Shel Holtz and John Havens just published the book “Tactical Transparency.” The latest entry in the growing library of social media books is a very strong one. I highly recommend it to executives and communicators considering social media for any organization, but particularly within enterprises or non-profits that have 20 or more people working for them.

Here’s my video review:

Some more color… The thing I took away from the book was the theme of transparency, and how critical this new level of visibility is for organizational social media. While personality matters, this book is about more comprehensive corporate social media, and as such it’s more important to show the entity’s logic, efforts, reasons, as well as its people. In essence, what personality adds for the individual, transparency provides to the larger entity.

In addition, I really liked how Holtz and Havens blended brick and mortar examples of transparency with online versions. The reality is online works so much better when it’s integrated into traditional communications. It’s great to see a book recognize that.

My only minor critique is an overly strong focus on blogs as a tool. In comparison, while social networks are well discussed, they are not as well documented in comparison. With each passing year, I feel that social networks have become an increasingly critical component of corporate social media.

All in all, I rated it five stars on Amazon, and will be buying additional copies to provide to colleagues and clients. Well done, Shel and John! Buy Tactical Transparency today!

Cerado Ventana connects customers to brands in spaces such as their blogs, personal start pages and cells phones. Created by Cerado, a provider of mobile and web-based software services, Cerado Ventana offers a wide array of features designed and implemented by customer requests.

Features include:

• News & Info: provides the latest information in real time.
• Search: allows you to search across multiple information sources
• Connect & Network: connect with customers, employees and fans through social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
• Do Business: purchase products, register for conferences or donate online with one click
• Integrate Anywhere: bridge the web and mobile worlds through a Cerado Ventana network
• Provide Support: build your customer service reputation by reaching out to customers from anywhere

Cerado Ventana addresses the needs of brands and customers. Brands have the opportunity to create and manage ventanas of their company, networks, events, etc. and deploy them through mobile devices or the web, broadening their ways to reach customers. The ventanas enable brands to find customers that are talking about them online – allowing the brands to engage in the conversation and build relationships with customers. Through this system, customers can address five aspects of business relationships: research, purchase, support, connection and conversation. The relationship building also helps brands connect their customers to the sales teams, support staff, and to easily find product information.

If you own an iPhone or Blackberry, you can immediately deploy their mobile-based app and/or blog widget through personal start pages, like iGoogle. You can also integrate Cerado Ventana with a blog sidebar. All you have to do is purchase Cerado Ventana, create your ventanas and with one click – become connected. Examples of ventanas include: Blog World Expo, GigaOm’s Mobilize Conference, and Zappos.

Here is an intro video of Cerado Ventana:

Buzz Meter Ranking: 4 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: Lots of brands are looking for better and more efficient ways to connect with customers. An issue is that these organizations do not know how to connect with customers beyond the brick and mortar and regular online sites; Cerado Ventana addresses this.

Negative: Building relationships takes a while and is not free. Cerado Ventana’s starting price is $499, but don’t let this hinder you from connecting you to your customers.

Conclusion: As they’ve stated, “Cerado Ventana is the new platform for bringing people, information and business together,” and I believe that Cerado is successfully doing this. Cerado Ventana is an excellent investment that brands should consider using.

Fellow Georgetown University adjunct and SEC social media wonk Mark Story aptly dubbed the current post election government 2.0 craze a meme. And in doing so, he tagged me. It’s been a while since we’ve updated our ongoing coverage of the federal government’s adoption of social media, and the current excitement does prompt a new post. Why? Because, 15 years of DC-based experience tells me what a great challenge Obama faces bringing open online conversation to the world of federal government — in spite of his social media savoir faire.

To answer Mark’s question, I think the great social media promise for the Obama administration lies in freeing data. Tons of taxpayer data from poverty figures to weather information should be available to us all, but it’s trapped in ancient legacy IT systems.

Freeing data and serving taxpayers with access and usage will create a new world of context for Americans. Tim O’Reilly’s dream of a democratized web can come true. This will allow true governance and service to the taxpayer.

