While in Dearborn, I visited The Henry Ford Museum, The Rouge Truck Factory and had an invitation to visit Ford’s Head of Social Media, Scott Monty at Ford’s World Headquarters where we did a short interview. We’ve talked to Scott and live blogged about Ford social media efforts in the past, but in this interview he talked about the place for social media with Ford’s new product lines, local social media work with Chapter 2 of the Fiesta movement and advice for companies on empowering communities.

Being able to learn about the history of this 100+ year old company through experiences at The Henry Ford and Rouge Factory tours was very informative. Being able to sit down with Bob Kreipke, Ford’s full time historian and hear stories about Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, company history and the evolution of Ford was priceless.

Fast forward over 100 years and Ford is a very different company, as is the automotive industry. It’s not enough to be innovative but to be able to innovate quickly and connect with customers in more meaningful ways. Based on my discussions with Scott, Ford is very committed to making those connections.  Watch the interview below to get more insight on how Ford is approaching social media:

Click here to view the embedded video.

By leveraging technology and the social web, Ford is moving from being known as “A truck and Mustang company” to a “Car, utility and truck company”.  I think the decision to focus on local social media marketing is great evidence of understanding audience in a social strategy. So much of what companies are doing in the social space is a shotgun approach based on popular applications vs focusing on where and how actual customers spend their time.

Check out the The Ford Story, a great example of a corporate social media aggregator not only of Ford social web participation, but of what others are saying about their brands. I can’t imaging any active brand online not launching a site like this.

What are some great examples of consumer brands you think we should focus on in future posts? What kind of insights would you like to learn more of from those kinds of companies when it comes to the social web?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Ford’s Focus on Social Media: Scott Monty Interview | 4 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

(CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com

Vanessa Fox works as Entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners but is especially well known in the Search Marketing world because of her past work as Google’s search engine strategy spokesperson and creator of Google Webmaster Central. I’ve interviewed Vanessa several times on video in the past here, here, here and podcast here but nothing as substantial as what you’re about to read.

Vanessa has a new book coming out called “Marketing in the Age of Google“, which I’ve had the opportunity to preview and it reminds me of how important it is to draw attention to her exceptional insight. My kudos for the book:

“Finally! A C-level book about smarter search engine marketing.  Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox is undoubtedly, the search marketing bible for senior executives looking to maximize business growth through search engine marketing. This is a must read and if you don’t, your competition certainly will.”

In this interview you’ll discover the importance of SEO strategy, dealing with CEOs and social media, search personas, operationalizing Social Media and SEO, thoughts on upcoming search innovations and her favorite search engine (not what you think).

Let’s start off with an elevator bio: 50 words or less? (Not to be confused with the escalator bio, which is much shorter)

I’ve been involved in user experience, product development, and web development since the mid-90s. I was able to draw on all that background when I worked at Google and built Webmaster Central. We realized that we could provide a lot of key information to site owners (in ways such as diagnostic tools and education) to help them see better results from organic search acquisition. Now post-Google, I’m focused on that same goal.

Many companies are approaching social media tactically and making big mistakes. There’s a lot of encouragement for corporate social efforts to start with a strategy first. Do you think the same is true with SEO? Are companies approaching SEO tactically with little consideration of a search strategy?

Oh absolutely. True search strategy is integrated into overall product and business strategy, and too often whoever is responsible for SEO isn’t involved those parts of a company’s planning process. Unfortunately, that means that in some cases, those doing SEO focus on what they can accomplish tactically. Certainly, many tactical elements of SEO decoupled from strategy can improve search acquisition (particularly regarding architecture), but without a strategy, you can only go so far.

For instance, if you’re looking at search acquisition strategically, a large part of your assessment is around what your potential customer base is really looking for and how you can best meet their needs. Where that meeting first happens is often in the search results, but in order to have the potential to show up there, your site needs to provide what it takes to meet those needs, and that often lies beyond the SEO department.

Even with highly technical components, having a strategy can help ensure that you’re tackling the more impactful issues first and that you’re laying groundwork to ensure that any new infrastructure elements are search-friendly from the start. That prevents you from spending all of your time fixing issues that just pop right up again.

How can we get the C-Suite to overcome their fear of change when it comes to the importance search and social media within a marketing strategy?

I think the situation is already starting to change. Many marketing departments already realize that search and social media are important aspects of a comprehensive marketing strategy in today’s online world. The question becomes what to do with that knowledge. Traditionally, marketing has been able to operate well in silos. As long as everyone was working towards the same marketing message and vision, they could build their campaigns separately. But that’s no longer true. Truly effective search and social media strategies are integrated into larger marketing strategies and often that bridge needs to span beyond marketing and into web development as well.

In terms of implementation, it can significantly easier for a marketing department to have an agency build a microsite to support a campaign than to engage directly with the development team, but in terms of effectiveness, it’s more difficult to truly integrate search and social media.

“SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam.”

Some key things to consider are:

• The consumer experience – can the consumer easily engage with your brand if each social media site you are active on leads back to a different domain and has different goals? If the consumer is engaging on microsites named for particular campaigns, are they getting positive brand reinforcement or just a positive experience with that particular campaign? Do they have a clear path back to the brand or are you just adding confusion? What happens when the campaign ends? In some cases, building social media engagement via a particular campaign and building a microsite to support these efforts can absolutely be effective. But it’s important to make these decisions as part of a broader, more long-term plan and to understand the complexities.
• How search works – SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam. But it does require a firm understanding of both how search engines technically crawl and index pages and how searchers behave.  The company needs a search advocate who either understands it and can help ensure it’s taken into account during every step of the process, or needs to gain that expertise, whether it’s through hiring a consultant or firm an hiring someone in-house.
• Key metrics – Search in particular is very measurable, key is knowing what to measure and what the metrics mean. With web analytics and search data, you are overwhelmed with hundreds of data points. It’s easy to either dismiss them all or to fixate on certain ones that don’t seem to show progress. While some key pieces of data are important for any business, many of the important metrics tend to depend on your business goals and your customer base. Building an effective framework for measurement can alleviate the hesitation some may feel at expanding into these types of marketing efforts.  I still see a lot of powerpoint slides prepared for board meetings that showcase visits to the website as the key metric and that’s almost never the right primary measure.

A lot has changed in search technology and how search results are displayed over the past year or so. Since we’re in the new year, any predications on major changes in the nest 6-12 months?

This is difficult to answer, as we’ve seen a lot of experimentation in the last year and many of the changes will likely be based on the searcher data that results. We’re still watching to see what’s going to happen with Microsoft and Yahoo. If that deal indeed goes through, it’s not clear exactly how that will change things, so a lot is in flux.

For instance, will Yahoo still offer BOSS, which currently powers a number of smaller search engines? I’m not sure that they can without a crawling infrastructure and index of their own.

But certainly we’ll see continued evolution beyond text-based search results. The major search engines have to balance richness against complexity. I find the ability to view search results just from the last week or just from forums, for instance, really helpful, but if those options were front and center, they’d likely confuse many searchers who just want to type into the box and get back an answer.

Of course, the solution Google is skewing towards is personalization. Google will ask for less interaction, but will show you more variety in results based on your online behavior. Microsoft seems to be taking a different tack – they’re also providing more variety (for instance, with categorized search) but are also providing more ways to interact directly within the search results (such as with the Farecast integration).

Please explain the notion of search personas and why they’re important.

Searcher personas and search acquisition workflows are integral to the way I approach search strategy. Before you can start attracting visitors to your web site, you need to know who you are attracting and why.  I always start with asking what the goals of the business and the goals of the web site are. From there, we can work backwards to who the company wants to attract to help them meet those goals, and then dive into the goals of that audience.

With that information, we can build searcher personas, which are similar to typical personas, except that they start with understanding what the audience wants to accomplish and what they are searching for. This leads to a user workflow that starts at least two steps before the user accesses the website. And of course, with search and social media, every page of the site is the home page, so the user workflow assessment evaluates each page to determine if it meets the searcher goal and if it draws the visitor deeper into the site to meet the business goal.

Without this framework, it’s difficult to fully realize the potential of search.

“If a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise”

Advice given in some Social Media/SEO sessions at conferences can be quite varied from recommendations to automate duplicate content on bookmarking sites to the importance of listening and engagement. What is it that marketers should be paying attention to when it comes to Social Media and SEO?

That’s a broad topic but one thing marketers should think about is how search and social media can work together. When you’re working on a viral campaign, make sure links are designed in a way to provide SEO benefit (via their structure and anchor text). Realize that with search, social media efforts can have long lasting impact beyond the engagement. If you help someone solve a problem, that discussion may later surface in search results for someone else looking to solve that same issue. I’ve seen companies build pages that expire after 90 days.

Any tips on operationalizing SEO or Social Media in organizations? How can companies move from where they are to making SEO part of processes?

This happens as search and social media become a regular part of the business (product development, marketing, customer support, etc.) and not a separate silo. But if a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise (through hiring a consultant, training, hiring someone in-house, or some other way of gaining expertise). I’ve seen so many organizations who felt search was important but implemented it ad hoc based on random advice different people would read online (like this interview! ) So, while it was great that everyone in the company was empowered to drive SEO, one programmer who decide to add nofollow tags on all the footers, and someone in marketing would change all the title tags to be a certain number of characters, and without a comprehensive strategy, and without any barometer of what was a valuable use of time, the company can feel like SEO was a failure for them.

Let’s say someone reads your new book, Marketing in the Age of Google, and they “get it”. What should they do next to take that appreciation for a strategic perspective and start improving their marketing?

In the book, I provide a number of suggestions for getting started. If the company already has an in-house SEO or consultant, then involve them in high-level strategy discussions. How can search data help influence product strategy? How can the technical team build search best practices into their development process? How can marketing better integrate search acquisition?

If search is new to the organization, it’s probably worthwhile to hire someone to help build a strategy that works for the organization: benchmark where things are, flag any big issues, help build in search best practices at the key points of the organization, develop searcher personas and workflows that can be used as templates for future development.

Once search is built into existing processes, ongoing search strategy is much easier and companies can see much better results.

If you were a search engine, which would you be?

It would be the Urban Spoon iPhone app: always traveling and surrounded by delicious food.

Thank you Vanessa!

Find more about Vanessa’s work online at:

• ninebyblue.com – Online marketing strategy
• janeandrobot.com – Search friendly design patterns for web development
• SearchEngineLand.com – Contributing Editor
• Office Hours – Weekly podcast
• @vanessafox – Twitter

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Marketing in the Age of Google: Vanessa Fox Interview | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Greg manages and executes interactive public relations programs for Weber Shandwick clients across consumer, technology and public affairs industries. As the social media team lead, Greg oversees the U.S. Army’s social media efforts, including pioneering instant messaging and mobile programs and the launch of the Army’s first-ever Soldier blog. Greg has helped clients, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Snickers, Verizon and Chevrolet, take the big leap into the social mediasphere to influence consumer behavior online and create authentic engagement.

You’re in an elevator going to the 45th floor (NYC) and you’re asked what you do. What’s your reply? If that happened in any other city, would your answer be different?

My role as a digital strategist at Weber Shandwick is to help colleagues and clients understand, embrace and leverage the marketing opportunities that are created by the ever-changing social dynamic that’s fostered by new technologies. I love thinking about what’s next and helping brands experiment with emerging social marketing techniques. Or if I’m riding in an elevator with my Grandma, I would say, “I do marketing.”

Where did Perfect Porridge come from and where can I get some?

I’ve always loved music. I probably own a couple thousand CDs by now and don’t even want to know how much money I’ve spent on concert tickets over the years. I was a journalist for a short time in college — wrote for the alternative newspaper in town and was editor-in-chief of an arts magazine I co-founded. So when my wife and I moved to Minneapolis, I needed an outlet for that passion for writing and sharing news, and a music blog was the perfect outlet for both passions.

It’s been more than four years now, and my little music blog has grown into an AllTop.com-accredited destination for national and local music news, mp3s, video and reviews. I’m receiving more than 100 PR pitches a day and about 50 albums a month to review. Although that’s a tad overwhelming, I’ve developed long-term relationships with PR firms, record labels and publicists vying for coverage — yielding experience that helps me inform Weber Shandwick clients on blogger engagement strategies beyond the blind e-mail pitch..

Let’s try something different. I’m going to list a few words or phrases and it would be great to get your initial thoughts on each. What’s the most important thing for each topic companies should be thinking about for 2010?

Reputation management: Online reputation management is going to be a hot topic in 2010. A sizable 84 percent of global senior executives surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit reported that reputation risk increased significantly over the past five years. When executives were asked to choose among 13 risk types, reputation risk emerged as the most significant threat to global corporate business. As company, brand and product reputations fluctuate and/or deteriorate worldwide — and the real-time Web becomes “the” destination for breaking news, scandal and crises — marketers need to proactively engage reputation radar systems to identify, track and respond to approaching reputation threats, as well as find ways to locate and empower brand advocates. It’s my belief inoculation strategies today are crucial. As my boss always says, “Fill the sandbags before the flood.”

Search and PR: In my opinion, search marketing — both organic and paid — should be part of a complementary marketing mix. Organic search results are a continuation of an online reputation management framework, as well as a core part of any proactive campaign. There’s a philosophical debate happening right now about the utility of static URLs in a world dominated by search. For example, if a consumer wants to learn the latest news about a certain sports star scandal or the availability of a new energy drinks, they’re more likely to start at Google then visit a static URL homepage. In 2009, your marketing program could be helped or hindered by those first 10 links the search results. In 2010, it would mean success or failure.

Social Media and PR: At the Public Relations Society of America’s General Assembly in 1982 the attendees came to an agreement on the definition of PR: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” For decades, reaching the masses with marketing messages required utilization of mass media (e.g., newspapers, magazine, radio, television). The most visible aspects of the PR industry today centers on pitching these legacy mediums to share an organization’s messages with its publics. But beyond the publicity and media relations aspects of public relations, PR pros have always been listening to what consumers think about companies and issues, building grassroots networks, fostering word of mouth campaigns and seeking two-way communication with those same publics. In 2010, PR is still the same marketing discipline it’s always been, but we have different tools to meet our clients’ objectives. The social Web has increased the velocity and momentum of these community building and social marketing initiatives. In my opinion, PR is perfectly suited to operate in the social mediasphere.

PR Measurement:  I love this topic. Measurement is so important to all marketing campaigns, but the accepted norms are changing. Traditional PR measurement may include circulation, impressions, pass-along and advertising equivalency. These are all good baselines for traditional coverage. However, the nature of social media requires a shift in ROI focus from traditional, media-driven metrics to more progressive, participatory metrics. It is critical that an organization develop acceptable, understandable and meaningful measures of ROI, and agreed-upon benchmarks and stretch goals, as well as marketing plans to meet those goals. Depending on your objectives, your goals will be vastly different. If a company isn’t sure where to start or what would be successful, a good starting place is to start logging analytics as a benchmark today. A great way to know where you’re going is to know where you’ve been. Start by keeping track of total visits, number of posts, number of comments/likes and number of friends/followers in a detailed record that can be extrapolated over time. Six months from now, you’ll have a good idea if 20 comments on a blog post is “good.” Digging deeper than number of comments, we’ve developed a Digital Media Scorecard that can analyze the volume, content and sentiment of online conversations about a company or brand and then assign a numeric value to it. This is an even better way to assign quantitative measurement to qualitative engagement.

Future of the PR industry: Like all marketing practices, the PR industry will evolve to help their clients utilize new technologies to connect with their publics. We recently got rid of all of our fax machines across the office in favor of integrated copier/printer/fax units, and I thought that was a telling sign that the more things change the more they stay the same. I may never use a fax to send a press release to a media outlet again, but I’m glad I know how to send a fax if I need to. PR has never been about the tools – phone calls, blast faxes, e-mail and media clip pasting — it’s been about relationships. That won’t change. In my opinion, PR is going to see explosive growth as more senior leaders get over the technology barrier.

For companies that are trying to wrap their arms around the digital space, especially when it comes to brand, influence and the media, what are some of the larger issues they should consider before engaging outside help? What can they do to take better advantage of digitally savvy PR consulting? Think of that scene from Jerry Maguire, “help me, help you”.

You had me at “digitally savvy,” Lee. For starers, I’m a big believer in internal inventories to give brands and outside contractors the most accurate and up to date intelligence to layer digital strategies upon. For example, we’ve developed a client checklist to help brands clearly understand where they already have assets, resources and opportunities. Do you own your online profile in the intuitive places (e.g., URLs, social networks)? Do you know who in your company has the username/passwords? Do you have an internal and/or external social media policy, and if not, what are the steps to writing and approving one? What mainstream or online media monitoring and measurement practices do you already have in place? Is your company subject to regulatory standards that prohibit certain social marketing activities? You get the idea. The next step is agreeing upon a measurable objective. Then charge your internal and external marketing partners to focus their efforts on developing strategies to meet that measurable objective. Show me the money!

