OMG! That is one boring headline! Not even sure it’s link-bait for Twitter.

That said, I’m going to call it like it is. We are still seriously blinded by the flashbulbs of social media. Everyday I see PowerPoint decks full of copy-and-paste logos of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn proclaiming, “If we don’t do this, we’re dead.” I don’t really know what these presentations and the people who deliver them are saying. Do what? Stuff? Really? Is that what we’re talking about? Doing stuff?

Especially in B2B, this is the case. If I see another Facebook logo on a B2B presentation, I might barf a little. You sell machines that pump out auto parts! Or logistics software! Or industrial strength windmill lubricants! (I made that up.) Do you really think the dude who’s going to write you a check for $10 million is out there on Facebook saying, “Today, I went sledding with the girls. Then I made a turkey sandwich (here’s a picture of it), and now I’m going to buy 4,300 drums of lube from Mega-Fast Windmills!”

Social networks are like anything else you do in business. There are certain fundamental questions that you need to ask before you spend or make money. Let’s take a look at three that I obsess about on a daily basis.

1. What Are the Opportunities?
So you want a Facebook page. Or to start a LinkedIn community. Or to Tweet the b’jeeb out of your daily life. Why? What are you trying to accomplish? What will success look like and how will you measure it? Launching these social puppies is easy. (I wish it cost $250,000 to launch a business Twitter account. Someone would care.) Solving a problem for your customers or associates isn’t. In analyzing these networks, you need to seriously question how you will be adding value to your customers’ experience, your brand, and your operations. If you’re going to launch a social presence, articulate very clearly what need you’re filling or what problem you’re solving.

2. Who’s Going to Use This?
Back to our windmill friends on Facebook. What if you learn that most of your buyers’ IT departments do not allow access to Facebook on their corporate networks? We have a bit of a problem, yes? Look, I’m all in favor of collaboration and knowledge sharing and open access to the people within companies—but it’s equally important to know whether the people with whom you want to collaborate can even do so or desire to do so. I’m guessing they do, but having absolute certainty is critical. Most of the social ghost towns were developed by companies that didn’t understand how their customers wanted to interact with them.

3. Do We Have the Skills Internally to Succeed?
As I’ve stated here on a weekly basis, I don’t believe becoming a social enterprise is a marketing function. It’s a business function that crosses all silos and departments. So to that point, if we have properly assessed both the opportunities and the audiences we’re focusing on, then we need to understand and plan around the internal capabilities of our colleagues on staff. If our assessment indicates that we have a wonderful opportunity for human resources to recruit talent via LinkedIn, have we trained them? Are they prepared?

Similarly, if our opportunity assessment indicates that our customers really need knowledge from our technology or scientific community, we need to build plans around how those professionals are going to manage their time (and attitudes) around becoming more customer-facing. Often, this is not going to come naturally for them. Training on how to use the tools won’t be good enough. You’re talking about training left-brained people on right-brain skills. If you don’t do this properly, you’ll be that marketing person wandering around the office wondering why no one cares.

Seems simple, right? Not so much. But please do yourself and the market a favor by stopping what you’re about to do and answer these three questions. The world doesn’t need another social presence that goes nowhere.

Hello, friends. Greetings from Gorinchem, The Netherlands! I’m writing here at the Brasserie Hotel Le Bon ‘Apart, a brand new hotel nestled along a canal . . . of course. And by “new” I mean retrofitted into a building 400 years old or more.

The Dutch know about space and architecture. In Amsterdam, in particular, you see buildings within the center city built at forward-leaning angles. It’s not an accident. Those hooks at the top of every building allowed for occupants on the top floors to hook and pulley goods from the ground to the top floors without scraping and damaging the external walls of the floors below them. Brilliant! My client here, who lives in Rotterdam, explained to me tonight that after the city was rebuilt after WWII, it was torn back down, only to embrace modern architecture to exhibit a destination of 20th-century commerce. As I screamed by on the fast train yesterday, clearly this was a good decision. It’s a city of impressive spaces any international business will find attractive.