Social conversation with the government seems much less stimulating. While useful to governance, like most business or organizational social media it will be one dimensional. Consider the TSA blog.

More importantly, Obama has a great task ahead of him. I’ve sold more than $30 million worth of communications contracts to the federal government. I know how public affairs and IT departments conflict over web communications. And I know how legal precautions, procurement and legacy contractors can absolutely kill change in the government.

In reality, because of the way the federal government works, a good expectation for aggressive, systematic communications change in the government is two to three years. Consider that the Navy is leading the charge with the first set of social media guidelines for an entire agency.

Here are six reasons why Obama isn’t going to be turn the switch on walking in the door:

1) Sheer Girth: We’re talking about 26 federal agencies here, each the size of their very own automobile manufacturer. Think changing those organizations are hard? Try moving a bureaucratic organization that’s got no adherence to Wall Street, no real accountability to anyone (please don’t say Congress), with decades of strange processes and legal entanglements, legacy contracts already in place, and demoralized staff that have been abused for eight years by incompetent political appointees.

2) Culture of Fear: Government employees are afraid that if they do communicate, they will have their butts handed to them courtesy of the Washington Post or some other “investigative reporter” seeking to expose government ills. Think that’s wrong? Welcome to beltway reality, where scandals and incompetency are written about and discussed regularly. Every communication must be filtered through public affairs to protect agencies from embarrassment. The command and control ethos reigns here.

Just like any traditional enterprise, controlling the message and negative feedback will be huge issues for the bureaucratic public affairs departments. Often these folks are the last to adopt. Expect the public affairs department to fight for control on the government communications front for years.

3) Welcome to the World of Beltway Bandits: Sorry Silicon Valley. We actually have more IT workers than you do, in large part because of the federal government.

Massive IT companies hold legacy contracts in almost every agency, and big companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon won’t be quick to allow their private billion dollar systems be replaced by web app du jour. These local giants will do everything they can to protect their contracts, including lobbying and leveraging deep relationships throughout the agency procurement cycle.

4) CIOs: Government officials like to protect their budgets, and not yield them. Like a feudal system, the CIO’s office can function like a warlord, holding sway over multi-year million dollar contracts. Opening IT to the socialized web will not be easy here for a variety of reasons, but most importantly surrendering budget — even in a time of restricting budget — will not happen.

5) Security and Privacy: Securing government data is not just a priority, it’s essential. The more defense and security oriented, the harder it will be to sway government bodies to open data and information for the social web. Beefing up technologies like PHP-based WordPress will be a must.

6) Appointees and Procurement: These processes will slow down the process, too. Consider the following points:

No, the challenges for Obama are deep and significant. I expect change we will, but we won’t quickly. Think the 2010-2011 timeframe.

Because the conversation to date has been dominated by non beltway insiders, I’d like to tag some folks in the know. Andrea Baker, Chris Dorobek, Mark Drapeau and Helen Mosher, what do you think social media can do under Obama?

Jothy Rosenberg predicts that “millenials will abandon Facebook.” On Rocketvox Jothy provides a detailed history of Facebook, and he offers insight into why it has developed gracefully. But, according to Jothy, things are changing. He asks rhetorically, “what is turning the Millennials — Facebook’s original and core constituency — away in droves? Creepiness, complexity, and lack of privacy.” Check out Rocketvox, for an in-depth look into Facebook’s rise, and predicted fall.

Technosailor’s Aaron Brazell reveals the latest news on the upcoming WordPress release. Aaron has includes three screenshots in his post. He also says to be on the lookout on Technosailor for “the big release cheat sheet as soon as it comes out.”