What advice do you have for companies still feeling uncertain about active engagement on the social web when it comes to dealing with budgeting and resource issues?

Remember that only a small percentage of both B2C and B2B companies are engaged in the social Web, and of those, even fewer are doing a tremendous job. The bar is still low, and recognizing an opportunity and digging into the resource and dollars is a great first step. From there, start a small project with a low-hanging fruit measurable objective. Execute, evaluate and try again. Baby steps go far in social marketing, particularly over the long-term.

Our readers love tips, so please share a few practical tips for getting a social media PR effort off the ground, assuming specific objectives have been identified, such as increased placement & mentions on online news sites, blogs and industry publications.

Agree upon measurement for the specific objectives, even if they seems innocuous (e.g., 5% increase in Facebook friends).

Identify company spokespeople who are available and willing to react to positive and negative online news, in both official and unofficial channels (e.g,. Corporate blog/Twitter, as well as message boards, newspaper article comments).

• Do a deep dive into the social media buzz around your campaign topic.
• Identify influencers, advocates and badvocates and transparently reach out to them ahead of a formal pitch. Ask them questions that will make your campaign better, stickier and more sharable.
• Build relationships you can leverage when you’re ready for the ask.
• Set up a comprehensive Google Alert (www.google.com/alerts) to get a sense of what’s being said about a brand, product, spokesperson, etc. in real time both now and throughout the campaign.
• Keep detailed reports and post-campaign develop a summary that includes successes and key learnings. Evaluate, adjust and try again

What are 3-4 resources (blogs, books, podcasts, web sites, newsletters, conferences, etc) for staying on top of digital and social media public relations?

• http://www.socialmediatoday.com/ is a curated blog that publishes the best of the best social marketing writing every day.
• http://mashable.com/ publishes daily articles about the latest and greatest applications and innovations happening in social media.
• http://sxsw.com is my favorite annual interactive conference and the one event a year I can count on recharging my creative batteries with a host of new thinking and status quo-challenging.

Minnesota is a treasure trove of companies and talent in the digital, interactive and social media space, yet a bit of a “best kept secret” compared to the coasts. Please describe some of what impresses you about the Twin Cities digital community?
The marketing community here in the Twin Cities has continued to grow, innovate and produce a tremendous quality of work in the interactive space. From Fortune 500 brands headquartered here to big name clients tapping local talent, the scope, scale and reach of Twin Cities-touched interactive work is something of which we should all be immensely proud. The community itself and the opportunities that arise from plugged in and passionate individuals coming together inspires me. For example, there is the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA), which boasts one of the largest memberships of any IMA, as well as some of the largest monthly and annuals events (disclaimer: I’m on the board). On the grassroots side, there are 1,400 members of Social Media Breakfast (SMB) who sell out ad hoc breakfast events for 300 in under three minutes. From a market-impact perspective, the buzz and community of the Twin Cities metro area is unparalleled.

Fun question: If you could be a single social media application, service or web site, what would you be?

I would be a widget. Widgets are dynamic, updatable, sharable, and the best ones can adapt to anywhere they’re placed. Grab me!

Find more about Greg Swan on the social web:
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/gregswan
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregswan
Blog http://www.perfectporridge.com

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | MiNterview: Greg Swan, Digital Account Group Manager | 3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Connie Bensen is a key voice amongst online Community Managers. Her blog is recognized as a leading resource for cultivating online communities and providing best practices for this emerging role. She also provides mentorship and inspires individuals to explore this new career. Connie is the Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian, which provides leading marketing products for the enterprise.

Please describe your personal evolution in becoming a community strategist and explain what that role is?

My community building started as a public librarian (even though I didn’t realize it). Outreach and community building was critical to staying relevant when we were competing against Amazon, Barnes & Noble & Google. A digital imaging company found me using their product in a new way. They allowed me great latitude to experiment with brand building, social networking, and social media marketing. I quickly realized the power that community offers in regard to word of mouth, organic SEO and human nature. Over the past three years I have been sharing my ideas on why a company needs someone focused on social media and what that role looks like as well as challenges, compensation, etc.

What’s the best thing about working with Techrigy and what has changed the most about your role there?

Techrigy was acquired in July, so it is Alterian SM2 now (I have to be true to my present role). The best thing about Techrigy was that it was an opportunity to take a brand from square one and build it as quickly as possible. The rate of change at a startup is incredible. When I started there were 4 people and 10 months later we had acquired Andiamo Systems, grown our customer base by 840% and had a staff of 10 people! My challenge was that I didn’t have a marketing budget, but sales & I put our heads together & learned from each other. by acquisition time I was ready to give up the many hats that I was wearing. That knowledge transfer is done and I now lead the social media efforts globally at Alterian (offers products for marketers: database, analytics, email, content management system and now Techrigy SM2). It’s exciting to have the opportunity to work in a global company!

The number of companies offering social media monitoring and analytics services has really mushroomed in the past year or two. Yet many companies really don’t have a sense for how monitoring and engagement fit within their social media efforts. What advice can you give about how best to use social monitoring tools? (pick whatever application, purpose or objective you like)

I don’t really see how anyone with an online presence can afford to not be monitoring their brand. I’ve been using Google alerts and RSS since 2006. It’s the only way to efficiently build your brand (personal and/or company). And it’s very helpful in identifying conversations to participate in which is huge for building SEO and driving traffic back to your site (what you call ‘Social SEO’ – great term by the way!). My favorite application is lead generation for sales. It’s simple: monitor for people expressing a need for your product, then provide information. At Techrigy it shortened our sales cycle, we quit cold calling after 3 months, and had lower acquisition costs (some Freemium users were converting directly).

For companies that are trying to wrap their arms around the digital space, especially when it comes to brand, influence and the media, what are some of the larger issues they should consider before engaging outside help? What can they do to take better advantage of digitally savvy PR consulting? Think of that scene from Jerry Maguire, “help me, help you”.

Our industry is in agreement that an organization needs to have a certain culture in order to sustain a social media engagement. Zappos, Dell, and Southwest Airlines are all very successful because they truly care about their customers. Companies will require various levels of organizational restructuring in order to embrace social media. Considering that aspect will make best use of the PR consulting (rather than considering it a separate entity). Social media requires an entwining and communication amongst many departments and that will be a challenge for many.

To me, listening is the precursor as well as the justification for social web engagement. Do you have a good example of a company that made business level changes based on social media monitoring?

Paula Berg has some great examples of how Southwest Airlines has responded to their customers requests. My favorite is the example of people complaining about the amount of color ink to print boarding passes. In only a few hours, a change was made so that they printed in black and white which saves their customers how much? (I keep hinting to United that they should do the same. Each leg of a flight requires a full sheet of paper to print and half is advertising! Too annoying! Northwest’s boarding passes are smart – one sheet of paper with all of the legs of the flight in one place!)

What are your thoughts on the intersection of search and social media? You and I Tweeted with Best Buy CMO, Barry Judge about this in the past and I’m curious what your current opinion is and if you’ve seen any specific examples of it in action worth noting?

It’s easy to say that search and social media are totally dependent. Having a site is one thing, having a presence and participating in channels takes it to the next level. Social media monitoring identifies which channels are best and where the influencers are at for your vertical. It allows you to build your search rank as quickly as possible. As we said in that conversation the community aspect and their contribution of user generated content results in building a level of word of mouth that is invaluable (others creating backlinks for you).

What practical tips can you share for getting a social media monitoring effort off the ground? If you can be unbiased about it, what recommendations can you give for selecting the right tools?

1. Everyone should start with free tools. Google Alerts, Tweetbeep, etc are great places to start. If you’d like to see the volume and the results aggregated then we have the Freemium of SM2 and Scoutlabs & Filterbox have 30 day trials.
2. Listen for awhile (1-3 months)
3. Identify a business objective and create a strategy
a. identify who in your organization should participate
b. Have HR put a social media strategy in place
c. Talk with legal and put together a crisis plan
4. Train staff on best practices for engaging
5. Benchmark and plan to measure the objective decided on in number 3

Tip – Start small and grow it

Do you have any creative models for ongoing cost justification associated with adding tools and community managers to a corporate social media program?

My advice to small companies is to find someone to do contract work to start with. Both parties will quickly realize if it’s a good fit or not. And the nature of the position will show its value very quickly if the person is suited (note that it’s really important for the position to be open ended enough to allow for growth). A larger entity can look internally and make it part of an existing person’s role to start with. Monitoring tools are relatively inexpensive and range from free to professional tools for $5 k a year.

What are 3-4 resources (blogs, books, podcasts, web sites, newsletters, conferences, etc) for staying on top of digital and social media public relations?

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations by Brian Solis, Deidre Breckenridge (Review)
Katie Paine’s blog – http://kdpaine.blogs.com/
Marketing Prof’s blog – http://www.mpdailyfix.com/

Minnesota is a treasure trove of companies and talent in the digital, interactive and social media space, yet a bit of a “best kept secret” compared to the coasts. Please describe some of what impresses you about the Twin Cities digital community?

The MPS SMB is the best! I’m appreciative that they adopted me even though I live 5 hours away. The group is diverse and I’m grateful for the friends I have met through Rick Mahn’s group.

Any predictions for hot applications, services or strategies in the social media space in 2010?

• More companies will invest in a Social Media Specialist (community manager) to guide their efforts internally & externally.
• Many companies are going to find a conflict when they try to extend their social media efforts across the board. They will need to have a culture shift in order to be successful in their social media efforts. Many will need considerable amount of organizational restructuring.
• The value of social media efforts will continue to be reinforced. Social media monitoring tools will make it easier to show ROI.

Find more about Connie Bensen on the social web:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cbensen
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bensenc
Blog: http://conniebensen.com

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | MiNterview: Connie Bensen Director of Social Media & Community Strategy | 9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Dan Zarrella, a self-described “social media marketing & viral marketing scientist” lives at the intersection of social marketing and web development.  He’s known for conducting experiments with Twitter, compiling data behind the social web, creating interesting web applications and blogging.  And now, he has released a book.

Dan’s book is called “The Social Media Marketing Book” and is aimed at helping those who are new to social media marketing learn the basics.  The content is well-written and outlined into clear sections.  Those just getting into digital marketing will find it to be a good starting point in their journey.

To learn more about the topics discussed in the book, Dan was nice enough to answer a few questions for Online Marketing Blog readers.

1)  You’re a self described “Social Media And Viral Marketing Scientist.”  Can you tell us the story behind that title and define it for us?

In the current social and viral marketing landscape there’s a lot of what I call unicors-and-soft-focus-rainbows advice. “Experts” telling people what feels right or sounds good. Suggestions like “engage in the conversation” which sound great as soundbites, but aren’t based in real hard data or evidence. I take a much more analytical approach to marketing and strive to answer questions with science, statistics, experimentation and real data.

2)  The Social Media Marketing Book is tailored to those new to digital marketing and is a great intro for those just getting involved.  As someone fluent in social media marketing strategies, any reason you chose to reach out to this audience as opposed to seasoned pros?

Its not going to be my last book, so I think a book for beginners was a good start. And I noticed that with a lot of the other introductory books theres a lot of “theory” and high-level thinking, this book is designed to be much more tactical and hands-on. Its like a cookbook that will teach you the basics of how to actually get started marketing your brand or product in social media.

3)  Much of the book outlines how to use social web tools effectively.  As both a developer and a marketer you have a unique perspective:  do you think that social media applications don’t do a good enough job of showing users (and marketers) how to use their products?

A lot of the work that goes into good web apps is around making them intuitive, so that the interface itself explains how to use it, rather than requiring seperate documentation or teaching. I think this is a great approach, but with my book I wanted to give people a baseline understanding of what these tools are used for and how they’re used, so that readers know what they’re trying to get out of the tools before they really dig in and learn the intricacies of any system.

4)  You mention Digg in the book as a channel for marketers to promote the right kind of material (tech-oriented content, specifically).  But you don’t mention that Digg is a highly-gamed network with a majority of front page content controlled by top 100 users.  Even with some of the tips you mentioned, do you think marketers have a chance of making page one of Digg without relationships with power users?

You raise a great point, and you’re right, relationships with power users is key. Of course even better than that is to get a piece of your content on a well-known and trusted site and they try to get that site to the frontpage. I didn’t want to give new social media marketers a roadmap that pointed them at 100 power users with the instructions to go beg them for submissions, it felt wrong and dangerous to do that. Instead I tried to give them an understanding of how Digg and sites like it function in general, which are lessons that can be applied to a bunch of different communities.

5)  Say you’re a new digital marketer and just read the Social Media Marketing Book, have experimented a bit, and have the basics down.  What do you see as the next challenge they will face, and how can they overcome it?

The biggest challenge, I think they’ll face is learning how to incorporate social media into their daily work and life. With Twitter for instance, I know plenty of good marketers, who don’t Tweet that much, or do for a little while and then stop. Its a marathon, not a sprint and you’re going to have the best results when you can learn to integrate social media with what you’re already doing.

6)  Do you see social media as closer to PR, (influence) direct marketing, (ROI) or something else?

Interesting question. I think the debate comes down to semantics really. In my head, I think marketing should be the  driver of “influence” and PR is concerned with crisis-mangement and old-school earned media. On the web, most great earned media comes from practicing a hybrid skill set of making cool stuff and then getting it in front of the right people, and neither can be ignored. I consider myself a marketer and I think its easier to outsource marketing than traditional PR. As far as results and metrics go, I think people should see influence as a means to an end (ROI) and both are important to measure and undertand, but only one pays the bills.

Be sure and visit Dan’s blog or connect with him on Twitter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Dan Zarrella Interview On The Social Media Marketing Book | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Officially, Rick is the founder of Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis/St. Paul, Social Media Strategist for Land O’Lakes, blogger, podcaster and author for Personal Branding Magazine. As part of Online Marketing Blog’s continuing effort to showcase social media movers and shakers in the Midwest, I connected with Rick for the following interview.

You’re a technology guy that now works as a Social Media Strategist at Land O’ Lakes. Can you tell us about the journey to that position?

It’s been an interesting one for sure. I’ve always been fascinated by technology, whether it was computers, phones, snowmobiles (hey, we live in Minnesota right), or anything else that presented itself as a puzzle. It made for a great career in Information Technology.

Somewhere around 2002 I started taking notice of more web-oriented ideas and technology. It was the beginning of ‘web 2.0’ and the idea of creating your own space online was just as fascinating as the technology it ran on. I found myself reading and following some of the early adopters and thought leaders like Dave Winer (a fellow techy guy) and Doc Searls. This led me to eventually start blogging in 2004 and continuing into today.

Somewhere along the way the interest in using web 2.0 started to develop into an idea about the social web. From there the learning and networking led to opportunities to share and teach. I guess without knowing it I developed a second career option outside IT and started transitioning somewhere in 2007.

At Land O’Lakes today, it’s an interesting challenge. I do perform a few functions I used to do – mainly identifying what the business needs related to social computing and work to find ways to introduce those ideas into the organization. We have our challenges as any large company does, from productivity & security concerns related to social media, to addressing the perception and demonstrating value. It’s a tough job, but invigorating at the same time because I see folks at many levels starting to have those ‘aha’ moments. That makes it fun and rewarding.

Not long ago, you started (along with some other forward thinkers) the now world-famous SMBMSP.org ala Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis / St. Paul. From a few people meeting in a downtown Minneapolis Café to over 300+ attending sold out events, the momentum and value creation from SMBMSP is phenomenal. Can you share a bit about how that organization started and your thoughts on why it’s so successful?

When I started SMBMSP in 2008, there was only one other Social Media Breakfast event – the original created by Bryan Person in Boston. I had connected with Bryan almost two years earlier when following blogroll links from some other folks in the Boston PR seen. He had some great content on his blog and I started reading and commenting along with a few others.

About September 2007, Bryan had this great idea of getting those talented Boston PR folks out for breakfast and talk social media over coffee and such. That first one that they held in November was a hit with about 20 or so folks showing up. People like Doug Haslam, Chris Brogan, and a several others were there taking pics, live tweeting and making it look like a darn good time. In December they did it again, and I email Bryan after New Years and said “if you have contacts with anyone in Minneapolis, you should have them set one up here”. Bryan simply responded “why don’t you”.

And that’s about it – I took that idea and ran with it. Our first SMBMSP was held at Key’s Café in Minneapolis with about 20 folks showing up. Little did I know that most of these folks would end up being peers and mentors, sharing ideas and tweets for the last two years.

What’s in store for SMBMSP in 2010 and how will you manage its explosive growth? What do you have planned for content and events in 2010?

It’s been challenging to keep up. Earlier this year I invited Mykl Roventine to join me in organizing and hosting the events. Mykl has become instrumental in helping take SMBMSP to the next level. We’re able to divide and conquer on organizing, drum up sponsors, keep up with our various community resources and develop ideas.