Earlier this week, upon finding some inspiration from Steve Jobs’ biography about his design of the Pixar headquarters, I did something in reaction to something that had been bothering me for some time about my firm’s space. Recently, we acquired and redesigned quite a bit of new space. More than we needed at the time. The result was that we now all had a lot of space per person. In fact, all of us have spaces that are beautiful and grand. So, what did I do? I “banned” them. We had quickly gone from a company that was used to collaborating and intersecting with each other to a company comprising talented people now isolated from one another.

In the Jobs’ bio, he talks about how it would be impossible to create works of brilliance in an environment where people are dependent upon e-mail and iChat to communicate with one another. This insight struck a chord with me, and it was clear that our newfound office space, while comfortable, was going to kill our creative instincts. So we killed it. Our private offices are now spaces for private phone calls and for time when absolute quietude is required to get the job done.

The result? Happiness. We really enjoy each other’s company. We enjoy the efficiency of simply lifting one’s head and asking a question of a colleague, rather than setting up an hour meeting, getting schedules in place, and dealing with the hassle. We simply “move our stuff” from the bottom floor to the top floor without bringing destruction to the infrastructure of the other floors.

Who knew we were so Dutch!?

I recommend the same to your own teams. Offices, cubes, and other constrictions within corporate American stifle creativity and problem solving. If you’re a leader, walk through your offices. Do you think your best work is being done? Are your smartest people working side by side? Can they actually work together, or are you holding on to some sort of antiquated idea of what “accomplishment” is inside your pointed office? Think about it. What’s more important? The internal comfort of personal space or the result of the work you’re doing for your customers?

Greetings, dear friends and readers. First, I’d like to thank you for your comments, ideas, and critique over these past few months of the Post-Chaos blog. I enjoy writing these posts, although I’m realizing I’m getting older, and as I get older I get more grimy and curmudgeonly. Stay positive, Andrew! Jeez. I mean, really.

My frustrations in digital marketing are really human ones, not technological. Technology isn’t the problem. The problem—still—rests with humans being resistant to change in a field so wrought with change it becomes incredible to me that so many people are still employed. I mean that, quite honestly.

So, with that, I believe 2012 is the year in which lots of people and companies are going to be caught with their pants down. Here are a few ways in which that’s going to happen:

1. Mobile. HOT. HOT. HOT. Super hot. I understand there are 14 billion blogs written by people who have something to gain from the explosion in mobile. This isn’t one of them. But this is a blog that basically says one thing about mobile: There’s a good chance that your key customers are now on a smart phone and that’s how they access the Web. Problem is, your Web site doesn’t render on a smart phone screen. Do I need to go into any more detail than that? I do not. Go to your smart phone right now and bring up your Web site. Happy with what you see? Fix it. (Disclosure: My own site sucks on mobile. I’m fixing it right now.) Plus, if you’re an executive and don’t have a smart phone, get one. Flipping open your flip-phone or Blackberry in 2012 is not giving your direct reports (and maybe now your board) any additional confidence in you. Don’t be that guy (or gal). It’s showing a lack of curiosity.

2. Organizational Social Media. I read a B2B predictions blog from last year that said that social media will be pervasive throughout the organization by the end of 2011. Yikes. This is not happening. There are pockets where wide-spread, strategically driven engagement and relationship development is going on, but this is not pervasive. Many companies still don’t have a social media policy. Strike that. Most companies still don’t know what they’re actually trying to accomplish. Fix this. It’s 2012. We can’t operate companies as though our consumers have just heard about Yahoo for the first time.