Check out Amber Naslund’s post on Attitude about how social networks and new media tools are able to bolster business development. Large quantities of money are spent on generating leads and nurturing relationships, and business development practices are evolving in the 2.0 world. Amber says, “Social media is business development. It’s merely a set of tools - yes, an overwhelming set at times - designed to better connect one person to another…”

Jay Deragon says that most companies don’t know what to ask for when hiring a new social media employee. On The Relationship Economy, Jay says, “Most of the job descriptions appear to focus on candidates who know how to use a listing of social technology with little if any emphasis on relationship or communication skills.” Jay argues that a social media professional’s job description is difficult to define. But the correct candidate’s value is based on the relationships they can create.

Are you looking to expand your Twitter presence, or to spruce up your blog or Facebook page? One way to do this is to add Twitter button, badge, widget, etc. to your online real estate. Darren Rowse provides an extensive list of links to “181 free Twitter buttons, badges, widget and counters to help you find followers.” These Twitter items go beyond the mundane. Check out TwiTip for the links.

In response to a PRWeek survey, which brings to light that 44% of CEO’s still don’t plan on using social media in the next year, TweetPR’s David Alston takes a deeper look at why some companies are struggling to catch the train. David “debunks” five main issues expressed by CEO’s in the study with detailed explanations. These include a lack of relevance, message control, ROI, lack of company know-how, and lack of communication agency know-how.

Ducati recently launched its new Streetfighter motorcycle with a reveal video and at the EICMA conference. Both events have been captured on YouTube, but for several reasons this online launch marks another corporate social media failure.

Yay. YouTube, but is that really social? Consider the lack of discussion on Twitter. How about blog posts? Only 285 in Technorati in all languages, including all of the prelaunch rumors.

In my mind, that means the community was not engaged. Companies who experiment with social media often make this mistake. They publish content instead of interacting with their stakeholders. They push messaging instead of engaging the community. Influencer relations and knowing the prominent Ducati owner and motorcycle influencers to involve them in the launch would have been savvy. Consider India’s Bikers on the Fastrack Facebook Group.

Heck, even the official web site doesn’t have the basic tagging and sharing principles that any major online product release should have. I don’t care whether you call that a social media release or just common sense. Consider that the reveal photos were not issued on Flickr though lots of folks at the show took them.

In addition to influencer relations and posting content in socially accessible locations, here are several pointers that Ducati could have benefited from:

What else would you suggest for this effort?

Wow! Twitter seems to be hotter than a volcano in the midst of eruption. And the social network has recovered its traffic from the second quarter, when it experienced systematic downtime in June.

Everywhere you go, you see Twitter. Consider the following:

Twitter has become so hot, and in a sustainable way, that it’s become impossible to ignore it. Marketers need to learn how to intelligently integrate Twitter into their online marketing efforts to enable their community to carry the ball forward with word of mouth marketing. The Solutions Stars Video conference owed a great deal of its success to the more than 1000 tweets on the event.

Note that companies can only enable the community, but viral happens when people care enough to talk on their own, not when companies force the matter. Twitter participation is highly interactive and social, so the usual broadcast method won’t work. In addition to active presence, that means providing hashtags, enable tweeting as a bookmark, and executing the proper etiquette. An interesting resource you may want to check out is Warren Whitlock and Deborak Micek’s new book, The Twitter Revolution.

More importantly, what’s next for Twitter? How far can the social microblogging network go?

Updated at 9:30 a.m.

“There’s no market for messages”

One thing has become readily apparent to me: Most social media communicators, “personal brands” (snort) and social media experts have neglected to read the Cluetrain Manifesto. Whether you agree with the principles in this book or not, in my mind it should be mandatory reading for anyone who conducts business communications on the Internet.

Many a social media consultant or online communicator have confided in me that they have not read the Cluetrain Manifesto. To me that’s as unforgivable as practicing law without a J.D. or practicing medicine without going to medical school and internships.

Cluetrain captures the essence of the uncontrolled business environment and they need to provide authentic, real dialogue based around the market’s needs. Without understand the fundamental dynamics of the social media form and the inherently uncontrived conversations it inspires, communicators are lost in the darkness.