In 2010, we have a number of things on the drawing board. We’re working ahead to get events planned further in the future, and secure larger venues with specific amenities that we’ve missed in the past. We know that the key to success for SMBMSP is the people who attend. They trust that we’ll have valuable content and many of them participate in sharing ideas and connecting us with resources.

I know that SMBMSP is also viewed as an educational resource as well, with folks just out of school, and many people transitioning jobs or careers looking for information that will help them land a good job. We want to help in that and have some ideas in the works. We’re working on some great content for 2010 and a couple of fun events as well. Stay tuned.

For companies that are trying to wrap their arms around the world of social media in the enterprise, especially when it comes to building a business case, what advice do you have?

Educate. I’ve found that misunderstanding of what social media is and how it is of value for an organization is a real stumbling block. Especially at middle management, it seems to help when getting them up to speed on the concepts and methods that social computing employs.

Also, I try to bring case studies on related or relevant businesses when building that business case. It’s sometimes easier for those folks who are unfamiliar with social media to show them how it works for a competitor, similar product, or sized company.

Obviously, one of the big things is to convey the concepts in an understandable manner. While social media purists like to say “you don’t own your brand, your customers do”, that tactic is the fastest way to loose believability. Start explaining how the collective opinions of consumers shared among themselves sways public perception of the brand and they begin to understand what’s happening. Remove the hyperbole and get back to the basics of business.

A lot of enterprise social media efforts are focused on listening, community engagement, content and measurement. What other actions should companies be paying attention to?

Usability. Make it easier for those customers to share what they love about the product or brand. We’ve got so many nifty tools and networks to do this, but for the vast majority of people on the web they don’t have time or the inclination to experiment.

Mashups are the other thing to watch for. We’ve seen many in the past year, but I think rather than the next Facebook or Twitter, its creative combinations of these larger tools and networks. Look at the number of short video services leveraging Twitter. All the apps on Facebook that tie back to other networks, blogs, multimedia hosting services, and such. This is the semantic web that many folks were describing a year or two ago – this is where we’ll see a lot of new ideas come together in the next couple years.

Do you have a sense for how often companies create their own applications vs. using third party tools? Do you have a model for deciding, for example, when it’s better to create your own social network vs. leveraging something like Facebook or LinkedIn?

I don’t know that I have a model, but I have a few guidelines in mind as I work with companies regarding this question. First I try to figure out what their needs are – otherwise you end up trying to pound that square peg in the round hole.

Once I understand the needs, it makes that decision easier. Second, I determine if there is a “white label” service or tool that would work – i.e. can I customize Ning into something that will fit their needs. If the business need is unique, it then becomes important to understand what portions need to be custom built, and then find ways to bring in those third party networks and tools.

The faster I can find a path to use existing services and functionality, the sooner and cheaper I can get them engaging their customers. For example, why write a custom login & user database when we can simply have them log in with Facebook?

There are many companies that, when asked, will say they’re already “doing” social media. But there’s a difference between having accounts setup on Twitter and Facebook and actually using those tools to better connect with customers and grow a business. How do you explain the value of digging deeper into social participation to companies (or individuals) that equate personal use of social tools with effective use to meet business goals?

That’s a great question because its an easy mistake to make. Just because any of us use social media personally, doesn’t coincide with a business strategy for social media. This is especially interesting for those with a strong personal brand that work for, and represent a strong commercial brand.

Simply getting a c-suite individual on Twitter isn’t a strategy, but developing a framework and guidelines for adding Twitter as a customer support tool is. Making sure that the use of social media by individuals in their professional capacity is in alignment with the goals of the organization is key here. There needs to be a purpose, a reason, otherwise an organization won’t accomplish anything other than being “cool”, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they “get it”.

It goes hand in hand with the business case. Understanding the goals of the organization, finding the right combination of engagement methodologies within the social web, and defining a corporate strategy and usage guidelines to get that done is what the business needs. It’s not easy, nor is it as sexy as one thinks for a social media professional. When all is said and done, we’re here to support our customers in new ways and that is simply doing good business.

What social tools do you use most often?

I’m fairly predictable. I’m on Twitter most of all, along with Facebook of course. I am still a heavy user of RSS feeds in Google Reader and have found several add-ins for Firefox to help manage the load of content I read every week. Also, I’ve been fiddling with Foursquare of late, but outside of letting people know what I’m up to, I don’t find the game aspect interesting.

What are 3-4 resources (blogs, books, podcasts, web sites, newsletters, conferences, etc) for staying on top of social media?

There are many blogs, books and newsletters that I keep up on. Somewhere around 200 at last count in Google Reader. I know many of these folks personally, though I can only call a couple true friends rather than simply connections. There are too many to really give a good sampling but here goes:

• Chris Brogan & Jason Falls (Social Media Explorer)
• Mashable & Tech Crunch
• Small Business Survival & Successful Blog

Minnesota is a treasure trove of companies and talent in the digital, interactive and social media space, yet a bit of a “best kept secret” compared to the coasts. Please describe what impresses you most about the Twin Cities digital community.

Lee, you touched on a good one with this question. The folks we have here locally truly are a hidden secret. They’re talented, open minded, vocal, and very active in the community. I think having those Midwestern values that exist here in Minnesota also plays a role in that.

Going off the SMBSMP community that I’m most familiar with – the folks involved come from all professions and love to share. They look out for each other and trade information on opportunities as well as “how to” tips on social media. We are lucky to have a vibrant economy in the Twin Cities, which allows us to have some of the best minds in PR, Marketing, Web Development, Information Technologies, Business Management, and many more.

I have to say I’m honored to be able to help bring them together and learn from them. That’s probably the biggest thing I respect them for – they participate as a community in every sense.

What are your plans for 2010 and what will you be doing next?

Let’s see if I can come up with a good guarded reply. Exciting opportunities for many folks in social media exist, so I’m not alone. I plan on expanding the offerings of Social Media Breakfast here locally, and working with the group nationally to make some interesting things happen. I’m looking forward to next year to try out some new ideas and hopefully get a few new projects moving that I’ve been thinking on for the last few months.

Thanks Rick. Find more about Rick Mahn on the social web here:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/rickmahn
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickmahn
• Blog: http://rickmahn.com

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Social Media MiNterview: Rick Mahn Land O’Lakes & SMBMSP | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

For Social Media Marketing Services and Training, contact TopRank Online Marketing 1-877-872-6628 .

The benefit from a firm grasp of social media for companies is impossible to ignore. Whether you work in marketing, advertising, public relations or interactive, there are distinct competitive advantages for both individuals and businesses from a better understanding of the social web.

This post provides specific advice from in-house social media marketers including: Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Intel, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil and a mix of SMM consultants/agencies: Altimeter Group, Crayon, Ogilvy 360, Future Works, Doe Anderson, New Marketing Labs and others. Advice includes justifying investment in social media strategy, how to decide on tactics and measuring success.

Our 25 contributors include:  Charlene Li, Richard Binhammer, Chris Brogan, Katie Paine, Valeria Maltoni, Joseph Jaffe, Dave McClure, Tac Anderson, Brian Solis, Rohit Bhargava, Jim Cuene, Jason Falls, Michael Brito, Scott Monty, Gary Koelling, Jessica Berlin, Tim Collins, Dave Evans, Brian Clark, Debbie Curtis-Magley, Geoff Livingston, Frank Eliason, Lindsay LeBresco, Nick Ayres and Shonali Burke -  an impressive mix of social media talent that we’ve interviewed in the past at Online Marketing Blog.

Charlene Li – Founder of The Altimeter Group and best selling author, ”Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies”.

So much of social technology and media engagement is centered on listening – not something many people, let alone companies, are very good at. What are some of the significant corporate cultural shifts and behaviors that you see as necessary to understanding, energizing and embracing the groundswell?

We lay out in the book five key objectives that you can achieve by tapping into the groundswell: Listening, Talking, Energizing, Supporting, and Embracing. All of these activities are being done today, but as you say, they aren’t always effective and in many ways, some existing techniques are becoming obsolete. Companies need to realize that they have to give up control — or as I like to think, the semblance of control — in order to engage with the customers and employees in the groundswell. It’s really, really hard, and most companies don’t “get it” initially. And even if you do get engaged, you’ll constantly be making mistakes and learning along the way.

So we offer a few words of advice on how to do this:

1. Never forget that the groundswell is about person-to-person activity. You are not speaking as “the company”, but as a person. Most companies don’t know how to do this, and it takes a lot of practice to find that voice and feel comfortable with it.
2. Be a good listener. All companies say they listen to their customers, but do they really LISTEN and let people know that they are listening?
3. Be patient. This takes a long time because you are going to be transforming your company, one person at a time.
4. Be opportunistic. Start small with the people who are most passionate about building relationships with customers.
5. Be flexible. You never know what’s going to happen so you have to constantly adjust your thinking and learn.
6. Be collaborative. You need people from up and down the management chain to buy-in.
7. Most importantly, be humble. Remember that you are not as powerful as the groundswell. If you forget this, they will let you know.

Photo Credit briansolis.com

Richard Binhammer – Senior Manager, Dell

What’s your decision making process when it comes to testing and implementing social media engagement efforts with specific tactics?

We are constantly “testing” and experimenting with different social media initiatives and opportunities.  In fact, we are encouraged to experiment and see what works and learn from it, versus guaranteeing success.  Our CEO, Michael Dell talks about experimentation, as well as social media in this recent online interview over at Small Business Advice TV. (interview starts around the 8 minute point, he talks about experiments at the 9:15 point, social media around 21 minutes).

Decision making and tactics for social media  “initiatives” depend on various factors, such as: circumstances; the specific social media initiative contemplated or planned; the business organization involved; among other things.

The key principles underlying Dell decisions and actions in social media are:

1. Listening, Learning and Engaging in conversations with our customers where they are.

Dell’s outreach to customers or others who blog about us and joining those conversations is an example of this.  Other examples include: presence on Twitter and involvement at YahooAnswers.

2. Telling our Story: Is there a social media “tool” or technology we should be using to connect, converse and share our story with customers and others who are interested in Dell?

Direct2dell, our first blog, was established at the urging of Michael Dell.  He wanted the company to have voice in the connected era, as well as establish a place for our customers to be able to connect and converse with Dell.

Michael Brito – Social Media Strategist at Intel

You’ve given great advice from an in-house corporate social media practitioner. Can you share some insights on how you’ve been able to evangelize social media within Intel and also, have you had opportunities to work with existing partners on coop social media projects?

Evangelizing social media within an organization that truly embraces the pure “essence” of conversations is not that difficult.  Of course, there are always some who question the true value of social media and often want to see the metrics (i.e. click throughs, page views, web visits, etc.) These metrics, however, don’t tell the whole story. The true value of evangelizing social media is finding those conversations that you wouldn’t normally find in a web analytics solution and make them visible to senior management.

Wepc.com is a joint venture with Asus and Intel. It is an effort to leverage the community as a source of innovation; a place where users congregate to share ideas, images and inspiration about the “ideal” PC. And, we are taking it one step further. The designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS and Intel. I am the “official Intel” spokesperson of the community and have been involved in several conversations within that particular community. ASUS also participates.

Chris Brogan – President of New Marketing Labs

Companies get involved in the social media space for many reasons, ranging from the perception that they’re on the cutting edge of marketing to increase sales to a  sincere interest in creating more powerful relationships with customers. What advice do you have for larger companies that are looking for “roadmap” level advice on how they should best approach participation on the social web?

These tools permit an opportunity to build relationships around your business communications. They empower a new chance at building a trust relationship that translates into precious attention. Learn to listen. Extrapolate the potential points of touch between your customers and your organization, and enable participation in some of your processes, in some way. It’s not one-size-fits-all, but definitely a toolset worthy of serious consideration. To me, it’s no less than the next telephone.

Rohit Bhargava – Senior Vice President Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence

As companies try to figure out the “ROI of social media”, there are many that have suggested comparison models that involve comparable revenue or cost savings to benefits gained from social media to advertising, PR and customer service. To justify social media budgets and the cost of participation, what advice can you give about social media value measurement?

Our 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy has spent a lot of time tackling this question. It’s one that is crucial to helping our clients to get the right value out of social media, and to use it strategically where it is the best fit, and not blindly or on a whim. I’m the first one to admit that social media is NOT a solution to every problem, and looking at it that way sets up you up for almost certain failure.

So my vastly simplified response to your question involves two big choices that many companies forget to make. The first is what the ultimate aim of a social media campaign will be. Is it product awareness (measured in conversational terms) or is it real sales (measured by actual sales figures), or is it something else? You’d be surprised how many efforts are launched without answering this fundamental question.

If you don’t have a clear picture of what you are aiming for, you’re definitely not going to be able to measure it or track results against it. Once you have an answer to that question, then there are a whole host of specific metrics that you can align against it. For example, you can measure volume or tonality of conversation. Or link frequency and actual clicks. Or content generation and influencer engagement. We have been building a model that has dozens of these types of metrics, that we can customize for each client engagement.

The point is, measurement of social media has to involve more than counting empty impressions. But the hard part is really nailing a smart strategy – not dreaming up new software tools or wishing for one big golden number that someone will eventually create.”

Geoff Livingston – Senior Vice President at CRT/tanaka

A lot of companies frame their experience with social media from an individual user perspective and as a result begin their participation tactically, rather than develop an overall strategy. Do you think it’s better for companies to experiment with certain channels before investing in an overall social media program or should they really nail down higher level strategy first?

I think they should nail down a higher strategy first.  It’s a common error, and one I face often where I have to unify and re-activate littered social media properties that have been abandoned due to little interest.  The reason why there’s no interest is because of a core communication failure in two-way principles, from control to truly understanding the value a company offers a community.  Going back to that core strategy, that core value an organization has to offer is the heart of where social media strategy begins.  Not playing with Twitter because it is hot.

Valeria Maltoni- Conversation Agent: blogger, speaker and consultant.

Social media strategy, tactics and measurement are not the entire picture of a social web program. Part of being able to sustain and grow a company’s social media participation relies on internal communications. Can you offer some advice on how companies can do a better job of tracking and then reporting to the right people, successes and opportunities with a social media marketing effort?

The first thing a marketing communication professional needs to do is get everyone who could be a stakeholder in a room – include legal, HR, sales and anyone else on the business side – and help answer questions and address concerns. Those people become those you report back to on a regular basis so it’s important they understand what you’re working on. At this time you need to make clarity on what you’d consider a success and how you will share opportunities. Setting expectations will also help people sign on to help with follow up where necessary.

When you map the objectives for participation in social media, you want to communicate them company wide. If you know people in sales, you probably know that they don’t do much sitting around and they may already be involved in several activities. Results are better when all activities are aligned and people know what you are working to accomplish at a minimum.

You may need to refresh your objectives and strategies on a regular basis, make sure you’re still on target and remain flexible. Once your content is socialized, the conversation may take you to unexpected places. It will be easier to determine the strategies and tools that support the company’s goals and at the same time respond to the community if you remain flexible and check in often. The “social” part makes this an ongoing activity instead of a program or campaign.

Training and an understanding of how social media tools integrate with the company’s overall digital marketing strategy is important if you wish to enroll a larger team. This step also helps you communicate the importance of tracking activities to objectives, and being flexible on changing course when needed. At this point you also have communication lines open with both senior management and the colleagues who will be involved on a day to day basis.

Dave McClure – Man of 500 hats including, entreprenuer, software developer, investor and currently runs Founders Fund.

What do pirates have to do with internet marketing and web 2.0?

About a year ago I began doing a talk on a Five Step Model for startups to make better decisions about product and marketing using simple, actionable, metrics. That model was based on Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue. The acronym for that is AARRR, so I decided and get a pirate mnemonic for people to remember that and make it easy to remember, maybe a little easier marketing idea for them to remember as well.

One thing that’s kind of interesting, even though Silicon Valley and San Francisco are at the center of a lot of start up action, I think people are still learning the craft and lot of that craft is, “informed guesswork”, I would say.  It’s important to figure out how to collect metrics that don’t overwhelm people but allow them to iterate more quickly and make better decisions so that they can grow and hopefully make money or get acquired by a larger company.

The great thing about web 2.0 and the internet, is that you have real-time customer feedback, being able to see what people are clicking on and spending time on, really understanding what they are using and enjoying is really, I think, the unique thing about building a web 2.0 business. You can tell in real time what customers want and use. If you use that information to build your product, then you can probably find a lot of really great businesses. Sometimes people, start-up entreprenuers that are smart, think they’re too smart, and try to make those decisions on behalf of customers without letting them help them figure it out.

Tac Anderson – Social Media, Global Enterprise Marketing Group - Hewlett Packard

What arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into marketing efforts that include social media participation? How about insights on justifying corporate blogging?

