What Marketers Can Learn from Singer Leann Rimes

This post originally appeared on Social Media Marketing Magazine on 11/1/2010.

I have always been a music enthusiast, but I’ve never been that interested in country music. And while I’m not ready to race out and fill my iTunes account with the likes of Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks, I recently purchased a few songs by the lovely and talented Leann Rimes. Why the sudden change of heart? If you must know, it was because of a single tweet. Well, it was actually two tweets… and the fact that during a show I saw at the ANA’s Masters of Marketing event, she was authentic and genuinely made an attempt to connect with the crowd of 1,500 senior marketers.

As someone that embraced Twitter back in 2007, I regularly use it to learn, engage, and build relationships. To that end, I often make a point of acknowledging people, companies, and organizations when I feel like they are doing a good job. This may or may not mean anything to them, but it’s my style, and so far, it’s borne a lot of goodwill and business value for me.

Getting back to Leann Rimes and her performance at the ANA conference last week: as she was wrapping up her set, I took the time to look her up on Twitter and send her a thank you tweet. Imagine my surprise when she actually tweeted me back (twice)!

The reason I’m sharing this experience is not to show off—although who doesn’t love having a successful female country singer tweet them back—but rather to point out a lesson that big brands could learn from this experience. For starters, it doesn’t hurt to follow Ms. Rimes’ lead and ensure that your brand is perceived as credible and authentic. That was the thing about Leann that got me to tweet her in the first place. But more importantly, the fact that someone as busy as she must be took the time to tweet back to a potential fan was huge.

Did she do it because she knew that I was on the fence about liking her? I don’t think so. Looking back in her tweet stream, it appears she does that with a lot of people. It’s just who she is. What I can guarantee is that while she is a very talented singer, one of the main reasons she has become so successful is because she engages her “customers.”

Now would I have been as excited if a brand like Lexus or Starbucks tweeted me back? Probably not. But I do appreciate it when a brand takes the time to acknowledge me, and it has made me more likely to stick with that brand. For example, in the case of WiFi provider Boingo, I’ve actually become one of its biggest fans, primarily because Boingo regularly engages me in conversation on Twitter. Now Boingo only earns $120 per year from me, but I tell everyone I know about Boingo, have mentioned it in blog posts, and have even gone so far as to be interviewed in an article about Boingo and the “network effect of super fans” on the FASTforward blog.

So is your company engaging its customers? It doesn’t take a lot to get started—just a good listening tool and an internal and/or external resource that can help reach out to customers (or prospective customers) who are mentioning you. You’ll be surprised how far a tweet, a blog comment, or even a Facebook “like” will go in turning people’s heads.

Samsung Encourages You to Join the Conversation

Apologies to my colleague, Joseph Jaffe, for borrowing the title of his second book, Join the Conversation [LINK], but in this instance, I just couldn't resist. The "conversation" I'm referring to is one that consumer electronics giant, Samsung, is their asking their customers to "join" at the bottom of their home page.

At first blush, you might laugh and remind me that many brands these days are asking their customers to "join THEIR conversation" on Facebook, Twitter and the like. However, not so fast. In Samsung's case, they are taking a clever and unorthodox approach to engaging with their customers. Let's call it "reverse influencer outreach" where instead of asking bloggers like myself to reach Samsung's customers (and prospective customers) via my Twitter, Facebook, blogs and podcasts, they instead are asking their customers to reach out to folks like me, Brian Solis, Mario Sundar and others. And instead of talking about Samsung's products, we're talking about the lifestyles that wrap around those products. Or in my case, more conversational topics like, "If you could write a best-selling book, what would it be about?"

Wait a second? Why would a Fortune500 company like Samsung who enjoys millions of visits a day to its website waste valuable real estate on frivolous conversation? Rather than speculate about why, I asked Samsung's Social Media Manager, Esteban Contreras (the person that invited me to participate in this program) a couple of questions about the program. Here are his verbatim responses:


[Aaron] What was the impetus for your innovative approach?

[Esteban] Samsung's strategy going into this exciting project was focused on creating an online environment that further engages with our consumers. We wanted to develop a customer-centric and socially relevant site that enhanced the overall brand experience.

Our new site provides opportunities for people to engage with us and with each other. From social elements on the homepage and “like” buttons on product pages, to consumer comments, reviews and Q and As.

[Aaron] Some people might say this is a waste of valuable space on Samsung US's home page (I think it's brilliant). What would you say to those detractors?

