ABA Presentation from David Brazeal on Vimeo.

Presentation on social media given to the North American Agricultural Lenders Conference in Omaha, November 2010.

Computers have been in schools for the last 30 years, but with few exceptions, they haven’t been used to their full potential.

Kay says the education system has squandered 30 years of technology in classrooms. He likens the modern factory educatory system to a monkey with a microscope. The monkey looks at its reflection in the microscope’s barrel but doesn’t look through the eyepiece — it utterly misses the point.

Computers have become tools of distraction, Kay said, instead of education. He singles out Guitar Hero as the best example of this — players get the fantasy of virtuoso guitar playing without learning a single note.

Now re-read the passage above, but replace the word “computers” with “social media,” and the word “schools” with “organizations.” If your organization has a Facebook page or a Twitter account or a blog, but no schedule for posting content, and no guidelines for what kind of content you’re posting, you’re like a monkey with a microscope. So take at least an hour, sit down with other people in the office, and answer a few key questions:

Who are you trying to communicate with online?
Where online are those people hanging out?
What information do they want to get from you?
How, and how often, do they want you to communicate with them?

Once you’ve answered those four questions, you’re on your way to using social media effectively.

So what does that mean for local businesses? It means you have an easy way to drive business based on timely offers and discounts. For example, my local sports booster club just updated its Facebook page with a special offer for T-shirts celebrating the school’s new soccer team. The offer showed up right away in Google search results, even for people who are not logged into Facebook.

How about other uses?  A local bakery could offer free muffins to the first 10 customers in the door.  A restaurant can post daily specials to Facebook and it will be cross-promoted on Google.   It offers you an opportunity to extend your immediate reach beyond Facebook and Twitter, and into the realm of search.

As Google integrates real-time results more fully into its search tools, smart local businesses will be looking for ways to take advantage of it with time-sensitive offers.

Update: I just noticed the real-time search page includes a new feature — location-based search.  Combining location with time-sensitive information opens up even more opportunities for local business who get creative with their promotional efforts.

For an example, take a look at a page I’ve set up for a little hobby website of mine, RepublicTigerSports.com.  (I cover local sports exclusively focused on my hometown.)  The season is just starting, and last night was a good example of what an actively engaged Facebook audience looks like.  In about 6 hours, here’s what people posted to the page, out of the 1,300 fans:

• 3 user-generated wall posts
• 14 comments on my posts
• 12 clicks on the “like” button

That’s about a 2.5% participation rate — but keep in mind, I’m only talking about a single 6-hour period.  Most traditional websites are lucky to get participation of around 5-10% over a much longer period of time.  I could never get that kind of comment rate if I merely posted sports updates to my website.

The point of the example is that a Facebook is a great way to engage people.  And engagement is more important than building up a huge number of fans.  That’s because engagement — getting people to take action, even if it’s just clicking a “like” button — is a sign that you are building a relationship with your followers.  And that’s the point of pouring time and energy into social media in the first place.

My favorite:

Who have we assigned to govern our content on an ongoing basis?

Producing content on a regular basis makes it extremely important to assign someone in your organization to maintain and govern it. Ideally this is a content strategist.

For those of us without the luxury of the ideal, be sure to select someone with high attention to detail and a knack for organization.

I’d add one other option (partly because I’ve seen this work with a lot of my own clients). Bring in a trusted partner to serve as a freelance content creator. Let that person work closely with you to generate ideas, and then turn them loose to write articles, make podcasts, create videos, and make engaging content for the people you want to reach.

However you do it, not assigning a point person to the content-creation role is the most common mistake I see organizations make when they try to participate online.

On this episode, we just lay the groundwork for what we’ll be covering. If you have 10 minutes to listen,

[podcast]http://journamarketing.com/Multimedia/Podcast_Episode1.mp3[/podcast]

Download Episode 1

[podcast]http://www.journamarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/SMGov_headlines1.mp3[/podcast]

The study looked at social networks more broadly, but from my own experience, most newsrooms have at least one reporter who frequently checks Twitter for story ideas. Many of them are following local nonprofits, government agencies, and companies — and will follow up when a bit of news from the Twitter feed piques their interest.

Setting up a Twitter account is free and easy, and there’s really no excuse not to have one. If you do nothing else with Twitter, set up the account, search for your local news organizations, and start following them.