My thoughts: LinkedIn and Twitter are social networking tools, but you don’t socialize at work the same way you socialize after work. The brash informality of Twitter – and the easy speed of tweeting – creates potential problems for those who chose to connect it with their LinkedIn profiles. It could backfire on those who don’t temper their tweeting in keeping with their business-oriented social network on LinkedIn.

On the other hand, it could be like combining chocolate and peanut butter.

“The risk posed by social media for your company … exists whether you participate or not,’ observed Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4 Web Systems, an IR website and communications firm out of Toronto. ‘If you’ve ignored social media and said there are too many risks, we‘re not going to get involved, then you are putting your company at higher risk … than if you know how to use the tools. The market doesn’t care whether or not you’re there. They’re going to use the channels that are most readily available to them to put their message out.’

Heaps made those comments during a panel discussion yesterday in downtown Minneapolis on best practices for using social media to communicate material information, co-sponsored by the Dorsey & Whitney law firm and the Twin Cities NIRI chapter.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs, collectively referred to as ‘social media’, have worked their way into the IR conversation. As evidence of how hot the topic is, NIRI chapters as well as consultants have sponsored several events on the topic around North America over the past six months.

Embrace the trend; plan your attack; update and integrate your policies across functions; implement consciously; train your employees; monitor what’s being said about your company; and manage the process. Those were the key takeaways in Minneapolis.

“Social media defines the online experience today,” Heaps said. Over the last couple of years, the line between social media and mainstream websites has blurred, he observed. “You go to your favorite newspaper site and you see comments, profiles, people interacting. The social concept has been applied to virtually every website.”

Citing a recent study by Brunswick Group, Heaps reported that 47 percent of buy-side and sell-side players surveyed in the US and Europe were prompted to research an issue and 20 percent made an investment decision or recommendation based on information from a blog. Nearly two-thirds of the US survey group expects blogs and social media to play an increasingly important role in investment decision-making in the future.

While social media raises new issues for publicly-traded corporations that must conduct their investor relations communications within the limits of a variety of laws and regulations, the challenges are not insurmountable – and the overall value of social media to enhance a company’s image and communications with customers, shareholders, clients, suppliers and other interested parties vastly outweighs the challenges.

Business Week looked at some of that in an article regarding Twitter that was published Thursday, saying, “Companies can work wonders before Twitter’s vast interactive audience of consumers, but it’s best to start slowly and build credibility.”

Says Business Week: “Business uses for Twitter are proving to be as diverse as those for the telephone or e-mail. They generally break into two categories: ways to follow customers and ways to increase efficiency.” Note that neither of those categories sounds much like a one-way marketing communications channel. In fact, says Business Week, “Companies who try to use the tool as yet another marketing arrow in their quiver—one that mostly carries targeted, one-way messages—usually fail.”

Twitter – and social media in general – is not a marketing channel, but a conversation conduit. Companies that use it that way will derive real value from doing so; companies that use it merely as a way to distribute the latest “company line” more than likely won’t.

Incidentally, the same is true for political candidates and campaigns.

Your challenge as the owner of a business or leader an organization or campaign is to market your services, tell your story and communicate your message to the right audience using the right media formats and the right social media tools. The first step we recommend is to ignore simplistic headlines that declare that certain groups of people do or do not use or consume any certain medium or technology. There are teens who Tweet and adults on MySpace, and senior citizens who use Skype.

Because of their cheap fares and high customer service rankings, both airlines have legions of loyal travelers. Part of that loyalty can also be traced to fresh marketing that tries to put some fun in flying. JetBlue’s tongue-in-cheek ads have urged executives to get off their private jets and fly JetBlue. In Southwest TV ads, CEO Gary Kelly told customers “It’s On” in New York.

Both airlines are on YouTube. Blogs and Twitter are also important parts of their brands.

JetBlue’s social media efforts include a robust Flickr photostream. Southwest’s highly regarded blog, Nuts About Southwest, also links to a Flickr photo gallery. On YouTube, JetBlue is here and Southwest is here – and Southwest has the clear lead over JetBlue in terms of channel views and subscribers on YouTube. If JetBlue has a recently updated blog, it isn’t easy to locate – though the former blog of a former CEO shows up high in the Google results.

