Check out these 5 Twitter tips for staying authentic and transparent:

1. Reveal who’s behind the Tweets. It doesn’t necessarily matter who it is—the CEO, the social media manager or a marketing intern. It just matters that the person is in fact a person. Putting a face and name behind your Tweets through a photo and brief bio can help followers relate to and connect with your brand.

Kodak is an excellent example of a company that’s put a face to the brand on Twitter. The company’s official Tweeter, chief blogger and social media manager Jennifer Cisney (@kodakcb), leaves no guesses as to who she is and what she does. Her Tweets strike a healthy balance between letting her personality shine through and offering too much irrelevant information (i.e., “Sitting on my couch watching Desperate Housewives and eating popcorn.”)

2. Show some personality. It doesn’t have to be all business all the time. Have some fun with your Tweets by telling humorous stories or poking a little fun at yourself every now and then.

Part of what makes Ford Motor Co. head of social media and Tweeterati Scott Monty (@scottmonty) so successful and popular is his ability to make followers feel like he’s an old college buddy or family friend. His bio tells his followers he’s “a generally nice guy.” But his genuine Tweets—a combination of marketing insight, Ford and auto news, and his own personal anecdotes—lets them know that’s the case. (Scott Monty video interview here)

3. Admit when you’re wrong. With the explosion of social networks over the past few years, bad decisions and unfortunate snafus are exposed sooner rather than later. So it’s important for brands to fess up first and show their willingness to rectify the situation. With that said, why not turn a negative situation into a positive one?

After you’ve admitted to a mistake, strike up some friendly competition by asking your followers to submit their own “biggest oops moment.” Choose—or better yet allow followers to vote on—the best story. Offer some sort of an incentive to the winner, whether it’s a coupon, a free product or a gift certificate.

4. Get to know your followers. Let’s face it: Your followers—and potential customers—have more on their minds than just your brand. Ask your followers questions about themselves, gain a sense of who they are and customize your responses to them based on their personal details.

In the end, not only will you be viewed as an authentic and trusted brand on Twitter, you’ll also obtain valuable information on customer demographics.

5. Don’t get carried away by your accomplishments. With trial-and-error, know-how and a little luck, you’re likely to find much success in your social media and Twitter efforts. But don’t let it go to your head. Keep in mind that it’s your followers who gave you that success.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Twitterati that’s been more successful at using Twitter for customer service than Frank Eliason (@comcastcares) from Comcast. But what keeps them relevant and useful for followers over the long term is their ability to remain genuine and humble amidst widespread popularity. (Frank Eliason interview here)

While there are any number of ways to fail while trying to effectively market on Twitter, social media usage by companies has matured enough for a growing number of good examples to emerge. Being aware of what’s working for others can be priceless insight for how to develop your own genuine communications and brand experience with customers on the social web.

What are some brands that have done a good job at staying authentic and transparent on Twitter? What other Twitter tips do you have for remaining authentic and transparent?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Twitter Tips for Staying Authentic and Transparent | 20 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

By day, Lee Aase is manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic and by night, he is chancellor of Social Media University, Global (SMUG). I first met Lee at a media relations conference in San Francisco a few years ago. He was kind enough to sit in on a presentation I gave to the public relations community on search engine optimization for news content. It was a pleasure to meet another Minnesotan at an industry conference and Lee’s savvy with social media was immediately apparent.

In the Q and A post below, Lee Aase provides insights into social media within the Mayo clinic, offers advice for other companies on his “MacGyver-style” testing , developing a strategy, winning management approval, measuring social media ROI and his work with SMUG.

Please share a bit about your background and what you currently do for the Mayo Clinic as a social media manager?

I have a B.S. in Political Science from Mankato State University, and worked for 14 years in politics and government at the local, state and national levels. I came to work at Mayo Clinic in April 2000 as a media relations consultant, and in 2004 became manager of the media relations team. As manager for syndication and social media, my team’s focus now is to create high-quality health and medical news content for mainstream media, while also creating more in-depth content for patients and consumers. Finally, we’re empowering employees and patients to share their Mayo Clinic stories and engaging in conversations.

What are some of the important questions to be answered when a company is first investigating whether social media makes sense?

The main questions are “What does the organization hope to accomplish or prevent?” and “Are those goals are realistic?” Both questions apply whether the company considers social media an opportunity or a threat. Questions of corporate culture and whether the organization is comfortable with openness and transparency play a role, but mainly in the pace of adoption.

Given that Facebook has 200 million active users, any organization of significant size already has many employees and even more customers involved. Will the conversations be about the company or with the company? So in the end, I believe the real questions are whether the company engages only informally, or how quickly they move to officially sanctioned participation.

If your customers are basically happy with the products or services you provide, and if your employees are comparatively satisfied with their work, the potential benefits of active engagement are likely significant. If you have serious employee morale or customer satisfaction deficits, providing social media platforms will amplify those concerns. Don’t be deluded that avoiding official social media engagement will keep people from talking about your company. Consumers and employees will commiserate online whether you provide a site for them or not. But if you have these problems you should work first on addressing them before launching major social media initiatives. Social media mainly make existing chatter louder.

Mainstream media aren’t going away, but they no longer dominate the crowded market for consumer attention. Companies may be able to avoid official social media involvement for a time, but these platforms will continue to grow in importance. It’s better to become fluent in its language earlier and adapt, instead of clinging as long as possible to a more guarded communication style.

That’s approaching the question from a negative, risk-avoidance perspective. I firmly believe the more exciting and relevant view is how to take advantage of social media’s immense opportunities.

Do you test specific social media tactics or do you go full on with a social media strategy for each initiative? Knowing what you know now, what approach would you recommend that companies take when they’re starting out?

I recommend what I call the “MacGyver Mindset,” named after the TV character played by Minnesota native Richard Dean Anderson. Look at the tools and resources you have available and how you can adapt them to meet your communication and marketing goals, and empower staff to explore.

Focus first on the free platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, mainly because that’s where you will find communities already gathered. This also enables you to prove your concepts before deciding whether to launch a community of your own.

Strategic thinking can be an excuse for inaction, and just as it’s easier to alter the direction of a moving car than it is to get one started from a dead stop, I believe it’s best to build social media momentum through low-cost experimentation and iteration.

