We’re not about to get political here, and tell you what you should think of any proposed federal bailout of the Big 3 American carmakers.  Instead, we’d like to shed light on how one of those companies is using social media to spread the word about their POSITIVES — which is a side of the story that the mainstream media isn’t covering very much these days.

Scott Monty (a May 2009 Business Smart Tools speaker) is currently a one-man social media team employed by Ford.  One of his biggest challenges is overcoming the wave of negativity directed at the auto industry during this time of economic uncertainty.  So Scott has been striving to make sure you, the people, have access to some positive facts about Ford that are otherwise getting lost in the shuffle.

That’s because Scott believes it’s in the public’s best interest to know as many sides of the story as possible. If the mainstream media are tilting in one direction, Ford can utilize Scott to help share another perspective, and make sure the public has access to some balanced facts.

How could YOUR company use social media to help the world learn more about YOUR positives?

(Don’t forget to follow Scott on Twitter.)

Shel Holtz and John C. Havens have written a new book about the value of transparency in your business communications.   It’s called Tactical Transparency, and it features extensive quotes from both Valorie Luther (founder of Business Smart Tools’ parent company, Creative Concepts) and BST speaker Cindi Bigelow (President of Bigelow Tea) — so you know WE like it.

But if that’s not enough to catch your attention, consider this:

When communicating online, how much information is TOO MUCH information?

Where do you draw the line between business communications and personal communications?

Who’s controlling what your employees say online (or in person) when they represent your company?

How do you handle a PR crisis?

If any of those questions got you thinking, then perhaps Holtz and Havens’s new book is worth picking up. (And if you’d like to learn more about transparency from one of the authors, John Havens, you can talk with him at the Business Smart Tools conference in May!)

Photo by abardwell.

(Full disclosure: Creative Concepts, the parent company of the Business Smart Tools conference, developed and produced the following video.)

Last year, The American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes teamed up to deliver nearly 600,000 holiday cards and letters to members of the US armed services, as part of their Holiday Mail for Heroes campaign. This year, they’re aiming for 1 million cards and letters — and they need your help.

Can YOU send a card or letter to a US serviceman or servicewoman this holiday season?  Whatever your politics, one thing we can all agree on is that no one should be alone during the holidays — and, as the following video makes clear, no matter how far away our soldiers, sailors, pilots and marines are from their homes this holiday season, they certainly don’t have to be alone.

Here’s how you can help.

For more information, please visit the official Red Cross website.

Last week, we mentioned the importance of being “present” in as many social media forums as you can handle, because you never know which one of them might help a new customer (or a hundred of them) discover your business.

This week, let’s tackle the nuts & bolts of HOW to be everywhere.  Because even though it seems like there’s an endless supply of social media tools to explore, your hours in a day are still locked in at 24, and you’d like to use a few of those for pursuits other than work…

The good news is, you can be everywhere using one of 3 basic approaches:

The Billboard

This is the least time-consuming (but also least personal) way to use social media: as a one-size-fits-all media outlet for your message.  This means you essentially take the same information you’d use in one format — like a blog — and repurpose that content everywhere else you “are” online — on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Same message, different outlets.

The upside?  Once you have your master blog post or ad copy designed, the rest of your time is spent copying-and-pasting, or otherwise rearranging that message to fit into all of the other outlets.

The downside?  You’re not really being “social” in this case, since you’re essentially using each platform as a one-way conversation — more like traditional advertising but with more distribution points.

The Funnel

This approach presumes that you have a “home base” — a website, web store, or some other central hub that you’d like all of your new visitors to end up at.  In this case, you can utilize as many social media tools as you’d like, but the purpose for each of them will be to offer bite-sized glimpses of the “full story.” If people want more, they’ll have to click through to your home base.

The upside?  Social media is not an arena that prides itself on long attention spans, so a bite-sized message or teaser is often ideal for a medium that lends itself well to skimming.  Plus, you can save the bulk of your time and effort for the visitors who are interested enough to click through to your hub, rather than spreading yourself too thin across multiple platforms.

The downside?  If you’re encouraging the bulk of your social interaction or customer involvement to take place in one (web) location, you may miss out on opportunities to engage people more fully throughout your additional outposts.

The One-of-a-Kind

Not for the faint of heart (or the short of time), this solution calls for a dedicated involvement on the part of you (or whomever comprises your “social media team”).  Here, you’re seeking to customize the delivery of your message AND the quality of your interaction with new (and existing) audiences within each individual social media platform you inhabit.  In this strategy, all tools are equal, and someone commenting on your blog post is every bit as important as someone who silently follows your photo stream on Flickr.

The upside?  Quality of engagement.  Instead of using social media as a bullhorn, this option truly allows you to invest a personal touch in your online interactions, and helps you discover “what works” for each audience on each platform.  That means your ROI will be much higher (but so will your invested resources).  AND, as an added bonus, you’ll learn much more about your audience because you’ll be listening, acting and reacting to them, as opposed to merely shouting at or shepherding them.

The downside?  A lack of time.  The nuances of each of these tools can be exploited ever more fully, but to do so might require a person to spend as much time online as they spend offline — if not more.

So which solution is best for YOU?  Honestly, you won’t know until you’ve begun to experiment with these tools and measured their impact on your business.  But, as in most things, time — and how much you have to share — will tell.

Photo by teliko82.

Once upon a time, a company could make a healthy living just by advertising in one form of media.  Sure, you might invest a minimal amount in radio or TV, “just in case,” but if print ads were how most of your customers found you, then print ads were where most of your advertising dollars went.

Today, social media offers a nearly infinite array of outreach opportunities to help you find new customers — but how do you know WHICH one is where MOST of them will come from?

You don’t (yet).

That’s partly because these tools are still new, and therefore the TOOLS are still finding their audiences at the same time you’re using them to find YOUR customers.  It also means that the number of users for each emerging web tool might grow exponentially over the course of a year, and if you don’t invest at least some time and effort in maintaining a presence across multiple sites / tools / platforms, your target audience might flock to one of those services you’re not using — and then you’ll be playing catch-up.

So why get caught at the wrong party when you can be at all the parties at once?

If you’re mounting a social media presence, be sure to use the central, proven tools that are getting the most buzz (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.), but also set aside some time for the exploration of new services that are just starting to catch on with a wider audience (Seesmic, StumbleUpon, NING).  You don’t need to be active on each service every day, but you do need to have a consistent message across all of the platforms.  Because you never know when one of these new services or destinations might erupt into The Next Big Thing — and if you’re late to the party, one of your competitors will almost certainly be in your seat.

Next week: HOW to Be Everywhere at Once (Without *Actually* Cloning Yourself)

Photo by tonibduguid.