You have to start with two things. I always used to say you had to start with one thing but my time in corporate America has taught me that it’s two things.

The #1 thing has always been, who’s your audience. What matters to them?

As an example if you’re trying to reach consumers then the case for blogs and social media is about reaching them where and how they interact. It’s about building trust and being open,which are all trends I’m sure your readers are more than familiar with. If your customers are CXO’s (CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO) then the reason you have a blog is because the two most influential factors to a CXO’s decision making process are the Two G’s: Google and Gartner. Google is speaking to the importance of all search and Gartner is speaking to the importance that analysts play. Blogs are great for reaching both. There’s no lower bang for your buck tactic to reach the two G’s than having a high quality blog.

The #2 thing I’ve learned is to start with what your company is already measuring. Then look at Return on Total Investment.  How much does it cost you to do something today? Can you do it cheaper and more effectively with social media? At first don’t try and recreate your companies measurements and reporting. If they have stated KPI’s (key performance indicators) work with those. How can you use social media to impact those numbers. Once you prove that you are capable of moving certain needles then you can broaden what your measuring.

Brian Solis – CEO Futureworks, blogger, speaking, author and PR/Social Media evangelist.

Which drives which, technology or communications?

It’s a collision between technology and communications. If anything, it’s technology slamming into communications and we’re all trying to figure out what hit us.

Conferences like SNCR and Web 2.0 Expo are the epitome of all the hottest, coolest, shiny objects, tools and networks from social media to enterprise 2.0. It affects us as communications professionals, as marketers and even as business professionals as the social graph has now been enhanced and streamlined through all of this stuff, at least it’s supposed to be.

What we’re seeing in terms of the collision between technology and communications is that technology is not just forcing communications but all of media, causing us to evolve in a way that’s making us better communications professionals because we’re actually communicating with people and not at them.

Jim Cuene - Director of Interactive at General Mills

What are some of the common issues large organizations encounter when trying to evaluate and adopt social media technologies? Are you seeing more internal or external facing applications? (ex: building a private social network vs engaging in existing/public social networks)

The only stuff I care about right now is consumer facing. I don’t care too much about Enterprise 2.0 (though I know that I need the same tools for internal communications that I’m seeing take off in the consumer space).

The phenomenon is just getting started, even though to those of us who are on Twitter and compulsively reload Tec meme it feels like it’s been around a while. It’s still so early in the game! Big companies that have been historically reliant on mass media are just now beginning to realize the extent to which their worlds will change as a result of social media.

A couple key issues:

• Efficiency is elusive/It’s hard to execute social media efficiently- Large companies have made a science out of finding efficiencies in media, and have been pretty successful squeezing most of the fat out of production budgets. But, social media, in a lot of ways, is the exact opposite of mass: Labor intensive, highly involved, non-standardized.

• Who to Turn to – Big companies are critically dependent on their agencies as a way to run lean internally. But 90% of ad agencies are still trying to figure out how to deal with display and SEM. Social media is going to be a total mind- f*** for them. And a lot of the “social media agencies” are making it up everyday, as they go along. No one has this figured out, and big companies aren’t really staffed right to figure it out themselves.

• Evaluating success – What’s a good result? We all know home runs when we see them in other media, but what does a a successful social media campaign look like? How big does that success have to be to drive the business?

• Velocity -By it’s nature, social media is slower than Mass. The Blendtec guys were at it for a while, before “Will it Blend” went big. Viral hits like “elf-yourself” don’t just happen overnight in most cases, even if it seems like it to us. Tv-centric companies are used to turning on the ad (or dropping the FSI, or starting the promotion) and seeing the results immediately. For companies that are used to the velocity of impact that comes from “mass” media, the slow, steady approach may be frustrating

Scott Monty – Head of Global Social Media at Ford

What insights do you have for other large organizations, Fortune 500 at least, on things they should think about when looking at social media as something to invest in?

I think so much is made of social media, there’s a different tool nearly every day that’s being developed, but the bottom line is, it’s just online conversations. It’s learning how to speak to your customers again and getting into the channels where they are, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, whatever.

And when legal departments freak out as they normally do, I’d remind them that 15 years ago email was very much in the same cusp and look at how that’s worked out for us. Nobody has spilled the beans on some corporate IP secret, or at least very few people have.  It’s just another way of communicating.

Gary Koelling - Senior Manager, Social Technology at Best Buy and co-creator of Blue Shirt Nation

Can you share a few high level tips for companies that are in discovery mode when it comes to tasks such as deciding on social platforms and applications, internal management and success measurement?  Or should they take a less evaluative approach and just jump in?

If you’re ready to count more failures than wins and if you can get honest admissions of fear – you’re almost ready to jump in. But first ask yourself “What kind of relationship do I (not We) want to have with my employees or customers? Give yourself an honest answer. If it’s a purely transactional relationship that’s fine. If it’s something else, try to plot it on a line of intimacy somewhere between “Someone I see a couple days a week in the elevator” and “Soul mate.” Hopefully, for their sake, it’s somewhere in the middle. Then practice. Keep it small. Say hi. Get to know each other. Try things. Learn. If a jaded old ad guy like me can figure it out, the rest of you should be fine.

Photo Credit briansolis.com

Jessica Berlin – Social Media Manager, Cirque du Soleil

Can you share an example of how you’ve successfully employed a social media effort and how you measured success? (marketing, online reputation management, branding, etc)

Our efforts have so far proved to be successful internally and externally. Internally we’re successful because of the team effort developing and maintaining content for our channels. The publicists are the primary content producers and are always looking for interesting things happening at the shows that a fan might want to know about. With Facebook and Twitter, we’re primarily measuring success by continuing to steadily grow our fan numbers as well as the positive feedback we receive from people about the content we are posting.

For instance, we recently launched an on-line quiz with a widget component (www.getcirqued.com/quiz) exclusively through social media and it has been a great success just in terms of the number of people taking the quiz and then word of mouth as a result. This goes back to us showing people can engage with Cirque du Soleil without going to see a show.

Eventually we will leverage our fan base to spread the word about ticket promotions developed exclusively for these channels. We will monitor the response from the community and track the ticket sales revenue.

Tim Collins – Senior Vice President of Experiential Marketing Wells Fargo

Do you outsource any social media work and if so, do you have tips for other large company social media marketers for finding and managing consultants?

Most of our work is done internally.  But on the small portion that is external, the same rules apply to other media:
• Get referrals from people you trust
• Check their work with other clients
• Set clear expectations and hold them accountable

Dave Evans – Social Media Strategist at Digital Voodoo and Author, “Social Media Marketing An Hour a Day”

Can you share an example of how you’ve successfully employed a social media effort (large scale or a specific tactic)  and how you measured success? (marketing, ORM, branding, etc) URLs to examples are very much appreciated.

Three come to mind immediately, as all are fundamentally different in their goals.

First, Meredith Publishing and its communities like Parents/American Baby and Better Homes and Gardens. Working with Meredith’s Community Manager we developed a strategic roadmap guiding their use of the Pluck community platform. The objective was stronger engagement between individual print and online subscribers via the content discussions in which they were engaged. In this case, we gauged success in terms of page views–the base line indicator for publishers–and the size of the community as it grew over time.

Next is Premiere Global, a provider of scalable electronic messaging services. Premiere’s platform powers many of the financial trade transaction confirmations that people receive, hurricane evacuation notices, and similar. Premiere developed an API around its platform, and then invited developers to build monetized application using these tools. Working with Austin’s FG SQUARED, we developed a support and learning community built on the Jive Software platform for application developers to facilitate the spread of tips and knowledge in order to build more and better application based on PGI’s underlying API and service platform. We are measuring the number of applications developed, and the revenue associate with them. This is essential a direct measure of ROI.

Finally, working again with FG SQUARED and its client, University Federal Credit Union, we implemented Techrigy’s SM2 social media monitoring platform to engage the credit unions marketing and operations units with conversations of interest. This is the first step in what will be a larger social media based implementation, and is a great example of the ways in which innovators within organizations can take initial steps into social media. Measurement in this case is related to the conversations uncovered, and their value in terms of intelligence to the firm.

Joseph Jaffe – President of Crayon and best selling author of multiple books on advertising and new media.

Can you share 3-5 tips for companies trying to make sense out of defining a social media strategy?

1. Don’t cede control completely to your consumers. They don’t want it. Meet them halfway. Partner with them. Work with them
2. Marketing is not a campaign; it’s a commitment. If you want lifetime relationships with your consumers, you need to invest in them…genuinely…for life. Begin with investing in what we call at crayon, “commitment to conversation” (monitoring, optimization, response, outreach etc.)
3. Learn to deal with negativity. You want the love, but can’t deal with the hate. Criticism is not your enemy; apathy and indifference are. Any negative response from consumers (whether by blog, e-mail or customer service inquiry) is a cry for help AND an acknowledgement that they care (enough to reach out to you…)
4. As per my earlier point, think strategically. We’re currently working with some of our clients to define a social networking strategy BEFORE cart before the horse deploying a “Facebook App” for example
5. That said, we also advise companies to invest in “well-structured experimentation”. We distill this into a very real and workable number – 4: 4 experiments over a calendar year. Is 1 experiment per quarter that unrealistic or irrationally exuberant? I think not.

Lindsay Lebresco – Public Relations and Social Media Manager, Graco

What arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into social media engagement?

Making a business case justification for social media investment will wholly depend on your company’s business objectives.  For Graco, our business goals for the brand, we felt, could be achieved through the use of social media to build relationships with our consumers to help enable brand advocacy and to build upon trust, which is paramount for parents choosing products they will use with their infants, as a brand attribute. It’s also important to note that we see Social Media as just one part of our overall integrated marketing effort to build our brands.  At this time, specific measurements tied directly to sales are not yet achievable for our brands.  However, we do feel that Social Media has a long term impact on brand preference.  We are currently evaluating and/or experimenting with services that will more closely measure our social media efforts and their potential impacts.

Brian Clark – Owner of Copyblogger.com, new media writer/producer, entrepreneur and recovering attorney.

How much does SEO play into your blog marketing efforts with copyblogger.com and the other sites you work with?

Well, it’s absolutely vital and yet absolute optimization never happens too soon for us. I’m a firm believer in building trusted authority sites, and sometimes that means foregoing the best keyword optimization in order to attract more links and subscribers. Once you have that trust (with people and Google) it’s easy to dive in and optimize certain pages or sections of a site.

What are the most common mistakes you see people make that get in the way of blogs or web sites from having better search visibility?

I think it goes back to my last answer… Obsessing over the perfect keywords in your title before you have any readers or any links is backwards these days. Google wants to rank trusted brands highly, and creating a brand goes way beyond keyword research and placement.

Debbie Curtis-Magley – Public Relations Manager, UPS

What strategies do you use to measure the effectiveness of social media?  What metrics make the most impact upstream (C-level) in your organization?

Ultimately, our management will evaluate the success of a program on its ability to deliver business results.

One example that I can share is our launch of UPS Delivery Intercept in 2007. To complement our media outreach, we used MySpace and YouTube to promote the service. Delivery Intercept has exceeded its revenue plan. During the first 12 months that the service was offered, UPS received well over 1 million requests from more than 165,000 distinct customers for this fee-based service.  In a company that is highly focused on numbers, usage continues to run significantly above plan.

Jason Falls – Director of Social Media at Doe Anderson, blogger and speaker.

How can we get the public relations industry to wake up and smell the social media coffee?

I think public relations needs to own the responsibility for social media. I’ve always thought of social media as online PR if you really want to whittle it down to what it is. The first thing we need to do is to understand that everyone that “gets it” needs to start teaching and telling the people that don’t get it, especially in the world of PR, “Look, you really need to start focusing on this.”.

Part of that is going to have to be education, because the biggest hurdle that public relations professionals have to overcome right now in order to get up to speed with social media is a fear of technology. They don’t understand the technological side of things well enough.

They don’t know how to do a blog, they don’t know what SEO is, they don’t understand RSS. So we need to teach them basic social web, web 2.0 skills. Once they see that it’s not about the technology, that it is a communications platform, they’ll see the technology only supports what you’re trying to communicate – they’ll get it.

Nick Ayres – Interactive Marketing Manager, The Home Depot

How do you decide whether to blog vs setup social networking profiles vs Twitter vs image and video sharing or other social media tactics? What’s your decision making process when it comes to testing and implementing social media engagement efforts with specific tactics?

It sounds a bit like strategy and marketing 101, but you really have to start with who your customers are and what their expectations and desires are from you in the space. Based on what you learn, you can much more easily lay out your objectives, strategies and tactics to meet those wants and needs. If you aren’t already doing so, one of the first things you need to do before even thinking about a tactic is to just start listening to what’s already being said about you. Whether it’s on blogs or on Twitter or in existing online communities – wherever your customers are already talking about your brand – you can learn a lot by just paying attention to what’s already being said. I’m a big fan of approaches like Forrester’s POST methodology, or frankly any method that starts with customers and their expectations, and works towards technology, versus the other way around.

For us, if you look at what we’ve done with Twitter or with our video syndication efforts (posting our how-to videos on YouTube and other video sites) we’ve had the most success when we’ve approached the spaces from that direction rather than a “hey this is cool so let’s do it” mindset.

Katie Paine – CEO KDPaine & Partners

Building a business case for PR and influence based digital marketing can be a challenge in a down economy. What practical advice do you have on how analytics and measurement play in that effort?

Be very clear about your goals. Goals drive the type of measurements you are going to use. So once you get everyone clear about the goals, then you can develop a meaningful measurement system. Are you trying to spend less money, then you need to measure cost savings, not “HITS”  if you want to change your image in the marketplace you can’t measure that with hits either, you need to look at positioning and messaging. Remember that you become what you measure, so you need to make sure your metrics line up with what you were hired to do.

Shonali Burke – Principal, Shonali Burke Consulting

What strategies do you use to measure the effectiveness of social media? What metrics make the most impact upstream (C-level)?

In my opinion, the smartest way to approach strategic communications is to outline the measurable outcomes you want to achieve at the beginning. Even though this is a fundamental of classic communications planning, it still amazes me how many practitioners focus on outputs and outtakes, rather than the actual outcomes. Katie Delahaye Paine, of whom I’m a huge (and known) fan, frequently posts on this at her blog.

If you approach measurement from an outcomes point of view, then defining your metrics for social media becomes no different than defining them for traditional media. What do you want to achieve? What are the outcomes that will make the most impact from a business point of view, both qualitative and quantitative? Those are the metrics that are going to be most meaningful to the C-Suite. Aaron Uhrmacher wrote a brilliant post on this for Mashable a few months ago. And recently, Jason Falls posted an extremely thought-provoking article on his blog about social media ROI.

Photo credit shel israel

Frank Eliason – Director of Digital Care, Comcast

As far as deciding what social media channels to engage in, what’s your decision making process when it comes to testing and implementing specific tactics?

Two key factors: Searchability and Timeliness. We can not continually look at the same website to see if anything is being said, so we use a variety of search techniques. This brings me to the second key factor. Searching but not getting the results for days or weeks after something is posted is not going to be effective. So we use methods that are immediate. One of the reasons we like Twitter is the real time search at search.twitter.  Google blog search also allows you to sort blogs by 1 hour, 12 hours, 1 day, 1 week or 1 month.

To our readers: What questions about social media would you like to see asked in future interviews?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips | 40 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Out of all that buzz came new connections, insights and renewed connections such as the one I had with Ogilvy 360’s Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy & Marketing, Rohit Bhargava. I’ve known Rohit online and off for a few years and finally had a chance to capture a conversation on video.  Watch the interview below regarding the opportunities of attending SXSW including knowledge and networking as well as a few thoughts on his popular book, Personality Not Included, which TopRank has reviewed in the past.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | SXSWi Interview with Rohit Bhargava | 2 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Brian is a fantastic writer and marketer, recovering attorney and someone that over 50,000 people have decided to subscribe to at copyblogger.com - one of the most popular blogs on the internet.  Brian has a lot of what people want: knowledge, talent and success.  Read on to tap into some of that Copyblogger goodness.

How did you go from being a lawyer to an internet entrepreneur?

Easy… I hated practicing law and I was fascinated by the Internet. The transition was extreme I suppose, but I always had a thing for writing, so I started creating online content over a decade ago. Now it’s just part of me.  

How much does SEO play into your blog marketing efforts with copyblogger.com and the other sites you work with?

Well, it’s absolutely vital and yet absolute optimization never happens too soon for us. I’m a firm believer in building trusted authority sites, and sometimes that means foregoing the best keyword optimization in order to attract more links and subscribers. Once you have that trust (with people and Google) it’s easy to dive in and optimize certain pages or sections of a site.

What are the most common mistakes you see people make that get in the way of blogs or web sites from having better search visibility?

