Social Media is Better for Experiential Products

Paul Mabray is the chief strategy officer for the wine industry digital think tank, Vintank. Paul is a 17 year veteran in the wine industry and is a regular speaker and blogger.

The race is on.  Everyone is endeavoring to decipher the Rosetta Stone that is Social Media.  Unfortunately, by definition the medium is multi-dimensional and the real applications of social media range from customer support & communication, content distribution, sales, marketing, PR, business intelligence and well beyond.  With all these facets to consider, is it any wonder that there is no silver bullet?

However, a certain segment of industries are positioned to be better served by this medium.  Experiential products clearly stand to benefit more from social media.

Why?  Because social media is fundamentally a channel for sharing and it is inherently human nature to share our experiences.  How many people really enjoy talking about soap? Pencils?  Dishwashers?  Of course, there is dialogue about these types of  products (most of them relate to the buying experience or the quality, or lack thereof,  about the product)  Yes, it is possible to create campaigns to artificially stimulate dialogue about a brand or product.  However, the interaction that occur as a result of natural engagement are more relevant, meaningful, and enduring.  In essence, industries that offer meaningful experiences like wine, food, restaurants, travel, software, and entertainment are natural conduits for conversations that occur on the web.  People enjoy sharing their personal stories and experiences related to these products.  They are vocal and they are prolific. For example, the wine industry and the specialized site Cellartracker.com.  With 140K users this single site has generated 1.8 million conversations about wine.  In fact, in 2010 social media sites generated over 13 million conversations about wine by 3 million online profiles.  KAPOW!

A recent article citing research from IBM suggests that SM consumers do not want intimate relationships with Brands.  This report states that they are primarily looking for tangible benefits from a relationship (discounts, commerce) and they rank “feeling connected” and “part of the community” far lower.  This is not unexpected for traditional retail and non- experiential products.  Do we really want to feel part of the Best Buy community?  Is it important for us to feel part of the Amazon tribe?  How deeply do we really want to be related to Skittles?

Experiential products allow us to feel emotionally attached and we DO want to be “connected” to these brands--- and as a result we are more passionate and vocal about them.  Whether it is a restaurant that has created a memorable experience, a wine that we love, a rock band, a movie, video game, or even a software platform (that’s why companies have dedicated UEX departments) we DO crave more of a relationship with those products.  Equally as important, there is always a very active “prosumer” base that evangelizes and helps spread the message to more and more potential consumers.  These voices are the true influencers in the ecosphere that prostelyze for the brand allowing these brands to be “discovered” via social media through sharing, commenting in forums, “Liking”, and retweeting.  They are also prolific about creating content and messages to help influence potential new customers buying decisions. 

Need proof ? Just look at a company that transcends product and focuses on experience:  Apple.  How many blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts do you see about their products?  

Want other examples? 

Check out the volume of comments and user generated content for the game BioShock

Or the  number of Tweets about Lady GaGa.

Or the activity on the Fan Page of the TV show The Walking Dead.

Or real experiences being shared on the Fan Page of Morton’s Steak House.

What is most relevant is the natural phenomenon that inspires people to want to authentically share stories about brands and products. There is no need for clever marketing campaigns, to create gimmicks to get your consumers to engage in your community, and no need to create contests to stimulate conversations.

Why is this important?  The major transcendence of social media is how, who and where we get our information.  My good friend Doug Cook (founder of Ablegrape.com and former director of search for Twitter) has an amazing saying, "search is the fiber that connects the web." He is absolutely correct.  There is nothing you can't find on the web if you know what you are looking for.  Whether it is the most obscure book or replacement part for your 1972 dishwasher, search engines can help you find anything. What search cannot help you do is discover.  That is the role of Social Media.  Seeing authentic (not artificially induced) comments (positive or negative) about brands from people we trust encourages us to explore.  With non-experiential products, brands are almost forced to create gimmicks, marketing campaigns, or contests to stimulate conversation or engagement.  With experiential products, this occurs naturally, without artificial stimulation, and authentically from within our own out networks.  Social media is the human fiber for sharing and discovery. 

