Of course, nobody’s actually said that to me recently, so I need to stretch a bit. Just the other week, this brilliant video posted all over the Interwebs. While it turns out that it was prepared by a unit of Penguin Publishing, the message is no less valid. Make sure you watch and listen to the whole thing before you make up your mind.

Yes, it’s on YouTube. Yes, social networking has been a big deal long enough to go from fad to trend to established communication form. But there still has to be something to talk about. One can only get so deep into philosophy, current events, science, and art with Facebook or Buzz status updates. There will always be a place for physical media. These are major sources for big ideas.

New media can be the start of great print too. Social networking is a thousand different sociology experiments writ large, all happening at once. Good information on human behavior is there for the observing. Journalists get leads from Web sources all the time. And who’s to say that a hot exchange of tweets won’t inspire the next great novel—or that a blog won’t help us find out about it?

Sure, circulation and ad revenue are down, but that’s just good news for the trees. Executives must learn that the socialverse isn’t going away, and adjust print’s business practices to reflect this fact. I don’t have the answer yet, nor do they, but we’re working on it.

Conventional wisdom states that 90 percent of online community members are passive participants, or lurkers; they monitor the content and events but don’t contribute. The next 9 percent are active participants who post and engage with some regularity. But the majority of activity in the community comes from just 1 percent of members, called hypercontributors (or grognards, to some). This is sometimes known as the 1-Percent Rule. Conventional wisdom isn’t always wise, so Wu set about putting numbers to the theory.

It’s hard to get decent data on how non-participants contribute to a community—it’s like proving an unbounded negative—so the study focuses on the top 10 percent of community contributors. Lurkers aside, it turns out that conventional wisdom is actually wise: The hypercontributors in the top 1 percent create an average of 56 percent of community content, with the rest coming from regular contributors in the next 9 percentiles.

There’s more to it than this brief outline, and I recommend reading the study results in depth. Knowing your audience is key to serving it.

As the verbal assault continued, I raised my hand and asked the obvious: “Why Twitter? Does God hate Twitter?”

“We have not quarrels with Twitter. Twitter is a great platform,” stated a gray-haired WBC woman juggling several signs that could be interpreted as funny and ironic if they were actually funny and ironic. Gesturing to one of the younger WBC women, she added, “Meagan, she’s Twittering right now.”

But she explained the reason behind the protest: “Twitter should be used to tell the punks of doomed America that God hates you!”

As a staunch advocate of the use of social media, I have to say this shows a complete misunderstanding of how Twitter works, and reveals the difference between the old and new schools of mass communication. Protesting at the Twitter offices to get the platform to be used in one way or another presupposes that Twitter is a one-way channel that controls all the messages sent through it. It’s like seeing a soda can on the ground next to a recycling bin and complaining that the bin doesn’t reach out and pick up the can.

The new model of social engagement starts with interested parties reaching out to other interested parties. The correct action to take if you want Twitter to “tell the punks of doomed America that God hates you” is to start telling them yourself via Twitter.

Of course, that’s going to be somewhat problematic, since Twitter doesn’t work by telepathy. You can spout all the hate you want (subject to Twitter’s terms of service) but if nobody’s following you, you won’t be heard. The punks of doomed America aren’t going to follow these people to receive daily reminders of how a fringe group thinks they’re damned—well, the masochistic ones might—so the message dies. That’s how it is with social: If you want to reach people, you must have something worthwhile to say.

Maybe it’s not that bad where you are, but in New York we have it frigid and windy. I happen to love cold weather, and even I find this to be a bit much. The window I’m sitting next to as I write this is not the best insulated, so a draft is pouring off of it onto my left arm. (I prefer to think of pouring drafts in a more delicious liquid format, but I’m not here to talk about my weakness for fine adult beverages.)

I can hear you wondering what, if anything, this has to do with the business of getting and keeping customers. I’m getting to that. It’s just taking me a while because my brain is impaired by the cold; my fingers aren’t doing much better. It’s cold enough that, were I outside, I’d be looking for a shop to go into just to warm up. As it is, I’m considering leaving my drafty apartment for just such an adventure. And there’s the tie-in.