I think it goes back to my last answer… Obsessing over the perfect keywords in your title before you have any readers or any links is backwards these days. Google wants to rank trusted brands highly, and creating a brand goes way beyond keyword research and placement. 

How important is genuinely good writing to having a successful blog?

It depends both on the audience and the author. In some areas being a great writer will put you ahead of the pack. In others, people are more interested in what you have to share with them, warts and all. But how you say things will always matter, whether you’re considered a “great writer” or not. That’s where copywriting skills come in.

Do you see links and buzz worthy content as a cart before the horse situation? ie, in order to get those links, you need to have something worth linking to.

The content and the value has to be there first. People think this is about “gaming” or whatever. Some people think having any strategy at all is “gaming,” and that’s fine for them. To me, it’s about solid value and solid strategy… both are necessary to achieve online marketing goals. 

If you were limited to 2 or 3 things blog owners should always do to optimize and promote their blogs, what would they be? ie, what are 2 or 3 of your best blog optimization/marketing tips?

Well, it’s been said over and over, but I can’t say anything new. It’s about a unique voice, unique value, and working to make a connection with the audience. It’s not easy, but those who truly work at it will succeed.

What are some of your most effective tactics for writing blog post headlines?

It boils down to making a relevant and compelling promise… one that your target reader can’t refuse–and then fulfilling that promise with your content. If you’ll forgive a link, I’ve written a ton about headlines. 

What do you think are the most important success measurements for a corporate blog, a content blog, a personal blog? (RSS Subscribers, web traffic, repeat web traffic, advertising rev, consulting)

It really depends on your revenue model, but frankly, my answer remains the same regardless–subscribers. It can be email (and in most niches, it still should be) or RSS, but getting people to “raise their hand” and pay attention to you on a regular basis is golden.

What resources can you recommend for keeping current with blogging, monetization and internet marketing?

Well, for starters, you. Also, a lot of really great stuff is being shared on Twitter these days if you follow relevant folks. And I suppose we manage a decent tip or two over at Copyblogger.

Here’s the best advice I can give on this… learn from everyone. Study marketers you hate as well as marketers you agree with. Don’t close your mind to anything and you’ll come out with a more well-rounded toolbox of tactics and strategies for online marketing. 

 Thanks Brian!

Check out Brian on the web at: Copyblogger, Teaching Sells, DIY Themes and on Twitter

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | The Copyblogger Files – Interview with Brian Clark | 12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Recently I came across the new book by Dave Evans, Social Media Marketing An Hour a Day. It’s one of the few marketing books I actually purchased in 2008 because it seemed thorough (as far as a book can be on a fast changing topic) and since so many publishers send us free copies to review.

The notion of taking a slice of time per day to conduct social media marketing activities is such spot-on advice, that I wanted to bring more insights from the book author, Dave Evans, to our readers.  

In this interview Dave talks about the genesis of the book, thoughts on social media strategy, innovation, building a business case, practical examples and measuring success. Enjoy!

First, please share some about your background and experience as a social media marketer.

My interest in social media and marketing developed while I was working at GSD&M in Austin. At work, I was part of a team that was making ads all day. At night, as a consumer, I was looking for ways to skip them. The irony of that was not lost on me. In 2003 as I was working on an advergame program for Dial’s “Coast” soap brand built around Matt Hoffman’s ProBMX game I realized that advertising may be better received if it had a very strong participative, non-interruptive character. That got me interested in what was emerging as the Social Web, aka, Web 2.0–and the content that people make and then share–and to the discipline of social media based marketing.

 You’ve written a great book, “Social Media Marketing an Hour A Day“. What prompted you to write it and if you were to write your own 50 word or less review, what would it be?

 First, thank you for the compliment. I sincerely appreciate the positive reception to my first book. I had been thinking about writing a book based on the work I doing around the purchase funnel and the impact of word-of-mouth, and as an expansion of a whitepaper on social media that I’d written in 2004 when serendipity stepped in.  Wiley|Sybex’ Acquisition Editor Willem Knibbe called me and asked if I’d write this book. It was an honor to say ‘yes’. Eleven months later it was on Amazon.

The book itself is designed for social media practitioners, traditional marketers, and others interested in applying social media based concepts and practices to marketing. In 55 daily one-hour exercises, it presents a survey of the Social Web, resources and tools for aligning a brand with the specific needs of highly connected consumers, and important tips and best practices ranging from disclosure and transparency to effectively presenting a social media program.  

 In the course of having conversations with people about what you do and the book, how do you define “social media” for people who aren’t in the digital marketing  business.

 I define social media as it applies to marketing in terms of the content–text, audio, photos, videos–that is created and shared on and through the web for the purpose of conveying an experience or influence an outcome. Note that this applies equally to consumers and marketers: the key word in my definition is “participative,” which is of course what separates social from traditional media.

 What arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into social media engagements?

 The most compelling case I know of is showing a brand or product manager what is being said about his/her brand, product, or service on the Social Web and then asking what is being done to leverage, correct, or otherwise respond to this conversation. Too often the answer is “nothing” which is course a mistake: Positive conversations are floating past without being tapped, and negative discussions are left unchecked. The result is a slower product or service evolution cycle than what be available if these same resources were tapped, and that translates directly into a competitive disadvantage. In these times, who can afford that?

 When developing a social media strategy, how do you decide the tactical mix? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or something completely different?

 I begin with business objectives and an understanding of the audience. A listening strategy is distinct from an outreach effort, and without a handle on objectives and audience it’s impossible to develop either of these. For many applications, simply listening and understanding current conversation is the right starting point: Using Twitter, Flickr, Facebook for marketing…all comes later.

What’s your decision making process when it comes to testing and implementing social media engagement efforts with specific tactics?

 First and foremost, I help clients develop a quantitative baseline: What is the state of the current marketing program? As noted above, next up is the integration of objectives and audience data. With these pieces in place, we can devise experiments–often based on early listening results–that involve selected social channels which work to supplement what is happening in other marketing channels.

 What strategies do you use to measure the effectiveness of social media?   What metrics make the most impact when reporting them upstream in an organization – to key executives or CEO?

 I am a strong advocate of quantitative measurement: Chapter 13 of “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day” is dedicated to it. The Social Web, because it is digital, is fundamentally measurable. There are a number of platforms that facilitate direct measurement of conversations, and which give you a handle on what is being said. Then, by connecting social analytics with web analytics via referrer and related data (not perfect, but better than nothing) we can tie the conversational impact to the conversion process. This opens the entire set of traditional web measures which can be used to establish an ROI and other fundamental indicators that are of interest at the C-level.

 Can you share an example of how you’ve successfully employed a social media effort (large scale or a specific tactic)  and how you measured success? (marketing, ORM, branding, etc) URLs to examples are very much appreciated.

 Three come to mind immediately, as all are fundamentally different in their goals.

First, Meredith Publishing and its communities like Parents/American Baby and Better Homes and Gardens. Working with Meredith’s Community Manager we developed a strategic roadmap guiding their use of the Pluck community platform. The objective was stronger engagement between individual print and online subscribers via the content discussions in which they were engaged. In this case, we gauged success in terms of page views–the base line indicator for publishers–and the size of the community as it grew over time.

Next is Premiere Global, a provider of scalable electronic messaging services. Premiere’s platform powers many of the financial trade transaction confirmations that people receive, hurricane evacuation notices, and similar. Premiere developed an API around its platform, and then invited developers to build monetized application using these tools. Working with Austin’s FG SQUARED, we developed a support and learning community built on the Jive Software platform for application developers to facilitate the spread of tips and knowledge in order to build more and better application based on PGI’s underlying API and service platform. We are measuring the number of applications developed, and the revenue associate with them. This is essential a direct measure of ROI.

 Finally, working again with FG SQUARED and its client, University Federal Credit Union, we implemented Techrigy’s SM2 social media monitoring platform to engage the credit unions marketing and operations units with conversations of interest. This is the first step in what will be a larger social media based implementation, and is a great example of the ways in which innovators within organizations can take initial steps into social media. Measurement in this case is related to the conversations uncovered, and their value in terms of intelligence to the firm.

 Please share 3-4 resources for staying on top of social media marketing trends and tactics:

First, the social web itself. I learn more everyday by simply listening to what others are doing than I do via any other source. Industry resources–emarketer, Forrester Research, ClickZ (disclosure: I write for ClickZ) and blogs likes yours. Twitter is at the top of my list, in part because I follow a lot of social media professionals: I’m a passionate work-a-holic and tend to everything for work related purposes. The conversations of experts ranging from Robert Scoble to Jeremiah Owyang are all important sources of learning.  Books that I often recommend include Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s “Groundswell“, Fred Reichheld’s “The Ultimate Question”, and Avinash Kaushik’s “Web Analytics.”

Thanks Dave!

Dave Evans is a social media strategist and business consultant though Digital Voodoo, a firm Dave cofounded in 1994. In 2005, he cofounded HearThis.com, a podcasting service firm, and maintains a blog at ReadThis.com.

A few places where you can find Dave on the social web:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Blog

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Social Media Marketing An Hour A Day: Dave Evans | 13 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

One of the great things about the social web is the opportunity socialize offline as well as online. That is how I finally got the chance to meet Tac Anderson from HP during BlogWorldExpo.

Tac currently leads social media activities across Hewlett Packard for both internal collaboration and external marketing. Tac is also the Entrepreneur in Residence for Highway 12 Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, where he advises them on potential investment opportunities in the social media space. Tac blogs regularly at www.newcommbiz.com.

In this interview Tac talks about his role as the voice of social media at Hewlett Packard and Entrepreneur in Residence at Highway 12 Ventures. He also gives us the goods on defining, justifying, testing, measuring and recommending social media. The icing on the cake comes in the form of sage social media advice for businesses and a few resources for those that want to stay up to date on the social web. Enjoy!

Please describe how you got involved in your current position with HP and how social media  and internet communications play into your responsibilities:

I was actually recruited by HP back in mid 07. Some HP people had come to a luncheon I was speaking at. I was doing some consulting at the time while working on a startup with a friend that never got off the ground. They offered me an opportunity that was too good to be true and the timing worked out really well.

I was originally hired as the Web 2.0 Strategic Lead for the LaserJet Business. Basically I worked at a worldwide level to implement Web 2.0/Social Media into the marketing organization. This included everything from implementing internal wiki’s, training product teams on using Google Alerts, RSS feeds and other tools, working with the various regions on implementing social media marketing tactics as well lending my expertise where ever I could across HP.

Today, 2 re-orgs later I now sit in the global enterprise marketing group. I still do most of the things I did before but I’m mostly focused on the Enterprise customer and my role has been expanded to include marketing metrics.

What’s your involvement with Highway 12 Ventures?

To really explain my role at Highway 12 Ventures I have to step back just a bit. Highway 12 is a regionally focused VC firm. This means they only do deals in the Rocky Mountain west (ID, CO, UT, MT, OR). I live in Boise, Idaho and have been very involved in our tech and entrepreneurial community. I helped launch our first downtown incubator, I run the TechBoise blog and hold monthly tech meetups. I’ve known the guys at Highway 12 Ventures for a while now and this summer they asked me to come on as an Entrepreneur in Residence.

It’s not the usual type of EIR role that the Silicon Valley/Alley people are used to. Because of my local involvement and that they see a lot of deals, esp out of Boulder and SLC that are Web based, I consult with them as they look at companies to invest in.  It’s “in my spare time” and I don’t get paid for it. What I get out of it is the opportunity to sit in on their partner meetings, review their deal flow with them and in general learn more about the VC business. Because of their broad geographic area and the fact that they don’t have a vertical focus I get to see a lot of fascinating companies across the area and meet all kinds of great people.

A question I like to ask is how would you describe or define “social media” to someone who’s web savvy extends no further than email or Google.com?

I don’t really have a canned response but there are two distinctions I like to make. I used to get a lot of people ask me about the difference between Web 2.0 and social media. I explain Web 2.0 as the technologies and tools that enable social media (RSS, JAVA, blogs, wiki’s etc) and social media is the trend in online content/media/whatever that enables people to communicate with each other directly. It’s media that you help shape and influence.

I don’t get the Web 2.0 question much anymore, I think that peaked in early 08 and I’m already seeing a lot fewer questions about social media. We’re really getting to the point, that we all knew we would, where all online content is social in some way. If it’s not now it will be in the next 2 years.

What arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into marketing efforts that include social media participation? How about insights on justifying corporate blogging?

You have to start with two things. I always used to say you had to start with one thing but my time in corporate America has taught me that it’s two things.

The #1 thing has always been, who’s your audience. What matters to them?

As an example if you’re trying to reach consumers then the case for blogs and social media is about reaching them where and how they interact. It’s about building trust and being open,which are all trends I’m sure your readers are more than familiar with. If your customers are CXO’s (CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO) then the reason you have a blog is because the two most influential factors to a CXO’s decision making process are the Two G’s: Google and Gartner. Google is speaking to the importance of all search and Gartner is speaking to the importance that analysts play. Blogs are great for reaching both. There’s no lower bang for your buck tactic to reach the two G’s than having a high quality blog.

The #2 thing I’ve learned is to start with what your company is already measuring. Then look at Return on Total Investment.  How much does it cost you to do something today? Can you do it cheaper and more effectively with social media? At first don’t try and recreate your companies measurements and reporting. If they have stated KPI’s (key performance indicators) work with those. How can you use social media to impact those numbers. Once you prove that you are capable of moving certain needles then you can broaden what your measuring.

Do you have a process or decision scheme for deciding what new shiny objects to pay attention to and what to ignore?  What are your current, favorite social tools/channels/platforms?

Early on, it was easy, you just tried everything that came out. Now you obviously have to be more particular. I think there are two filters I have in place for deciding what new tools to try: Is it in an area I’m interested in? Is it coming from a reputable source?

I’m not a big videophile. I don’t particularly care if there’s another YouTube like product out. I am a big mobile and publishing geek so if a new tool comes out that enables me to produce content from my phone I usually give it a look.

I also really evaluate who told me about the service. There are some people/blogs that I count on for the good stuff. Conversely there are a lot of people/blogs that will and do talk about everything.

What advice can you give marketers, technologists, PR, communications, customer service or marketing people at organizations thinking about incorporating social media involvement into their efforts, but are not sure where to start?

 Start by using the tools. If you’re not already on Twitter yourself, I’d be hesitant to launch a corporate Twitter account. You don’t have to be a power user or anything but be comfortable with it. I think the other thing I’d tell people is to focus on the word you used *Incorporate*. I’ve found that social media works best when it’s incorporated into your existing marketing efforts. Finally I’m still a big believer in the corporate blog. Start one if you haven’t yet and start pushing good content to it. Because there’s so much noise out there now that if you all of a sudden decide you need one, it can take 1-2 years to get your blog established. Start small but get something out there.

You’ve written on your blog New Comm Biz about measuring the effectiveness of social media. Please share your perspectives on that and what metrics make the most impact when reporting upstream in your organization?

One of the things I really like about this space right now is that there are no best practices. No one has a silver bullet, no one has all the answers. It’s a lot of trial and error. My best advice is fail early and fail often. You won’t know what works for your company until you try it.

But it’s all about the metrics that your organization is already using. One of the metrics I keyed off of early on was Share of Voice (SOV). This is a measurement most PR groups use to measure the amount of penetration your company is getting in non-paid media. You of course have to be measuring this for online not just offline. Take a historical view of what your SOV is before launching a blog or other effort and then measure it after. To best impact this you need to coordinate your social media efforts with your traditional online efforts. If you have a press release going out, do a blog post on the topic and link to it in the press release.

If you’re in a very sales focused group then it’s going to be leads (however your company defines that). Going back to what I said earlier about incorporating social media; does your sales team know how to use all the advanced search functions on LinkedIn? Does the landing site for your newest lead-gen effort have social components? Things like links to a company blog talking about the offer, a rating/feedback or share this option? Is the page mobile device optimized? If not do those things and measure the difference.

Do you outsource any social media work and if so, do you have tips for company social media marketers regarding finding and managing consultants?

We use agencies, mostly for tactical execution.

The things I learned were to hire people that are already familiar with the tools and the space. I have a hard time finding agencies and consultants that have much hands on experience. At best most are all talk with no action. Having your own marketing blog does not make you an expert. Find someone with some experience.

My other rule in working with agencies and consultants is work with someone you like. You don’t have to be best buds or hang out on the weekends but if you like the person and have a shared understanding of what’s important the output of the relationship will be so much better. Too many times there’s this tension between the client and the agency. You each have to be able to tell the other person that their idea is stupid.

Can you share an example of how you’ve successfully employed a social media effort (large scale or a specific tactic)  and how you measured success? (marketing, ORM, branding, etc) URLs to examples are very much appreciated.

I use an HP blog to catalog some of the campaigns we’ve done. You can see those at HP Marketing Impressions.

