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Two new studies provide new and compelling data about ongoing struggles to keep social media in the strategic marketing mix by nonprofits and corporate chief marketing officers. These reports confirm some trends I’ve observed recently with clients in university marketing communications and alumni relations offices – good ideas and technologies need appropriate staff and budgets to put them fully to work.

Coincidentally I also heard about social media fatigue from a couple of favorite bloggers. Here’s a quick summary of these recent cyber exchanges:

• A study by the public relations firm Weber Shandwick found that the vast majority of nonprofit organizations (88 percent) are experimenting with social media to engage key audiences, but a significant majority (79 percent) are uncertain of how to demonstrate social media’s value for their organizations. And, only half (51 percent) report active use of social media. In reporting on the study, the Association of Fundraising Professionals noted that  nonprofit executives are skeptical about social media’s ability to reach donors, media and policy makers.
• More than four out of five (84 percent) chief marketing officers (CMOs) allocate less than ten percent of their budgets to experimenting through social media and non-traditional communications channels, with more than half (55 percent) allocating just five percent or less, according to a study by The CMO Club and Hill & Knowlton, while the number of adult Internet users who have profiles on social networks quadrupled to 35 percent in 2008, from eight percent in 2005.

What I find most illuminating in the current conversations is the vital shift in focus to resources — people and budgets. It’s easy to get excited about new technologies and experiment at the front end, but the reality of sustainable implementation unfortunately seems to be more of a “Phase 2″ than a “Phase 1″ consideration. 

Of particular interest were these findings in the Weber Shandwick report: “With nearly 70 percent of nonprofit professionals projecting their 2010 communications budgets to remain the same or decrease compared to last year, finding the resources and expertise to implement social media strategies is a widely shared challenge. Fifty-two percent of organizations concede they do not have enough staff to manage their current social media outreach and almost two-thirds (64 percent) report that their organizations do not have social media policies and guidelines in place for employees and board members to engage appropriately online.”

University and nonprofit communications staff are smart, can-do professionals who often go the extra mile to meet expectations. Many of them have simply started creating social media communities through their websites as another service that adds to the many things on their plates. As these reports show, these staff and their bosses would be well-served to step back and assess their strategies for social media, its relevancy to the outcomes they seek and how they are going to provide the resources to keep the tweeting and friending going.

As universities and nonprofits look once again at tight budgets for the next fiscal year, here’s a plan of action for scaling social media practices in your marketing mix:

• Begin with assessing the needs. What are you trying to accomplish, and why?
• Determine the best tools for your organization, not other organizations.
• Decide what’s real: Who will do the work? Do they have the skills and the willingness? What will staff have to stop doing to tackle more active social media engagement? What will be lost if one communications tactic becomes a priority over the others?
• Cease looking at social media as activity that staff can do in their free time.
• Engage only in activities that can be done well.
• Put social media responsibilities and outcomes into annual workplans; integrate and measure their activity; resource them appropriately with people and budgets; reevaluate every 90 days.
• Consider phased implementation — start small, set expectations appropriately and ramp up as resources become available — or as the measurable results make a case for adding more social media support.
• Can volunteers be trained and used effectively to help advance social media activities?
• Equally importantly, assist communicators at all levels in learning how to manage up. Often their superiors don’t know the process or the best solutions and need wise counsel, even if it’s not what they want to hear about the latest trend.

And, if you’re still with me, here are some honest insights from bloggers Michael Stoner and Brad Ward about how they are scaling their own social media activity in the context of making smart business decisions.

Social media and “killer content” held court today — once again — at Marketing Profs’ Digital Marketing Virtual Conference, the second one this year. Cruising through the sessions and booths at this information-loaded real-time experience is completely worth an all-day visit.

The statistics continue to accelerate — 60% of Americans use social media, according to Becky Carroll of the Petra Consulting Group and Michael Brito, social media strategist for Intel, in their presentation, “Building Customer Loyalty on the Social Web.” Of that 60%:

• 59% use it to interact with companies
• 93% believe that companies should have a social media presence
• 85% believe a company should interact with its audiences via social media

It’s remarkable how the social media buzz has changed from the “wow” factor to some serious long-term thinking. The experts have moved beyond their fascination with the cool tools and more thoughtfully into the durability of the social web for longer-term marketing strategies. In getting started, how’s a business to choose the best course of action? The marketing basics of relationship-building still count. ”Map out a strategy first, because the tools will change, and you want to be able to adapt to the next tool out there,” Carroll advised. “Believe it or not, Twitter won’t always be around.”

That’s really a solid point.  The Marketing Profs group certainly has its tactics well-mapped to an overall strategy: this virtual conference reportly has 12,000 registrations.