At bare minimum communicators should read the opening salvo of 95 theses that comprise the Cluetrain Manifesto, Christopher Locke’s chapter, “Internet Apocalypso, and Doc Searls and David Weinberger’s contribution, “Markets Are Conversations.”

It get backs to community concepts which are at the heart of Now Is Gone. In many ways, Now Is Gone is the direct product of the Internet and Cluetrain’s unrelenting view that controlled and contrived business brand messages — personal or corporate — have no place on the Internet. Consider the boiled down thesis of the book and its seven principles of community development.

For me Cluetrain represents a great hope: That business can be done differently. The Internet and social media can become the elixir to revolutionize our corporate cultures of exploitation, and refocus it on social good, causes, and service to actual markets.

One of the reasons the whole personal branding movement disturbs me is that most personal branders are in actuality exploiting these tools to foster a new conversational, self-centered hucksterism that makes me sick. It’s not genuine or real, and I don’t want any part of it. Add your genuine personality to the conversation, not a contrived self image.

Here are my favorite 10 of the 95 theses from Cluetrain:

3) Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

25) Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

26) Public relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

33) Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.

34) To speak in a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.

35) But first they must belong to a community.

61) Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false — and often is.

62) marketers do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

83) We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

91) Our allegiance is to ourselves — our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.

Is it possible for one search engine to determine the “pulse of the web?” OneRiot, formerly known as Me.dium, is not your typical search engine. What differentiates OneRiot with other search engines is their method of presenting information. OneRiot prioritizes the current popular information, making their search results “relevant, fresh, friendly and pulsing with the real-time energy of the web.”

OneRiot determines the popularity of the search using pulse indicators. If the search results are something the community is excited about, either of the three pulse indicator images shown below will be next to the results:

• Emerging
• Surging
• Raging

To search for the most popular web content, all you have to do is download OneRiot’s toolbar. The toolbar, once known as the Pulsechecker, can be found at the bottom right corner of your webpages. It is compatible with Internet Explorer and Firefox. For customer service and support or for general questions, visit OneRiot’s Satisfaction page.

I decided to test what I felt was yesterday’s buzzword: TwitterRank. OneRiot listed 94 search results for the buzzword and none of the results had the pulse indicators. What does that mean? TwitterRank was yesterday’s news.

I then tested the social search engine for our President-Elect Obama and found 66,802,000 search results. Three of the results had “Raging” pulse indicators. What does that mean? Those three articles on Obama are so far the most popular for the day.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: OneRiot is a fun tool to use and search for popular web content. I do enjoy the simplicity of the tool and the layout. The pulse indicators are useful for determining which content people find more valuable.

Negative: While playing with OneRiot, I noticed next to the pulse indicators another indicator called the “Average Visit Duration.” That indicator was represented by a mini pie, which was colored in depending the average time someone spent on the site – at least that’s my interpretation. I couldn’t find an answer to how they measured or determined the Average Visit Duration.

Conclusion: ReadWriteWeb said OneRiot has the possibility to “corner niche categories with specific markets;” and I agree with them. OneRiot has the potential to drive social content if they can find more users with similar interests to further drive the popularity of their search results.

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of Now Is Gone’s release! So much has happened since then, it’s been amazing and humbling at the same time. Thank you to everyone who supported Now Is Gone (image by lunaweb).

I know Brian Solis also was humbled by the reception towards the book. For me, it was a life changing event (may write more about this on Off Hours), and the culmination of a 15 year dream of becoming an author.

Consider some of the milestones:

Perhaps the most exciting news is that we are approximately 2/3 of the way through the first print edition, and are starting to weigh edits/changes to the original manuscript. The second edition will provide an update, as well as the lessons learned. Some likely changes include more on influencer relations, more on social networks, less on blogs, more on the media’s use of social media, and fewer typos

A Final Bow for First Edition Sources

The following bloggers had either blog posts cited in and/or were interviewed for the first edition of Now Is Gone. Some of them won’t make it to the second edition as the book will change quite a bit.