One that I probably have the most measurable results from was the LaserJet blog.  It was featured in the Forrester book Groundswell for our response to early Vista issues around printing and print drivers. There are several little things we did along the way and several things we learned but this is the blog that taught me just how effective a corporate blog can be.

There’s been a lot of talk about how “bad” corporate blogs are and how they are just re-purposed marketing material. This is largely the case but some of that’s ok. What do people expect from a corporate blog. There are good and bad ways to do it but it’s all about your goal.

We didn’t care if everyone in the world read the blog. It’s about LaserJet printers how exciting can it be? But we did want the analysts and IT networking crowd to read it and find it useful. The analysts would read it because it’s there job, we just had to keep putting useful things in it. The IT professionals probably wouldn’t subscribe to it but we did want them to find it through search so we did a lot work around keyword optimization and linking to get the blog rated high as well as lift up deeper HP pages.

I wrote up case study which can be found here about how we also used the blog for competitive response. When Xerox changed some pricing on a competitive technology we were able to roll out a response that some day that got picked up by the analysts and search engines. The last time I checked if you search for “Xerox solid ink” or Xerox solid ink pricing” our post is still the #2 or #3 result and that was almost about 1 1/2 years ago.

Please share 3-4 resources for staying on top of social media marketing trends and tactics:

Well there’s always this blog and mine. lol

Forrester’s Groundswell book I mentioned is a must read IMHO.

Honestly I find it difficult to find a lot of great examples out there. I think you have a lot of people that have been talking about it (but not actually doing much) for the last several years and then you have a few of us that have been fortunate enough to be doing some of this stuff but we’ve just been too busy to write about it. That’s why one of my New Years goals is to blog more about the work I’ve been doing.

Thanks Tac!

You can find Tac Anderson on the social web at:

Blog
Twitter
FriendFeed
Facebook
LinkedIn

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Social Media Interview: HP’s Tac Anderson | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Photo by Shel Israel

Twitter has become many things to many people and organizations for that matter, including Comcast.  It really says something when a company experiences the bite of consumer malcontent via social media and then turns around and becomes known as a best practitioner.  This is the experience of Comcast and Director of Digital Care, Frank Eliason.  

Based in Philadelphia, PA, Frank started with Comcast as a Customer Service Manager in September, 2007 and as you’ll read in the interview below has evolved into the social media face of Comcast through his Twitter name ComcastCares.

Even though we typically focus on marketing and public relations subject matter on Online Marketing Blog, there is no doubt of the effect of good customer service facilitated by technology like social media.  In this interview, Frank describes his involvement with social media as a customer engagement tool for Comcast, offers insights into justifying and measuring social media efforts as well his take on Twitter. Enjoy! 

Can you describe how got involved in your current position with Comcast?

I am still trying to figure out how we got to the point, it has been an interesting year. I started with Comcast is September, 2007 managing a small Customer Service team. Within my first week we reached out to a few Customers via phone after they posted to a blog. We continued doing this until December. In December we started posting to the websites to help out. By February I was asked to take on a new role. My title evolved to Director of Digital Care.

What part does social media play in your overall responsibilities and how do you define social media to others?

My role, and the role of my team is to assist Customers throughout the internet, so I would say social media plays a very large role. I define social media as any place on the web where someone is talking. This means blogs Facebook, Twitter or other microblogs, but it also means YouTube, forums, or even personal websites.

There’s a lot to be said for how companies like Comcast have put their “listening hats” on with social media, especially after certain videos get popular on YouTube.  For companies just looking into social media as a listenting/communications channel, what arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into social media engagement?

I think listening is imperative for all companies. I am sure many of the readers Google their name once in a while. Shouldn’t companies do the same? Listening is relatively easy and inexpensive. Just simply do a Google search. Or to be more timely, try a Google blogsearch. Many large companies have been doing this for years. After listening comes engagement, and this is where there is a little bit larger cost. I am asked about this and it really to me comes down to what is the cost for not being there. People will be talking about your brand, isn’t it great to be able to respond right back. The key to doing this is not being ‘PR’ or marketing but rather a real person that someone can relate to. That is why I believe Customer Service is the best fit.

As far as deciding what social media channels to engage in, what’s your decision making process when it comes to testing and implementing specific tactics?

Two key factors: Searchability and Timeliness. We can not continually look at the same website to see if anything is being said, so we use a variety of search techniques. This brings me to the second key factor. Searching but not getting the results for days or weeks after something is posted is not going to be effective. So we use methods that are immediate. One of the reasons we like Twitter is the real time search at search.twitter.  Google blog search also allows you to sort blogs by 1 hour, 12 hours, 1 day, 1 week or 1 month.

How do you measure the success of your social media efforts? What goals and metrics make the most impact upstream (C-level) in your organization?

I think success is 2 fold. I think you can measure the feedback that you obtain and the benefits this provides an organization. You can also measure the positive feedback that is on the web.

Do you outsource any social media work and if so, do you have tips for other large company social media marketers for finding and managing consultants?

Like many organizations we do work with Nielsen Online (formerly Buzzmetrics) to collect feedback from the web.

Can you share your experience with a specific social media tool like Twitter or blogging? What were your goals, strategy and tactics? Can you share success metrics?

The biggest benefit to Twitter is if someone is answering the question here is what I am doing now,” you are getting immediate data on how someone is using your product or interacting with your organization. The goals are simple for everything we do. Offer assistance and gather feedback. The strategy we take is to be ourselves and offer to help. Not much different than what should happen in a Customer Service call.

Please share 3-4 resources you use for staying on top of social media marketing trends and tactics:

I actually am not a marketer, I do pay attention to groups like WOMMA, but I would not say I am an expert in this area. Tactics we learn as we go. Some of the best resources are the people we help and some of the organizations in this space. People are always open to talk.

Thank you Frank!

What questions do you have for Frank? I can’t promise he’ll answer them, but if he’s monitoring the social web he’ll certainly notice.

You can find Frank online at:

Twitter
LinkedIn
Time to be Frank Blog

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | ComcastCares Social Media Interview with Frank Eliason | 9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Photo Credit www.briansolis.com 

Of all the companies known for making advances in the realm of social media, Dell holds a place that reaches both ends of the spectrum. References to “Dell Hell” are less about something wrong and more about one of the most popular examples of a major corporation that “gets” social media listening and engagement.  One of the key people at Dell responsible for the successful social media presence so many have come to know is Richard Binhammer. 

Richard has enjoyed a career that has taken him from Canadian politics, lobbying and election campaigns to public relations in the Midwest to Corporate Communications in NYC and then public affairs, now social media/blog outreach at Dell.

In this in-depth interview, Richard discusses definitions of social media, Dell’s strategic perspective examples, testing social tactics, measurement, building a business case for social media and shares a few resources to stay current. Enjoy!

How would you describe “social media” to someone who’s web savvy extends no further than email or Google.com?

That’s a good question, Lee.  I think I would indicate the Web and related technologies that they currently use to deliver their email and to visit Google, search and surf have morphed.  Rather than static sites, the Web has become the global information technology infrastructure that underpins a rich, interactive and fully featured way to communicate and connect. At Dell we call it The Connected Era

The result: it is easy to connect, communicate  and share information with others.  You can now find information you want—when you want, as well as share that information and your own perspectives.  That’s why it is social. 

These connections and conversations take place using tools that are easy, occur in real time and remove traditional barriers like geography, and are also breaking lifestyle and social boundaries.   Friendships, professional connections, indeed new kinds of communities are emerging.  

What arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into social media engagement?

Hmmmmmmm ?…let me think.  I have several justifications that come to mind:

1. The  Magnitude of Change: One billion people are now online — a figure that will double by 2011. In fact, every day 500,000 new users come online for the first time.  Content is exploding. There was more content on YouTube in 2006 than on the Web in 2000.  This represents a significant shift in what we think of as media, or put another way, what and how people get information.  Taken together, we are experiencing changes to the dynamics of how we process information to form opinions.

News cycles can start from anywhere today.  News and conversations are not just local/regional, they are global.  Single blog posts can have as much power as major news stories.  People are publishers, content providers and decision-makers.  There are additional and new news cycles, and a proliferation of outlets for information. There is a rapid and continuing democratization of information.

This global information technology infrastructure enables individuals to connect and converse using all kinds of social media. They are forming new communities, their own communities,  sharing information in ways they care about and make sense to them. These communities shape debates, impact perspectives and perceptions.  The numbers and connectedness are of such a magnitude that public opinion and perceptions can be influenced and changed by “each other,” not controlled by others (and, I think this is a good thing,  by the way). 

2. The Value of Personal: I personally believe social media is contributing to a significant change that take us from what I call the “traditional, rational, objective, institutional” perspective to a more “subjective, emotive, personalized and human” perspective.  

The move from “objective,” fact-based, third party reporting and commentary (traditional media/advertising/controlled  messages/interruptions) to individual, “subjective,” and “crowd sourced” perceptions is very powerful. Perceptions are no longer just reality. They are real.  The “new facts” are based on real interactions and experiences that people share with each other.  Perceptions (“my real experience and my views) gain legitimacy and value and become a part of the larger community’s “facts.” For more on the importance (and inherent value) of perceptions in social media check these links. 

If you are not persuaded by the trend data, directions and changes occurring, I would pose this question, rhetorically.  I call it the customer question.

3. Connecting with Customers: Since when did any business not want to connect with its customers? Seriously, what is the issue here?  Do we need to justify using today’s efficient, effective and readily available technology to spend 30 minutes or couple hours a day connecting with real customers?

No one has yet to explain to me why they should not use social media as a way to connect with their customers.   We could leave this point hang and let it stand on its own.  I think it speaks volumes.

However, lets flesh it out a bit.  Connecting and communicating with customers is about more than merely meeting customers’ expectations today.  Social media is an ideal tool to reach customers more quickly, efficiently, frequently and cost effectively.  

Even more importantly than its efficiency and  cost-effectiveness, social media is an ideal tool to listen, learn and engage in real conversations with customers.  Does someone need to justify that?  

Here is an example: If a conversation occurs in a Minneapolis Starbucks about the new Dell mini, I can’t hear it, nor be informed by it.  On the other hand, if that same conversation starts in Minneapolis (or China) with a post on a blog, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook or wherever, not only can I listen and learn, I can act and join the conversation.  

We can immediately take the information and do what we need to – fix something, thank the customer for positive feedback, correct misinformation, whatever might be relevant.  It’s like having Dell customers from anywhere in the world walking the halls of our offices in Round Rock, TX.  How cool is that?  But the result is better than cool.  The immediacy of online listening means we can continuously build a better business based on real time customer input.

One further thought, beyond listening and learning, I’d also highlight the benefits of engaging in online conversations using social media.  If your customers are connecting with each other, why not join them?  At a minimum you are forming a relationship, and more broadly, a community.  There are all kinds of benefits to deeper and interactive relationships. One of my colleagues likes to say, “we used to host, prepare and serve the dinner party.  Social media allows us to come to the party, join the conversation in a more relaxed manner and be part of it.”

What’s your decision making process when it comes to testing and implementing social media engagement efforts with specific tactics?

We are constantly “testing” and experimenting with different social media initiatives and opportunities.  In fact, we are encouraged to experiment and see what works and learn from it, versus guaranteeing success.  Our CEO, Michael Dell talks about experimentation, as well as social media in this recent online interview over at Small Business Advice TV. (interview starts around the 8 minute point, he talks about experiments at the 9:15 point, social media around 21 minutes).  

Decision making and tactics for social media  “initiatives” depend on various factors, such as: circumstances; the specific social media initiative contemplated or planned; the business organization involved; among other things.  

The key principles underlying Dell decisions and actions in social media are:

1. Listening, Learning and Engaging in conversations with our customers where they are.

Dell’s outreach to customers or others who blog about us and joining those conversations is an example of this.  Other examples include: presence on Twitter and involvement at YahooAnswers. 

2. Telling our Story: Is there a social media “tool” or technology we should be using to connect, converse and share our story with customers and others who are interested in Dell?  

Direct2dell, our first blog, was established at the urging of Michael Dell.  He wanted the company to have voice in the connected era, as well as establish a place for our customers to be able to connect and converse with Dell.  

3. Strengthening Business connections, conversations, relationships and partnerships with customers/others interested in our business or to foster communities where we have mutual interest.

The investor relations team wanted a new way to connect with investors and potential investors.  They believed social media offered an opportunity to democratize financial information and have broader conversations. Dellshares was launched.  At regeneration.org, we are focused on partnering with anyone and everyone to build a movement that shares information and embraces higher environmental standards to help regenerate the planet. We launched the Digital Nomads blog when we launched our new Latitude notebooks.  However, the site is focused on building, nurturing and supporting the digitally nomadic community. We really just administer the site.   

4. Share content, information and Collect Ideas Ideastorm.com was created to specifically encourage customers to share ideas about what we do and what they wanted from Dell. Ratings and Reviews were implemented on Dell.com because customers want information from each other. We have also made parts of Dell.com more “shareable.”  The Facebook-Dell social media page for small business was driven by a desire to “give back” to the community some lessons we have learned in social media.  We thought the tips sheets could be especially helpful to small businesses.  

Stay tuned….more is coming ?

What strategies and tools do you use to measure the effectiveness of social media?  What goals and metrics make the most impact upstream (C-level) in your organization?

There is no single strategy or tool to measure effectiveness of social media, especially when you view social media as a part of how you do business and connect with customers, as we increasingly do at Dell.  Therefore, strategies, tools and measurement of effectiveness are going to vary.  

For example, at Dell social media is becoming part of how we do business and contributes to continuously making us better at it.  We also believe that engagement though these direct connections with customers is what we are all about as a company – direct relationships with customers.  Therefore, measurement goes beyond a singular ROI or measure of effectiveness when social media is used to:  

• Understand issues and change business processes based on information and conversations in social media;
• include more customers in opportunities to connect and meet with Dell people;
• Identify issues earlier than we would have previously, thanks to blog and social media  commentary, and act on them; 
• connect directly with customers in a timely, efficient and direct manner about specific concerns;
• Contribute to, and integrated into, Dell’s product development.  For example, the Ideastorm community ideas have resulted in product changes, including:

1. Dell’s proud partnership with (PRODUCT) REDTM   in which the purchase of  Dell (PRODUCT) REDTM  signature products results in part of the proceeds going to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa
2. significant aspects of the new Latitude E series design
3. Dell’s expanded Linux offerings 

We use Radian6 for social media tracking and are working with them on a development program related to managing overall workflow and management.  We track conversations in social media about us (on average about 5000 per day gross number), the subject, sentiment, the extent to which we get involved and the outcome of the conversation.  As you may know since we became involved in social media we have seen a nearly 30% decline in negative commentary about the company. 

We also track revenue generation from The Dell outlet, small business and home offers available on Twitter. We have previously noted that Dell Outlet’s Twitter offers resulted in $500,000.00 in revenue.

We also track visits to our various sites and the extent to which conversations and engagement are happening. We are continually working to fine tune measurement, moving from engagement to measuring community connections.

Do you outsource any social media work and if so, do you have tips for other large company social media marketers for finding and managing consultants?

At one point we outsourced blog search.  However, now that we use Radian6, this is not the case.   I’m not aware of any social media work that “outsource.” In some situations, for example we might identify bloggers to be invited to a media round table or product launch event, and Enfatico, our global agency would be involved.

As for commentary about finding and managing consultants, at Dell we have consolidated work from 800 agencies around the world to partnering with a single marketing communications agency, Enfatico.  The focus is creating a new and truly integrated marketing communications model designed to further propel Dell’s growth. 

Its design and focus is on customers, irrespective of marketing communications disciplines. Originally it was code named ‘Project Da Vinci’ because we wanted to combine  artist and scientist—an agency that has both the creative horsepower and ability to measure the business impact of their work.

Please share 3-4 resources for staying on top of social media marketing trends and tactics:

• Your RSS reader and subscriptions
• Your online friends/professional network and their recommendations (Twitter, FriendFeed, MyBlogLog, etc)
• And of course Toprank Online Marketing Blog

Thank you Richard!  I promise, we did not ask or encourage Richard to mention TopRank but we’re certainly appreciative that he did.

You can find Richard Binhammer on the social web at: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and his blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Dell Social Media Interview with Richard Binhammer | 27 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

To preview the upcoming BlogWell event Oct 28 on How Big Companies Use Social Media, Online Marketing Blog brings you this first ever group interview with 4 speakers from some of America’s best known brands to share their insights on defining, justifying, testing, outsourcing, measuring and continuing to learn about social media for the enterprise.

Tim Collins, Senior Vice President of Experiential Marketing, is a eleven year veteran of Wells Fargo.  He manages sponsorships, events, virtual worlds, social media, etc.  He also has “Only at Wells Fargo” responsibilities including History Museums and an active Stage Coach Appearance program.

