share anywhere your High Interest Connections congregate. Polls also can publish to Facebook and Twitter automatically.
• When you create a Poll, LinkedIn invites you to send a message to your Connections for free.
• You can pay to send your Poll to LI members with specific characteristics.
• Do this once a month.
• Don’t get hung up on the number of responses you get; the point is, all your Connections saw the Poll; make sure the question part speaks to your High Interest people.

Share links in relevant LinkedIn Groups

• LinkedIn Groups are now private (only Group members see interactions) or public (Google sees Group interactions). Be aware of this when interacting. Group Admins can change the visibility. This shouldn’t be a huge deterrent to you but it could be, depending on the nature of your business and Connections.
• By now you probably aren’t surprised that I’m recommending that you focus on 2-3 LinkedIn Groups that are most aligned with your High Interest Connections. Share links to your blog posts or the best posts or news/analysis stories you read.
• When you share the link, write a sentence explaining why you’re interested in it and why you wanted to share it (IOW, why you think they’d be interested, too).
• Ask a question! Questions are the best conversation starters.
• Bonus points if you LinkedIn message group members who are also your Connections, inviting them to check it out.

Start and moderate a discussion in relevant LinkedIn Groups

• Here you are focusing on interaction and actively reaching out to invite people to discuss something that’s important to you (and them).
• To hit it out of the park, let a few people know ahead of time that you’re going to hold the discussion and tell them that you’d really like them to weigh in on it. When you post the discussion, LinkedIn message them and share the link.
• Yes, Groups let their members know when new discussions are posted, but many people have Group notifications turned off, so it’s important to LinkedIn message people directly.
• Write a good question, and make sure to use the “add more details” field, so people understand your point of view or angle on the issue.
• Do this once a month in each of the three Groups.

Respond to questions in LinkedIn Answers

• 

  LI Answers badge in Profile right sider

  LinkedIn Answers is a gold mine that few members have ever known about. It’s LinkedIn’s discussion forums, and it’s public, so discussions are searchable via Google.

• Here are some more thoughts on LinkedIn Answers’ power and how to use it.
• Take a couple hours and familiarize yourself with the forums relevant to you and your High Interest Connections.
• Practice using Advanced Answers Search so you can find questions that are relevant to you and your High Interest Connections.
• Answer one question per month, or per week.
• Answers are extremely powerful. Unless you turn it off, your Answers activity is a part of your Profile, so people see your activity, which is very valuable when you make your participation relevant. (right)

Post questions and moderate discussions in LinkedIn Answers

• Similar to the Groups recommendations above, you can also post questions in LinkedIn Answers. Most people post the question and abandon it. Don’t do this.
• When you post a question, actively moderate it by checking it at least 2/3 times a day (and night); interact with people, thank them for responding and ask them follow-up questions.
• Very important tip: during client work, I’ve analyzed thousands on forum posts, including LinkedIn Answers. When you have a very high quality, serious response soon after the question posts, it dramatically influences the quality of other people’s answers afterward (sets the bar). Therefore, increase your chance of a home run by inviting High Interest Connections to respond to your question; Linkedin message them with the link to your question.
• By the way, LinkedIn Answers are public and have URLs; you can reference them always.

Parting Shots

• Give yourself a month to try most of the interactions above, and create a plan for yourself. Depending on your work habits and your High Interest Connections, put together your palette of interactions.
• Remember, you won’t necessarily see an immediate “business benefit” from being top of mind, but you will build your reputation as someone who is doing “worthwhile” things (in your High Interest Connections’ eyes). If you’re in B2B, the deals you do are probably large. My firm has landed two large enterprise consulting contracts from people who found us online, based on our activity.
• But rather than deals, focus on relationships; when you help people out online, everybody sees. It’s cumulative and builds your reputation.
• Most people use LinkedIn as an “online resume,” but I hope you realize that they are leaving almost all the money on the table. Interaction is what pays off; it gets you noticed by the right people, for the right reasons. And you dramatically increase the probability of creating relationships and closing deals by how you conduct yourself online.
• Here’s a big picture view of how social networks are disrupting and transforming B2B sales and marketing.

We’ve covered a lot of ground here, so please post your questions in comments!

Response

• To arrive at a satisfactory answer, we need more context. For example, ask yourself what are the top3 stakeholders you want to engage? Define them specifically enough to distinguish each from the others clearly. In addition, around what actions do you want to engage each? Given the answers to those questions, you can create a robust strategy for your Google+ Page.
• In the beginning, maintain a rabid focus on community quality, not quantity. In networked environments, your core membership is the root for the tree. If your community/following is a grab bag, you will have trouble creating critical mass to have a distinctive Page. If there are a few people whose social actions detract from what you’re trying to create, block them (very few of these in most cases). Proactively seek out stakeholders interested in the actions relevant to your business and Google+ strategy.
• 99.5% of all Facebook and Google+ Pages have poor/no strategy, so they get poor results. “Engaging with members” in general won’t be very efficient until you have a solid value proposition for each stakeholder *with* its actions.
• Another general rule is that you will get better results by facilitating stakeholders’ participation because it is far more effective than what you say. Achieving this involves an intricate journey up the Google+ hierarchy of social actions (see http://bit.ly/fbladsocact).
• Plan on interacting consistently at lower level social actions. As people perceive your sincerity and commitment, they will start interacting on your Page at higher level social actions. And people mirror each other; they feel it when others are trusting you more and sharing more deeply, which will influence them to do the same.
• The other general advice I can give is to build using a networked model. The context of this post is Facebook Pages, but the strategy will work well for Google+ as well (http://bit.ly/fbnwkstrt).