3. Understanding All Customer Touchpoints. OK. I loathe jargon and “touchpoints.” I understand. The bigger word for this is “customer experience,” and I simply wonder who within an organization has truly mapped and understands how a customer really interacts with its brand, across all media, all people, and all relationships. If, for example, you claim to be “the leading company in ________,” but you have mega-lame digital presence or your people aren’t involved in online forums and social channels where real conversations are actually taking place, then you’re not. You’re simply not the leader. You may make great products but the paths you build to those products are increasingly complex. A good idea would be to fix this. Understand how your brand actually lives in the modern world.

4. The Talent Crisis. This year, those leaders and emerging leaders who truly understand just what the hell is going on are going to be rewarded. Of course, the other side of that coin is that those who don’t are going to be exposed. That goes for all of us. Agencies and consultants who claim to be “experts” but can’t deliver aren’t experts. They’re dabblers who push jargon around. I struggle with this every day at my own firm. Ask yourself every day, “Just what exactly am I trying to accomplish that has value to my shareholders, customers, and colleagues?” You need to have an answer—or many well-crafted, documented, aligned answers. If you don’t, pants down. Fix yourself first. Then fix your company.

These are just a smattering of critical needs right now in 2012. I would love your ideas as well, so please go through the trouble (ahem . . . ) of commenting below. Once again, please tell me if I’m full of it. Or if you have much better ideas, share them. We can all use the help.

Oh. And pants. Pull ‘em up.

I have this stereotype of the 1950s-era husband. Guy works hard all day. Stops off at the bar for a couple of bumps. Heads home. Dog brings him his slippers and his pipe. Wife is finishing up dinner in the kitchen. Eats food. Watches a little TV (or listens to the radio). And maybe, if according to the schedule these two have agreed to, retires for a little unsatisfying (at least for her) nookie. But I doubt it.

I know it’s not a fair stereotype. I’m sure there were plenty—like a hundred—of marriages in that era based upon an equality of intimacy where man and woman brought equal emotional investment and respect to the relationship. (I’m sure there were man and man or woman and woman relationships too, but you just didn’t hear about them.) But that’s certainly not the stereotype of that era. In fact, if I were a single guy at that time, I’d be a professional “kept man.” What an opportunity! There was a great market for outsourced intimacy.

Everyday, and especially now with a new year right around the corner, bajillions of companies are putting elaborate plans together to outsource their customer relationships to their PR firms or digital agencies. The term for this is “community management.” You’ve probably heard of it or perhaps have a proposal on your desk that offers it. The idea is that companies are going to launch a series of social environments where customers of all types are invited to gather and share their experiences together, interact with branded content, and make decisions about how they want to make their relationship with these organizations.

And these companies are going to outsource the oversight of these communities. They’re going to dial it in. They have no time for that squishy old “relationship stuff.” No! We make products, not babies!

So, that’s cool. They can do what they want to do. But customers are burning their bras, and they’re not going to take it anymore. They’re looking for a new kind of partner, one that recognizes that they have a voice, ambition, and power. You see, these people—these customers—have never experienced power before. They’re giddy. You think Gaddafi and Mubarak don’t know a little something about this customer power? How about Syria? How about . . . Google?

How about you?

It’s true. You have a choice. You can hire an agency to oversee your most intimate relationships with your customers. But don’t be surprised if they don’t represent you well. They’re not you. They’re them trying to be you. And customers see right through it.

The other choice is to change. To use our analogy, the cultural transition of women’s rights and empowerment wasn’t easy for traditional power struggles. (Our continued struggles with providing equal rights for gay people or people who are anything other than white are about fear and power as well.)

Are businesses immune from the same dynamics of transitioning power? Absolutely not. Can we dial it in? Can we simply say, “Oh, yeah—we do social media,” but never actually become social enterprises? That’s a choice for you to make, but remember history. It’s about to repeat itself once again.

This past weekend several of us visited the new Radisson Blu Chicago hotel. I have to tell you — and I’m not kissing up here — the hotel is stunning. I’ve stayed in plenty a’hotel in my life, and when I walked into my room, my breath was taken away. It was a “wow” moment. On Friday night we hosted an event for Chicago bloggers, and they too were really psyched to be there and see the place. So, take my word, stay there on your next visit to Chicago. For photos, videos, and other good stuff, check out our Radisson Blu Chicago Tumblr site.

