Archive for March, 2010

What Location Based Social Means to Businesses

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Location, Location, Location the 3 key words that any business uses in selecting their real estate customers?

Location based social media tools are beginning to gain traction with early adopters.  Although they have been around for 4 years or so, it is just recently that there are enough smart mobile devices in the hands of consumers to gain some sense of critical mass.  In today’s economy, businesses are looking for anything that will help bring in more customers and location based solutions just might be an answer.

For those not as familiar, there are many types of location based solutions available.  Here is a sampling of what’s out there:

Find places around you: Where, Yelp, Loopt

Check in and earn status: Gowalla, Foursquare

Track Friends: Glympse, Ipoki

Find a new “friend”: MeetMoi, MeetNowLive, Grindr (for gay men)

These services work in a number of ways.  The newer phones like iPhone3G and the Android based devices have geo-location capabilities built in.  Other devices use cell tower triangulation like the original iPhone and some Nokia devices and some take advantage of location services across wi-fi connections.  With one of these devices, you can add your location to any tweet, status update or restaurant review or simply leave it turned “on” to allow anyone or only certain people to track your where abouts at any time.

Notably missing are the big boys you say? They are all either launching or have recently launched their own location based solutions as well:  Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter.  Facebook and Google are specifically using geo-tagging and location based services to capture more lucrative ad dollars from the small business markets.  Seems straight-forward for SMBs, instead of buying impressions or ad-words on local community sites, you would pay to show ads to people within 2 blocks of your store or even pay for actual visitors to your store.

Certainly, consumers seem to be taking the lead in adoption but how can businesses take advantage of attracting these early adopters to their stores, restaurants, clubs and bars?  That’s Jay Baer’s job to help us all figure it out!  This week Jay will be moderating the 53rd weekly chat for #socialmedia.  The details are as follows:

Topic:  What location based social means to businesses

Q1)  How will “check-ins” and geo-tagged content change the believability factor of ratings and reviews?

Q2)  What impact will widespread, instant, on the spot reviews and tips have on customer experience?

Q3)  Recommend best practices for businesses with a physical presence to capitalize on “check-in” behavior.

The chat will take place, as usual, on Tuesday 3/30 at 12 noon EST.  This week you can follow along by following #sm53 from any Twitter based client or simply follow our LIVE page.

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Characteristics of Highly Influencial Brands in Social Media

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

When you go out at night with friends, how do you decide who you go out with?  Sometimes you might like to hang out with the funny one, the quiet one or the friendly one, but whoever it is, there is some amount of trust and shared interest.  Whether in person or online, you have a choice of where to go and who you want to hang out with.  Understanding this simple perspective is easier said than done for companies who are jumping into the digital social space.

As the world has gone “social”, so too have companies.  In the past, a brand or company did not need a personality to be loved by entire generations only a good marketing department.  One of the biggest challenges with social media that companies have is transitioning their personalities from a prepared marketing push to an ad-hoc, two-way communication.  Some companies and brands are diving in and taking on the challenge of morphing their digital personality and some are not.  For those who are taking the leap, some are showing better results than others. 

Consider the results of a global corporation like Coca-Cola so loved on Facebook (with over 5 million friends and wall comments that PR firms can be proud of) while another global consumer goods company, Nestle, is having a bit of a time on Facebook to say the least.  The issue with Nestle in particular is very telling in many ways.  A small recap for the purposes of this post: Greanpeace puts up a video on YouTube mocking the Kit-Kat candy bar.  Many users took the mocked-up wrapper and used it on Facebook as their avatar to post messages.  A Nestle rep responded to not use altered versions of their logos or risk being deleted.  The rest….is, well, making history as we speak.  Grass-roots efforts build up and blow over for every company, look at Nike.  Remember in 1996 when the campaign against their use of sweatshops to produce their shoes was all the rage?  Guess what, it still is look here.  Back in 1996 Nike was forced to reconcile with the way their products were produced.  Their actions made enough people happier and for most it’s done and gone while for a few, they think Nike could still do more.  It’s not the grass-roots movement that set this tyrant off on Nestle, it was the tone and manner in which Nestle responded that set this off.  By the way, take a look at Nike’s Facebook page  now (1 of them), they have learned and in my opinion are using Facebook in a way that Nestle and every other conglomerate global brand should, by focusing on the experience of each Brand and not on a wide-open corporate catch-all experience (that’s probably a different topic though).

So what makes companies more likable than others in the digital or social media space?

This seems to be the million dollar question (or multi-billion in some cases).   How can companies convince consumers to be digital “friends” and hang-out on social media sites without causing virtual riots?  For this topic, Marc Meyer and I went to the top of the virtual food chain to get a moderator who could guide us through this subject and come out of it with helpful tidbits that any company can use.  Tamar Weinberg is a veteran of community management and released a book last summer on The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web that continues to do very well.  Her hands on experience with Mashable’s community along with dozens of other clients puts Tamar in a league of her own.  This week she will moderate 3 questions on the following topic:

Topic: Characteristics of Highly Influencial Brands in Social Media

Q1: Is there advantage to having Brand or a person be your SM “face”?
Q2: How do you choose to follow Brands on Twitter, Facebook, blog, et al?
Q3: Build a checklist for Brands on how to behave in SM for best results.

