Libert knows a bit about this. Mzinga manages two billion conversations monthly for 15,000 communities on behalf of 300 well-known companies. Libert believes that customer input is absolutely essential to business success, but he acknowledges that many companies struggle to internalize and act upon honest feedback. In his new book Social Nation, he talks about the essential attributes of customer-driven social media success. In this interview, he talked about the importance of customer support as a differentiator in a globalized world, which companies do it well, his amazing Ducati experience and other topics.

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Audio continues to be Doug Kaye’s passion, even though the promise of podcasting never lived up to some early – and probably over-optimistic – forecasts. Once billed as a replacement for terrestrial radio, podcasting has settled into a niche that primarily serves people with intensive information needs and limited time. Asked whether podcasting has under-performed its potential, Doug points to NPR, which podcasts nearly every radio program in its portfolio. Hundreds of other radio stations also podcast their audio programs in order to serve fans who are too busy to listen to scheduled programs.

Podcasts are a great medium for people who need to consume information while they’re busy doing something else. Perhaps that’s why regular podcast listeners have some of the best demographics of any social media consumers, according to eMarketer.

As the Conversations Network has grown, Doug Kaye has turned his attention to an ambitious new project that aims to organize the world’s library of recorded spoken information into a single card catalog. SpokenWord.org is an experiment in what is being called “curation,” or the organization of assets from other places into a master directory. Curation presents a whole new set of challenges to people who are accustomed to creating original content, Doug explains, but it may well be the great new opportunity on the Web. He tells us why podcasting has quietly revolutionized audio, its limits as a shareable medium and the great new opportunity for curation.

Paul first interviewed Doug in 2006 for The New Influencers. That recording is mainly of historical interest, but you can listen to it here.

Listen to our Sept. 8, 2010 interview with Doug Kaye or Right-click here to download

Here are some links to his published works:

• Lead into Gold – the math related to your cost and the crowd worker’s earnings
• PR, Internet Intern – do all kinds of research that just takes lots of time
• Small Business Will Inherit the Earth -  small businesses have to outsource lots of components of business that require specialties or time they don’t have
• Entrepreneurial Shock – earn more doing less by outsourcing mundane portions of research
• Grasshopper Case Study – build a custom list to an exacting spec for very little cost

You can download our podcast here (20:10):

Audio link (right click to download)

What a difference a couple of decades makes. Today IBM is one of the most prominent adopters of social media. Here are the numbers on usage of different tools by its 400,000 employees:

• Internal blogs: 17,000
• Members of the Beehive social network: 60,000
• Daily page views on IBM’s internal wiki: 1,000,000
• Participants in its four Innovation Jams: 500,000
• IBMers on Twitter: 3,000
• IBMers on Facebook: 52,000
• IBMers on LinkedIn: 198,000

Big Blue applies social media both to internal and external communications. Because more than half the employees work outside of a conventional office, media like blogs and podcasts have become essential elements for tying teams together on projects.

Adam Christensen is Social Media Communications Manager at IBM. In that capacity, he helps define policies and best practices for dissemination across IBM’s global workforce. Not surprisingly, he’s also an active blogger, tweeter and member of multiple social networks. He tells David and Paul how IBM’s embrace of social media is opening up the company and making it more efficient.

Audio link (right click to download)

Scott Monty left a job at the conversation monitoring agency Crayon in 2008 to take on the challenge of helping the Ford Motor Co. reinvigorate its image with new media. In the intervening 14 months, the US auto industry has undergone a near meltdown, but Ford has escaped the carnage that drove rival General Motors into bankruptcy.

Monty is Ford’s ubiquitous online presence, with over 30,000 followers on Twitter alone. Among the initiatives he’s worked on is The Ford Story, a multimedia showcase of Ford’s work in fuel efficiency, design and engineering innovation. As he notes in this podcast, Ford has been rewarded for its openness by being hailed as a leader in social media adoption.

Monty manages to find time to tend to his popular blog, but has had to set aside, temporarily at least, another labor of love: His fascination with all things Sherlock Holmes. With the first new Holmes movie in years set for release this fall, now’s a good time to follow Scott Monty.

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As the National Hockey League seeks to recover from its damaging 2004-2005 lockout,  It’s turning to new media as a means to reach out to the public.  Remarkably, half of all NHL fans don’t live near the teams they root for., so the league is using every medium and its disposal to connect people with their favorite teams.  The NHL.com website has been relaunched with an integrated social network and publicity director Michael DiLorenzo is an active proponent of using blogs, twitter and social networks as a way to connect with the league’s constituency.

DiLorenzo practices what he preaches, blogging at http://www.fromtheblueseats.com/ and tweeting at umassdilo. He’s already sent 2,500 Twitter updates. Although he’s a fan, he’s also a shrewd media strategist, as you’ll see when you download the interview.

(16:52)

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Paula Berg (Ragan Communications photo)

This week we talk to Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines and the team leading the airline’s efforts in blogging, podcasting, and other social media.

In a corporate blogging world that has turned in mostly unspectacular results so far, Southwest is a standout.  The company uses ordinary employees — not high paid executives — to tell its story, and they do so with marvelous candor and enthusiasm.  Nuts About Southwest has a joyful irreverence that reinforces the airline’s offbeat, slightly goofy image. Recently, Southwest added video and podcasts to the mix in a manner that truly looks planned.

Southwest has done a lot of things right in this world, and we find out how customer conversations have changed the company’s policies, how Southwest gives its people lots of leeway in choosing what to contribute to the blog, the online “voice of the company and how its first Twitter-based “screenplay” came together in the past couple of weeks.

(17:08)

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The Traveling Mamas site features a wonderfully homespun and playful voice layered onto the sage experience of people who know how to travel. Fifteen months after launch, it’s getting 50,000 visitors a month and a bouquet of awards, citations and recommendations from media outlets and other bloggers. The four mamas post prodigiously and their audience is  coveted by destination marketers, who compete to get their attention. It’s all rather overwhelming and unexpected.

Shannon is Cajun Mama. She joins us midway through a trip in the Georgia wilderness. In 93 programs, this is the first time David and Paul have ever interviewed someone under these circumstances. Listen to find out more.

Also listen to find out about the nearly disastrous bicycling accident David suffered last week. He’s okay, but instead of sending flowers, he’d like listeners to support his ride for the National MS Society.

Listen to the podcast (17:01) (right click and choose “Save As…” to download)

Since the book came out, Forrester has been at the center of controversial research that indicates that corporate blogs are missing the mark by failing to communicate with customers in meaningful new ways. Businesses are still casting about to find a means of engagement that works for them and blogs just aren’t doing the job at the moment.

Bernoff believes that corporations will find the right tools, but the bigger goal should be to humanize interactions between them and their constituents. In his frequent writings on the Groundswell blog, he argues passionately that years of cost-cutting and automation have robbed many businesses of their personality. Now they have the means to become genuine, but too many companies simply use new media to force the same old message down the pipe. No wonder Forrester Research has recently shown a corporate blogs have less credibility than advertisements. In this interview, he talks about how social media continues to shake up the status quo.

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And that’s in his spare time.  Blackshaw is better known to many people is the executive vice president of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services, a group that helps companies develop online strategies.  Branding in the age of conversation is nothing like it was in the days of one-way communications, he says.  Today, brands are developed cooperatively in discussions with customers whose feedback needs to be seriously considered and incorporated into a company’s message.  He talks with David and Paul about some of the more common mistakes marketers make and also who’s getting it right.

Download the podcast here  (20:39)