Russ: This is a BusinessMakers WebXtra, a continuation of the radio broadcast with Tim Walker, analyst with Hoover's. Well, one thing I recall from our other social media guests and they're the advocacies of this new media, several months ago, all of them were recommending that businesses should have a presence on Facebook. Now, does Twitter sort of outdate that or does it integrate? What do you recommend?

Tim: My big recommendation is the same as it's been for a long time in business, way before the Internet, which is "Go where your customers are." It's not a case of you having to build the presence and then people will come to you. It's the fact that you already probably have customers on Facebook who might prefer to interact with you there as opposed to some other channel. Facebook has a very low barrier to entry like Twitter does. So, why not set yourself up using these different platforms, these different media to let people hear you, let people interact with you, let people come and talk to you or so that you can reach out to them. I think it's less about having a huge strategic view of it than it is just making it easier for people to tell you what they think or to do business with you.

Russ: So, therefore, you're monitoring Twitter and Facebook and your blog and all of these different places?

Tim: Right. I do a lot of this work for Hoover's, and a lot of companies are doing it. The larger the company, the more sophistication might, ultimately, be required to do it. But for starters, you can just get up and running and start to do it. It doesn't have to take a lot of your day, and there's some very good tools. Like Twitter has a very good search feature. You set up some searches that identify keywords, maybe your company's name, maybe the industry you're in, maybe some key competitors. You set up some RSS feeds, so that's delivered to you every morning. It's just like your morning email that you get when you first log on and look at your inbox so that you can see what are people talking about. It's a very straightforward ways for you to monitor activity so that you can choose what kind of engagements you want. Are these people you want to engage with or is this just good information that you can have moving forward because you're getting feedback from people out there in your user base?

Russ: Are you the only person that does this for Hoover's?

Tim: Well, I maintain the main blog for Hoover's, but we also have a group of editors. I blog at our site called HooversBiz.com. We have a group of editors who talk more about industry-specific news. They're experts in different industries and they blog at Bizmology.com. Then, my boss, who's our Communications Director, he joins me on the Hoover's Twitter account. We both post to that one.

Russ: Why I asked that question, we had Lionel Menchaca, the original Dell blogger on the show probably six months ago. It was just an incredible interview - at least, for me, it was - to hear how Dell had managed to select one person to sort of lead this cause. I would guess that you would recommend that companies be careful in who they allow to speak on their behalf.

Tim: I do think that you should be careful. I think that upfront, it makes sense to set up some common sense guidelines. Like I said before, if there are compliance issues or financial disclosures or things like that, those are the things that would get you in trouble regardless of what the venue is. I couldn't sit here and tell them to you, in person, much less over the radio. So, Twitter is no different in that in terms of public disclosures. So, it makes sense to have some common sense rules, not overly restrictive about how anybody could talk about your company. That would include an employee who sets up their own blog on the site, it's not specific to your company but they might mention it from time to time.

If you're going to get somebody who's your real spokesperson for you, I think you'd look for the same quality as you would, again, in other venues. If somebody's going to go on TV, it needs to be somebody who can play well to a camera. It needs to be someone who can represent the company well in that venue. On Twitter, you certainly don't have to have a face for TV, you don't have to have a voice for radio, you basically need to know how to type. Then, you need to know how to interact with people. So, I certainly think you want somebody with a high emotional intelligence, somebody who grasps not just the technical issues that affect your company, but the way that people interact with people.

Russ: I know of several instances of larger, particularly, older companies that control so aggressively what is said about their company top to bottom. I cannot imagine that they would feel comfortable taking this logical step as you so clearly articulated. What would you tell to those old, resistant-to-change companies?

Tim: Well, I would tell them that their practices may have made perfect sense for where the media was before. If you know that there's a limited number of New York Times reporters or Newsweek writers who might be talking to your company about a particular issue. Or, if you know that somebody's trying to do an expose, "60 Minutes" is trying to uncover things about your company. It's easy enough to inform everybody in the company, "Nobody talks to "60 Minutes," only our designated people – the CEO, the head of Communications" or so on.