[Esteban] We are living in a world where consumers expect and deserve more. Being customer-centric means offering an authentic and human experience. That’s why you see photos of real people on our site and an easier experience to find some of our employees and official accounts on Twitter. It’s also why we’ve provided an area for our visitors to engage not only with us, but also with others that have similar interests.

The web has become a social web and all we’ve done is bring a small part of it unto our site. We believe that giving some of our valuable digital space to our customers is important because they are the number one reason why we love doing what we do. Our customers mean everything to us.


While the "join the conversation" program is too new to measure impact, I can tell you anecdotally that I've received a couple of dozen responses (and anticipate receiving hundreds more). More importantly, I can't help but think that Samsung's customers will appreciate the fact that a big brand is taking a few minutes out of the day to get to know it's customers better (all of the inquiries come through as hash-tagged tweets with #samsung in the "@" replies I receive so Samsung can measure the traffic). Even smarter, Samsung is outsourcing the responses to subject matter experts versus tackling them all themselves -- okay, I may not be a SME in book writing but I have supported the marketing/social campaigns around three colleagues' books to date (We Are Smarter than Me, Flip the Funnel and now microMarketing).

What do you think of Samsungs' approach? Is it worth the real estate they are using on their home page? Should Samsung themselves be getting more involved in the conversation? Or are they just being a good host, handing conversations off to the "experts" and then keeping an eye on what transpires?

A Tale of Two CMO's: A Study in Contrasts

As someone that's spent the last 16 years of his life doing some form of advertising or marketing, I've been thinking a lot about what an exciting, yet anxious time this must be for most chief marketing officers (CMOs). To that end, there are still a number of CMOs and marketers that have chosen to ignore or hide from recent trends like social media and its ability to help brands -- big and small -- retain, engage and ultimately grow their current customer base.

While there is nothing to say that the strategies and tools that marketers have used for decades can't still be effective, there are also a number of new tools that could greatly benefit their efforts. To help illustrate this point, I've decided to create a five part blog series titled, A Tale of Two CMO's. The series will juxtapose the approaches of two marketing leaders with different backgrounds and viewpoints by asking them to answer questions -- some that I will ask, others that I hope the readers of this blog will contribute. Each post will focus on a different marketing goal such as:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

post script: I've updated items 2-4 based on my colleague, Joe Jaffe's, AIDA version of the marketing funnel in his new book, Flip the Funnel.

To help bring the series to life, I've fleshed out the personas for Mr. "old school" CMO and Ms. "I'm okay with change" CMO. My goal is to post a new installment every week for the next five weeks -- in a perfect world, this will be every Wednesday morning -- but please know that I live in a far from perfect world.

Meet Our Two CMOs

Who: James Hossenpfeifer, CMO of a large consumer package goods company

Age: 61
Education: BA from Notre Dame, MBA from University of Michigan

Likes: Single malt scotch, World War II movies, Frank Sinatra and weekends at the country house

Favorite publications: The Financial Times, AdAge, Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal

Tools of choice: Direct mail, inserts, primetime television ads, print ads, the occasional outdoor ad to mix things up and recently, takeover ads on some of the larger networks like Yahoo.

Experience: During his first 12 years, James worked as an account exec on Madison Avenue for two well-known ad agencies. Feeling stuck in his career, he took two years off for B-school and then jumped to the client side at age 36. Since then, he's held senior level marketing positions at three Fortune500 companies, the latest being the title of chief marketing officer at his current company (current tenure, 14 years).

Following 10,000, Filtering and the Value of Large Numbers

As a person that appreciates symmetry and patterns in nature, I was intrigued this morning when I saw that I was following exactly 10,000 people on Twitter. Even better, I am only 8 followers away from 11,111 which in some ways, is an even more perfect number (no official reason, I just like the symmetry better). I don't normally mention following numbers in public as it's a turn off but I couldn't resist if for no other reason than the fact the reason I mentioned in the first sentence.

I wasn't really expecting any responses other than maybe a snarky "who cares" or "I just unfollowed you so now you have 9,999." Instead, I got some thoughtful replies from folks like Adam Zand, Chris Selland, Dan Blank, Alex Howard and Hadley Stern.

