Great post on Marketing Prof’s about 5 excuses that companies use when asked about investing more time and effort into social media:

1.    “Our target audience is not on Facebook and Twitter.”
2.    “I would like my staff to concentrate on more important things than playing on Facebook all day.”
3.    “We tried it; it didn’t work.”
4.    “We are just too busy.”
5.    Lastly, my favorite: “Could you do it for us?”

Read more here.

My friend Jason Keath over at Social Fresh has done some tasty research on Community Managers, including this cool infographic!

INFOGRAPHIC DATA SPELLED OUT

Average Salary

• $61,800.00

Most Popular Community Manager Cities In Order

1. NYC
2. San Fransico
3. Boston
4. Denver
5. Austin

Gender Breakdown of Community Managers

• Female 68%
• Male 32%

Job Type

• Full Time 89%
• Freelance/Contract 6%
• Part Time 5%

Additional Data

• Total Community Managers surveyed 143
• Average Marketing Experience 5 years
• Average Age  30 years

Community Managers by Region

1. Northeast 37%
2. West  21%
3. Southeast 16%
4. Southwest 14%
5. Midwest 12%

On Wednesday, Jive Software will host a live webcast titled:

Facebook for Spies:  Enabling Social Collaboration in a Community Trained not to Collaborate

In September 2008, the federal government introduced secure social networking capabilities to the US intelligence community to share insights, debate, and communicate. Called “A-Space” (Analyst Space), the initiative’s goal — like intelligence analysis in general — is to protect the US by assessing all the information available across the Department of Defense’s spy agencies.

DIA Program Manager Ahmad Ishaq will discuss the impetus behind A-Space and social software across an organization specifically trained not to share information, how A-Space was launched, the successes to date, future plans, as well as share best practices that are applicable to any industry or private company. He’ll also share how this secure community has helped unify a community to take advantage of intelligence, ideas, and innovations across multiple, globally distributed agencies.

Learn how to:

• Create low barriers to entry and improve adoption rates of Enterprise 2.0 initiatives
• Enable a governance model that works in the new social collaboration paradigm
• Align Enterprise 2.0 tools to speak the language of business
• Study community patterns and don’t be afraid to restart pieces that fail

Get free resources:

• Gartner, Inc. Report: 2009 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workforce
• Forrester Wave Report: Community Platforms, Q1 2009

Get signed up here

I was having coffee with a friend recently and we were discussing funny things that we tweet and how we tend to tweet.  We are starting to see social media as part of everyday life for work, home, and even church.

How is social media changing what you do?

Here’s a video interview I did this morning with Guy Walker from ARC (Association of Related Churches)