Next month I’m producing a conference for The Conference Board that focuses this. The Conference Board people say there are only a limited number of seats left, so register soon. Here’s why:

• JetBlue’s CMO  is talking about new social competencies needed to lead
• Humana is showing how to make social part of innovation
• Kimberly-Clark and American Express are cutting through the data and talk analytics and measurement
• FedEx is sharing how one of the biggest companies in the world is changing customer service
• CEO Jim Lavoie is explaining how to change a corporate culture

And we’ll have other company folks talking about essential social practices, disruptive tools, and how work with  legal to innovate while minimizing risk.

What is your favorite social media word?

Authenticity. It’s not a social media word in terms of Twitter, Wiki, or “unfriend,” but it is the word I use most when we talk about how we participate in social media.

What is your least favorite social media word?

Acai. Of course that is just because I keep getting served up Acai diet ads on my Facebook account. Outside of social media I don’t have any fundamental issue with Acai as a berry.

What turns you on about social media?

Being involved in the conversation at the point where companies are figuring out how to leverage the new medium. Everyone who has social media on their radar is talking about ‘do we play’ ‘how do we play’ and ‘how do we measure’ and there is no silver bullet, no one universal answer. The conversations probably sounded very similar when any new medium broke, radio, TV, the internet.

What turns you off about social media?

When people dismiss social media as a fad or as generational, that doesn’t sit well. Specific products in the medium may be fads but social media has fundamentally shifted how people are communicating.

What social media other than what you’re doing would you like to attempt?

I’ll have to wait to see who invents it tomorrow.

What part of social media would you not like to do?

Any channel that where we can’t be true to what we are as a corporation and add value to the conversation.

What one thing do you hope people will learn from you at The Conference Board’s “Extending Your Brand to Employees Conference?”

That partnership among departments and stakeholders was a critical component to our approach to ‘playing’ in the social media world.

I’ve asked the social media panelists to give us some pre-conference views on social media, using James Lipton’s “Inside the Actors Studio” question format. Here are comments from Hollie Delaney, senior human resources manager at Zappos.com.

What is your favorite social media word?

Transparency. At Zappos, we are obsessed with sharing our culture and way of operating our business with the outside world. Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter have given us an outlet to do this on a higher level than what we ever thought possible. One of our core values is to ‘Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication’, and this isn’t limited to the employees of Zappos; we would like for the outside world to be able to see anything that they would like about our business.

We have 450+ employees on Twitter, and there is no company policy to dictate what an employee can say. We just tell everyone to use their best judgment. We even have a Twitter aggregate page which shows employees’ Tweets in real time, along with all public mentions of the company.

What is your least favorite social media word?

Expert/Guru. These are a series of new mediums, and we’re not sure that anyone can be an expert on a subject that we’ve only skimmed the surface of as an industry.

What turns you on about social media?

Its ability to engage with customers on a level that wasn’t possible just a few years ago.

What turns you off about social media?

When businesses look at these tools as a free way to spam customers.

What social media other than what you’re doing would you like to attempt?

We just try to form personal connections with customers. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube all seem to be the best tools right now, but we know that will change/evolve over time.

What part of social media would you not like to do?

We would like to stay away from using the mediums completely for selling products. Our idea for Facebook and Twitter is that it’s a place where people go to engage with Zappos as a brand, and just making it about sharing our culture.

What would you like to hear your CEO say about social media?

http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/ceo-and-coo-blog/2009/01/25/how-twitter-can-make-you-a-better-and-happier-person

What one thing do you hope people will learn from you at The Conference Board’s “Extending Your Brand to Employees Conference?”

That it’s not how many fans or followers that you have, it’s about how you are engaging them and if you’re forming a personal connection. You can have 1M fans, but if they aren’t engaged in your brand and they just signed up with a click and then forgot about it, the point is lost on the effort.

This leads us to a much more specialized type of startup company – one that can form around discrete aspects of a very narrowly defined segment. Its founders create it, own it and then manage their risks accordingly.

Think about how many startups long to be bought out by Google. Not because they are in trouble, but because that is their mission in life. Seriously. Their mission statement is “to be purchased by Google” or Facebook.

How did this happen?

I think the starting point for me was when Cisco bought Stratcom back in the late 90s for $3.7 billion dollars. And then Cisco’s market cap went up roughly the same amount! This flew in the face of the notion that all innovation had to come from within. Acquisition was now a viable strategy in tech, as it had been in other industries for years.

What’s a marketer to do? Well, there is money to be made in being niche. So if you are in a small technology firm, try owning as defined a niche as you can – such as LinkedIn’s advertising operation. This company’s brand promise delivers on what it says while focused on a defensible position. Just don’t forget to can manage the risks.

Perhaps niche is the new black!

I submit that it is! Please hear me out.

When I say Ralph Lauren, Nine Inch Nails, Vineyard Vines, GAP – or even Apple – you get a sense of a very homogeneous type of person. You get a picture of exactly who I mean and the “lifestyle” that brand portrays. When I say Ralph Lauren, it’s like reading the preppie handbook.

But what happens when I say Unisys or Delco or even Oracle? What mental image, what picture of homogenous people comes to mind, if any? Probably nothing, right?

Now, consider Nine Inch Nails and their use of social media. The band printed tour shirts with different, seemingly random boldface letters that, when strung together, spelled out a website address – iamtryingtobelieve.com. The tactic engaged an audience that was totally in sync with their brand and lit up their community site, Spiral.

Sure a B2B company can launch a microsite any day. But can it launch one that speaks to the company’s audience so perfectly that it resonates with a vast majority? I would submit the answer is no.

Yes, I know microsites aren’t social media. My point is that out in social media land if you know exact who your audience is, what will resonate with them and how to tap into it, you are home free. B2B audiences are more fragmented, with internal employees, external partners, channel partners, third party vendors, and, oh yeah, customers and prospects.

What’s your take? I’m interested to hear from you …

In order to provide some answers to this questions, and in a partnership between Deloitte, The Society of New Communications Research and Beeline Labs, we are conducting a research project on how companies measure progress and success within their business communities.

If you are involved in managing online communities for your organization, you are invited to participate in the 2008 Online Community Effectiveness Study. To take the online survey, go to: http://www.communityeffectiveness.com.

Results of the survey will be freely shared in May to all who are interested in this subject.

Thank you - Francois