The use of social in a business-to-business setting is really an extension of the idea that people do not do business with businesses, people do business with people; the transparency that social media afford is relevant and is important as the adoption of media channels with social elements emerge and are more widely adopted.  The consumer, whether in business or personal transactions must first trust and believe in the people and team behind the brand.

The value of an online presence and how it translates to an offline presence is relevant for business as well.  A listener in the audience of the Blogtalkradio.com broadcast we did asks about the use of social media to create a real-life connection.  Joan responds that she sees “meet-up” as opportunities to gauge the effectiveness of the online strategy, but whether the meet-up is impromptu or planned weeks in advance, the events that begin online allow people to meet and share their passion.  These days it is often a passion about social media. So she dive a bit deeper and suggests that a meet-up that is a meet-up with other social media people is often not an application of time CorePurpose invests their time in.

She also explores how the use of social media has benefitted a non-profit she heads up, that would be the Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation, or OTEF (disclaimer: Joan and I both serve on the board of OTEF).  She shares her educational journey in social media on her blog where she chronicles the things she has learned during the last year through trial & error and a little help from her friends.

She advises business to not lose sight of the social media marketing channel and to respect that it is an extension of a  communication strategy that uses a different medium – one that demands socializing, which is sometimes a very different medium than the business might be used to.  Nonetheless, Joan suggests that you still need to go through many of the same questions you have to go through using traditional media, which is –

• who is my audience,
• what are they looking for,
• where will I access them, and
• how will I interact? 

Summary - Find out what your audience wants, where they are and then simply go there and deliver it.

Play / Download Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose Episode 4 Podcast Here

Here is a link to the previous episode in this series -

Episode 1 – Segmenting Your Approach to a Social Media Presence

Episode 2 – Generating Original Content

Episode 3 – Setting KPIs for Measuring Social Media

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, a LinkedIn Group, and a special discussion group on the Social Media Bible Ning site.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence.

This is the final episode of the podcast with Joan and Guy Powell and I want to thank her; we appreciate her perspective and taking the time to share it with us during a live BlogTalkRadio.com broadcast!

Here are links to material related to the interview that you may find useful; the entire conversation in one extended recording and soon, a transcript of the conversation

Play / Download Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose Entire Broadcast Here

We’re very interested in your perspective on the topic and, if you have a favored presenter or person who can add to the conversation, please let us know – we’re looking to interview him / her and put it up here!

Thank you again to you our listeners – hope you enjoyed the effort and work we put into it!

About the Podcast, Transcript and Credit For Where Credit is Due – This transcript was developed from a live BlogTalkRadio Show on December 15, 2009 between Joan Koerber-Walker, Guy Powell and Steven Groves.

The podcast interview was downloaded and processes in Audacity, available as a free download from SourceForge, and with ‘4toFloor.wav’ music loop from member ‘Rooks’ and posted at SoundSnap.com.

Introduction voice is Cynthia Propst / TSMB Media, LLC.

The transcript provided by Cynthia Propst / TSMB Media, LLC.

Related posts:

• Establishing Performance Indicators for Social Media – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 3
• Being Original In Your Content – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 2
• Segmenting Your Social Media Presence – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 1

The primary application of social media for CorePurpose is for community building and advertising, so metrics are not necessarily revenue related, but there are key performance indicators (KPIs) that support an understanding of how a social media presence leads to to revenue.

How does CorePurpose monitor their presence and what are the metrics she uses?   The tools are simple enough; Google Alerts, Google Analytics, Feedburner, and YouTube stats.  They do not employ any of the for-fee tools to track their segmented presence right now.

The various KPIs are pretty straightforward too; where did they access a resources that their social media presence made possible, where did CorePurpose make a connection that was directly related to their social media presence, did they get a customer that came from a social network or were they able to find a piece of information for a client or research that the social media presence provided?

CorePurpose monitors the number of hits a blog posts receive, how comments made by visitors and from those indicators, they get a sense of what people are looking for in terms of the online content they post – and based upon the result, they move to determine if an engagement might result in a productive off-line, real-life relationship.  So another KPI is ‘of those conversations that begin online, how many convert to an offline, person-to-person conversation.’

In this episode, Joan introduces BloggerBase.com as an international source of traffic to her main blog and how it’s impacted her traffic.  With her extensive adoption and use of Google tools, she responds to a question on how she adopts a particular social media tool.   The short answer is that she watches what tools are being produced and talked about, watched adoption and only after the early adopters have share their experiences and how they are innovating with it, does it enter her earnest consideration.  Joan discusses how her adoption of Twitter evolved for her and likens it to whether or not Google Wave might become a part of her toolset.

Play / Download Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose Episode 3 Podcast Here

Here is a link to the previous episode in this series -

Episode 1 – Segmenting Your Approach to a Social Media Presence

Episode 2 – Generating Original Content

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, a LinkedIn Group, and a special discussion group on the Social Media Bible Ning site.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence.