Walk-in customers and their online equivalent represent a great opportunity to earn new business, but only if the customer experience you provide is up to the challenge. Anybody can turn up the heat, but turning casual browsers into new customers requires warmth. Making people feel welcome goes a long way toward getting them to see what you have to offer, and this applies whether you serve consumers or businesses, in a shop or on a Web site.

Most businesses aim to showoff value first, with announcements about the latest sales and best brands right in customers’ faces when they walk in the door. This can backfire, because it’s very off-putting. Shoppers who know what they’ve come for aren’t interested, and casual foot traffic gets the sense that they are prey for a sales pitch. “How can I help you” is much more welcoming than “what are you looking for,” wouldn’t you agree?

For brick and mortar shops, simple touches like having hot tea or coffee available in the winter—preferably free—and cold drinks in the summer can earn a favorable impression and a closer look. Williams-Sonoma often has free mulled cider in the winter, and remembering that is nearly enough to get me to go there now. Always allow (read: encourage) staff to engage walk-ins in non-sales related conversation as long as it isn’t taking away from something they need to be doing. Things like that go a long way.

Getting beyond specifics like hot drinks and warm conversation in retail stores, the general principle of welcoming applies to any business. If you can make your customers think kindly of you, they will always have you in mind. They will think of you as more than just a supplier of products—and they will spread the word about how pleasant it is to do business with you, even when they’re not actively buying.

The dialogue, if you can call it that, between cats and their owners is mostly in one direction. I buy a new toy or type of food for the cats, and then try to interpret their interest—marketing. We don’t speak the same language, just as businesses often don’t think of a successful product in the same way a customer would.

Once I’ve started the marketing campaign, the next step in KRM (Kitty Relationship Management) is trying to close the deal, turning up the pressure in order to sell the cats (their names are Cookie and Dr. Harbl, in case you were wondering) on the wonders of these new rawhide mice, or frozen raw venison burgers, or whatever. Again, the success or failure of my efforts is dependent on factors I can neither predict nor understand. In time I might develop some insight to what these particular cats prefer, but I can’t necessarily communicate that information to somebody else, nor can I apply it to other cats.

Kitty customer service? Again, failure to communicate is the order of the day. I am prepared to respond to certain requests from my cats, so every time they provide input I try to interpret it in light of those expected requests: feed me, pet me, or clean the litter box. It took a while to learn that last request, mainly because my own data told me I was doing an adequate job. If I’m not doing what the cats want, they have limited means for setting me on the right track, and if they don’t lodge some kind of protest, I continue with what I’ve been doing.

Good CRM, especially the social kind, is like speaking cat language. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, but trust me—it’s huge. If you’ve ever had a cat deposit its “customer feedback” on your laundry bag, you’ll agree.

While letting “social CRM” exist merely as shorthand for a broader concept—like Paul Greenberg’s excellent and tweetable definition, “the company’s response to the customer’s control of the conversation”—I prefer for the concept to remain grounded in the words that describe it. In this case, the best definition of social itself is from Merriam-Webster: of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society; tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others of one’s kind.

It’s great if your company is engaging its customers and partners in conversation through its own social networking tools. It’s beyond great, it’s necessary in most cases. But there must be more. You’ve got to reach out beyond your own circle, and start exchanging ideas with new people and organizations, ones in whom you don’t already have a financial interest.

This is not to say that you should abandon any current social efforts. Just make sure you’re sticking your corporate nose into somebody else’s as well. I’m not talking about corporate espionage—that’s bad. I mean participation in timely and topical discussion groups (the Answers section of LinkedIn is an excellent example), attending Webinars, and just letting your people explore where their interest takes them.

If our hunter/gatherer ancestors hadn’t been willing to meet other bands of like-minded people, we would never have gotten beyond tribes and clans, warring with one another for access to water, hunting grounds, and abundant vegetation. (You could make a decent argument that we still haven’t gotten beyond that, but I’m feeling generous to our insane species today.) Communication with “the other” brought trade, exchange of ideas, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing what those guys in the next cave are up to.