The gist of the comments/questions (as you can see from the answers above) was, "how do you follow so many people?" and "do you really see value in following so many?" My immediate answer was:

• Out of the 10,000 people I follow, only about 500 or so of that group do most of that tweeting. Of that group, I pay close attention to about 200-300 (a relatively manageable number) using Tweetdeck
• To Chris' point, I may not "really be following" all 10,000 of the people I have connected with on Twitter, but I believe that my willingness to follow back gives these folks a feeling of connection and makes them feel like they can DM me or @ me when they like (I try and respond to all personal @'s and DMs). In fairness, I also have an "all friends" column in Tweetdeck and at least a few times a day, keep an eye on this open stream for new folks to add to my inner circle of people to follow.
• Adding a third item to this that I tweeted after the fact, the serendipity that I've enjoyed as a result of engaging with such a broad audience has led to some amazing things like new business, podcast interviews and even the opportunity to write the foreword to Janet Fouts latest book.

While I realize that my strategy doesn't work for everyone (just like I'm finding out that my blog-reading strategy varies wildly from person to person), it seems to be working for me. I'm not sure what happens when this number grows to 15,000 or 20,000, right now, I'm going to keep adjusting my filters and enjoying the benefits of lots of social "friends" to give and receive valuable information on research, restaurants and rollodex access).

What is your Twitter follow strategy?

Need Your Advice on Upcoming Webinars

One of my responsbilities as the CMO of Powered is to work with the marketing and sales team to come up with a list of informative and engaging webinars for 2009. Given the fact that I like participating (and sometimes attending) webinars, I'm particularly interested in getting our roster right.

This is where you come in. Can you let me which five most resonate with you? Or if you think they all suck? Or if there are glaring holes? Either way, please add your thoughts in the comments section below. Your help is invaluable to me/us in this process. And if you're willing to help me out, I'm always happy to return the favor (maybe by inviting you to be a guest on one of our webinars)!

Here goes:

• Content & Conversations: Engaging Your Customers Online - this is an almost real webinar that will involve Forrester Analyst, Jeremiah Owyang and Chief Content Officer at Marketing Profs, Ann Handley. The tentative date is December 16th at 2:00 PM ET. Details/registration link to follow.
• Building a Business Case for Social Marketing
• Content your Customers Care About
• Crossing the Chasm of Consumer Consideration (like the aliteration?)
• Tapping the Power of Social in a Regulated Environement (hello financial services & pharma)
• Social Marketing: This ROI Sounds Too Good to Be True!
• Moving Beyond Pageviews: Measuring Real Customer Engagement
• Social Marketing: 5 Pitfalls to Avoid
• 2008 Social Marketing ROI Report (this one's happening whether you like it or not so get over it!)
• Social Marketing: What's in it for Me? What's in it for my Customers?
• Integrating Social Into your Traditional Marketing Mix
• Got Content? If You Do, Is it Driving the Results?
• 10 Ways to Insure Your Social Marketing Plan Succeeds
• Top 5 Reasons Your Company Can't Ignore Social Marketing
• Increasing Customer Retention During a Down Market
• Social Marketing Explained: The Bottom Line on Your Bottom Line
• A Brand's "Place" in the World of Social
• Benefits of "Managed" vs. "Un-managed" Online Community Solutions

There you have it. Let's hear which ones resonate with you and which don't!

LinkedIn Goes Facebook

Got this e-mail from LinkedIn today (see below). I've know this was coming for a while but it was nice to see that LinkedIn is realizing that social networking and is ultimately about engagement. While LinkedIn was good for a while at serving as place to connect online and create an online resume, it was not a good place to really engage with one another. Now they are taking a page out of Facebook's playbook and adding some "social" features.

Today we're announcing many more ways to interact with your network on LinkedIn. Whether it's a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights, the new LinkedIn Applications deliver.

Click here and you'll be able to add applications that enable you to:
Work collaboratively with your network.

• Box on LinkedIn: Share files and collaborate with your network.
  
• Huddle on LinkedIn: Private workspaces to collaborate with your network on projects.
  

Share information and keep up to date with your network.

• Amazon on LinkedIn: Discover what your network is reading.
  
• TripIt on LinkedIn: See where your network is traveling.
  
• SixApart on LinkedIn: Stay up to date with your network's latest blog posts.
  

Present yourself and your work in new ways.

• Google Docs on LinkedIn: Embed a presentation on your profile.
  
• SlideShare on LinkedIn: Share, view and comment on presentations from your network.
  
• WordPress on LinkedIn: Promote your blog and latest posts.
  

Gain key insights that will make you more effective.

• Company Buzz by LinkedIn: See what people are saying about your company.
  

If you want to check out these features, here's the link.