These sources will remain listed permanently on the Now Is Gone blog to honor them and provide business readers additional source material. If you have questions about marketing the book, or the use of bloggers as sources, I refer you to the previous post, “Marketing Now Is Gone.” To the bloggers, thank you for creating great content in the new media world. The book’s sources are:

• Teli Adlam, The OptiNiche Blog
• Adam Aleman, FlashReport
• Todd Andrlik, Todd And: The Power to Connect
• Scott Baradell, Media Orchard
• Cam Beck, ChaosScenario
• Richard Becker, Copywrite
• Jordan Behan, Tell Ten Friends
• Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing Blog
• Bob, Bob Meets World
• Kristina Bouweiri, Make It Better
• Chris Brogan, ChrisBrogan.com
• C.C Chapman, Reality Bitchslap
• Ed Cotton, Influx
• Todd Defren, PR Squared
• Chris Dorobek, The FCW Insider
• Alicia Dorset, GM FastLane
• Kevin Dugan and Richard Laermer, The Bad Pitch Blog
• Eric Eggertson, Common Sense PR
• Li Evans, Search Marketing Gurus
• Kyle Flaherty, Engage in PR
• Susan Getgood, Marketing Roadmaps
• Heather Green, Blogspotting
• Lewis Green, Bizsolutionsplus
• Karl Greenberg, MediaPost Publications
• Chris Heuer, The Future of Communities
• Sally Seville Hodge, Marketing Profs
• Shel Holtz, A Shel of my Former Self
• John Horrigan, Pew/Internet
• Kami Watson Huyse, Communications Overtones
• Shel Isreal, Global Neighborhoods
• Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog
• Rob La Gesse, Stuffleufagus
• Tim Leberecht, iPlot
• Charlene Li, The Groundswell
• Joe Lichtenberg, Marketing Profs
• Brian Lusk, Nuts About Southwest
• Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent
• Richard McManus, Read/Write Web
• Jake Matthews, 10e20
• Brian Oberkirch, Like It Matters
• Lee Odden, Online Marketing Blog
• Janice Partyka, GPS World
• Jeremy Pepper, Pop! PR Jots
• Ike Pigott, Occam’s Razr
• Chris Polito, Total Telecom
• Jeff Pulver, The Jeff Pulver Blog
• Aaron Reed, SYS-CON Media
• Laura Ries, Origin of Brands
• Kim Roach, Lifehack.org
• Frank Rose, Epicenter
• Jay Rosen, Press Think
• Hanni Ross, Successful Blog
• Darren Rowse, ProBlogger
• Steve Rubel, Micropersuasion
• Mike Sansome, ConverStations
• David Meerman Scott, Web Ink Now
• Doc Searl, Linux Journal
• Brian Solis, PR 2.0
• Steve Spalding, How To Split An Atom
• Michael A. Stelzner, Marketing Profs
• Amy Stodgehill, Green Options
• Mario Sundar, Marketing Nirvana
• Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams, Wikinomics: The Blog
• Robb Tokatakiya, Tokatakiya
• Joe Wilkert, Publishing Blog 2020

Since last Thursday’s post, “I Don’t Care About Your Personal Brand,” there have been many conversations about why personal brands are or are not valid marketing models (image by Nirav Mehta). There have been some threads that unite to form general arguments for the personal brand, which deserve some discussion. Why? Because they fail to serve social media communicators who work with actual companies.

1) Self-centeredness: I’ve heard self awareness and self fulfillment as reasons to cultivate personal brands. Why don’t we just call this category self-centered since it’s the personal brand using excuses about self worth to cultivate a personal brand.

How does ego-centric branding help a corporation? Why would deploying self-centered brands positively help them affect change, stop contrived messaging and engage in real conversations?

Like the personal brand, companies have been too self-centered, and not market centric. This is the heart of the Cluetrain Manifesto. Any social media consultant needs to read this book, otherwise they will not understand the underpinnings of the social web.