What process did you follow to win management approval for specific or overall social media programs? What kinds of data were most successful?

For more than 100 years, the most important factor responsible for patient preference for Mayo Clinic has been word of mouth; satisfied patients telling their friends and neighbors about their experiences. We’ve had strong data on that point, and that news media stories and physician recommendations are the second and third most significant reasons for Mayo Clinic preference. So in our case it wasn’t a “prove the value in advance” situation. We emphasized that social media are just the way word of mouth happens in the 21st century.

How do you handle the “social media ROI” question? What are some of the important metrics that you use to communicate social media success?

Our main focus has been keeping costs low and incorporating social media strategies into every communication effort. As the “I” in the ROI calculation approaches zero, ROI approaches infinity. We don’t represent social media as something radically discontinuous with our previous strategies; a blog is, after all, just an easy-to-publish Web site that allows comments. By keeping incremental costs low, it doesn’t take much to show solid returns.

We use our blogs partly for media relations, so accounting for increased news coverage is important. We also can track visits to our sites and click-through behavior to our “request an appointment” links.

What are some examples of companies that are using social media successfully that you admire the most? What social media work are you most proud of at the Mayo Clinic?

I admire how companies like Comcast and Dell have used social media tools to overcome customer service problems. If there’s one industry that’s known for poor customer service it’s the Cable TV industry; there’s a reason why Jim Carrey could make a movie called “ The Cable Guy.” And Dell’s original experience with the blogosphere with Jeff Jarvis’ “Dell Hell” rant is a classic. But both companies used social media to change their organizations and treat customers better. So while in general I recommend fixing service issues before embarking on a social media program, with the right kind of commitment both Comcast and Dell have show that social media can accelerate organizational change.

At Mayo Clinic, I think our most important accomplishment has been integrating the various platforms and keeping costs down. For example, we use YouTube as the video server for our blogs, so the videos can be found directly through YouTube or on our sites. We don’t have any server bandwidth costs, and our videos are portable and can be embedded elsewhere. Sharing Mayo Clinic, our blog that enables patients and employees to share their Mayo Clinic stories, is the hub that ties most of our efforts together.

How have you gone about forecasting resources for a social media program? Internally as well as choosing to hire an outside vendor.

By integrating social media into all of our communications, we have not needed to seek significant resources. We have a small core team that trains our staff and provides the backbone/infrastructure for social media, but the goal is to help everyone in communications and marketing be more effective by using these powerful tools.

In our earliest explorations we didn’t hire vendors for social media, but we did bring in external consultants to help us think through and validate our approach. This helped us with leadership buy-in because it brought a broader perspective.

We have some agencies working with us on major projects, such as our collaboration with Microsoft on Mayo Clinic Health Manager. In those cases we ask the agencies to incorporate social media into the strategies and provide some of the services, but we also work alongside them, using our blogs, Facebook and Twitter to spread the word.

What resources do you use to stay current and can you list a few smart social media savvy people on Twitter for our readers to follow?

Twitter is an excellent platform for staying current, and has practically supplanted RSS for me. In health care, the #hcsm and #hcmktg chats are excellent places to find people with interesting perspectives, and @danamlewis, @tstitt, @daphneleigh and @meredithgould are among the ringleaders, while @EdBennett has done a great service by pulling together the listing of hospitals using social media. It’s hard to know where to stop, so since you said “a few” I will leave it a that, but I did a post here where I listed several others.

What social technologies do you use personally? LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Delicious, Twitter, YouTube, etc

Twitter is where I am most active because it is most open and enables me to broaden my interactions, making connections with people who have shared interests but whom I haven’t yet met.

I love Slideshare.net, which I call “YouTube for PowerPoints.” It’s a great way to disseminate ideas, and it enables me to do presentations in a much more engaging way. Instead of handing out slide copies (which may cause people to skip ahead), I can assure participants that they can just listen, ask questions and contribute to the in-person discussion, and that the entire presentation will be embedded in my blog. And I’ve had some people who didn’t attend my presentations embed the slides in their blogs.

Facebook is my general-purpose network, although in my evangelistic zeal for it I have been too indiscriminate in accepting friend requests, which has made it less useful for me…but I wanted to encourage people like me just getting started in Facebook, so I suggested that they add me as a friend. I’m not planning to “unfriend” anyone, but will likely start pulling some out of my news feed so that it becomes a more relevant stream to me. No one really has 900 friends.

I set up a MySpace profile just because in my role I thought I needed to understand it, but I have zero interaction there. I’m present on LinkedIn and connect with people there, but haven’t used it to anywhere near its potential. I would love to have someone become the visiting professor for LinkedInology at SMUG, which leads to your last question…

Tell us about SMUG (http://social-media-university-global.org/)

SMUG (Social Media University, Global) is my lighthearted, fun way of teaching social media to lifelong learners. It’s an unaccredited university of which I am the chancellor, and our students are called “SMUGgles.” Like the merely mortal “muggles” of Harry Potter fame, SMUGgles also are ordinary humans, but they’re learning to use magical social media tools to accomplish amazing feats.

I re-branded my blog as SMUG in early 2008 because I saw a need for systematic training to help mid-career professionals understand social media and see potential business uses. That’s why I organized posts sequentially so they could work through a course that would take them from novice status to comfortable confidence. For example, by the end of the SMUG Podcasting 101-110 series students can create a personal podcast and have it listed in the iTunes podcast directory, without spending a penny. That can give them confidence to propose podcasting for their company and to advocate for it fairly tenaciously, because no one can tell them it’s too difficult or complicated. Of course they will want to spend a little money on better recording equipment and production tools, but we’re talking a few hundred dollars or less.

Tuition at SMUG is free, but each student is responsible for room and board.

Thanks Lee!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Social Media MiNterview: Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic | 10 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

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

I first ran into Shonali Burke right before she presented with Katie Paine at the PRSA International conference, “True Tales From the Social Media Measurement Trenches”. We had not met in person before but were connected on Twitter. Social media will do that – facilitate real world connections.  Based on her PR and social media metric savvy, I thought it would be interesting to do an interview as part of our Social Media Smarts posts.