It’s no different in modern society. Looking for new ideas and new associates to share them with is a major driver for the modern, socially-aware business. Does your desire for partnership and creativity outweigh your fear of competition? It should; competition is healthy. Social interaction means business doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Your competitors may glean some ideas from you that they might otherwise not have, but you will do the same. You will each innovate, raising the standard for all. You will allow your entire industry to serve the customer better.

Take the next step. Get your company onto somebody else’s social network. It’s only natural.

Social CRM, and social media awareness in general, is passing from the wowgottahaveit buzzword phase of its existence and entering the cost-benefit analysis phase. There are lots of discussions (or one big discussion, in a way) being had about how one measures the return on investment—ROI—of social CRM. You can see the Wordpress blogs that have touched on it here; I can’t say I’ve read them all yet, and likely never will. A guy’s gotta get out of the home office from time to time.

Forrester analyst Natalie Petouhoff (Dr. Nat to her friends and pretty much anybody else) has a report on The ROI of online customer service communities. Sometime in the near future, Ryan Zuk will be publishing an article on social media monitoring for the PRSA newsletter. I may or may not be quoted in it, depending on how the piece shapes up and what his word count ends up at. (I’m not trying to add pressure for my inclusion, Ryan, just using you as a lead-in to my point.)

If I’m in there, I may come off seeming like I don’t think ROI should be a consideration for businesses implementing social CRM. That’s not the case. It’s the foolish (and often failed) business that doesn’t consider the consequences of potential actions. What I do think is that sometimes “hard” ROI, expressed in dollars and cents, is tricky to estimate and sometimes utterly beside the point.

You can see a few cases where social CRM has made a big difference for small businesses in this New York Times article. Beautiful examples of clear, identifiable ROI—even though most of the social tools mentioned don’t cost anything. These business are reaching out directly to customers, using simple applications as a marketing engine first and a means of receiving feedback or participating in a conversation second.

I’ve developed a habit, when discussing ROI on social CRM for larger companies, of putting things in terms of fear. Next to greed, fear is the prime motivator in business. “Your customers are having conversations about you that you’re not party to,” I’ll say. “They’re also having conversations about your competitors, but some of your competitors are participating. If somebody starts a rumor about your products or your practices, your customers might perpetuate it, and your competitors aren’t going to do anything to stop it, if it’s bad. Can you afford not to listen?”

Of course it’s not all about fear. One of the best anecdotes of social CRM in action is owned by blogger, consultant, and CRM Rock Star Brent Leary. Ask him about biscuits (the American kind), and how a single tweet got him to eat at Popeye’s after a multi-year absence. More than just the $6 revenue Popeye’s got, though, is the tremendous positive word-of-mouth the restaurant chain got by making one response to one person—the right person—at the right time. Brent will be able to tell this story about how Popeye’s “gets it” for years to come—and if he doesn’t, then I will.

My advice to businesses, in brief: Study social CRM as much as you can, see what others are doing and what works best for your particular business. If you can figure out a way to make it pay, then by all means do that. But get in the game regardless. It may cost you nothing, but the rewards—monetary or otherwise—only come when you get involved.

The Harris poll explores two main questions: general effectiveness of advertising type, and ads addressing the economic crisis. It’s never explicitly stated, but the poll appears to be focused on TV advertising. Whether or not that’s true, the results can likely be extrapolated to other advertising media.

In terms of general effectiveness, the three biggest gaps are for ads that make the viewer stop and think, that provide new information, and that are integrated into the look and feel of the show they appear with.

• More than half of marketers (53 percent) think ads that make the viewer stop and think are very effective, but just 30 percent of viewers feel that way. That’s a 23 percent margin, for those of you scoring at home.
• Ads that provide new information are only slightly close to the mark: 51 percent of marketers versus 29 percent of viewers feel they’re very effective, a 22 percent gap.
• Ads that are integrated into the feel of a program (The MythBusters build team and their Diesel Diaries commercials for Volkswagen are the best example I can think of) fare particularly poorly, in my opinion. While the gap is “only” 19 percent (26 percent of marketers vs. 7 percent of viewers), it’s a ratio of 3.7:1 which tells me money and effort is being wasted. Informative ads, according to Harris, have 37 percent of marketers and 30 percent of viewers saying they’re very effective, so for every $37 spent you could say that $30 is going to the right place. With integrated-feel ads, every $37 spent equates to $10 spent well. This is not the mathematics of success.