The question is, no matter what kind of product you have, are you making it experiential? 

What About The Rest of The World?

This is a continuation of a series of guest blog posts. Today's post comes from good friend and social media big brain, Jason Falls. Jason is a leading thinker on the social media marketing space. He blogs at SocialMediaExplorer.com and is bridging the gap by offering ExploringSocialMedia.com, a learning community geared toward teaching technology, digital and social media marketing to anyone who needs the help.

Insanity seems normal when you live in the asylum. Or so I keep reminding myself of the echo chamber that has emerged in our lovely little Web 2.0 world.

The technologists and developers and marketers and bloggers alike love to throw out statistics to prove their little world is the norm. We (and I'm in the middle of it, too) consistently point to the future as being online, connected, mobile or whatever ... so long as it doesn't involve ink or broadcast waves.
But we're wrong.

Sure, you can throw out Pew Internet and American Life statistics all you want. But you didn't look them up yourself, have no idea of the context of the questions asked and don't realize there's so much missing from the research.

Sure, 79 percent of U.S. adults use the Internet. But the statistic is "use" the internet, not follow you on Twitter. Why aren't we asking how well they use the Internet?

You know what percentage of the U.S. adult population has broadband in their home? Sixty-six percent. One in three people are still on dial-up, Jethro.

So the social fanatics want to say my doomsday drill down is a myth? Pew also tells us that of the 74 percent of U.S. adults online in 2009, the activities they used the web for were, in order, watching videos; getting information about a job; sending instant messages; downloading music and playing games. And of those, only watching videos was more than half of U.S. adults. Social networking? Thirty-five percent. Reading blogs? Thirty-two.

Now, before you go all math on me and say, "Well, 32 percent of U.S. adults is still like 100 million people." Sure, but keep in mind you are in an industry that thinks a 2% click thru rate on an ad and a 25% open rate on an email are good. Your logic is that the more bullets you spray, the more unsuspecting consumers you'll hit.

How about we focus on the 68 percent that don't read blogs? Or the 98 percent that don't click on search ads? Or the 75 percent that don't open your shitty emails?

At a trade show for retailers in a niche industry recently, I spoke with over 150 individuals about digital marketing. One-fourth of them ... 25 percent ... didn't have a website. Talking social media to them was like talking retirement when they couldn't even pay their mortgage.

Think that anecdotal data is misleading? How about the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business's Center for Excellence in Service State of Small Business Report from January of this year? The study, sponsored by Network Solutions (disclosure: I'm on their social media advisory board), showed that only 56 percent of small business owners currently have a website. (Fourty-four percent of small businesses are NOT online.) Only 66 percent say they plan to in the next two years.
Think that's a shocker? Would you believe that when asked how often these companies that do have website update them, 41 percent said no more frequently than every 4-9 months. Ten percent said they update them less than once per year.

Social media use? Just 31 percent have a presence now with 46 percent planning one. Flip the notion before you nod in positive agreement: 69 percent of small businesses are NOT using social media.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 1.2 million businesses in the United States with 10 or more employees. There are 4.5 million with nine employees or fewer. Would you believe that 98 percent of business in America are small businesses? (Those with less than 100 employees.)
That's a big market place of people out there that aren't checking in on Foursquare, aren't following you on Twitter and don't read your precious blog.

There exists a huge gap between those that know the web and those that don't. And it's high time we start being honest with ourselves and realize that social media types are not only in the minority, if web usage were religion, we'd be a fringe cult. No, this doesn't mean the Feds should come blow up our commune. But we've got a lot of work to do before real people -- those outside the echo chamber -- are here to play.

If we don't start bridging the gap and helping mainstream consumers understand and embrace social media marketing, the dot-com bust is going to seem like a market correction.
So, what are you doing to bridge the gap?

5 Lessons Businesses Can Learn from the Just Bieber Experience [podcast]

Yes, I saw The Justin Bieber Experience yesterday against my better judgement (kids choice). However, in spite of still not being a big fan of his music, I came away much more impressed than I thought I would. In fact, I was so impressed with Bieber's approach that I did a quick podcast today on five lessons businesses can learn from Justin Bieber.