Shonali Burke, ABC, is an award-winning communications consultant and self-confessed measurement fiend. She was formerly a vice president of media and communications at ASPCA. She and her husband are owned by three shelter dogs and live in the Washington, D.C., area. You can also find her on Twitter.

How do you define “social media?”

When the term first started being used and I was curious about it, I wondered what the definition of “anti-social” media would be. I’m not sure there is an answer to that question, because all media aim to reach people; can you imagine one that would aim to do the opposite? So to me, “social media” are those Internet-based platforms that facilitate and encourage two-way (or multiple) conversations and interaction in the pursuit of building relationships. Bryan Eisenberg’s recent post on the subject sums it up beautifully.

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?

Given how new the use of social media still is, it’s understandable for executives to have misgivings about investing in it, especially the C-suite who have not, to a large extent, grown up in a “Web 2.0” world. But if you can bring the “social” to the forefront, reminding them that business is, at the end of the day, about relationships, it will go a long way. 

Traditionally, one needed to be part of certain networks of influencers and decision-makers to be successful in business. Those networks still exist, and are still powerful, but the ability for end-users or customers to voice their opinion directly about a product or service has greatly democratized the “old boys clubs.” The recent episode of the Motrin Moms is a great example. Business is about building, and catalyzing relationships. If you don’t have good relationships with your customers, they’re not going to buy your products or services, or be evangelizers for them. And you can’t have sustained, good relationships with your customers if you’re not going to listen to them. Social media provides a unique way to listen to your customers or target audience; it’s as simple as that.

This is also why I think public relations practitioners are uniquely situated to grab the social media bull by the horns. PR has always been about relationships, though in recent years it seems to have been co-opted by “publicity” in people’s minds. The industry is in dire need of adopting a strong, methodical approach to PR measurement, that shows how building and sustaining these relationships is serving the organization’s bottom line – that’s what executives understand. I recently guest-posted on “Communication Overtones” on the subject, and if we combine our PR smarts with solid measurement, the sky is the limit.

The beauty of social media is that it can be relatively inexpensive compared to traditional media outreach, requiring primarily time. That, combined with a couple of case studies showing the effective use of social media either by you (assuming you have dabbled in it, as I mentioned before) or by similar organizations to achieve desired, measurable results—or the dire consequences of not doing so—is usually enough to at least get the go-ahead to experiment (and if you’ve been playing around on your own, on a larger scale) with social media. 

It’s important to remember, however, that in 9 cases out of 10, social media outreach will complement, not replace, traditional media outreach, since the latter can still provide great value, when used wisely; it’s also what a large percentage of top management are familiar with, and trust. Explaining that you won’t be throwing your tried and tested outreach to the wind but rather, are dipping your toes into a potentially extremely valuable new pool at little or no increased cost, will go a long way.

When developing a social media strategy, how do you decide whether to blog vs setup social networking profiles vs Twitter vs image and video sharing or other social media tactics? 

Even in the social media world, the basics about choosing one’s platforms and tactics are no different than when working in the “old” media world: know your audience, identify your measurable objectives, and THEN—and only then—select the items in your toolbox. If your audience isn’t on Twitter, what good will it do to invest the time and energy into setting up a Twitter account? If your product or service doesn’t lend itself to image and/or video-sharing, should you really invest in it? So the bottom line, as always, is, do your homework – do your research. This means get familiar with the various social media platforms, engage with and listen to your target audience, and understand how they want to hear from you… the results might surprise you. 

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

 The most important thing to remember about embarking on a social media strategy is that you have to commit to engaging. Social media is, first and foremost, a way to build relationships. Just as with “real” relationships, virtual ones need time and nurturing. So you need to ensure you have staff, or external resources, to do that. Make sure you’ve tested the waters by monitoring and listening to conversations first. Then, examine your objectives under a microscope, and use the tactics that are going to give you the greatest return on your investment, however you define that. A “nice to have” or an “I want to have” is not necessarily a “must have,” especially if it’s not going to achieve your goals effectively

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.

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

In my last position at the ASPCA, we did not outsource any social media work at the time; we had one staffer on my team dedicated to the job. I have recently seen a growing trend in companies interested in engaging in social media, though. My recommendation to anyone thinking of hiring a consultant is to use the medium to do your research; see who’s popping up as a thought-leader via searches, RSS feeds, on Twitter, etc. LinkedIn’s Q&A feature can be tremendously helpful as well, since you can gauge someone’s level of experience and understanding of the subject by the way they answer questions. Turn to your local chapters of well-regarded associations, such as IABC, PRSA, and most importantly, SMC, to find out who would be a good resource.

In terms of managing them, I think the usual best practices for managing consultants apply. Given how new a field social media is, though, I think it’s really important to hire a consultant you can trust and, once you’ve outlined their scope of work, let them do it. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, or ask for clarification when you don’t understand something—it’s ok for the consultant to be “smarter” than the client, that’s why you hired her/him, remember? But once you’ve brought them on board, treat them as a valued partner, and give them the same respect you would give to said partners. 

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

The resource that I personally find the most valuable in keeping up with social media and all things related is Twitter:  I find out about events, new people/thought-leaders to follow and a treasure trove of blog posts and websites every day. Twitter has practically replaced my RSS feed (though I still check that out every few days).

If there were one resource I had to recommend, it would be that. Just a few others are (and I know I’m leaving many out): Mashable, MarketingProfs, MarketingSherpa, and the blogs of Chris Brogan, Jason Falls and Kami Watson Huyse. SMC’s website is a good resource, as is WOMMA’s site (you can click through to its blog). And because measurement is an integral part of effective marketing, Katie Paine’s and Avinash Kaushik’s blogs are must-reads for me as well.

Thanks Shonali!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Social Media Interview Shonali Burke | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Jess has worked with Cirque du Soleil as a publicist and now as a social media marketing manager. She’s active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and has received kudos from social media kingmakers like Chris Brogan, who offers an insightful perspective on Jessica as a “trust agent” for Cirque du Soleil and a great story on what to do with 100 bloggers in Las Vegas.

Please define “social media?”

Social Media is the capability to interact directly with our potential customers by participating in the conversations they are having about our brand.

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?

Well, the numbers speak for themselves in terms of how many people (of all ages) are using social media on a daily basis. We recognize that traditional advertising and PR is changing and that utilizing social media can be one of the most targeted, low cost means of reaching fans of the Cirque du Soleil brand as well as educating people who have never seen one of our shows.