As Public Relations Manager, Debbie Curtis-Magley leads social media strategy, policies, and practices at UPS. Her role includes overseeing online monitoring, research and reporting. Debbie also blogs about the Atlanta running scene. Find Debbie at UPS and LinkedIn.

Lindsay Lebresco is the Public Relations and Social Media Manager at Graco Children’s Products, a leader in the juvenile products category.  She is the lead blogger for the new Graco corporate blog which was recently recognized with a PRSA bronze anvil award in the corporate blog category. Find Lindsay on Friendfeed, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Nick Ayres works as Interactive Marketing Manager with The Home Depot. Nick is a social media hierophant who has been with The Home Depot for three years with a current focus on developing and implementing new media and content strategies. Find Nick on LinkedIn.

TopRank: Thank you Tim, Debbie, Lindsay and Nick for participating in this group interview. Let’s start with the basics. Please define “social media?”

Nick Ayres: It’s funny, almost immediately after I first read this question I saw a tweet from Valeria Maltoni that was just perfectly timed. She said, “Social media is one interaction at a time”. I think that sums it up pretty nicely, actually – and speaks more to what social media isn’t which is equally important in my mind.

Whether you choose to call this phenomena “social media” or “social computing” or “web 2.0” or something else, I think perhaps the most important point is that social media is not a “campaign”. It’s not something you “do” the way you might traditional execute a print or television campaign. Instead, it’s about finding ways to connect and engage with customers in an authentic, timely and relevant manner. We’ve seen an explosion in the number of tools you can use to help do that, but regardless of which tools you use, it really is one step, one point of contact at a time.

Tim Collins: Social media is media that anyone can participate in.  Not just as a consumer, but also as a creator.

Lindsay Lebresco: We see social media as a new way to create a stronger, deeper and long-term relationship with our consumers.  Social media gives our brand access to our consumers and their needs in a unique environment and allows our messages to be delivered in a personal, transparent and immediate way.

Debbie Curtis-Magley: I typically rely on Forrester’s definition for “social computing,” which is a social structure in which technology puts power in individuals and communities, not institutions.

The technology behind social media is changing the way that people communicate with each other, with companies, and with institutions.

TopRank: What arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into social media engagement?

Debbie Curtis-Magley: As a communications function, we look at social media’s ability to extend and amplify the reach of our messages. Ultimately, the communications tactics we use need to demonstrate contributions to our business goals. We also share examples from other companies’ success with social media to show how it can be effectively used.

Lindsay Lebresco: Making a business case justification for social media investment will wholly depend on your company’s business objectives.  For Graco, our business goals for the brand, we felt, could be achieved through the use of social media to build relationships with our consumers to help enable brand advocacy and to build upon trust, which is paramount for parents choosing products they will use with their infants, as a brand attribute. It’s also important to note that we see Social Media as just one part of our overall integrated marketing effort to build our brands.  At this time, specific measurements tied directly to sales are not yet achievable for our brands.  However, we do feel that Social Media has a long term impact on brand preference.  We are currently evaluating and/or experimenting with services that will more closely measure our social media efforts and their potential impacts.

Tim Collins: Social media helps us reach our customer where they are, which will drive more customer loyalty, satisfaction and sales.

Nick Ayres: We’ve long been a business that focuses on helping people solve their home improvement problems, so in some senses, social media has been an easier sell here than you might find at other companies. If handled correctly, I really believe we have a game-changing opportunity to consistent serve our customers’ needs via what we call our “digital orange apron”. Honestly, it’s hard not to get excited at the potential.

I’d also say that for many social media endeavors there is such a low cost of entry that you don’t have to sell a big IT investment and a big human capital investment to get a project off the ground. We’ve been able to use successes from some of our smaller, lower-cost case tests to show the value potential to the broader organization and to grease the wheels for bigger asks. Last, it goes without saying that if you can show positive ROI and/or track back directly to sales, it’s a huge plus. We’ve had success there with product ratings and reviews on homedepot.com.

TopRank: How do you decide whether to blog vs setup social networking profiles vs Twitter vs image and video sharing or other social media tactics? What’s your decision making process when it comes to testing and implementing social media engagement efforts with specific tactics?

Tim Collins: It all starts and ends with the business objective and the audience we’re trying to reach.  That’s what drives the tactics, as well as measurement of success.

Lindsay Lebresco: Most people using social media will tell you that the first thing you need to do when making decisions regarding the use of these tactics is to listen.  Listening to what your consumers have to say will inform your business strategy in this space and your strategy can then be achieved through the use of specific tactics. So listen first then create a strategy and then apply tactics that can help achieve your business goals.  Because social media is so new and much of what our brand is doing is, in a sense, experimental, we have to be prepared to be flexible.  Although a strategy is always put in place when trying something new, we are always prepared to adjust, dig in or pull out whenever necessary. It’s important to [be willing] to recognize when adjustments are needed and take action accordingly – if you don’t do it yourself, then your consumers will be happy to do that for you.

Debbie Curtis-Magley: For all tactics – whether social media or traditional communications – we look at its ability to support our communications and business objectives. One of the advantages of social media is that it offers new ways to connect with the media, customers and employees. It also broadens your ability to measure the effectiveness of your efforts, such as the volume and tonality of discussions that your communications attract.

Nick Ayres: It sounds a bit like strategy and marketing 101, but you really have to start with who your customers are and what their expectations and desires are from you in the space. Based on what you learn, you can much more easily lay out your objectives, strategies and tactics to meet those wants and needs. If you aren’t already doing so, one of the first things you need to do before even thinking about a tactic is to just start listening to what’s already being said about you. Whether it’s on blogs or on Twitter or in existing online communities – wherever your customers are already talking about your brand – you can learn a lot by just paying attention to what’s already being said. I’m a big fan of approaches like Forrester’s POST methodology, or frankly any method that starts with customers and their expectations, and works towards technology, versus the other way around.

For us, if you look at what we’ve done with Twitter or with our video syndication efforts (posting our how-to videos on YouTube and other video sites) we’ve had the most success when we’ve approached the spaces from that direction rather than a “hey this is cool so let’s do it” mindset.

TopRank: What strategies do you use to measure the effectiveness of social media?  What metrics make the most impact upstream (C-level) in your organization?

Debbie Curtis-Magley: Ultimately, our management will evaluate the success of a program on its ability to deliver business results.

One example that I can share is our launch of UPS Delivery Intercept in 2007. To complement our media outreach, we used MySpace and YouTube to promote the service. Delivery Intercept has exceeded its revenue plan. During the first 12 months that the service was offered, UPS received well over 1 million requests from more than 165,000 distinct customers for this fee-based service.  In a company that is highly focused on numbers, usage continues to run significantly above plan.

Nick Ayres: It’s an ongoing process for sure. There are some efforts that are much easier to tie metrics to (product ratings and reviews, for example) and some areas where we’re still trying to nail down exactly what “effective” means, and what measurements should follow based on that definition.

Because of how new the space is for The Home Depot, I think the things that make the most impact upstream are the candid customer comments (both positively and negatively) we receive from places like Twitter. While we can throw numbers out all day, the most attention-grabbing and impactful items tend to be when a customer just gushes about how appreciative they are of our efforts, or how much they have benefited from our presence in a particular space. It puts a very human face on what sometimes can be perceived as a faceless environment to some of the more traditional brick-and-mortar personalities throughout our organization.

Tim Collins: We use the usual online metrics, but also have metrics on consumer engagement.   We determine how “social” our social media outreach was, and whether the customer not just a consumer, but also a creator.  Did they write a comment, a review, etc.?

Lindsay Lebresco: We use Converseon’s (Social Media AOR) Conversation Mining tool to measure and monitor online conversations for popular topics, potential issues and product level detail as well as brand polarity and sentiment in order to create benchmarks we measure against quarterly and throughout specific campaigns.   Metrics like brand sentiment which increased from 68% positive to 83% over a year, brand mentions (vs. product mentions) which doubled in our year of engagement and recommendations about the brand or our products increased significantly over that year as well.  Our use of social media actually landed Graco on the Today Show which wasn’t planned for and wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for our engagement in this space and our relationships with bloggers in the space as well. Of course we also track comments on the blog, links to the blog, increased SEO, impressions of online influencers, etc- these details help to support the story of success that Graco has had in this space.

TopRank: Do you outsource any social media work and if so, do you have tips for other large company social media marketers for finding and managing consultants?

Tim Collins: Most of our work is done internally.  But on the small portion that is external, the same rules apply to other media:
• Get referrals from people you trust
• Check their work with other clients
• Set clear expectations and hold them accountable

Debbie Curtis-Magley: We collaborate with our vendors to shape our strategy and to build the technology. Program management and measurement are typically managed internally.

The research firms that follow social media are a good starting point for help with finding vendors. The analysts are knowledgeable about vendors’ capabilities and expertise. They can also help companies establish expectations for working with vendors.

As far as advice for working with vendors, it would be the same practices you’d follow for managing any vendor. Define your strategy and goals before engaging a vendor. Identify potential obstacles (internal and external) that can hinder your work. Avoid misunderstandings by ensuring that both your team and the vendor are in agreement on project goals and how success will be measured.

Nick Ayres: We’ve used a few agencies for different things, but we do keep a lot in-house. That being said, everybody is pitching “social media” these days, whether they have any experience in the space or not so mostly definitely do your homework. In today’s times, it’s really not hard or time-consuming to do. Ask for case studies, talk to their current clients, search out the blogosphere around campaigns an agency currently has in the market, and see what the agency is doing with social media on its own behalf.

I think the other thing you want to find are agencies/consultants that really understand your customers and your brand, and are able to articulate the role social media should play in your overall communications / marketing mix. Social media should rarely happen on its own island.

Lindsay Lebresco: We’ve partnered with an agency, Converseon, which specializes in social media. They help us with social media strategy and planning through their technology and consulting services.  Our internal team (1 dedicated, 1 support) does all the social media execution and outreach.  For companies interested in using social media, I would highly recommend finding an agency partner that can lend their expertise in the space, has a track record of experience and relevant case studies, who can help guide your planning.  Having an expert in our corner not only helped our brand communications team feel confident in our adoption of social media and in our plans to utilize this new media but it helped significantly in dealing with the internal cultural shift that needed to happen – especially with the legal department.

TopRank Bonus question:  Please share 3-4 resources for staying on top of social media marketing trends and tactics:

Lindsay Lebresco:

• Twitter – Not only have I relied on Twitter for breaking news and election updates, but I follow a lot of social media experts who are always pointing to resources that are helpful. Our brand is using Twitter as a resource for moms – follow @GracoRoadAhead to see how we’re doing that.

• Mommy Bloggers – Don’t be fooled by the label they’ve been given. They are an incredibly savvy group of women who, especially for a brand like Graco’s, will point you to some of the best ideas in the biz (and some of the worst ideas too).  They are free to share their ideas and since they are our consumers (as are daddy bloggers), we pay close attention.

• Agency partner – This was another huge help of having an agency partner – they often (constantly) filtered new trends and tactics our way – a lot of learning happening from an expert source.

• Blog Council- The BlogCouncil has been a fantastic resource for corporate blogging. It feels like a safe environment where folks in similar positions can toss around ideas, ask questions and garner knowledge from other experts in the space.

• Forrester Research – They are an excellent resource on future trends in social media and interactive marketing and provide an objective perspective on vendors and services in this area.

Debbie Curtis-Magley: Often times, I get the best information from colleagues and vendors who pass along blog posts, case studies and research to me. I also get a lot of great insight from Blog Council members through our monthly teleconferences and discussion board posts. When I get a chance to catch up on blogs, I read Groundswell and Micro Persuasion.

Tim Collins:

• Forrester
• Word of Mouth Marketing Association
• Conferences (one a quarter)

TopRank: Thank you again Tim, Debbie, Lindsay and Nick for your insight and expertise!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Big Brand Social Media Interview: Wells Fargo, Home Depot, UPS & Graco | 15 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

It’s social media interview week here at Online Marketing Blog and we have another excellent interview with a social media sage just for you.

Gary Koelling is a blogger, Twitterati, public speaker and a social media pathfinder. He’s also Senior Manager, Social Technology at Best Buy. Best Buy is undoubtedly one of the “best” known brands in retail and in particular with many of the gadget-geeky readers of Online Marketing Blog. After seeing Gary speak at a MIMA event (pictured above) I thought it would be interesting to get a few of his insights as a social media evangelist within a large company as well as advice for others.

For the uninitiated, can you describe your creative and writing background as well as what you do in your current position as Senior Manager, Social Technology for Best Buy?

I’m a J School grad from the University of Minnesota . Unlike many of my classmates I took the low road and went into advertising. I worked as a copywriter for many years, most recently at Carmichael Lynch. I came to Best Buy in 2003 as a creative director. In the fall of 2006, six months after the launch of BlueShirt Nation, my day job changed. Most days my job involves building and maintaining social technology tools like BlueShirt Nation, Best Buy’s internal social network. And more recently Giftag.com, a universal gift registry slash wish list. With increasing frequency my job involves education, trying to help others understand what social media is and what it means to a corporation.

How would you define “social media” to someone not fluent in interactive or online marketing?

I hesitate a little to use the word education to describe the process of explaining to people what social media is. For one thing, what it is is constantly changing. New technologies and new ways of using them are being introduced all the time and this changes the tone and depth of our online and offline social interactions.

The other reason I hesitate is because it’s not so much education as it is re-education which often means having to unlearn a lot of what they think they know about how to act. A lot of people say to me “I’m completely ignorant about this stuff” or “I’m totally dumb when it comes to this stuff.”  What I hear is “This scares me.”

What are some of the common issues large organizations encounter when trying to evaluate and adopt social media technologies? Are you seeing more internal or external facing applications? (ex: building a private social network vs engaging in existing/public social networks)

From about 1994 to about 2005 or 2006 our relationship with interactive media had been pretty much identical to the relationship we’ve had with mass media for about the last hundred years. The few create and the many consume. The how, what and why of the message is controlled and sometimes vetted by journalistic standards. Social Media doesn’t hew to this model because the center of control has been moved from the few to the many. This does not compute with our current math, our current approach of even calling it ‘media.’

As a result I get a lot plaintive if earnest looks from people who have either been sent to me by their bosses to get smart about this thing or who understand that something fundamental is shifting under feet and they’re terrified. In both cases they feel helpless. And there’s the tragedy. The corporation, as a way of organizing group activity, has little room for what is social; trust, thoughtfulness, vulnerability – human. It’s required that we suppress these things and substitute policy, process and ambition.

So when I tell people, “Be human” I get, “What does that mean?” or “Can we do that – who has to approve it?” At that moment I find myself having to help people remember what it was like to interact with real people. Could you get fired for acting human in this context? I suppose you could. The handicap that we’re running up against is that as a person, the corporation, or more specifically the brand that is presented internally and externally, behaves like a sociopath.

The external or customer facing effect (as well internal) is that when in normal conversation brands tend to act paranoid, or narcissistic. “Nice day today” begets “Compared to what?” Or “How’s the weather?” begets “Beautiful day …  to buy some of my stuff.” To be fair, it’s not easy being social. It takes work. Even as “social” animals we have our struggles so is it really surprising that an abstraction that wants to be human struggles with it? Nah.

What kind of impact has Best Buy’s internal social network, BlueShirtNation.com had and how did you come about creating it?

The impact or value of social technology, like most ubiquitous technology, is hard to measure. You know a phone system has value but it’s hard to even know where to begin to take a measure of that. I truly wish I had a better answer but like any relationship, if you want to keep it healthy, you have to pay attention. You can’t just monitor it. You have to really pay attention. In paying attention the two things I tend to collect are 1) stories from users about how the technology failed them or helped them win and 2) admissions of fear. You can tell a lot by watching those two things.

Can you share a few high level tips for companies that are in discovery mode when it comes to tasks such as deciding on social platforms and applications, internal management and success measurement?  Or should they take a less evaluative approach and just jump in?

If you’re ready to count more failures than wins and if you can get honest admissions of fear – you’re almost ready to jump in. But first ask yourself “What kind of relationship do I (not We) want to have with my employees or customers? Give yourself an honest answer. If it’s a purely transactional relationship that’s fine. If it’s something else, try to plot it on a line of intimacy somewhere between “Someone I see a couple days a week in the elevator” and “Soul mate.” Hopefully, for their sake, it’s somewhere in the middle. Then practice. Keep it small. Say hi. Get to know each other. Try things. Learn. If a jaded old ad guy like me can figure it out, the rest of you should be fine.

What are some of the resources (sites, blogs, books, events, networks, applications, etc) that you rely on for information on social media best practices?

Here are  couple of books that have enlightened me:

• The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks by C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan
• The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
• Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

And here are a couple of sites I keep up with: readwriteweb.com and techcrunch.com

Thanks Gary!