What is your experience with building Google+ and/or Facebook Pages?

Alas, as I have argued here and in conference presentations since Google+ launched, this misunderstanding is completely understandable—and wrong. Most interesting here, it elevates opportunities and threats for market participants.

The Wall Street Journal’s The Mounting Minuses at Google+ post epitomizes conventional wisdom about Google+. Here are three reasons I recommend doubting the view that Google+ is a lackluster social network that’s late to the party without a valid value proposition. I have argued that Google+ may prove to be a mammal to pureplay social networks’ reptiles. It’s a fundamentally different animal:

• The business model: Google doesn’t have to make money from Google+ the same way as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace had to “monetize the eyeballs”
• Social and search can be the killer combination if done right
• Very few people understand Google’s breadth of engagement and accessibility to social actions

Business Model

At a very simplistic level, Facebook monetizes via display adverts and gaming. Over the last couple of years, its revenue has risen impressively, although it is relatively little compared to the amount of time people spend on the site. LinkedIn has diverse revenue streams and has been profitable for several years. Twitter is struggling to monetize. However, Google is in a class of its own:

Google+ is a “social substrate” into which myriad Google “products” plug, and its mission is to encourage users to create social data that Google can co-mingle with the kind of data that only Google has. Put another way, Facebook will have relentless pressure to monetize as a public company, and its Timeline initiative shows that it will push further into adverts. It already has a stormy relationship with a vocal minority of its users. LinkedIn will earn handsome returns for its shareholders, but it will remain a niche play relative to Google. Twitter is the weakest of the lot and has an uncertain future.

However, if Google+ succeeds in creating enough social data to increase the relevance and value of other Google products, especially as relates to search, it will have earned Google an order of magnitude more than any pureplay.

Social and Search

Many search pundits are engaged in a hue and cry against SPYW (Search Plus Your World, Google’s “product” name for mixing social and legacy search results), accusing Google of “polluting” “pure” search results with “social” results. Obviously major changes in Google’s algorithms can be severely disruptive to their businesses, but that comes with the territory. The arguments I’ve seen have been weak. Google has grown to dominance on a simple value proposition: returning more relevant and useful search results than anyone else. Some kinds of searches will be less valuable if they include social data; others will be significantly more valuable. Let the customer choose whether to include social results or not (Google already does this).

Google+ has the potential to do what no other social network can: influence search results. I don’t believe that Google is ever going to manage Google+ as a self-standing profit center. The market and government will pressure Google to tread cautiously, but they will use social data to improve search results to the extent that it’s practical. I recommend that ecommerce companies or anyone invested in SEO or SEM to look into Google+ aggressively by conducting feasibility studies and launching pilots.

Pureplay social networks have proven disappointing levers to ecommerce-style sales; while engagement is through the roof, “converting” engagement in the Web 1.0 sense (ecommerce) has fallen far below expectations (it’s a flawed concept, but that’s another post); however, Google searches are far more likely to include people who want to buy; they aren’t on Google to socialize or network; they are often work-focused (they’re looking for things), so the context is more amenable to sales.

Social Actions

Considering that virtually all digital transactions can be seen as social actions when social relationships can be determined, Google has a tremendous breadth of social actions from which to choose. Very few YouTube users ever bothered to build YouTube networks or friend lists, but now they don’t have to. Google Docs users don’t currently socialize much. Google Maps aren’t very social. Gmail has intense social potential, but Google’s former attempts to play with that all backfired. Even if Google+ succeeds in motivating people to link with a few friends, that will help Google tremendously. Imagine these scenarios:

• You hit YouTube, and videos of your friends and their favorite videos are automatically displayed in the main pane
• You’re using Google Docs to create a spreadsheet for some light regression analysis for a segmentation study, and Google suggests some public spreadsheets from your B-school cohorts
• You’re looking for a Chinese place in SoHo on Google Maps, and reviews or Stream Posts (Google+ “Wall posts”) by your friends pop up on the map
• Ditto for photo albums in Picasa … …
• The big payoff for Google is that, even if average users spend far less time on Google+ than on Facebook, which I expect in the immediate future, Google can learn from the social relationships and vastly improve the value of search and other “products”
• Of course, none of this is to mention the exploding Android/geosocial/mobile learning to which Google will have access