With social media we’re able to have a more intimate relationship with our fans which allows us to show them a different side of the Cirque du Soleil they’re used to. We’re now able to give fans access to new experiences by developing special content. We are a premiere entertainment company and know people may only come to our shows on special occasions or vacation. By offering unique content, we are allowing customers to interact with our brand on a more regular basis, hopefully keeping us top of mind.

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?

Our initial strategy was focused on social networking sites simply because of the number of people already in the space talking about Cirque du Soleil and our shows.

Since we’re a global company, we chose to focus our efforts on Facebook because of its worldwide popularity. Cirque du Soleil is lucky to have such dedicated and enthusiastic fans. Social networks are a great forum for people to connect and share information about their experiences at our shows. By having a presence there ourselves, we are able to communicate directly with our fans on a unique and personal level. Through our pages we provide exclusive content such as backstage photos and videos, interaction with performers, contests and show updates.

Twitter has been a great tool to help pull all of our channels together and distribute news about things we’re doing throughout the space.

As we grow our on-line communities we want to position these outlets as a place customers can rely on to have questions answered, receive special promotions and learn new things about the company.

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

We monitor and distribute information on the influence, tonality and reach of particular blogs through Buzzlogic but internally our executives still really like seeing particular blog postings as well as the week to week growth of our channels.

Another thing we look at is how conversations are growing from month to month in blogs, comments, forums, etc. Are there more or fewer on-line conversations happening? We want to know which shows are being mentioned the most/least and for what reasons.

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?

We do almost everything in house.

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.

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

• WOMMA
• Chris Brogan – www.chrisbrogan.com
• Twitter – You’re able to hear from so many voices at once!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Cirque du Soleil Jessica Berlin on Social Media Marketing | 5 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

As a preview, I reached out to Douglas Pollei (left) of Social Media Club Minneapolis and VP of Internet Strategy and Corporate Development for IKANO Communications who helped get the panel created and panelist Jim Cuene (right), who is Director of Interactive at General Mills. to ask a few questions about tonight’s topic.

This dual interview offers everyman definitions of social media, common challenges in large organizations as well as tips and resources for companies trying to figure out how to get their arms around social media in their organizations. We also have reason for new nicknames: “Twitter Jim” and “Wiki Douglas”. Read on.

MIMA is having an upcoming event about social media in the enterprise, “Dual Reality: Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise”. How did the event and your involvement with it come about? What are some key topics?

Pollei: The idea for the panel goes back to December when I had a discussion with Ken Kaplan at Intel in San Jose http://kenekaplan.wordpress.com. What he was experiencing is what many who are involved with social media deployment in large companies were up against, the duality reality. Since then I had heard it called by different names. Liz Strauss calls it the gap, Josh Bernoff calls it purists and corporatists, but it is about the bottom up groundswell and the top down control colliding.

Since that early discussion with Ken, I collaborated on the idea of a panel with Jim Cuene at General Mills. He introduced me to Matt Wilson at MIMA who agreed that the topic would be interesting. I figured the event, being co-produced with MIMA and Social Media Club, could help open up the conversation to a more national level. MIMA announced today that this will be the largest monthly event ever held.

Cuene: Doug Pollei and I were talking in January about the social media, how companies like General Mills were going to be changed by it, and how much we had to learn. At the same time, he was looking into starting up a local chapter of the Social Media Club. I though there was a clear synergy with MiMA, suggested he approach MiMA about a joint program. He’s a driver, and he made it happen. I’m happy to be part of it!

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

Cuene: I’m going to rip off Dan Zane’s definition of folk music: Social media is media for social people. Or, a slightly more complicated version: Social media is the online content left by people as a by-product of being social online. It’s the media that results when folks write, review, share, trade, connect, etc. online.

A lot of people define it by the tools: IM, twitter, Facebook, etc. It’s easy to look at the technology that delivers the media – like TV, radio, magazines. But, the key in this model is that the media is more associated with the behavior than with the tools.

Pollei: A online area where people can connect, share, and learn. In the early days of the Internet, this was done by newsgroups, email, or bulletin boards. Now there are large online spaces you can connect like Facebook, Myspace, or LinkedIn. Connections can be on these large sites or it can be in smaller sites as well with persons of likeminded interests. The whole point is to participate (connect and share) and not to be idle on the sidelines.

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)

Pollei: Social media is great for its potential for honesty and community involvement. This is an opportunity but also a risk. Groups like Marketing, Interactive, Product Management, Strategy, Legal, PR, IT, outside vendors, consultants, and advertising agencies are all part of the mix that must coordinate. All are groups who have a say in the struggle many large organizations are experiencing regarding control over social media.

Forces are oftentimes at odds with each other inside these groups due to top down control and bottom up innovation. So the idea of “control” really should not be part of the conversation inside a large organization. Rather the vocabulary and culture should shift.

I believe IT groups are starting to embrace social tools in their network. Many vendors are now building social tools for their existing software. BEA announced recently a series of social tools with innovators like BDG. In the future, companies will use a mix of private and public tools based upon the needs or their customers, employees, and community.

Cuene: 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

For me, the scariest thing is the tension between wanting to move fast on this stuff, and not wanting to make a major commitment too soon. I think the idea of “first move advantage” is mostly bullshit in this space. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or because my brands have more to lose, but I’m really getting comfortable with the idea of being the smart follower.

Social media is creating whole new communication patterns, consumers are learning new habits and they’re inventing new ways of taking in information. And the technology to make it all go is literally being invented right now. As an entrepreneur, I’d want to be right in the middle, creating the change. As a marketer, I’m comfortable with the idea of watching things evolve for a while

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?

Cuene: I’m an unreliable source here. We’re still sorting out this stuff, but I’ll let you know when I’m confident enough that we’ve been successful. Here are principles we’re working from:

• Fail fast and small
• Pull the trigger slowly
• Manage experimentation like a portfolio. Assume that out of 10 experiments, you’ll get one smash, 2-3 qualified wins, one or two that seem like noble failures, and the rest will probably wash out.

One piece of advice that I would give is, work really closely with the companies. Facebook, Myspace, Google, Yahoo, Cafemom, Videoegg, have all been very willing to work with us to create successes.