I must say I am shocked—shocked—to discover that marketers don’t have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the people they’re trying to attract.

No, actually I’m not shocked at all.

Let’s be fair to marketers, though. They (as a profession) have had to adjust in recent years to a demand from the C-level for measurability and accountability. (Excellent article from 2007 here;  fresher commentary here.) It’s not an easy thing to have to make wholesale changes to the way you ply your craft, but the marketing department has done so. Now they’re being asked to adjust again, using not only new techniques but new media as well.

“Tough,” you say. “Change is part of growth, so why should anybody get to make excuses?” (I hope somebody said that, otherwise I look like a jerk.) When you’re learning new things while still expected to deliver something useful, you tend to fall back on old habits, good or otherwise. For too long, marketing’s job was to create markets for products—conjuring demand for new products, rather than answering existing demand. This led members of the profession to sometimes value their own opinions over those of the public. This happens when ANY group of insiders/experts becomes too insulated, but marketers have been singled out in recent years as the prime example.

The disconnect between marketers and the marketed-to is just one more reason why social media needs to be integrated into any smart CRM practice. Rather than spending advertising and marketing money on extended campaigns only to find out months later that they’re a failure, the CMO and her team can find out within hours or days whether their efforts have gone awry. Sure, you don’t pull a campaign because of negative initial reactions alone—sometimes a spot needs to grow on people—but in the long run companies will save precious budget and deliver what customers want to see far more effectively.

The Intel guidelines are broken into three sections. The first and third are nothing special; one is a reminder to think before you post, be helpful, and don’t be a jerk, while three is all about guidelines for moderating content in social forums. Both are good to have and necessary to the discussion—it’s posted in the Legal Information section, after all. But section two, “Rules of Engagement,” is the standout part of the document.

The first bullet sets the tone. “Be transparent. Your honesty—or dishonesty—will be quickly noticed in the social media environment. If you are blogging about your work at Intel, use your real name, identify that you work for Intel, and be clear about your role. If you have a vested interest in something you are discussing, be the first to point it out.” It’s advice that I (and my colleagues) can’t stress enough, but is often ignored by corporate entities to their detriment. Social CRM touches some of the roles of public relations and marketing, but it is neither, and thus requires a different voice and a more open attitude.

Other entries (“Perception is reality,” “It’s a conversation,” and “Are you adding value?”) are similarly important bits of advice for anybody who blogs on behalf of a business. It’s too easy to forget that you’re not writing to a forum, or a group, or a hashtag—you’re writing to the people who go there because they want something they can’t get from the newspaper or the TV. Each person wants to feel like they’re involved on some level, and each has different opinions and hot buttons.

Of course, Intel is a huge company that must cover its own arse, as well as those of its employees. Thus, the following: “Your Responsibility: What you write is ultimately your responsibility. Participation in social computing on behalf of Intel is not a right but an opportunity, so please treat it seriously and with respect. If you want to participate on behalf of Intel, take the Digital IQ training and contact the Social Media Center of Excellence. Please know and follow the Intel Code of Conduct. Failure to abide by these guidelines and the Intel Code of Conduct could put your participation at risk. Contact social.media@intel.com for more information. Please also follow the terms and conditions for any third-party sites.” Yeah, it may seem strange or artificial that they have a training program and Center of Excellence (whatever that is), but it shows they’re trying to get it right.

But just as important as that is this: “Did you screw up? If you make a mistake, admit it. Be upfront and be quick with your correction. If you’re posting to a blog, you may choose to modify an earlier post—just make it clear that you have done so.” Advice like this doesn’t seem to surface often enough. It should be posted on every wall of every room of every building everywhere. The most honest thing you can say is “I screwed up,” and it’s a sign of maturity to try to fix it without being forced to.

As I said when I started this post, I have been letting the topic marinate for a week, so I’ve probably missed some good discussion. Links to other coverage are appreciated, and if you have any other examples of good attempts at corporate social media policy, I’d love to see ‘em.