Have you seen the 2012 Audi R8? No? Do you want to? Here.

Now that’s just a ridiculous car. It looks fast. I’ve never owned an Audi, but if I did, I’d hope it was the R8. I’d get a lot of speeding tickets. I mean, how could you not? “I’m sorry, officer. You see, I’m driving this car. You understand, right?”

How do I know about the R8? I saw one in a Target parking lot the other day. I didn’t see a TV commercial or hear a radio spot for a weekend “sales event.” (Really? An event? An event is something special, not something that happens every damn weekend.)

I didn’t know the car existed until I saw it, and it was extraordinary. When I got home I wanted to know more so I went to the Web site and began drooling. Then I Googled “what’s the R8 like to drive?” I really did. I wonder if the search engine specialists have optimized content for that phrase. I came upon several reviews from auto magazine Web sites like Autoweek.

Then I thought, “What’s it really like to drive?” I determined then and there that if I ever found another one in a Target parking lot, I would sit in my car and wait until the owner exited the store with his $300 toothbrush—I mean, that’s all he intended to buy in the first place—and walk up and say, “I’m sorry to bother you, but seriously, man. What’s it like to drive that car?” And you know what? I bet we’d spend the next 20 minutes talking about what it’s really like to drive that car. At that very moment, I will have moved from a non-believer to a total, complete believer. I believe in the Audi R8.

So what happened here? Was that advertising? Was that marketing? Or was that simply a car manufacturer making a product so extraordinary that its owner can’t wait to talk about it? Perhaps I shouldn’t have used this example. Fact is, we’re not all Audi R8s. That toothbrush is not an Audi R8, and I seriously doubt if anyone has ever said, “Hey, how do you like that toothbrush? Can I take yours for a test drive?” But many of you truly do lead extraordinary brands, and when you do, you have an incredible opportunity at your finger tips that allows you to harness the tipping-point power of advocacy.

Continue reading at Twin Cities Business…

This morning, like millions of other parents, I watched my middle schooler and sixth grader hop on the bus to start another school year. The shock of educational stimulation will hit their summer-sogged brains like artillery fire. They’ll be exhausted tonight. (Date night, perhaps?)

Ciceron Boat Outing on Lake Minnetonka. Commodore Kraig Getting Us Lost.

Unlike them, marketing professionals don’t have the luxury of summer vacations. In fact, if you’re not feeling like you’re under fire every single day, then something’s gone madly wrong. Quite literally every Monday morning (or Tuesday, this week) I arrive at my desk at Ciceron wondering, “How do I have to reinvent this company this week?” Or, “What’s about to happen that I may or may not be prepared for?” As my colleagues here know, I operate every day with a healthy dose of paranoia that at any given time I may be behind the curve of innovation, the pace of my clients’ expectations, and, most important, the adoption of new media and practices of the consumer.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about how digital “goes big.” Most brands don’t have huge budgets for interactive. (Let’s face it.) But digital is the crazy, and while many of us obsess about email segmentation, Facebook followers, and micro-targeted Google Ads, what’s more? Where does it go HUGE?

So I quit thinking and started writing. Read on here at my Twin Cities Business blog. Please comment. Yes, that’s a plea.

What do you think of this analogy? Marketers often behave like Wall Street investors, making changes based upon daily interests vs. a long economic view. No wonder it always feel chaotic!

This week’s Post-Chaos 1.0 blog post.

So much to wrap your head around in this articulate piece from McKinsey. Of course, we here have been pursuing this unicorn for a long time, and it’s looking more real than ever — “push advertising” simply can’t pull its weight anymore. And social engagement is no longer a central marketing function but a company-wide effort. So who’s in charge? Read on. Fascinating.