Pollei: First you have to find out what kind of participation levels you community is at before you decide on a platform or application. You could potentially invest large dollars in something no one is using yet in the social media adoption curve.

Participate in webinars with many of the social media vendors to see if they have products that meet you community criteria. Awareness Networks is very active in this area of Enterprise 2.0. I would also seek analysts who have performed reviews of social tools. Jeremiah Owyang’s list of White Label Social Media Vendors is a good place to start. Connie Benson, a community manager located here in Minnesota, has helped compile some further questions on these topics at http://dualityreality.pbwiki.com

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

Pollei: This is a hard one but I can list what I am currently reading or attending.

Academic Sites:

• http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/
• http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/ – Andrew McAfee@Harvard

Great Thoughts

• http://www.conversationsmatter.org/
• http://www.webguild.org/
• http://iinnovate.blogspot.com/
• http://avc.blogs.com/
• http://www.chrisbrogan.com
• http://www.providentpartners.net/blog/
• http://www.web-strategist.com

Events:

• http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/16/ – This is the master list for what to attend
• http://conversation.eventbrite.com/
• I always liked the Cluetrain Manefesto and it will be celebrating the 10 year anniversary at this event with Doc Searls, co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto” and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Institute.
• http://code.google.com/events/io/ – Google Developer Conference
• http://smbmsp.ning.com/ Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast – Hosted by Rick Mahn

Books Currently in my Bag: The Big Switch and Groundswell

Cuene: My reading list is much more narrow than both it should be and it used to be. I don’t think I’ve got anything unique to share here…

I asked this question of Charlene Li in a previous interview about Groundswell, so you can’t use her answer (RSS). If you were a social technology, which one would you be?

Cuene: Twitter? Short attention span, limited capabilities, impulsive, compulsive, omnivorous

Pollei: How about being a wiki. It is similar to a “mi casa su casa” attitude. You don’t have to know somebody at the door to get in or have to bribe the bouncer. Simply share your information and thoughts and people will do the same. Collective thoughts and community. It is not about who owns the brand or channel but about problem solving.

READER BONUS! What question should I really be asking you? (and the answer of course)

Cuene: How are you making decisions about where to invest energy and time in social media?

• Where are you placing your long term bets? (not telling)
• Is Facebook the next AOL? (yes)
• Is the web page dead? (Not yet, but it’s dying)
• What comes after the webpage? (the feed)
• Is professional, quality content dead? (it’s not nearly as valuable as it used to be)

Thanks guys!

[Be sure to visit Jim's blog where he elaborates on his answers "Questions about Social Media/ Implications for Marketers".]

Meet Jim, Doug and the rest of the panel, Brad Smith, VP of eCommerce & Digital Marketing, Fingerhut Direct Marketing, Gary Koelling, Creative Director, Social Technology, Best Buy, Jason Kleckner, Manager, Information Architecture, Target Corporation, and Moderator: Michael Kraabel, Group Creative Director, Gage this evening at Solera.

Registration is currently only available at the event at 5:15. Space is limited so get there early. Presentations start at 6:00pm. More info on the MIMA site.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | MiNterview: Enterprise Social Media Interview with Jim Cuene and Douglas Pollei | 12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Web 2.0 Expo – Video Interview Brian Solis | One comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Web 2.0 Expo – Video Interview Dave McClure | One comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Photo Credit stuartliroff

Charlene Li is Vice President & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research covering social computing and technologies. She is undoubtedly one of the most often quoted analysts on all things dealing with social computing and commerce on the web. After reading a review copy of “Groundswell – Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” I’ve been referring every chance I get. Following is an interview with Charlene about the book and her insights into key questions for companies trying to demystify the social web.

With the book coming out May 1st, can you offer a little about what the concept of “groundswell” is all about? Please describe the Social Technographics Profile, its genesis and what goals do you intend to accomplish with the book?

“Groundswell” is the social trend that happens when people start connecting with each other via social technologies. The result: they start getting what they need from each other, rather than from companies. That’s incredibly disruptive to businesses who adhere to traditional ways of managing and marketing.

The goal of the book is to put in one place the frameworks, data, and case studies that can help companies not only deal with, but thrive in the groundswell. Here’s an example: One of the key problems companies have is that they don’t understand how people act in the groundswell. To that end, we created the Social Technographics Profile, which categorizes the way people participate into six areas, ranging from Inactive and Spectators to Critics and Creators. The profile helps companies understand HOW people are connecting with one another and the extent of their participation. You’ll want to craft a different social strategy if you have a target audience that has a higher proportion of Spectators than Creators.

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.

The ROI of an executive’s blog like GM’s Fastlane that you give in the book is pretty compelling. What are some of the most creative examples of large company blogging efforts that you’ve seen? Are there up and coming executive or CEO blogs that you can point out?

While GM’s blog features a top executive, that’s not always the best route to follow. Forrester’s own CEO, George Colony, has a blog and he has publicly discussed how hard it is to do this. That said, there are several company blogs that I find particularly good, and they are all unique to that company. The reason I like them so much is that they really suit what the company is trying to do.

• Nuts About Southwest. Many different people from around the company blog on the site, including customers. The CEO occasionally blogs as well. Blogsouthwest.com is the main blog, Gary Kelly’s posts are at http://www.blogsouthwest.com/author/gkelly

• This is written by Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. It’s a wonderful view into the world of medicine and health care.

• Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com. He often video blogs, in the way that only Bob Parsons can. Not exactly a style that most CEOs would want to emulate, but what I love about it is that it’s all Bob, all GoDaddy. www.bobparsons.com

• Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman PR. He’s been blogging since September 2004, week in and week out. He gives his opinions on everything from how PR is being impacted to his run-ins with media luminaries.

• Bill Marriott, CEO of Marriott. Bill shows that you don’t have to be a spring chicken to blog. He’ll write about his opinion on US immigration policy and also personal things like movies he’s seen.

• Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems. Jonathan is the poster child for CEO blogging — he’s been at it since June 2004. But more than just doing it himself, he’s spearheaded blogging and open communications up and down throughout the company. He’s leading by example, setting the tone for the whole company to follow in his footsteps.