Ease of Use

Most of CSRA’s client work with platforms has involved WordPress, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and various Forums, and I personally have extensive experience with these and others. CSRA has invested significantly in Google+, but our investments are based on stakeholder and workstream analysis. We don’t invest in search or SEO beyond writing the best content we can. Here are some of Google+ design advantages that we appreciate:

• The simplicity of Circles is value-defining. In social business, the conversation is the content. Interaction trumps everything. It is easier on Google+ to create a Circle and communicate with that Circle than it is in any other platform
• The people interacting on Google+ are high-octane thought leaders
• If you are used to Facebook, many of Google+’s design metaphors will be familiar to you
• It’s a new network, so easy to distinguish yourself, which counts if your stakeholders are on Google+
• If you have a B2B, you should be interacting and leveraging unique and highly differentiating keyword families; it is too early to call whether CSRA’s interactions on Google+ are affecting Google legacy search, but the chance is significant that it will

Recommendations

• Make Google+ pilots a priority if your firm invests in Internet search/SEO/SEM: There will clearly be disruptive advantages because social data can improve relevance (and search results) for certain use cases
• Explore Google+ pilots if your firm does not invest in search: Analyze Google+ activity and memberships, and determine how its segmentation and sharing tools compare to your other social business investments
• Google+ will disrupt the market, so most organizations will benefit from gaining experience with it: Few firms understand it because they think it’s a social network
• Use their confusion to your advantage
• Remember, Google+ is social: It will take time to develop a quality community (in circles)
• Community sharing affects search results and buying decisions
• One of Google+’s huge advantages is that your competitors don’t get it; seize the day!

Why Don’t We Just Use Facebook?

This is a good question, especially given Google’s “social” fumbles, which lead the unwary to believe that “Google doesn’t get social, it’s a search company.” Executives, and I’m no different in this regard, don’t like to be shaken up and disrupted. But we will be, whether we like it or not.

• Google+, since its strategy is to add more value to search, doesn’t have to make money like the pureplays do (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn). Even by adding incremental value to search, it makes Google a ton of money.
• Google+ will “synergize” with search in interesting ways that no one can predict. Google faces extensive legal and public resistance to SPYW (Search Plus Your World), its current “product” for co-mingling “Google” search results with social data. That is the intention, and I expect Google to pursue it as strenuously as possible.
• No “social network” can do that. I generally advise companies that invest in SEO or ecommerce to scope and pursue Google+ pilots aggressively this year.

We Don’t Want to Manage Another Presence

Sorry to be blunt, but the market won’t wait for you. Early movers will have very large advantages because this is changing the landscape in which social networks operate. Pureplays will prove to be dinosaurs, Google+ is a mammal. I predicted years ago that social networks would disappear because all software would have social features.

Nor am I saying that every firm needs to make a sizable Google+ investment. Ecommerce and SEO-focused organizations should aggressively pursue quick feasibility studies to scope the relevance to their businesses and pursue pilots as warranted.

I Don’t Know any Active Google+ Users, Isn’t This Just Hype?

Although some studies predict 400 million Google+ users by December 2012, we all know by now that, on average, five percent of a network’s users produce about 95% of the content. Google+ will not be in the workstreams of most users for years, even though they may technically be users.

But if you are like most of CSRA’s clients, you care about connecting with niches. Google+ can offer a rare opportunity to connect with key niches and affect search results. Successful social business initiatives aim to create trust and develop relationships with specific kinds of people. Google+ will be a very effective venue for some niches. Don’t be distracted by the fact that mass adoption doesn’t happen right away.

Another unique aspect of Google that leads me to believe that Google+ won’t have to worry about adoption. Google already touches so many people that it will have innumerable opportunities to lead people into the playground. Imagine these scenarios:

• You open YouTube and your friends’ videos are displayed by default (not your YouTube friends because most people never bothered to build that network); friends of yours who have +1′ed things
• You open Google Docs spreadsheets and other people’s public documents are displayed, especially people who went to your business school
• Google Maps displays your friends’ +1′s near where you are searching
• Google has all these opportunities to engage and show value; it doesn’t need overnight adoption

Won’t the Feds Shoot This Down?

Although I have no inside information on Google, I watch most of the major players. I expect Google’s main defenses to charges that it is “polluting” search results with “social” influence or data to be logical and technical:

• Logical: Google’s value proposition to users has been very consistent, “Deliver a better search result.” For some searches, social data will produce better results, and Google is smart enough to figure that out and deliver it intelligently
• Technical: offer a simple button that displays results with/without social data, giving choice to the user
• I expect Google to move slowly; they’ve learned from missteps with Buzz, etc.

What are your experiences with Google+?

Download Presentations Here

Here is one of the decks I used: How Google+ Will Trivialize Pureplay Social Networks.

The real answer is far less satisfying, “It depends.” Some search results will be improved with social data while others won’t. Search, SEO/SEM and other players dislike Google+ when it disrupts their businesses. Expect, and listen to, these arguments, but realize that they are often biased.