You can follow Southwest on Twitter @SouthwestAir, while JetBlue is on Twitter @JetBlue – where its more than 1 million followers is more than double the current number of people following Southwest on Twitter.

Neither airline features their YouTube, Flickr, Twitter or Facebook links on their consumer-facing home pages, though Southwest includes a text link to “our blog” – which does feature its social media efforts. The Southwest blog even links to CEO Gary Kelly’s LinkedIn profile. (Looking at the LinkedIn-created pages for each company. JetBlue’s is better than Southwest’s.

Although JetBlue is trouncing Southwest on Twitter, on balance it is clear Southwest has the edge in understanding and using social media. Whether that translates into winning the Battle of Boston remains to be seen. That Twitter lead is potentially a huge edge for JetBlue.

If Mesh Media was advising Southwest, we’d urge them to focus intently on growing their Twitter following – and using Twitter as a promotional channel to reach fliers in Boston and beyond – and market to them. (One thought: Offer a free round-trip ticket each week to one random Twitter follower, to grow the number of followers rapidly. Then market extensively to Twitter announcements of fare sales, new routes, etc.)  If we were advising JetBlue, we’d urge a more integrated and cohesive approach to its social media – and a blog that belongs to the airline and would continue on past a change in leadership at the top.  A million-plus followers on Twitter is a great ready-made channel for promoting the airline – and a blog can be programmed to automatically “Tweet” on Twitter and Facebook.

Mesh Media’s favorite airline is Southwest – we love the low fares, the good service, the boarding procedures and the attitude. We’ve never had the opportunity to fly JetBlue as they don’t currently serve our hometown, or we might like them too.

One thing I’d like to see Southwest offer – a free iPhone app where a person could check fares and schedules, make reservations, check in and track Rapid Rewards points.

Update 8/17/09: Southwest Airlines responded via Twitter:

@meshstrategies Use mobile.southwest.com save on your homepage as a bookmark!

Done. Looks good. Works like a good iPhone app. Thanks. Another reason why Southwest is our favorite airline.

Next time, though, they should tweet the company news via an official Telstra Twitter page, not on an employee’s personal Twitter page.

Speaking of official company Twitter pages, the recent hacker attack that bedeviled Twitter and made access to it rather spotty shouldn’t scare businesses away from using the service – but they should learn a lesson from it: Don’t rely on any one social networking medium as your online communications tool. Instead, spread out across several. Have a Twitter page, a Facebook presence and a YouTube channel. Be involved in the blogosphere. Make sure your key executives have LinkedIn profiles. Use text messaging. Each of those can be an outlet for company information and marketing messages and a two-way street for communicating with your customers, clients and supporters.

The goal isn’t to spread yourself thin but to reach your audience in all the ways they prefer to be reached or to access information.

According to Burson-Marsteller, 54 percent of the Fortune 100 have a Twitter presence, 32 percent have a blog, and 29 percent have an active Facebook Page. Also, Twitter is the choice of 76 percent of Fortune 100 companies that use only only one of those three social media tools.

How are the Fortune 100 using social media?

• 17 percent use all three mediums: Twitter, Facebook and a blog.
• 94 percent use it for news/announcements, 67 percent for customers service, and 57 percent for deals and promotions.

The average Fortune 100 Twitter account has 5,234 followers. The median is 674 followers.

Top companies are flocking to social media for the same reason your business should be using the tools: They work. And the many different social networking tools makes it possible to craft a social media plan specifically tailored for your business or campaign.

Social media gives job-searchers “more outlets to communicate your personal brand and find a job faster than the competition,” he adds.

The same dynamic holds true for entrepreneurs, by the way, especially if what your business is built more on expertise and information more than on selling a physical commodity product.

The article also notes that, six months ago, “MySpace was the top dog in the social space with Facebook and Twitter distant seconds,” but now Face book is number one, and Twitter is surging fast as MySpace fads. What does that mean for marketers? BizReport.com:

This is an indicator that social consumers are a bit fickle and will change ‘favorites’ quickly depending on circumstances. For that reason, marketers need to really research the different social spaces and define a clear reason for being in the social space. Simple having followers on Twitter, friends on Facebook MySpace isn’t enough. A brand needs to have a voice, a message and a way to interact with friends even after the social network loses favor.

Our suggestion: Have a media strategy that meshes social networking with other more traditional approaches, and is adaptable to the rapid changes in the social networking space.