Clever and nimble companies that have successfully leveraged the internet and marketing online have become formidable alternatives to larger, legacy competitors. It would seem that those companies that can best adapt to and engage social technologies like blogging, reviews, social networking and media will gain even more of an advantage. What advice do you have for companies with a “wait and see” perspective?

Don’t wait too long! Some companies think that they can wait until the technology is “proven” or when it becomes “safer” to engage. They want ample “proof” that these technologies work and that there is a proven ROI associated with these efforts. I think it’s a cop out, a way to dismiss these technologies as experimental and early, rather than taking a closer, deeper look to understand the power they bring.

Adapting these new technologies is really, really hard work, so any company that does have a “wait and see” attitude is going to behind the curve in another year or two. They don’t have to get involved in a big way, but make sure that there is are a few people who are at the least LISTENING to the groundswell of your customers and employees with these new technologies. You can’t go wrong by listening, even if you’re not actively engaging. Otherwise, you’ll miss the markers of when it’s the right time and place for you to jump in.

What are some of your favorite examples of companies who have embraced the groundswell either as part of an external communications/conversation strategy or for conducting research for internal purposes?

In the book, we do a thorough case study of Dell — this is the company that went from Dell Hell and flaming notebooks to being our poster child for embracing social technologies with their customers. Internally, I think that Avenue A/Razorfish is doing a good job, ranging from a CEO blog (internally focused) to the use of wikis and social networks to connect far-flung employees.

Social media mistakes and mishaps like the fake “Walmarting Across America” blog and Kryptonite Locks avoiding public dialog are tired. Do you have newer examples where companies really missed opportunities? Target ignoring bloggers comes to mind. What about companies that missed out and recovered like Dell has?

Mistakes and mishaps are a given in this space — we all constantly make mistakes in our relationships, and in most cases, we recover. Case in point with Dell and even Wal-mart is coming around. I give Wal-Mart a lot of props for continuing to engage the groundswell (remember The Hub?). Although they keep falling in their face, they know the importance of the groundswell and learn with every misstep. Their latest blog, checkoutblog.com, is doing very well. It’s written by Wal-Mart buyers — people who buy the gadgets, games, movies, and green products for the company. Not everyone agrees with the decisions made by the buyers, but the discussions are about the topics, not whether Wal-mart is doing a good job with the blogging.

At a recent PR conference where the average audience age was likely 40-ish, famous blogger Robert Scoble gave a keynote presentation which was enthusiastic in both it’s geekiness and gadget use. It was also overwhelming to the non-geek audience, with many feeling lost in a ever growing high tech world. Do you believe Baby Boomers will “be assimilated” by the groundswell or will their world not be so transformed?

While I love Robert, he’s an outlier by any measure! Baby Boomers are definitely a key part of the groundswell — our data shows that 39% of Older Boomers (ages 52-62) and 30% of Seniors (age 62+) are what we call “Spectators” in the groundswell, meaning that they do activities like read blogs, listen to podcasts, or watch user-generated video. There aren’t as many that are “Creators” (just 8% and 5% respectively) but I think that is going to change — slowly. They are less likely to have friends online, less likely to have content and services geared to them, and less likely to driven by a need to use these new technologies. But as social features get woven into mainstream Web sites, you’ll see Boomers participating in droves.

If you could be a social technology, which would you be?

RSS/XML. Nobody would know who I am or what my initials mean, but I make everything work together. I’d be the foundation of mashups, social applications, and widgets. Without me, the social Web would grind to a halt.

Thank you Charlene!

If you’re attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week, you can see Charlene present on, “Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business” on Wednesday morning.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Groundswell Interview with Charlene Li | 9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

At last year’s DMA07 Annual Conference, I had the good fortune of giving half of a workshop on social media with renowned author, speaker and new media marketing guru, Joseph Jaffe. Too many marketing pundits don’t “walk the talk” and I found this not to be the case with Jaffe. A brilliant marketer who dares to challenge established marketing groupthink and advocates experimentation, Jaffe brings a fresh perspective that has attracted blue chip clients like P&G, The Coca-Cola Company, American Airlines and Motorola. He has also written two excellent books: “Life After the 30 Second Spot” and “Join the Conversation“.

As part of CATFOA, Tim Brunelle from MCAD announced to the Twin Cities Interactive Community group on Facebook that Joseph Jaffe will be presenting Monday (4/14) at the Fine Line and I thought what better way to help promote that event than through an interview? While in Helsinki, Joseph fielded a list of questions ranging from how companies can define social media strategy, a tricky question on Second Life and why companies are so afraid of “letting go”.

Enjoy and be sure to make your way downtown Minneapolis Monday night at 6pm.

If you were a social networking site, which one would you be?

I love that question. If I were a social networking site, no question I would be NinBeOrkHiLinkFaceSpace. If I had to choose one, I’m definitely going to go with WebKinz, probably because I spend more time on it than any other site trying to earn my son KinzCash!

What have been some of your experiences with promoting “Join the Conversation” that were different than your first book, “Life After the 30 Second Spot”?

JTC has been much harder than LA30 for many reasons. I’m busier being the main reason. I’m blogging, podcasting, have a real job (kinda) with crayon, a new kid…I can go on, but it’s making my exhausted.

Also, there’s a LOT more clutter and competition out there. It seems that I started a trend when LA30 came out. Suddenly everyone wanted to be a book author. Also, it became so much easier to publish a book through self-publishing, publishing-on-demand, which is almost how I went with LA30 had I not landed a book deal with Wiley. All in all, I think it’s terrific that so much IP is out there. Rising tide….

Speaking of which, there’s also this little phenomenon called the Blogosphere, which gives away generous amounts of FREE and PREMIUM IP. It’s certainly made it harder for authors to break through. I have a pile of review books from the floor to the ceiling from authors. It’s one of the reasons why I turned the traditional review outreach on its head by creating UNM2PNM: Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing.

My approach with both books was to use the very approaches in the books (exclusively) to promote them and in so doing, turn the books into their own case studies.

In this particular case, I extended an offer of a FREE book to any bloggers (business, marketing) who explicitly agreed to review my book. With a communal flavor and explicit permission, I’ve created a branded review mechanism. Many have embraced it, by paying it forward and giving up THEIR review copy for anyone who agrees to review it…and so on.