Join us Tuesday March 23 at noon EST for a 1 hour interactive chat.  Participate by following #sm52 on Twitter or simply go to our LIVE page to get to all the action.

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The Importance of a Content and Engagement Strategy in Social Media

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

We understand that having a blog or forum alone is not being social, it’s simply a tool set.  If you are a little overzealous and implement the tools first, you quickly understand that it is going to take more…a lot more than just tools to live up to the expectations that everyone has around social media.  So you sit in the middle of your corporate blog or new customer service forum and wonder what’s next.  Try a content and / or engagement strategy.

Without engagement there is no social and without content there is no engagement.  From this, it becomes apparent that developing a strategy around content and engagement can be very useful.  So where to start?

Content without engagement is a traditional approach to marketing like television or radio.  The content goes one way or is “pushed” at the audience.  While we could take an editorial approach to content development, let’s look at it a bit differently.  Whether you produce the content, your agency produces it, whether your content is available on external sites or your own sites, there is still a premise that I come back to.  Consumers buy products because they believe in the product, they relate to it, the product description fulfills a need or some other reason that stems from the fact that something about the content was relevant enough to make me purchase whether its ingredients, description, a jingle, ad copy, whatever, there was some form of trust around that content.  This is the key, your content has to instill trust with your participants.

With all the aggregation tools out there, it is easy to take the lazy way out of creating content for your corporate social initiatives.  Like a Twitter account that only re-tweets or a blog run on yahoo pipes, that content can be found anywhere so there is no reason to trust your company as a resource for content.  Like your content, your company becomes irrelevant quickly too.  Create content that sets your company apart, create a perspective that participants can have passion with and always do it under the premise that no matter what the content, your participants have to be able to trust it.  The first time they find a hole or blatant lie in your content, you will lose that trust for a very long time.

On the other hand, engagement without content feels empty and does not last long.  Like any guy at a bar without a good pick-up line, he can smile, approach and may smell good but after standing there for a while, you’re going to have to get past the “Hi, I’m Joe/Jeff/Bob/Mike, what’s your name?”.  There are many reasons for engagement and while most strategists will focus on what your company has to do to get ready to be engaging, don’t forget to think about why anyone would want to participate with your company.  A good, initial litmus test is whether you can answer the “So What?” question.  You arm the interns with conversational research data, you’ve been listening for months, you have tons of ideas for content and the executives are behind it.  If you are selling toilet paper, my response is “so what?”, why would a consumer care to participate around the product?  In this case, create a passion much like General Mills did with their Box Tops campaign to raise money for k-8 schools.

Does engagement or content come first?  If I create content and no one is listening, is it worth my time?  On the other side, if your customers are passionate around your Brand and want to participate, you better get some content so they have a reason to come back.  I’m not sure there is a right answer for everyone.  The right answer depends on every company’s unique situation, resources, time, talent and ability to execute.  Our moderator this week knows a lot about these answers and we are excited to have John Cass leading the way.  John has literally written the book on corporate blogging and has a wealth of experience to share with us.  The topic this week will be:

Topic: The Importance of a Content and Engagement Strategy in Social Media

Q1: What’s first, content marketing and/or engagement marketing as the lead strategy?

Q2: How should you handle disclosure of content origination whether employees or agency?

Q3: Charlene Li’s engagement 2009 report staked out most engaged brands, what’s key to implement a successful SM engagement strategy?

Please join us on Tuesday March 16 at noon EST to share your point of view.  Follow along on #sm51 or from our LIVE page.

Image: www.cartoonstock.com

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Customer Service’s Role in Social Media

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Budgets for social media are steadily increasing and all the analyst predictions say that 2010 will be the year of social media marketing.  It doesn’t take Confucious to know that marketing and social media are a cost effective alternative to traditional marketing.  What’s notable is the move to incorporate customer service as part of this plan.  Traditionally, marketing and service are very different parts of a company.  So different that marketing and communications are primarily inside-out focused (messagin starts inside and gets pushed out) where Service almost always carries an outside-in (customers call in to interact) perspective.  You can see some of the consolidation happening on the tools side (recently Exact Target aquired Cotweet) which often leads to consolidation within companies.  Beyond the social tools, communications vendors are getting into the action as well with Unified Communications platforms that manage phone, email, video, social, etc.

If social customer service is consolidating with marketing efforts then who owns customer service now and is customer service gaining importance at the executive level?  These are important questions especially as Comcast’s CEO, Brian Roberts announces that Twitter is changing the culture there.  This statement makes us think about the possibility of customer service with a much different influence within corporations.

Think about the process of setting up social media at any company (listen first, then engage…).  Just break down listening into it’s parts like monitoring for prospects, existing customers, brand mentions, competitors and detractors.  This includes duties normally performed by marcom, service, sales and public relations, yet one tool can be used.  So who takes charge, who’s accountable for “listening” at a company, let alone responding/engaging?

