In business, it’s akin to children asking their parents where babies come from.  That awkward moment, you hope, is during a quiet moment at home free from grandparents and neighbors. You know it’s coming. You just don’t know when.

Many business leaders know a similar moment is coming. It is when they are asked  “Where does social in social media come from, Boss?” They just hope that moment comes with no one around, in their  office free from agencies and co-workers, vendors and partners.

So where does the social in social media come from?

For some businesses, they wish an agency would drop a social media campaign on their company. Like storks dropping a baby in the night on unsuspecting parents. These businesses wish an agency would drop a  social media bundle, neatly tied with a bow, on their desk one morning.

The agency, like the stork, flies away having conducted its business and picked up its check.

And the social media campaign remains on the desk. Over time its cooing becomes an annoyance, an interruption in the day. A distraction.  And the pretty colors, the conversations and tweets, comments and communities, profiles and videos soon are abandoned and grow silent. Everyone walks away.

Or the kid, you know the intern, who’s all over Facebook and MySpace and can text one hundred words a minute (in a secret language only their friends understand…) can do this social media thing….They can. With their friends. Who aren’t your clients, your employees, your prospects.

Social media. See. Social comes first in social media.  Too much is spent discussing the media and forgetting the social of social media.

Social  doesn’t come from agencies or Twitter/Facebook/YouTube, even. Social in social media comes from conversations. In-person. One-to-one. The conversations you inspire or instigate with co-workers and colleagues, family and friends.  In business it comes from the conversations you can create and spur, and most importantly allow,  among ALL your stakeholders. Employees and customers, partners and vendors.  These are unscripted, spontaneous, digressions and debates, arguments and collaborations, celebrations and setbacks.

Organizations whose cultures allow their stakeholders, all of them, to engage in these social interactions, organizations whose leaders listen as much if not more than they talk are where you will find the social in social media.

So. Before you wish for an agency to bequeath you a social media something (program, campaign, strategy) or think you can do it on the cheap with an enthusiastic entry-level employee…ask yourself if your organization answers, every day in every way,  Where does the social in social media come from?

Social media is the tool that’s opened the veritable Pandora’s Box of connections. But who owns thisPandora’s Box?

We do. It’s ours. It is our Pandora’s Box. Like the original Pandora’s Box, ours contains our ills and sickness. These are the trolls and hackers, spammers and phishers. And they are our penchant for sharing too-much-information with too many strangers, too often. We’ve all done it. Drunk with the elixir of a personal media platform and the power to publish right now, when we are most inspired !!!!, we publish. Anything. Anytime. Anywhere.

I just did. It was a quick riff on the difference between trickle-down economics and our current stimulus plan. I’m not an economist. But, I’m a tax payer with a blog. I wrote it, published it. Still, I am guaranteed to remain without a Pulitzer. But, maybe, it connects and inspires someone else who has the same question. Maybe it will spur them on to clarify their question or idea or solution. It always helps me clarify my thoughts.

And, therein lies the possibility of social media: Hope. No, not the audacity of hope. No. This is the reality of Hope. This is Hope made real. And Hope was one of the original elements unleashed on humanity when Pandora’s Box was opened…back in the day.

But,  the Hope of Pandora’s Box fell on barren ground. The ability of her neighbors then to share their Hope was, well, limited. Small communities, isolated and the printing press was a few centuries away.

Hope is an idea, a dream, a vision. Hope is our idea, our dream, our vision. It describes our view of life. Its depth and fervor and burning fire is different inside each of us.  And with no one to share Hope or with only a few to share Hope, well Hope fails to grow. Oh, sure. There are pockets of Hope. They sustain us, our families, our communities, our nations through the darkest hours. But only with a thread.

The Hope released from our Pandora’s Box today, with the help of social media, will land on fertile ground.
And that ground is the ground of our global conversation and connections made possible through social media. Big communities, spanning the globe, instant connections, a literate society, and each of us now are publishers in our own right, able to publish the most unique content individually and collectively. And we now can deliver that content…instantly.

Wow, Zane, you’ve really rolled out the hyperbole today, you think. Really? What brought the world’s attention to the abuses in the recent Iranian elections? Well, it first started with Twitter and the Twitterati and then it went mainstream on Twitter with members changing their location to Tehran in an effort to confuse the Iranian censors. Then green, the color of the democracy movement in Iran, became the dominant color on member’s profile pictures.

Ask Motrin about the power of moms and social media to express, ahem, disdain for a condescending corporate attitude.
And then there’s the granddaddy of ‘em all, Jeff Jarvis and Dell Hell.

These are all corrective actions. The community reacts to correct an obvious wrong. And in each of these cases, there were obvious wrongs.

But that community reaction is driven first by the hope and now increasingly by the reality that our ideas, our dreams, our visions can now be shared together and in essence feed each other’s hope.

Who hasn’t turned to Twitter or Facebook or a blog for an uplifting aphorism or thought for the day? Or a joke or funny video. That lifted our spirits.

Does anyone now not turn to social media to find tools and resources to make manifest our hopes and dreams? I personally have crowd-sourced twitter any number of times for specific tools and resources. I have always found a wealth of help. Actually, it’s a wealth of hope. Because the ease of finding these resources only fuels our hope that we can accomplish our dreams, manifest our ideas, fulfill our visions.