Who are some of the companies doing well in “joining the conversation” and engaging effectively in social media?

I get asked this question ALL the time and my honest answer is that I don’t really know. I don’t really study companies progress with any consistent methodology/rigor and so I’m not sure it would be fair or accurate to single out ones doing an especially good or bad job, such as Dell or Sony respectively for example

It’s much easier to spot the ones taking their one foot out their mouths only to replace it with their other one. I’m sure many companies are doing a good job, however they’re not doing a good enough job communicating this…think of it as INFLUENCER OUTREACH ABOUT INFLUENCER OUTREACH

To be sure, it’s early days still. Companies are still learning to cope with digital and it’s explosive growth. I often say that we are today (with conversation) where the market was 5-7 years ago with digital. At the foot of the summit with a LONG way to go.

To date, my belief is that investment is sporadic and spend on conversation is one-off, ad-hoc and not very integrated. Interest is typically by one or two people (individuals, who are often more likely to be rogue than not) as opposed to a group, department or ultimately on a corporate level. I have an acronym of C.O.S.T. which stands for Cultural, Organizational, Strategic and Tactical. As an industry we’re at “Level-T” right now.

I will single out Dell though as a company that deserves honorable mention and praise in the space.

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.

And if you’re wondering whether 4 and 5 contradict each other, they don’t. This isn’t an OR; it’s an AND. I like to refer to this reconciliation as building a bridge to the future from both sides:

1. From the present forward (the experiments; the proof of concept)
2. From the future backwards (the prototypical 3-year plan; the vision etc)

What are some of the quantitative and qualitative metrics companies should consider with varying types of social media marketing efforts?

Metrics are a two-edged sword. As David Ogilvy once said, “we must use (research) not as drunk uses a lamppost, but rather as a guiding light.”

When it comes to experiments for example, I caution clients against short-term thinking. We need to be thinking about Return on Experimentation (ROE); not Return on Investment (ROI)

That said, I think there are several levels of efficacy and directional usefulness, from more traditional digital mechanisms like RFiD (Recency, Frequency, interactivity and Duration) to “Time Spent” as a whole; from conversational metrics like blogger pick-up, sentiment, authority and influence through mainstream media activation. I also wholeheartedly recommend custom metrics that are tailored to the program, the specific hypothesis being proven or refuted and of course the brand itself.

What’s your response to Fortune 100 Marketing VPs that show interest in Second Life because they think it’s “cool”?

Trick question right? There aren’t any Fortune 100 Marketing VP’s that think Second Life is cool, because they’re all reading and believing what they read in the mainstream media, trusting their traditional agencies counsel against Second Life and on the whole, preferring to follow as opposed to lead.

I once asked a room of marketers (50% of whom had cheered that Second Life was THE most overhyped approach in marketing today) which of them had spent more than 4 hours in Second Life AND piloted a program in this virtual world. Not one had.

To be honest, I’d love to chat with a Fortune 100 Marketing VP who *does* think Second Life is cool. It is, although it might now be a victim of its initial success. We’d then sit down and craft a deep, meaningful and sustainable program grounded in strategy, community, dialog and partnership.

From a personal standpoint, what’s you current favorite social media conversation tool – ie, shiny new object?

Twitter is definitely the shiny new object. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention my clients, ooVoo (www.oovoo.com) and Linkory (www.linkory.com)

Personally, I’m starting to experiment in video, so I’m fascinated with uStream (and ultimately, Blip, Qik, Seesmic, Viddler etc etc etc – haven’t got there yet!)

Write your own question. Really. What question should I really be asking you here and of course the answer would be nice too.

Q. Why are so companies so afraid of letting go (with respect to “control”)
A. That’s a great question; I’m glad I asked it. Companies are afraid of letting go, because they’re grounded in so much “baggage” and status quo; companies are dysfunctional, political and bureaucratic beasts. They’re not hard-wired to embrace change. They’re siloed and haven’t figured out yet how “just do it” when it comes to showing a human, authentic side (which is so badly needed)

There’s definitely an element of laziness when it comes to unlearning and relearning new processes, combined with the fear of the unknown.

This is just something that’s going to have to be learned the hard way. Controlled or gated access is a one-way ticket to obsolesce. Accessible and approachable companies (not completely, but somewhat) on the other hand will differentiate themselves based on their commitment to conversation, their communities AND to our little planet.

Outside of “Join the Conversation” and “Life After the 30 Second Spot” what are your favorite books on advertising, marketing or social media?

Honestly, I don’t get to read any business books much to my chagrin. Just no time! I am reading Alex Berenson’s The Ghost War after thoroughly enjoying The Faithful Spy.

I do however, like to talk about books as concepts (you should be able to “get” the entire concept of a book just by its title) and here I often talk about:

• Wisdom of Crowds
• The Tipping Point
• The Ultimate Question
• The World is Flat
• The Long Tail

…and I always must hat-tip Cluetrain as the book that started it all.

Thank you Joseph!

Be sure to make your way to the The Fine Line Music Cafe Monday night 4/14 (318 First Ave North in Minneapolis) 6:00 PM – 7:45 PM for Joseph’s presentation on “The Future of Advertising and Other Short Stories.” Admission is free and the first 250 people there will get a copy of his most recent book, “Join the Conversation” thanks to CML, IBS, Hello Viking and MIMA. The overall event on Monday is sponsored by MCAD, MIMA and MSP Communications.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Joseph Jaffe Interview | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Not too long ago I queried a number of online marketing and public relations peers ranging from Aaron Wall, Matt McGee and Neil Patel to Todd Defren, Triss Hussey and Peter Himler about sharing a few of their social media marketing tips. Out of that informal survey in combination with community specific solicitations came posts about marketing with MyBlogLog and Twitter.

However, there are many more social media communities and channels besides MBL and Twitter that I received tips on and from very reputable sources which you’ll find below. Enjoy!

Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications shared two of his own posts from a series on social media: Tips on using Twitter for finding and developing relationships and another post on using Del.icio.us for PR “edgework” or direct interactions with consumers.

Dan Perry from Cars.com offers a tip on using Flickr. “Since you have the ability to change your Screen Name, and it’s independent of your username OR your Flickr web addresses, use your domain [name]. For example, my Flickr Screen Name is danperry.com. When someone finds a picture of mine, they see my domain.”