Another new study presented by Carroll and Brito correlates financial performance with ”deep brand engagement” among the Top Ten brands, such as Starbucks, Dell, Google, Yahoo and Intel. The take-aways here are that simply listening to customers without responding and taking action makes a business’ social media strategy not only ineffective but irrelevant. Social media marketing must create a real conversation, not just sell your brand. That means showcasing competitors’ good ideas, exchanging knowledge, being authentic and believable. Through that service comes credibility, and the most successful firms, small to large, have proven that credibility through social media leads customers to action — to buy.

‘Killer content” is a term that’s been refined, too. Think of it as engaging customers outside of particular transactions, noted presenter Kathy Warren, digital strategy-social media program manager for Hewlett Packard, and Kari Homan and Natanya Anderson of Powered, Inc., in another session. Killer content is something far different from messaging, demos and press releases.

Take HP’s online Learning Center, which they described as the “crown jewel” of the firm’s integrated marketing strategy. The interactive site drives brand loyalty and acquires new prospects through a learning environment rich in lifestyle content based on consumer needs and interests. The 115 content areas, tied to HP’s business objectives, are broken down into four categories: PC Security and Maintenance, Home Office, Digital Photography, and Microsoft Office and Adobe. Users create profiles and choose from a host of options — such as newsletters, customer insights and analytics, and social tools. Through this unbiased information, many customers eventually migrate to a purchase decision about an HP product, but that’s not the exclusive — or apparent — goal.

HP’s numbers tell the story of a successful Learning Center strategy:

• 22 million visits since 2004
• 1.3 million enrollments
• 92% would recommend the site to others
• 22% reported a purchase of an HP product
• 11% have stayed actively engaged since 2004

Among what the presenters called the “10 Commandments of Killer Content,” keep these priorities in mind:

• No infomercials — ever!
• Know and honor your audience and what they want to learn.
• Offer breadth and depth of content — keep it fresh and relevant but also some content that will have a long life.
• And here’s a really good one — listen to your customers and use that data to cut through organizational politics to make decisions about the content that will make them part of your community.

Nonprofit technology expert and educator John Kenyon made the power of social media a more accessible concept when he presented at our consultants network of the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership of Marin County. “Making Web 2.0 Work for You” began with the “Conversation” prism, Brian Solis’  iconic visual that neatly frames “the art of social media listening, learning and sharing.”

And he made really clear that a website and email communications are the foundation of any strategy, with email still the “killer app.” For fundamentals, that means that your chances to build relationships are only as good as your email list — eg, your audience database.

John’s big themes for any social media strategy:

• Start with your needs — who is your audience and where do they “live” online?
• Find people who are passionate about your causes (through Technorati and Google Alerts).
• Grow people’s awareness and familiarity with your cause, and own the search engines! (Google Adwords, Blogging).
• Amplify word of mouth and grow your email list (YouTube and Flickr).
• Plug your supporters into fundraising widgets (ChipIn.org, SixDegrees.org, Change.org).
• Go where people are and tap into user participation (Facebook).
• Inspire people to visit your website and engage with you.

How to know if you’re headed in the right direction? Since Web 2.0 is still the “Wild West,” there are no industry-wide benchmarks and not a lot of data. So start with measuring ROI against your organization’s goals, not goals that other organizations have.

Check out this ebook, Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission, which John, Beth Kanter and other nonprofit technology gurus have just published. They’ll all be at the national Nonprofit Technology Conference, sponsored by the pace-setting Nonprofit Technology Network NTEN in San Francisco, April 26-28.

KD Paine’s data-driven analysis of how journalists use social media kicked off the sessions I attended at today’s Marketing Profs online conference.

First, her most memorable quotes on the trends in PR 2.0:

“I check Twitter before I check email.”

“Everyone is a journalist, and there are no more deadlines.”

“Twitter is news before it’s news.”

These recent changes in news-gathering have changed how journalists and marketers relate, as indicated in some telling facts from one of her recent media relations surveys:

• 100% of “millennial” journalists, ages 18-29, believe new media communication tools are enhancing journalism.
• Only 40% of journalists ages 50-64 think these tools are important.
• 87% of journalists ages 18-29 confirm new media communications are enhancing their relationships with their audiences.
• Only 42% of journalists ages 50-64 agree.
• 48% of all respondents use LinkedIn and 45% use Facebook to assist in their reporting.
• 68% of all respondents use blogs to keep up with issues.
• 86% of all respondents use company websites for information about an organization.

For marketers, KD shared her ”7 Steps to Social Media ROI”:

(1) Define the R (what return is expected?)

(2) Define the I (what’s the investment?)

(3) Understand your audiences and what motivates them

(4) Define the metrics (what do you want to become?)

(5) Determine what you are benchmarking against 

(6) Pick a tool and start your research

(7) Analyze results, gain insight, take action — and keep measuring

If you remember nothing else, repeat after KD: “You are what you measure.”