This post is a collaborative effort made possible through the efforts of numerous people, each of us blogging, tweeting, facebooking, finding our common ideas and vision on small business and social media and now finding a means to share them instantly. Here. With you. And your ideas, dreams and visions.

There is a lot to be thankful for. And one day, we’ll spend more than one day per year being thankful. But Thursday, if you’re giving thanks, give thanks for social media. Because, it’s social media that brings us a little closer, connects us in new and different ways with new and different people. And together we all find renewed Hope for our ideas, our dreams and our visions. Because after all, they are ours together. And we now have the tools to open ourselves fully to their possibilities.

About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

With that, we’re happy to announce new and improved URL shortening built right into QuestionPro. Now your survey URLs will be even shorter than before! Your new short URLs will look like this:

http://questionpro.com/t/AdEPZGPzX

The most important part: all existing URLs that have been created before this new feature was added will still work – there is nothing you need to do on your end.

In addition, we’ve made it easier than ever to get your survey link out there with Twitter, Facebook, and email integration right within the QuestionPro “Send Survey” tab. So get out there and tweet your surveys!

Again, just to be clear, you do not need to change anything.  We certainly suggest using the new URL, but all existing survey URL’s will function as they always have.

Naturally we thought, “why not crowdsource it?” The end result is an IdeaScale community using our new “poker chip” style voting system.

The rules for this system of voting is simple:

• each user gets 30 votes that they can apply to any of the ideas.
• users can vote more than once – but only up to the allocated 30 votes.
• at any point you can re-allocate your votes if you change your mind.

We then broke up all the main parts of H.R. 3200 into their own ideas on the community. The resulting community allows each user to vote on a section of the bill, deciding which elements of the bill are most important to them.

Take a spin and let us know what you think!

More info:

• HealthcareDebate.com IdeaScale community

There is a great benefit to being active as a business in Social Media.  As a business, there are amazing opportunities to create a Global Network and control more of your marketing activity, and for a great deal less than traditional marketing and PR.

Social Media is a great place to engage, promote your brand and even build relationships. But the “hows” of engagement can be a little sticky. There are a lot of people talking, but what makes a brand great is getting people to listen.  There is a difference between just being on Social Media and being great at Social Media.  Here are some tips to help you move along from just being part of the chatter and being part of the conversation.

• Be Relevant- You’re a Brand

There are lots of applications on Facebook and Twitter.  No matter how much you’re tempted, you are not allowed to poke, prod, give gifts there, if you’re interacting as a brand or trying to build a brand image.  If you give gifts of any kind, be sure that they tie into an overall promotional strategy.

Consider your content before you post.  Does what you’re saying fit into your overall brand strategy?  Be sure that grammar and spelling are correct.  You want to be taken seriously.  Provide great content.  Talk about what you “are” about.  If you are a business related to green living, talk, blog and post strategies on that initiative.  There is no substitute for great content.

• Be Creative

Creativity gets attention.  Be creative in your word usage be a good copywriter.  There’s a great difference between saying:  “Getting ready to survey our customers to find out what is important to them” and “Want to be in charge of our company for the day?  Give us your feedback and tell us what we need to be doing!!!” Use creative contests and give-aways to encourage people to interact with and even promote for your brand.

• Be Consistent

If you’re married or in a relationship, you would never go a day without talking to each other at all (hopefully).  Remember, that followers and friends of your brand are real people.  Build great relationships by showing up consistently.  If you blog, post regularly.  Post statuses daily or a few times during the day. Whatever you do, don’t start to engage then walk away from the relationship.

• Be Brief

Although we need to be consistent, we don’t want to overwhelm our readers.  Make posts and updates brief and easy to digest.  If you’re on Facebook, update sparingly.  Some companies and people update every hour on the hour, which burns people out, or worse, causes them to tune out.

If you like talking a lot or have lots of links/content to share – Twitter is your playground.  It’s a great place to talk, engage and share information quickly without overwhelming people.  But still be sure not to over post.

In most cases, even outside of Twitter, keep it to 140 characters or less.  If you have a lot more to say, place the content in a note, not a status update.

• Be Engaging

Talk with people.  Listen and comment on content other people post.  Show interest in what people are talking about and join the conversation.  Nothing makes brands shine more than listening and interacting in meaningful ways with customers.  By watching your friends and followers, you find out what is important to them, which gives you a great opportunity to do market research of some sort.

• Be Meaningful

Once you’ve engaged and listened, you’re now in a great position to meet the needs of your friends and fans.  Post things that are of value or interest to your readers.  Create and or tweak products to meet the needs that you’ve discovered.

• Be Polite

It can be tempting in Social Media to feel like you know people much better than you do.  While it is very possible to learn about people, get to know their personalities, likes and dislikes, until you’ve met, you don’t truly know them.  Move into relationships using good etiquette.  Talk to people publicly in the stream when the information is relevant, supports your overall brand or is applicable to more than one person.  When your content, conversations or questions are not relevant to the entire community or if information you want to applies only to one person, consider a direct message, e-mail, phone call or in person conversation.  Don’t ask overly personal questions.

Using these simple but effective ways to engage, interact and promote on Social Media, you’ll not only be GREAT, you’ll be FABULOUS!