Peter Himler, who runs Flatiron Communications and writes “The Flack” blog provides a few quick tips on Twitter: “Fun to follow thought-leaders and journalists who often tweet their forthcoming thoughts on the site” and LinkedIn: “Been on it for nealry two years. Still wish it had the functionality as FaceBook. Good for keeping tabs on former colleagues and college friends.”.

Bill Hartzer, who is my opinion one of the most talented SEO/Social Media marketers out there, offers a few insights on LinkedIn and Twitter as well:

LinkedIn: With LinkedIn, it’s important to put your email address in your profile name. That way you identify yourself as a “linked in open networker” and you’re open to having others add you to their network.

Twitter: Like a lot of other services, it’s important to add or follow other people first and then most likely they will reciprocate. Find your favorite Twitter profile and view who they’re following … and follow them. Follow people and they’ll (hopefully) follow you. Also, when editing your profile on Twitter, you can add more than one link in your profile. Turns out that http: link URLs are treated as links.

Aaron Wall famously writes SEOBook and is involved with many other business ventures and online marketing channels, offers tips on YouTube and Yahoo Answers:

If you have a well read blog and want to use YouTube make a number of videos all at once and then beg readers to subscribe to your channel. Also, make sure to syndicate the videos on your own site AND add background information to the videos there to keep your site as the destination rather than turning YouTube into the destination.

With Yahoo Answers make sure you partner with a few friends to ask and answer each other’s questions. Put enough context to what you do to make it look good, but use aggressive keyword rich titles, and point some external links at the pages you want to rank well.

Erica Forrette from Adapt SEM and who writes the Adapt SEM Blog offers her inside scoop into LinkedIn:

LinkedIn Questions & Answers can be useful in figuring out new angles to take in messaging or tactics that you can use for your product/service. Since my company has a product that’s relatively new to the market, we’re always trying different tactics for customer acquisition and/or exposure to our brand in general.

On a few occasions, I’ve wondered about whether or not I should do “tactic X” as a marketing effort, so I put a question out there on the LinkedIn Q&A to gauge opinion or get insights on what other people think of, or have learned from doing, “tactic X.” Peoples’ feedback and commentary has often been incredibly helpful on making the go/no-go decision. I’ve even asked questions that are related to product features we’re considering adding.

The LinkedIn Q&A is like quick and dirty informal market research! Granted, totally unscientific research but I usually respect peoples’ opinions and get good perspective from these Q&As. (p.s. watch out for those blatant shills who answer a question and shoehorn a plug for their own product or service into their response. Blech!)

Matt McGee from Marchex and writer of the Small Business SEM Blog plus the originator of the SEMMYs (vote for OMB!), gives us the goods on Flickr and Yahoo Answers:

Join active groups (activity is more important than size) and share your quality photos with the group. Comment on other people’s photos and join discussions. Tag your photos wisely; I’ve seen Flickr photos rank for phrases that only appeared in the tags. Link from your blog or web site to your Flickr photos to spread some link juice over there.

Don’t waste time trying to navigate to all the categories and sub-categories that interest you; sign up for RSS feeds, instead. Yahoo Answers offers RSS feeds for every category and sub-category on the site, and for any search you do on the site, too. Sign your name and URL on all answers you provide; spammers only leave a URL, so you stand out more with your name included.

Debra Mastaler, aka “Link Diva” or “The Link Spiel” sheds some light on Technorati:

If you’re looking for a list of highly relevant and authorative blogs to approach/use for link building, set the search options to “a lot of authority” and search on your keyword. Add the RSS feed from the results page to your reader to monitor each time new results show. Look for additional tags (keyword phrases) by clicking the Technorati logo on the results page and start the process over again.

Tris Hussey who is now with b5media and is a long time blogger at “A View From the Aisle” offers up tips on Twitter and StumbleUpon:

Twitter – Twitter is a great way to announced time-sensitive events like radio shows, etc. Combine with Twitterbar for Firefox and you can post right from your address bar.

StumbleUpon – SU is one of the best sustained traffic generators I’ve found. Make sure you Stumble your friends’ and your posts to add them into the mix of SU users. Great compliment to Digg!

Neil Patel from Advantage Consulting Services and who writes the QuickSprout blog, gives us the lowdown on Facebook:

If you want to be successful on Facebook you either need a viral application and/or you will have to spend thousands on advertising. An easy way to think of a viral application is what features does Facebook lack or how can you improve on their current set of features. If you want to go the advertising route, you can pay companies like RockYou 50 cents for every installation they drive.

Steven Bradley aka “vangoh” from YellowHouseHosting and The Van Blog offers general social media marketing tips for just about any platform or channel as well as specifics for Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon:

General Social Media Marketing Tips:
With all social media sites I think it’s important to spend some time getting to know the community and learning the unwritten laws of the land. It’s also always in your best interest to see a social media site as something you contribute to and not something you take from. The more valuable you are to the community the more you’ll get back from the community. It’s also important to pick and choose the sites you participate in based on your interests and their connection with your site. You don’t need to join every site. Choose the communities you most enjoy and the ones most aligned with your site.

Del.icio.us:
One feature of del.icio.us I’ve only begun to experiment with is the ’subscriptions’ feature. You might use it to set a subscription on your name or site name. Not everyone will use your name or the name of your site as a tag, but some might and it can be a way to keep track of who is bookmarking your content.

A better use is to track a topic you’re interested in, much the same way you would use Google Alerts.You can set up subscriptions around a keyword theme and see what is getting bookmarked. You can use those bookmarks as research for something you want to write or as a way to better understand what specific content on the topic is getting bookmarked and adjust your own content to make it more bookmarkable.

StumbleUpon:
One area of StumbleUpon that I don’t think gets used to its potential are the Groups. You can join groups on subjects that interest you and ask and answer questions as you would on any forum. Most of the groups I’ve joined don’t seem to be particularly active, which is why I think they aren’t being used to their potential. Of course I might have simply joined some inactive groups.

Involving yourself in the question and answer should allow you to build relationships with other stumblers and allow you to build your network.

These are some great recommendations from tried and true marketers, public relations and blogging professionals. What “Social Media Smarts” can you share?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Social Media Marketing Tips | 23 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com