The problem is, that's an old media world. This is in some kind of "Gee wiz, oh, look at this beautiful new future world we're already living out." It's not a love note to the new media, it's just an observation. What the blogosphere has done and the Web, more generally, and Web-enabled services like Twitter or Facebook, is it has made publishers of everyone. Basically, it removed all those barriers to entry. There's no cost, there's no friction. If I want to go out and start blogging, I can do it in the next 10 minutes, and I can do it for free.

Since that is true, it doesn't matter if we like it or don't like it, the fact that it's just true. Since it is true, let's deal with reality as it is. Let set up some common sense guidelines. Don't think that you're going to be able to control all the interactions that all your folks have on every possible venue. Just give them some guidelines about what goes and what doesn't go. Most people I find in the business, they're grown ups. If you give them some sensible guidelines, they'll adhere to them.

Russ: It seems, to make a lot of sense, to be able to sort of enter into discussions that are taking place about your company and about your industry. But, could a business actually use Twitter or any social media out there for sales or marketing purposes?

Tim: It's happening already. I'll tell you, TJ Maxx has a Twitter account and they are constantly posting fashion finds. They'll say, "TJ Maxx find," and then they'll just tell you what it is. "We've got this in stock. We were able to sell it at this price." Now, I wouldn't follow them because I don't shop at TJ Maxx and I'm not a big shopper for clothes or whatever else. But they have thousands of followers who are interested in knowing, "Wow! Right now, they have a special going on this" and they're looking for those bargains.

They know their audience and they're pumping out exactly what that audience wants right to them and they're talking to people back and forth. It's not that every tweet they ever put out is just a promo for a product. People tweet back to them and say, "Oh, I have some shoes just like that, that I got from you. That's great that they're on sale. I'll get another pair." The person who's tweeting for TJ Maxx will come back and say, "Oh, that's great. We always love valued customer." It did have a conversation that's real, "Hey, we're glad you're a loyal customer," just as simple as that.

The opportunities are there, you can have these kinds of conversations, and you can lead people, just open the door for them. Again if you were at a cocktail party and we're talking, we might get to a point in the conversation where, "Actually, the best next thing I could do for you is lets you know what my company could do for you because, in fact, you've just expressed the need that we can meet." I could say, "Hey, it's no big deal. Don't take this as a hard push. But if you're interested, I could set you up with some folks and I could demo for you."

It might be just the things to meet your needs, but because we're sending, talking at a cocktail party, we're having a friendly conversation that's not specifically business-oriented, I can pick the moment to do that. I can pick the language to do that so it doesn't come across as a hard sell. It's not a swarmy thing, it's not a pushy thing. It's me offering you something that actually does have meaning to you and it's in context to the conversation we were already having.

Russ: OK. Tim, before I let you go, let's say here I am, I've got a business out there and I've just been completely ignoring the whole world of social media. I've decided, after hearing you, that I'm missing a big conversation that's taking place that I need to be a part of. What kind of advice would you give me to get started?

Tim: Well, the key thing I'd have you keep in mind is that it's fine to start small, it's fine to start at the grassroots and then iterate, do it bit by bit. That's how Twitter works, because every message is only up to 240 characters. So, you can talk about what's going on. You can listen to people who you find interesting. You can find them because they're talking about certain topics that you can search on and say, "Hey, this person used to be in my same industry." You can just start following, you don't have to talk that much at first. Listen to what they say.

When somebody asks a question and you say, "Oh, I know somebody who can help you with that." Don't even promote yourself, just be helpful. Be a good person and make it clear, "OK, yes, I'm doing this and I'm the head of this company" or "I'm the head of the Communications for this company" or "I'm a salesman for this company" or whatever. You don't have to hide it. But the point is, you're a person, you're having conversations, and you start to open that door. You do it bit by bit, and overtime, what's going to happen is people in that community will come to respect you, they'll see you as a real member of the community who's not just there to chill but is actually there to take part in the conversation. You don't do it by tweeting a thousand times in a day, you could start with three tweets a day. It takes very little to sign up, costs you nothing, and it's an interesting way to just get a ball rolling that, in the end, can do very good things for you online.

Russ: And that wraps up this BusinessMakers WebXtra discussion with Tim Walker, analyst with Hoover's. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com.