Related posts:

• Translating an Online Connection to an Offline Relationship – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 4 of 4
• Being Original In Your Content – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 2
• Segmenting Your Social Media Presence – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 1

Joan talks about accepting the challenge of developing her own content for her presence and reveals the genesis of her #BeOriginal blog / project and how she overcame the challenge of developing meaningful content for her worldwide social presence, and how she has used social media as a tactic to reach out and connect with other thought leaders, regardless of their location on the globe.

What kinds of obstacles does Joan face in using more social media or using it better?  As an established business leader, writer and public speaker, Joan cites that social media was not a start-up strategy, as it is for many businesses, it is an expansion of the thought leadership, visibility and publicity programs she already had underway and she compares the use of social media in a traditional marketing / advertising model for institutional companies vs. the tactics and tools used even a few years ago.  She cites how social media as an institutional advertising tactic is quickly emerging and how CorePurpose has transitioned all their institutional advertising to online and an expanded, long term ‘word-of-mouth’ campaign.

She diagrams some of the tactics on how Avnet, her employer prior to going solo, as an example on how a F500 company has adopted social media in a segmented model to connect to audiences in a B2B model – the segmentation strategy is one she uses herself and a topic we covered in our first episode. 

The biggest obstacle to using more social media is the irreplaceable commodity of time.  She also shares her opinions how self-proclaimed social media experts that do not listen to their audience and have feeble followings – how can they be an expert if they cannot develop their own following or if they leave their tools lying fallow in a cornfield?

Play / Download Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose Episode 2 Podcast Here

Here is a link to the previous episode in this series -

Episode 1 – Segmenting Your Approach to a Social Media Presence

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, a LinkedIn Group, and a special discussion group on the Social Media Bible Ning site.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence.

Related posts:

• Establishing Performance Indicators for Social Media – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 3
• Translating an Online Connection to an Offline Relationship – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 4 of 4
• Segmenting Your Social Media Presence – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 1

This episode is from a BlogTalkRadio.com session which was presented live on December 15th 2009, just prior to the Christmas holiday.

Talking with Joan we discover that CorePurpose was founded in 2002 to support organizations with resources that they needed to make their efforts more successful.  She works with medium to large organizations around the globe.

Her journey in social media has been one that questions the time that was needed, from a beginning of a single blog, a single twitter account and a LinkedIn profile, she has connected with customers and prospects. 

For Core Purpose, social media is a communication medium to meet and stay connected with her audience.  The lessons learned in her journey include moderating her shares and making sure the content she produces are relevant.

Her realization is that the message needs to be about the audience, not arbitrary and not about the communicator.   The lesson was sometimes hard learned, she shares about how she dealt with the sometime harsh commentary from people listening to her messages, but she also will admit it has made her a better communicator and user of social media tools and technology.

She is a huge Twitter fan, with over 57,852 follower for her various brands.  Joan uses Twitter to develop and connect with a global network of followers that are interested in the business and personal topic that she promotes.

On Twitter she has developed and manages @JoanKW, @CorePurpose, @JKWLeadership, @JKWInnovation and @JKWGrowth as brands that have each developed a particular following with very little audience overlap from one to the next.  The simple and straight forward tactic she discusses is to identify people to follow and then communicate with them. 

She uses various tools like MrTweet.com, Twellow.com, SocialOomph.com, and the readily accessible Twitter tools such as Search, Twitter lists, and her participation in various LinkedIn groups.  Auto follow is turned on for all her brands and she is not unafraid to unfollow quickly for rude, offensive, automated or spamming behavior.  To keep her numbers honest, she regularly pares the deadwood out of her followers using Untweeps.com and knows that ALL her followers are active within the last 45 days or so. 

Her fav tools for Twitter posting and listening are Seesmic Desktop and HootSuite.

Her blogging presence is prolific as well with a presence on TypePad for a CorePurpose-centric blog, on WordPress.com for her Focus on Success blog, Little Life Stories, Be Original and  she and I both blog for an International audience at BloggerBase.com. 

For Core Purpose, social media is a communication medium to meet and stay connected with her audience.  The lessons learned in her journey include moderating her shares and making sure the content she produces are relevant.

Her realization is that the message needs to be about the audience, not arbitrary and not about the communicator.   The lesson was sometimes hard learned, she shares about how she dealt with the sometime harsh commentary from people listening to her messages, but she also will admit it has made her a better communicator and user of social media tools and technology.

Play / Download Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose Episode 1 Podcast Here

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, a LinkedIn Group, and a special discussion group on the Social Media Bible Ning site. Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence.

Related posts:

• Being Original In Your Content – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 2
• Establishing Performance Indicators for Social Media – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 3
• Translating an Online Connection to an Offline Relationship – ROI of Social Media podcast – Joan Koerber-Walker / CorePurpose – Episode 4 of 4