[updated: couldn't resist adding a link to this video -- hat tip to John Johansen for finding/sending -- of James Earl Jones reading lyrics to Bieber's Baby Baby song. Brilliant!

Paid Media... Meet Social Media: The New Twitter Model

For three years, many of us skeptics have wondered aloud about the viability of Twitter. Will they sell sponsorships? Can they corporate tools help merit their billion dollar plus valuation? Would power users be wiling to pay for their services? Apparently, the answer is no (or at least not at the core). Instead, Twitter is taking a page out of the paid media book of tricks -- but with a social twist.

Witness, the promoted trend. Some of you who still make your way over to Twitter.com may have noticed that at the top of the trending topics list, their is now a little yellow "promoted" box. According to a trusted source, this slot is purchased for 24 hours and as of right now, is selling for somewhere in the $100,000/slot range. While little data has emerged about the success of these promoted trends (or the accompanying promoted tweets), up to 80% of the advertisers who have tested promoted trends and tweets are repeat buyers.

Twitter also has a third product called recommended accounts which they plan to dial up over the coming months (beta tests with select brands ran in September). These accounts can include people, companies and services. What I like about this last model is that it fulfills on the promise of marrying social media (an annuity) with paid media (ongoing costs). It will also put pressure on companies to get strategic about their bio, picture and quality of their tweet streams.





Coming Soon

While I'm still not 100% sold on the value of the sponsored tweet (apparently they are sold on a cost-per-click basis), I do like the idea of the trends and follower recommendations, especially as things like geo, demographic and day-part targeting come into effect (I'm assuming that Twitter has plans for those in the works). All of a sudden, brands will have an opportunity an amazing opportunity to present relevant content via links based on location, profile, current trends and past behavior. And most important of all, this gets done in a place that's become a regular hang out spot for millions of regulars.

Where things could get really interesting is when tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are fitted for these same types of paid media opportunities. I'm just guessing here but I have a hunch that Tweetdeck's launch of their latest version that includes real time updates is signaling a tighter integration between Tweetdeck and Twitter (otherwise, I can't imagine that Twitter would allow Tweetdeck full access to its API). It's this kind of integration that will prevent Twitter from being disintermediated from itself by the ecosystem of tools and clients that have cropped up over the last three years.

Which brands will be most successful using Twitter's new paid offerings? I guarantee that any kind of travel and entertainment business will benefit from this. Retailers -- particularly around the holidays -- should also benefit from the opportunity. B2B will definitely have a tougher time cracking this nut but then again, many B2B companies are more niche advertisers anyway.

What do you think? Will Twitter truly realize it's billion dollar plus potential this way? I have a feeling that they may just be onto something.

5 Take Aways from the ANA's 2010 Masters of Marketing Conference

Last year, I had the pleasure of attending my first Masters of Marketing event in Phoenix, AZ (recap here). The thing that blew me away at that event and convinced me not only to come back, but also to sponsor this year, was the amount of talent amassed in one place at one time. Unlike many other conferences, the speakers all stick around and network... for three days. This leads to unprecedented access to people like:

• Mark Baynes - CMO, Kellogg Company
  
• Marc Pritchard - CMO, Procter and Gamble
  
• Erin Nelson - CMO, Dell Inc.
• Keith Pardy - CMO, Research in Motion
• Ralph Santana - CMO, Samsung Electronics NA
• Jim Speros - CMO, Fidelity Investments
• Joseph Tripodi - CMO, Coca-Cola Company
• Ted Ward - CMO, Geico Auto Insurance
• Mary Beth West - CMO, Kraft Foods
• Michael Francis - CMO, Target Corporation
  

What's amazing is that the ten CMOs I've listed above only represent about 1% of the senior marketers attending the event. Given the talent and experience the Masters of Marketing event attracts, you can only imagine the quality of the 3-day marketing "MBA" you receive after attending. And that's assuming you only make it to 50% of the sessions. Even more impressive is that many of the marketers seemed to be singing off the same song sheet. To that end, here are my five key takeaways from this year's event:

Top Take Aways

1. Companies are getting back to basics when it comes to defining what their brand stands for. Several speakers talked about the importance of a brand having purpose and there seems to be a greater awareness of a need for the brand to be better connected with its customers.
2. While the topic of social media came up in almost every presentation, it's still not a top priority for most brands. What is encouraging is that if social wasn't on last year's CMO's "must do" list, it definitely is this year, even if it's priority number 8, 9 or 10.
3. As a follow up to point number two, most marketers are at least "social curious." As someone that lives and breathes social media, I had at least a dozen very interesting conversations with marketers who wanted to know more about things like Twitter, location-based marketing and developing a social strategy.
4. While many of the presenters included clips of their 30 second spots, it felt more integrated versus "showcased" in comparison to last year's event. In fact, Coca Cola CMO, Joe Tripodi, only showed video clips from Youtube and customer research projects. By the way, with the exception of Seth Greenberg of Intuit, Joe seemed to be the most socially savvy CMO of the bunch.
5. The uptick in the economy this year was reflected in the event itself. First and foremost, there were easily 50% more attendees this year. Also, the quality of the receptions and entertainment were ratcheted up a notch or three. To me, that's a good sign that marketers are feeling comfortable (or at least cautiously optimistic) about spending again.

Another thing I included in last year's wrap up post were some of my favorite tweets from the event (many were quotes from the speakers). You can see all the tweets from the event that were tagged with #ANAMarketers but once again, I've selected my top ten (in no particular order) out of the hundreds for your viewing pleasure:

• @ANAmarketers: Friend casting on Facebook has no media cost. Friend casting was 4 more times more effective then a banner ad for #Intuit #ANAmarketers
• @StepByStepMktng: AmEx CMO John Hayes: build a narrative around the WHY of what you do inside and outside the company. #ANAMarketers
• @betterads: #ANAmarketers: @Starcom Laura Desmond - "Paid Media gets the party started, Owned & Earned keeps it going all night long"
  
• @ANAmarketers:Very cool: #Target’s take over of the Standard Hotel in NYC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ_v_WrahrM #ANAmarketers
  
• @WellsMelanie: Social media can do a lot--but it can't solve brand problems, say top marketers. #ANAmarketers http://bit.ly/dtylTj
  
• @lisarosenberg: Univision's Graciela Eleta: There is no average American. 46% of all people under 18 are minorities. #ANAmarketers #PNID
  
• @cindygallop1: All CMOs speaking @ #ANAMarketers showing work - PLEASE give your agency shout-out by name. Best new biz opportunity they will have all year
  
• @StepByStepMktng: Dell CMO Karen Quintos: we love data. We measure everything. we're mining through data all the time. #ANAMarketers
  
• @aaronstrout: Laura Desmond also talks about curation, content, conversation. Did she read @JaffeJuice's #FliptheFunnel book last night? #ANAMarketers
  
• @maryleesachs: Joe Tripodi of Coke talks about moving from measuring impressions to expressions, from loyalty to advocacy. Makes sense. #anamarketers
  

Oh, and while this isn't really of value to anyone but me, my response on Twitter from the lovely and talented, Leann Rimes, was hands down my favorite tweet during the event. In fact, I did a quick podcast a couple of days later on what brands could learn from how Leann engages with her customers (and prospective customers like me).

• @leannrimes: @AaronStrout thx! It was fun!!!!

All in all, this conference felt like a big success. As I mentioned earlier, my company, Powered, was a sponsor and our goal was to meet some smart people, create some additional brand awareness, demonstrate our thought leadership (we gave out copies of colleague, Joseph Jaffe's latest book, Flip the Funnel, to 500 of the ANA's members) and managed to collect a few business cards in the process. While sponsorship wasn't inexpensive, I would definitely do it all over again if I had to sign on the dotted line today.

As an added bonus, there were some great performers at the event including the Goo Goo Dolls (remember them)? If you liked the song Name, here is a live recording (thank you iPhone 4) of the performance. I have to say, the sound quality is actually pretty good.