Next, at a time when companies are reducing headcount, can service departments possibly respond to the dozens of new social channels in addition to traditional phone calls, emails and sometimes chat?  In order to fully understand the breadth of what affects social might have within an enterprise, we must understand if social actually adds to overall inquiries or if an increase in social inquiries decreases traditional inquiries.  As companies discuss scale and social, they need to include people, hardware and software considerations to evaluate the true impact to the business.

Finally, companies have been dipping their toes in the social media waters for the past 2-3 years.  When Mr. Roberts talks about how social efforts have a significant impact on a large company’s culture, you have to start thinking about your social efforts with a bit more foresight and structure than short-term, dis-continuous campaigns.  To prepare a company for such an initiative, they need to consider long term strategies, systems integrations, employee buy-in….or do you?  What are the entry points that a company needs to prepare for to begin to shift to a culturally infused environment?

How can we possibly work through this topic in only one hour you might ask?  Luck for us we have “Famous Frank” or Frank Eliason from Comcast this week to moderate this topic.Frank has lead Comcast’s social efforts with a focus on service through Twitter that has made him world famous.  Frank brings first hand experiences and answers to all our questions and more.  Usually you would have to have a very serious problem with your Comcast service to be able to spend an hour with Frank.  Today, we will have the opportunity to learn and share our collective experiences in managing a socially enabled customer service department.  The topic this week is as follows:

Topic: Customer Service’s Role in Social Media

Q1: Is Social Media converging the roles of Service, Marketing and PR, if so who owns it?

Q2: How do you scale customer service in social media?

Q3: How do companies prepare for social customer service?

Join us at 12 noon EST on Tuesday March 9, 2010 for one hour.  The first question will come out at noon and then at 12:20 and 12:40.  To participate or simply follow along, tune into #sm50 on Twitter or just go to our LIVE page for a richer experience.

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The Next Big Thing is So Last Year

Monday, March 1st, 2010

How do you differentiate your offering while improving service for existing customers and still keep your “cool” factor in your industry?  Business is still tough, new competition comes from every corner and buyers are still hesitant.  That makes for interesting decisions coming from marketers, product development teams, customer service and other outward facing departments inside of companies.

Ask these questions and you will get answers that come from every end of the spectrum.  Almost unanimously though the answers will be connected somehow to social media.  If you are outside the social media bubble, then you talk about social in it’s entirety as a the “shiny new toy”.  For those inside the social media bubble, you refer to all of the tools, gadgets, new platforms as the “next big thing.”  Depending on your perspective, both of those views are correct and both views can help companies solve real business challenges across many of their departments.

But what does the shiny new toy refer to exactly?  Assuming the shiny new toy syndrome in this case refers to the use of social media and any new gadgets associated with it, then we might be simply talking about innovation through the use of social.  Innovation coming from new processes, procedures, ways of connecting and engaging everyone from the inside out.  So I guess the whole shiny new toy discussion is a bit subjective.  To newbies into social, the whole experience will be new and, to them, pretty innovative.  To veterans of social media it will take a lot more to get them excited than simply dipping their toe in the water.

The other discussion has to look at the opposite of innovation (a new way of doing something) or even perceived innovation.  If you are not innovating then maybe you are content to do the same action over and over possibly expecting a different outcome (don’t they call this insanity?). Well let’s not go that far, but there is some wisdom in taking what you already know, with what you already have and simply doing it better.  In the corporate world we call this execution.  Take for instance, bottled water.  To me, the consumer, water is water is water.  How do I make my decision on what to buy then when I am thirsty.  If I have choices, I will usually buy Dasani.  Why? It doesn’t taste any better nor is the design of the bottle all that great.  I just know it’s a Coke brand and I happen to trust Coke products.  So whatever the messaging or interactions, Coke has executed better IMHO than pepsi or any of the other competitors.  This is not innovative, just better executed over time.

So how does your company start growing again or meeting it’s targets?  If you always chase the “shiny new object” (which as we learned above is very subjective) then you have little time with your limited resources to execute, to over deliver on expectations.  The other option then is to stop chasing the latest new toy, gadget or platform and get back to old fashioned blocking and tackling.  After a while, blocking and tackling will get stale though.  Maybe there is a happy medium?  Time to bring in the proper expertise.  This week’s moderator is Greg Verdino from the full service social media agency Powered, Inc.  Greg’s long tenure in this industry and reputation as a trusted senior strategist will help us make sense out of setting corporate priorities and balancing the next big thing with proven blocking and tackling methods.

Join us Tuesday 3/2/10 at 12 noon EST for the conversation by following the #sm49 on Twitter or by viewing our LIVE page (which has been recently enhanced).  the topic:

Topic: The Next Big Thing is So Last Year

Q1) Why are marketers so obsessed with the next big thing even though so many turn out to be next big busts?

Q2) How do you balance the benefits of strategic innovation with the risks of constantly chasing shiny objects?

Q3) What’s the one social media “old thing” most marketers still get wrong?

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