In this week's issue:
    
Should Your Brand Offer Social Media Education & Training to Partners?
This week IBM’s Business Partner division, a Text 100 client, shared the results of a survey it conducted with its business partners about how they felt  about social networking as a tool for business. While the results and IBM’s response got attention…
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45 percent of channel partners are experimenting with social media
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74 percent are looking for more education and direction
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The top social media sites visited by partners are LinkedIn and YouTube
IBM has launched a new skills initiatives:
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training sessions and a social media guide available via the IBM PartnerWorld website
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a webcast and podcast series on Web 2.0 social media opportunities and successful strategy implementations
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a live session on "Leveraging Social Media for your Business" scheduled for partners at the October 2010 IBM Information On Demand Conference
…We think this campaign is worth another look because it signals a shift in the way some larger companies are leveraging social media with channel partners. IBM has long been using social media to REACH its channel partners. In fact, IBM’s developerWorks could be considered one of the first social networks out there. But with this new initiative IBM is instead ARMING PARTNERS WITH SKILLS they need to elevate their sales and marketing teams.
What’s the benefit to IBM?
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By evolving their sales support, the company gets even closer to partners by assisting them with their needs and giving them a competitive tool to grow their business
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The value in partnering with IBM lies in having access to IBM expertise – social media education becomes another draw
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More channel partners active in social media creates more opportunity to participate in conversations relative to your brand and a vehicle to seed content that supports their goals
Are you using social media to REACH your partners? Have you polled them to see where they are spending time online? Is their social media knowledge you could SHARE that supports your partners’ objectives?
Trendspotting: "Snack-able" Content
A social media site without multimedia content, such as video, is like peanut butter without the jelly – just missing something. Which is why all companies that host social content on platforms, such as Facebook, the blogosphere and Twitter, should pay close attention to how video will impact their business, and how to make these videos impactful. The trick is making “snack-able” content – videos that enrich your brand, without taking away from the company’s core message and aesthetic - and one that viewers will want to watch.
To make this content attractive to viewers, tips include:
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Aim to make the video under 90-seconds. People have short attention spans with numerous distractions in the social media world, therefore the shorter, the better! If you do tape an executive/event that is longer than 90-seconds, take advantage of this opportunity to turn the footage into numerous videos and blog posts. This will allow you to reuse pertinent messaging, and get more exposure.
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Get to the point right away – hit the viewer with your best sound bit, and start your story from this point to ensure that the viewer will want to watch the entire video – people usually make a go or no-go decision within the first 10 seconds of the video.
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Although the personality on camera is key, make sure the basics of good production are there – editing, clear shots and good lighting.
Who has done this well? In recent months, Cisco has made a push to the video world with the introduction of the “world’s most interesting intern.” The 100-second first video features the Cisco intern rapping about his experiences at Cisco. This video was well-shot, simple, short and very entertaining (and received over 90,000 views) – and was followed by numerous other similar videos from the intern, garnering a variety of coverage in top-tier outlets including the San Jose Mercury News and AllThingsD.com and Network World.
Fifty and Flocking to Facebook
Think the only people updating their Facebook statuses and tweeting are millennials? Think again. A study released this month by Pew Research shows that the use of social network sites, such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, has doubled in the past year by Web users ages 50 and older. Interesting results from the study include:
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42% of web-users over age 50 claim they visit social networking sites (up 20% from last year)
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20% of Internet-using adults between ages 50 and 64 say they use social networking sites each day on average (up from 10% last year)
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Internet-usage among adults ages 65 and older grew 100% in the past year
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One in ten of web-users ages 50 and older use Twitter regularly
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On the other end of the spectrum, Facebook/LinkedIN use among users ages 18 to 29 grew from 76% to 86% in the past year.
What does this graying of social media users mean study mean for you?
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Listening Projects: Executives notoriously use the excuse that social media is just for the young crowd when dismissing social media engagement as a business tool not worthy of investment. It’s time to use this data as a reason to revisit a social media listening analysis focused on where your customers are spending time online for groups that may have dismissed social media’s relevance to their business objective.
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Pick the right topic and set the right tone: Forrester’s Social Technographic Data has shown that this older generation is much more likely to be spectators or critics when it comes to their social media behaviors. When targeting this group focus on topics that relate to the life and workstyle of this generation, be conscious of your tone. This is a group with great life experience and skills be sure you’re striking the right balance of introducing them to new concepts and nodding to their expertise. This group is not likely to be creators so avoid activities where you are asking them to create content like videos, etc.
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Usability: Internet-users over the age of 50 are looking for dead simple social media tools. If you're looking for feedback make that process dead simple. Instead of comments consider a function that uses low-effort contributions such as star ratings.
Facebook Testing Subscription Feature for Users
Soon you may be able to get a Facebook subscription to….your friend?
Facebook is testing a new feature that will allow users to subscribe to all of the notifications of another user. Updates from these selected friends would appear in the notifications section of a user’s Facebook homepage—the highest-priority location in the Facebook interface.
As first reported by AllFacebook, the subscribe feature may be Facebook’s response to Twitter’s “follow” button. For users, this is more than an opportunity to take stalking to a new level—this is going to facilitate greater interaction between a user and people of interest. Users will essentially be able to get rid of the clutter and focus on the activities of friends and family that are most important.
 In a statement from Facebook, they explained: “This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they’ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links or notes).”
Facebook’s subscribe feature will be separate from the “like” function on Pages—which means this may open new engagement opportunities for brands. If Facebook goes through with implementation, users may be able to subscribe to the activities of Pages as well, and companies would add an additional metric outside of fan count: “subscriber” count – the number of users who are guaranteed to receive all of their updates.
While still in testing phases, brands need to think about how they would adapt if a subscription feature is enabled – how often will they update their pages? What kind of content do they want to broadcast? Maybe less is more—an overload of updates would inundate subscribers’ notifications, causing them to potentially stop following the page.
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