BusinessWeek on the growing demand for social media directors

Last week's BusinessWeek covers corporate America's "rush" to hire social media directors:

Across the country, companies like Petco are going through a two-step process. First, they scramble to hire social media officers. Second, they figure out what it is, exactly, that social media officers do. Blending departments—promotion and marketing, customer service and support—and requiring the ability to be shameless boosters while maintaining a light, self-aware tone, the job category is experiencing a boomlet as companies try to keep up with the new media world. The chief social media officer may be supplanting the chief branding officer as the zaniest human resource innovation in memory.

These articles always make me cringe a bit, but you can't blame big companies for wanting to be active in this space. Towards the end of the piece the topic of metrics comes up:

Metrics used to evaluate success in corporate social media might include: number of Tweets; number of re-Tweets (a Twitter message that's resent by a follower); instances of "customer recovery," in which an irate civilian is successfully mollified; an increase in the number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers; and the number of photos of your product that have been posted online.

What about website visits from Facebook and Twitter activity? Or leads or sales? Those seem much more relevant than number of Tweets.

NY Times small-business guide to using Facebook

A few good tips from "How to Market Your Business With Facebook" from the NY Times:

• Identify a short list of goals before you begin.

• Show some personality in your page.

• Don't shill. Use your page to engage-and trust that sales will follow.

• Use Facebook data to analyze your customer demographics.

Claim your Facebook username tonight

Earlier this week Facebook announced that users will be able to claim usernames starting at tonight at midnight. If you're a company with registered name, however, you can claim your Facebook now using this form. Why is this potentially important? Your FB username will serve as the last half of your FB URL, e.g. http://www.facebook.com/john.doe.

It’s in Facebook’s interest to have these URLs appear high in the results for Google name searches, and for many of you, it’s in your interest to have your URL appear high when someone is searching for you. More from CNET here.

WSJ on Web 2.0 marketing

If you're venturing into social media, this article from the Wall Street Journal has a few good points to keep in mind.

Nielsen on Twitter

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen discusses Twitter in this week's BusinessWeek. Most interesting parts:

Do you think it's a good idea for CEOs to tweet to their customers?

Mostly no. Posting on the Web is the modern PR, and the CEO's job is to articulate the company's vision and direction, which requires more than 140 characters. Being perceived as a wise guy or a shallow thinker is not going to do your stock price much good. We have just completed a usability study of investor relations info on corporate Web sites, and one of the big reasons individual investors turn to companies' Web sites is to find the CEO's vision and take on the company's and industry's direction.

Because users don't want to read very much online, this information should be addressed concisely, but not as concisely as in a tweet. Better to write something deeper (or post a video clip, since investors also want to assess the CEO's personality by watching him or her speak), and then announce that, with a link, from the company's general Twitter update, as opposed to in the CEO's personal tweet.

Do you think the growth of Twitter is a threat to individuals' ability to concentrate?

If you care about productivity, don't check your Twitter feed while you're trying to get work done. Disruptions are deadly for productivity because it takes several minutes to reorient the brain every time you go off track looking at something else. Stick to checking updates once per day—for example, during lunch. All the tweets will still be there.