- by Alena Hitzemann, Associate Web Editor

I attended a HubSpot webinar yesterday about how to use social media for business. It was pretty good- they made the usual points about social media as inbound marketing, the importance of measurement, Twitter best practices (link, link, link!), etc. in an engaging way. But I thought the highlight of the hour was the discussion about distribution and conversation.

If you think about it, distribution and conversation are the two main drivers behind all social media. People share stuff- distribute it- and talk about stuff- converse about it. Among friends, this is normal. One of my friends posts a funny picture or video to their Facebook status, I converse with them by commenting on it or "liking" it, then maybe post it to my own status to continue the distribution pattern (now I can even tag the referring friend in my status- sweet.)

In the business world, however, it seems that we sometimes forget the importance of completely integrating these two actions.

We're certainly good at distributing. Traditionally, we sent out press releases, mail out brochures, launch email campaigns and send newsletters. Nowadays we're encouraging RSS feeds, posting content to Facebook fan pages and tweeting out links.

We do ok with the conversation part as well. We host webinars with Q&As, attend tradeshows, sponsor live chats and participate in online communities. This is all great stuff. But frequently, the distribution and conversation go on independently of each other. And that's where we miss opportunities.

Distributing content is a great way to spread the word about your business. It generally builds awareness, and if it's valuable content, also builds a strong reputation. Same goes for conversation. Whether it's a helpful support experience over live chat or a friendly exchange at a tradeshow booth, a positive interaction will reflect positively on your company. And again: great stuff. But the kicker is that other people are doing that, too. What they're not doing is combining the distribution and conversation into a fluid process that enhances and bolsters both objectives.

Example #1: Twitter. Instead of just tweeting links to your own stuff, or just using it as a tool to chat, integrate. Retweet. Retweet with your own commentary, or a response to someone else's commentary. Ask questions. Point to collateral while asking for feedback, responses, comments, opinions. Thank others for RTing your stuff. Direct message brand champions. All of these things make you stand out from the crowd, make your links stand out from the crowd, and make people like you- which will make them much more inclined to engage with the content that you distribute.

Example #2: Blogging. Blogging can be a great tool for two-way communication. Use your own voice to talk about company content (that you've linked to, of course.) Add your personal opinion to a white paper, discuss a recent event, shout out to the great people you met at your last conference. Pose questions, beg for comments, be controversial- do whatever it takes to get the conversation going around the collateral that you want to deliver.

Example #3: Online communities. The Company Presence in online communities often sways one of two ways: answers every question with a link back to some database, or answers every question with an involved, individually written response. But serious impact comes from combining these methods. "Hey Bob, thanks for the question. It sounds like solutions X, Y and Z might help. You can get started by doing _____, but also check out these resources in our database (link, link, link.) Jim also had a similar question in Forum X, you might be able to find some information there. Have you tried ____?" This method makes it personal, offers specialized suggestions, but also points to distributed collateral... which saves The Company Presence time and grows the general awareness of all the company's great content.

These examples may seem obvious, but they bring us back to "easier said than done." It isn't simple to combine distribution and conversation in a thoughtful way- if it was, everyone would be doing it. But it certainly is worth it, which makes it worth keeping both strategies in mind.

- by Anirban Dutta, Web Producer

Tidal wave?

The concept that has sent a Wave of excitement through the tech and non tech community alike comes from the innovative giant on the web – Google.

They’ve named it Google Wave.

Founders of the Google wave are Lars Rasmussen, Jens Rasmussen (brothers) and Stephanie Hannon - the same team that came up with the Google Maps application.

As Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Wave highlights, email was created some 40 years ago, before the creation of the Internet its self and it was done without the experience and knowledge we now have of things such as wikis, social networks, sms, instant messaging and so on. He introduces the Wave as “Google Wave is what email would look like if it was created today”. He says as opposed to emails which try to instantiate a point to point conversation, the Google Wave is "one metaphor for hosted conversations" object hosted on a server somewhere.

The Wave concept typifies an utopian Web 3.0 world where we have all the caliber of Web 2.0 ie emails, IMs, wikis, blogs, bulletin boards, Social networking, sharing and collaboration merged with a much more real time focus; so we have all of the cool stuff happening in a single browser session in a single pane with more enhanced features like we never imagined!

So how does this Sci-Fi set look?

Features like real time translation in 40 languages, contextual spell check, grammar checking and all in one drag drop file sharing, document creation, sharing and editing, starting forums. It certainly packs the thrills of a Spielberg flick!

Plus a very cool feature is its Playback option which lets you refer back to a conversation trail and see which participant added what and at which time and locate the origin of the Wave - each conversation is a wave.

Open Source and the Wave

Google shared its baby with the world at Google's Developer Preview forum Google I/O May 2009

Watch the launch video

Google has actually invited the developer community to participate in the Google Wave program by throwing open a forum to contribute to its features. Majority of the Wave's code is open source and the developers would be given accounts in a sandbox within Google's system  to start developing add on features and extensions to coincide with the launch. This is way too cool.

There is also a feedback capturing mechanism if you wish to be updated on whats going on - Fill up the form

I think I can definitely suggest some cool aliens in this movie on the semi technical side straight to the directorial suit.

The Wave is a platform in iself and it supports robots to automate tasks and functions, embed Waves into external blogs and web sites, “talk” to popular web services such as Twitter collaborate across different platforms, merge other Google tools and gadgets in short Google calls it a "Game changer".

I enhanced my open source knowledge from whurley's podcasts.

I'm not walking the technical line on this red hot topic - there's enough out there on the internet, a particularly good read is the Google Wave guide.

Concerns, resistance to change?

Does this mean the end of the world of CCing and BCCing and SMTP mails and the very recent blogging? How would it impact my business/ Do I have to resort to cloud computing? Would the corporate world accept the wave? Would the concept be scalable enough? These are some of the initial questions that make the tag cloud of this mega project but coming from an organization like Google I have full faith on their to realizing abilities.

My part of the shock was when I realized the concept of the Google Wave was so massive and yet so simple that Social Media would be turned into a subset of this giant - where I always thought Social networking encompasses all - I feel this Tide has a magnitude of possibly redefining Tim Berners Lee's www into World Wide Wave.

Cant wait for the tide to come sweep us over!

- by Alena Hitzemann, Associate Web Editor

Wow. My colleague Tom Parish tweeted the following today:

tparish Facebook Chat: 1 Billion Messages Sent Per Day (fascinating, I had no idea of the volume, huge) http://ff.im/-43xgA

One billion messages per day. That's so much communication. Makes me wonder what our volume here at BMC is, on MS Communicator, or Skype, or even quick pings over email... or all of the above. Clearly the nature of conversation is changing... how is the IT world going to keep up? How do we evolve with it?

(Speaking of Twitter and Tom, I highly recommend following him @tparish. He's a savvy guy. And while you're at it, follow me @IT4GenY. Just getting started but intend to make it worth your while.)