Companies need to stop BS, and start conversing in real dialogue, as opposed to employing rock stars who may or may not offer value in conversations about larger products/solutions and market needs. Social media requires a human voice, not a rock star personal brand. Just a real person with a real voice reaching out in a genuine conversation.

I will say the two can coincide if the personality adheres to the company role. Consider Scott Monty and Shashi Bellamkonda.

2) Personal brands work for consultants: True. It works for the person. That’s great if you are an author or an independent “Army of One.”

See, the problem is an individual consultant’s model - personal branding - is being sold to companies, and it doesn’t work on a large scale. It does not work for corporate communications - my primary focus. Companies by their very definition are more than one person.

If you are Microsoft do you really want another Robert Scoble to come and go? Further, personal brands and rock stars undermine teams and the kind of collaborative cultures necessary for corporate success.

It’s about we, not me. This is a universal facet of all successful life relationships — personal or business. Look how $200 million worth of all-stars have benefited the New York Yankees. Zero rings since 2000.

3) Social Media: But it’s social media! Really? I don’t think there’s anything social about a contrived personal brand. I think being genuine and allowing your personality to come through in a conversation is social. Social media implies more than one (as does communications) in a conversation, and conversations offer genuine dialogue between people, not personal brands.

Personal branding is all about the individual. So when we communicate personal brands in social media spaces we’re messaging at people, rather than engaging with them. That makes for a pretty bad conversation, IMO. See Cluetrain again, and spare me the personal brand BS.

If you are over-cultivating an intentional personal brand, it’s contrived for business (or vanity) and does not equate to a real conversation. Conversations become a notch in your belt towards achieving your self-image rather than a meaningful, sincere two way conversation.

4) Personal branding is about building value: Really? Maybe. The way I was taught branding is that a brand is a promise about a service to the marketplace that’s communicated through visual and verbal communications, as well as the actual product/service experiences.

Building value is about selling stuff to people. Trust me, I do it everyday when I send emails to prospects that contain links to valuable articles related to their business.

So is personal branding promising to deliver something to the market, or is it salesmanship? If that persona is a consultant or an author then I would say a personal brand. But if not, I might argue the latter — it’s selling in the classic Jeffrey Gitomer sense.

And if building value is really branding an individual vis a vis thought leadership, how does that personal brand translate to a company’s brand and value proposition? It doesn’t do so very naturally, and I don’t see it as a smart social communications strategy for a company.

5) You need personality online: Yes! This is true. That’s why we recommend Rohit Bharagava’s book to clients who struggle with this. But there’s a difference between being yourself, and manifesting contrived “Flair” online. Sooner or later BS like this gets called out, or loses attention from the community.

The most successful individuals with thousands of followers on Twitter (the home of the personal brand) are those that just let it hang out in a natural way. They don’t monitor Qwitter for optimal following, etc. Instead, they do what they do, and share what they want. There’s no real formal strategy.

6) But you yourself are a personal brand: Am I? Umm, until someone else besides me gets Now Is Gone tattooed on their body, I’m not buying it. It’s gotta take more than a couple thousand friends and followers to become a brand. That bar is way too low. No, I’m just another mouthy blogger. Search Technorati, you’ll find we’re a dime a dozen (image by Shashi Bellamkonda).

No one comes to this company because I ride a Ducati. Or because I am particularly vocal on Twitter and on marketing issues like this one. In fact, one could argue that while my personality online rings through and I am genuine, that these aspects of my personality turn away some business opportunities. Clients come to us because of a proven, award-winning track record of social media successes.

Further, Geoff Livingston, the individual, is not Livingston Communications. There is more than a handful of people operating under this masthead, all with their own personal brand identities. In reality, promising me as Livingston Communications would be bad branding because it would be a lie. I can’t do all or even most of the work. That’s why we are a company, and one that hopes to add ownership partners in 2009.

I made this same point to personal brander Dan Schawbel. For the record, if you are an individual seeking to build a good consulting brand, I do think Dan’s blog offers great value..