You can catch Gary in person speaking at next week’s Social Media Marketing Summit in San Francisco.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | MiNterview with Gary Koelling from Best Buy on Social Media | 3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

This interview with Ford’s head of social media, Scott Monty touches on a few things large companies (or any size company for that matter) should be thinking about when evaluating social media as a communications, marketing and community building channel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can read plenty more of Scott Monty’s insights on his blog, The Social Media Marketing Blog and on Twitter at @scottmonty.

We shot this video on top of the Maker’s Mark RV parked in the Blog World Exhibit hall and you’ll have to forgive my sad camera movement technique. I think it’s time to invest in “real” video equipment, something that’s long overdue since we’ve been shooting interviews at confernces since 2006.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Scott Monty Interview – Tips on Social Media for Large Companies | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Check out this interview with Jason after the “Blogs and PR” session we both sat on talking more about how to get the PR industry to wake up to the social web.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As you can see, Jason has a lot to say and he’s both insightful and entertaining. Read more of Jason’s social media smarts over on his blog at Social Media Explorer and I would also highly recommend that you connect with him on Twitter: @jasonfalls.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Jason Falls Interview: Waking Up the PR Industry to Social Media | 8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

One of the fun things we get to do on Online Marketing Blog is interview interesting people we meet and get to know by being involved with the industry. This interview is with Rebecca Lieb, Editorial Consultant to ClickZ and former Editor for the past 7 years. In addition to previously offering sage advice on getting more out of marketing conferences here on OMB, Rebecca works as a consultant, is writing a book on search marketing and is often retained as a speaker for industry events.

In this interview Rebecca shares tips on selecting interactive marketing vendors, shares her insights into upcoming marketing strategies and talks briefly about her upcoming book on search marketing as well as the MIMA Summit here in Minneapolis where she’s the keynote speaker.

Your journalism and editorial background has taken you many places topically and geographically. What are some of your favorites?

I was a Variety bureau chief based in Berlin right after the Wall fell, which was as fantastic as it was dissonant. One week I’d be at the Cannes Film Festival, a few days later I’d be attending the first film festival open to Westerners in Romania or Minsk. Often it’s not just the “where,” it’s the “when,” too. Interactive marketing has taken me many new parts of the world to speak, most notably my first trips to South America. But personally, my passion of the past few years has been Southeast Asia. I’ve been to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and most recently, Burma. As you can probably tell from this list, adventure takes precedence over thread count every single time!

You were so nice to meet with Dominic and I this hot summer. What do you like most about living in New York? It can’t be the heat! In an increasing digital world, do you think there are additional opportunities for someone working in the Interactive Marketing field to physically live in a large city vs. working remotely elsewhere?

I have a good friend who’s currently making a great living in this industry from his home in idyllic and remote rural Vermont. It’s all red barns, cows and covered bridges — but he’s got satellite wi-fi in his sugar shack! You can be anywhere nowadays, and I’m often tempted to pick up stakes and move elsewhere (who isn’t?). And who knows? One day I may. But there’s still a whole lot of value on at least thee occasional F2F meeting, not to mention conferences, seminars, and in-office meetings. Of course, that whole metaphor can be applied to physical workspace as well. For years at ClickZ, I went into an office or sometimes, worked from home. Regardless, the majority of business these days is done via emil or IM these days — often with the person at the next desk! Physical location and proximity are a great social lubricant, which isn’t to be underestimated. But certainly Being There on a daily basis is no longer a prerequisite for success or indicator of ability.

You’re writing a book on SEO for Pearson’s Financial Times imprint. Please share your high level view of the book. It seems quite a challenge to put something in print that changes so often.

SEO changes almost daily on a tactical level, but that’s really not what my book’s about. (It comes out either late this year or in early 2009, btw). Its aim is to provide a bird’s eye view of SEO to a CEO, CMO, or small business owner who needs to get a grip on the overarching strategies, tactics, needs, and philosophies behind SEO. And that’s really necessary. I can’t tell you how many people out there aren’t even aware SEO exists as a marketing discipline. When I’ve told non-industry friends I’m writing a book on “search,” they’ve taken it to mean research, or even executive recruiting. It’s a seeing-the-forest-rather-than-the-trees issue – something people in interactive marketing, who live and breathe this stuff every day, often forget.

We’ve run online marketing tactics polls with the usual suspects popping up in the top ten: Blogging, Email marketing, Search engine optimization, Pay per click, Social networks, Affiliate marketing, Blogger relations, Viral marketing, Corporate web site, Online public relations.

Want to know what I think is big right now? Content strategy. Content as marketing, and marketing as content. Buinesses are finally realizing what’s long been true: if you have a web site, you are a publisher and you have to think like one. The same holds true for bloggers, of course, as well as in e-mail. This whole digital thing is about content. You can’t do SEO without fresh, original, frequently updated content. Since leaving ClickZ as a full-time gig, I’m working with all sorts or companies and organizations to get their content on track, both strategically and tactically. That’s what’s at the core of all things digital, as with any other form of media.

For businesses newly exploring interactive marketing, what advice or tips can you give for evaluating tactics and vendors?

Know what you’re shopping for. I spoke with someone today who knows he needs an ESP, but was unfamiliar with the term “deliverability,” perhaps the biggest concern in email right now. Yes, it’s time consuming, but as the local TV ads for the discount suit store have been saying for years, “an educated consumer is our best customer.” That works three ways, in fact. It’s good for the vendor, good for the buyer, and good for best practices. And don’t forget to vet. Talk to current and past clients and get their stories. Learn from experience.

You’re keynoting at the MIMA Summit in October as is Ze Frank. Can you share an overview of what you’ll talk about and have you researched Minneapolis/St Paul yet? FYI, that doesn’t mean watching Fargo.

Hey! Yo! I’m a midwestern girl – born ‘n’ raised – so don’t start! But admittedly, I haven’t been to MN since I was about 10 years old, so I’m counting on local industry friends to show me around. One’s Gayle Tesky, and maybe you’re another one, Lee?

Definitely.

As for what I’ll be talking about: content is marketing, and marketing is content. I want to explore the effect this trend is having on different sectors in the digital space, as well as how it’s affecting media. Take the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld spots that CPB just launched. They’re pure content and entertainment. And the media is roll your own. So what’s this going to mean for media buying when all these destination sites pop up? By extension, what will that mean for agencies? I think the landscape is in for another interesting shift, and that’s what I hope to get people at MIMA thinking about.

With your deep and long time editorial background, I am hoping you can share some advice on what we could do to make Online Marketing Blog more effective at reaching client side internet marketers? BIG BONUS points for answering this one!

Be a mirror. How about industry-specific case studies and profiles of top client side marketers, again, in a variety of verticals. My experience has shown time and time again that people need to be led to information they can identify with. You can write about email marketing best practices until the cows come home, but until you apply it to financial services, or travel and hospitality, you just aren’t going to get those folks to read it, no way, no how. Why do you think we’re seeing such an explosion or hyper-vertical and hyper-local online content? That’s why!

What are some of the online resources you rely on for staying current with the interactive and internet marketing industries? Ex: blogs, forums, web sites, newsletters or social media sites. I see you’re on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Are those the social media sites you use most often or are there others?

Bloglines is my homepage. I subscribee to over 200 RSS feeds, and have feed-ized many of my email subscriptions so they land there, rather than in my already cluttered inbox. Also, many of my feeds are searches for keywords and hrases that appear in news and blog posts, so I can keep on top of subjects I’m tracking. What to see what I read there? My user name is rebeccal. I’m pretty sure you can search for feeds by user on Bloglines, right?

On the social front, I am signed up for more than the three services you name above, but more for research reasons than any real sort of functionality need.

You’re now an editorial advisor for ClickZ after serving as Editor for over 7 years, writing a book, speaking and consulting. What’s next?

Um, stay tuned? I’m doing a ton of speaking and content strategy consulting. But I’m also in late-stage talks with a couple of companies about full-time gigs. By the time this is published, I may have decided to remain a free agent…or not. The suspense is killing me, but life remains, as always, interesting. I may need you to run a reader poll on which choice I should make!

What is one question that I really should be asking you? (and the answer of course).

Boxers or briefs? Nah – I’m a chick. OK, what’s the single thing I absolutely, positively have to do or see in Minneapolis? And YOU have to answer that one, Lee!

Unfortunately the Minnesota State Fair with its cornucopia of deep fried foods on a stick has already passed, so we’d have to be sure to either do a boat tour of Lake Minnetonka or check out the new Guthrie Theatre.

Thanks Rebecca!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Spotlight on Search: Interview with Rebecca Lieb | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Innovation, creative problem solving and passionate interest in the subject matter are a big part of successful internet and social marketing – the topics of prime interest to readers of Online Marketing Blog. Those same characteristics apply to organizations and individuals working to make strategic business and marketing changes for the future.

In particular, these values are reflected in the upcoming PUSH 2008 conference in Minneapolis June 15-17. In the very busy run up to the conference, PUSH founder Cecily Sommers took the time to answer a few questions about PUSH and The Fertile Delta event.

First, what is your background? How did you come to start PUSH and what are your goals for the upcoming event?

My work as a brand strategist told me that to be strategic, an organization has to have a clear sense of purpose and a long, wide view of the future. This is much easier said than done, especially in the midst of demands on businesses that have intensified by increased competition and the fast pace of change. I started the PUSH conference (named for a commitment to look at and be what’s pushing the future in new directions) to provide a time-out to get perspective, renew purpose, and to cultivate what I now refer to as “change literacy.”

PUSH is described as an experience first and a conference second, focusing on conversation, interaction and ideas which is a perspective very much in alignment with principles of social media. What synergies do you see between real world an online social networking?

I also refer to PUSH as a “zone of discovery,” where new ways of thinking and seeing come from an intentional mix of sources and disciplines. Discoveries are like sparks, whether from “firsts” (i.e. first exposure), putting known quantities together in new ways, or from a panoramic view of how things/people/ideas are related. Social media supports that kind of interaction too – where unexpected sparks of conversation lead to something/someone you’d never have found otherwise. Real-time layering of social media – like Twitter – brings more input in from more places, making it a very rich medium for discovery. Of course you have to do a lot of editing…

Can you share a few examples of emerging opportunities and business models that fit with the theme of this year’s PUSH Institute event: “The Fertile Delta”?

So much of the work represented at PUSH demonstrates this focus beautifully, that it’s hard to know where to begin or end. A partial list includes

• Chandran Nair, Director, Global Institute for Tomorrow in Beijing, who is focused on sustainable solutions for Asia
• Nate Garvis, VP Government Affairs, Target, who understands that smart solutions for an increasing number of social issues are best met through private-public partnerships
• Antoine Bigirimana, partner, Thousand Hills Venture Fund, has created the Kigali Center for Entrepreneurship in Rwanda and is working with the government there to make Rwanda the most connected country in Africa
• Cameron Sinclair, Director, Architecture for Humanity, has a completely open source model for international design talent to work with communities in crisis to build homes, schools, health centers, etc.
• Van Jones, Executive Director, Ella Baker Center, creating a Green Corps to generate training and jobs to serve a green economy while alleviating unemployment and poverty in urban centers.
• LS9, a biotechnology company that has engineered the production of petroleum from biofuels

Other Fertile Delta efforts will take longer to see ROI, but are still so smart, such as GE’s investment in developing health care centers, workers, technology and Six Sigma processes in Ghana; AMD’s commitment to see 50% of the world connected by 2051; the OLPC and Intel’s Notebook projects that are on the way to making computing affordable for all, and many more…

What are some of the more promising shifts you’re seeing with business innovation as a result of technology and online information sharing?

Business models will evolve and create more overlap between public and private sectors, putting increased emphasis on Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship. And in markets, personal fabrication technologies, or 3-D printing, will affect every industry from health care to food to retail and energy.

Who attends PUSH?

PUSH Attendees include Directors, Managers, and Vice Presidents of Marketing, Consumer Insights, Product Development, Business Development, Store Design, Strategy and Innovation, Entrepreneurial Initiatives, Creative Services, Brand Management, Account Services, Strategic Alliances, and Design from enterprise-level companies such as Intel, GlaxoSmith Kline, Microsoft, Target, Best Buy… as well as independent consultants, academics and artists.

Thank you Cecily, we’ll see you on June 15th!

PUSH 2008: The Fertile Delta
June 15-17, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
http://www.pushthefuture.org/

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Interview: Cecily Sommers on PUSH 2008 The Fertile Delta | One comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Someone that I’ve wanted to interview as much as Robert Scoble is Guy Kawasaki. Guy is an enthusiastic promoter and marketer which are qualities Online Marketing Blog readers can appreciate a great deal. In this interview, he talks briefly about his most recent project, Alltop as well as changes he would make to Twitter, business blogging advice and a curious admission that he doesn’t understand SEO.

You have such a long and well published history working with technology and web based ventures ranging from your time at Apple to Garage Ventures to what you’re doing with Truemors and now Alltop. What are 2 or 3 things most people don’t know about you?

I don’t know if there are 2-3 things that most people don’t know about me. My life is a pretty open book.

You’re no stranger to marketing and promotion and the “brand of Guy Kawasaki” is known world wide. What tips do you have for online marketers that want to stand out from the crowd?

The only tip that really matters is this: “Market something good.” That’s the secret. It’s very hard to market a piece of crap. It’s very easy to market something good. I believe all marketing is based on good products and services.

blog.guykawasaki.com is listed on the Technorati 100 (out of 100 million+ blogs) and plenty of other exclusive lists. What part does the blog play in your own online marketing strategy? What other confirmations that you “kick ass” do you get as a result of blogging?

I hope you don’t think it’s a conscious, well-conceived plan. I just blog when I can about what I get a fancy for. These days I probably spend as much time Twittering as blogging. I just go in these streaks where I get obsessed with something. The most delightful confirmation that I kick ass, by a long shot, is how mommy bloggers have embraced me. Now that’s a tough audience.

What are a few of your top tips for business owners, entrepreneurs or corporate types that are trying to make sense out of using blogs?

Honestly, they shouldn’t blog because they think it will make money in a direct way like selling advertising or even an indirect way like building a brand. They should do it for the pure pleasure of it. Any other benefits are cream.

You’ve been involved with WebmasterWorld Pubcon as a speaker two years in a row (keynote then moderator) as well as a speaker for Elite Retreat where in both cases, marketing online and SEO are focal topics. How much of SEO that you see being promoted online do you think is snake oil and how much is the real deal?

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand SEO at all. My entire approach to SEO is to try to write good stuff. Then I assume that Google will find it. That’s it. End of discussion. I spend zero cycles worrying about “SEO.”

It was with great disappointment we learned the “semantic computational algorithm” that organizes Alltop feeds is a myth, but were very happy to see Online Marketing Blog included on the SEO Alltop Page, so you are redeemed. What are the key lessons you have learned (do’s and don’ts) from creating and promoting Alltop?

Alltop is only two months old. I don’t know if enough time has gone by to learn much yet. I will tell you this: Alltop is the most satisfying work that I’ve done since working on the Macintosh. It brings me great joy to help unknown sites and blogs get traffic and to help people discover information on the Internet.

It’s clear Twitter has been good to you (follow Guy here). If you owned Twitter, where would you take it in terms of new features? How would you monetize it? What do you think about the idea of people selling their social networking accounts like Twitter on eBay?

The first feature I would add is “reliability.” Then I would add an address book. Then the ability to “thread” replies and direct messages—when you have lots of people following you, keeping track of stuff is very, very hard.

It it were me, AFTER I fixed and added what I just listed, I would charge people to be on Twitter. Millions of people were paying $30/month for AOL. I’d gladly pay for a better Twitter service.

People are selling their Twitter accounts? I had no idea. How much do you think I could get for mine?

How do you stay updated with what’s new and what’s working in online marketing? Do you have favorite books, forums, newsletters, blogs, web sites, conferences, test web sites or any other information resources?

Do you really want to know how I do it? I don’t read any blogs on a regular basis. There are a handful of people who forward me stuff when they think it will interest me. That’s what I read. Other than that, I am so busy answering email, tweeting, blogging, and working on Alltop and Truemors that I don’t have time to do anything else.

Your work with venture capital and startups is legendary and undoubtedly, you’ve formed opinions about the kinds of characteristics that make a successful entrepreneur. What’s more important: sheer talent, a great network, creativity, business smarts, passion and drive or something else?

First of all, I’m hardly “legendary” as an entrepreneur or venture capitalist. I haven’t started or funded any multi-billion or even multi-hundred million dollar companies. Having said this, it won’t stop me from answering your question. My answer is that the most important factor is luck. The second most important is the willingness to grind it out. It also seems to me that the people who are lucky grind it out and the people who grind it out get lucky.

Thanks Guy!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Interview: Guy Kawasaki on Alltop, Twitter and Blogging | 16 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com