Social Media Help Desk: Social Won't Kill a Crisis, but Lack of Social During a Crisis Will Kill You

Date: Wednesday, October 27th
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 PM CT (note your time zone)
Speakers: Valeria Maltoni, Doug Wick (moderator) and me (Aaron)

A PR crisis comes and goes without much warning. The 24/7 environment of social media networks is a perfect farming ground for these potentially uncontrollable situations. While most companies have a solid foundation for social media engagement, these guidelines do not provide an integrated strategy, capable of navigating the murky waters of a PR storm. When the storm hits, the customer dictates how much preparation and reaction time you have. This is the worst time to learn to deal with the situation.

Establishing an integrated social media strategy is the key to weathering these situations successfully. Join Valeria Maltoni, Aaron Strout and Doug Wick as they explore the foundations for planning ahead and preparing for a PR crisis. Valeria will spend 30 minutes discussing the crisis communication groundwork and remaining 30 minutes will be focused on you and your questions. By attending, you will learn:

• Why companies need to be involved and communicate early on.
• The steps needed to build a communication framework for your organization and weather a crisis in real time.
• How to keep your cool during a crisis.

You in? Sign up now. And if you want to ask questions ahead of time, feel free to leave 'em in the comments!

Marketing: Why it's a Waltz vs. a Tango

Spoiler Alert: I'm not going to tell you anything that you don't already know in this post. I'm just reinforcing something that I was reminded of last night as I was helping my wife ramp up for her new job which is to do a little social media marketing for an online publication/content hub.

To be honest, it's always easier to market a company that has great content and fortunately the company she is working for has great content in spades. It's also makes it easy when a company hands you the reigns (with some guidance of course) but doesn't give you eight billion rules and regulations that you need to follow (I know, I know... I worked in financial services for nine years... some companies need to be strict about how they market... but still).

Here comes the roll up the sleeves part. Yup, the part where I tell you why it's the waltz versus the tango. As my wife was going through her company's Twitter account we started talking about ways to engage their audience. By the way, as of yesterday, there had been seven status updates and seven followers and that's not a knock against GC -- hell, they at least had the self-awareness to know that they needed help -- just a little background on the task at hand.

The easy thing to do might be to rush out and follow a list of 500 mommy bloggers. Or find a bunch of companies/people that auto-follow everyone back. That would certainly help with the optics around the follow/follower ratio. But would it do anything for the engagement level? Hardly. The first order of business was to reach out to a few of the seven followers and engage them in conversation (seeing some "@'s" in a company's Twitter stream is the second thing I look for after a decent follow/follower ratio).

Twelve hours later, the number of followers on her company's Twitter account had gone from seven to forty one. That may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things but now all of a sudden, her company has some content (a dozen new tweets) and a little groundswell (the new followers) at its back. Yes, they have a long way to go because realistically, they need to be closer to 4,000 or even 40,000 followers before they start to see some meaningful ROI. But as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Adverve: My Recent Guest Appearance

Last week, social media smarties, Bill Green and Angela Natividad, were kind enough to have me on their weekly podcast, Adverve. I have listened to the show a few times before and love Bill and Angela's wit and insight. This show was no different as we talked about:

• agencies of the future
• privacy
• how a particular well-known church might use social media

I have to say, the topic about church and social media was one of the most interesting / thought provoking I've ever discussed. Kudos to Angela for pushing me to really think that one through. If you have a chance, please give the show a listen. You can weigh in on my blog or the Adverve blog (or both if you are REALLY feeling motivated).

Enjoy!

Social Media for B2B: It CAN be done

This was originally posted on my friend Tommy Landry's blog, Return on Now, as a guest post on February 8, 2010.

Why is it that when it comes to conversation about social media, business-to-business (B2B) seems to draw the short stick every single time? As someone that does a lot of webcasts, blog posts and speaking gigs, the questions/comment that always comes up is, "what about B2B examples." Fortunately for me, I'm able to mention companies like BreakingPoint Systems and Hubspot that do a great job tapping into the power of social media but I often wish there were more examples (with public results) that I could discuss.

In thinking about this topic, one of the main reasons that B2B has taken a little longer to adopt social media into its marketing mix is that it's harder to do effectively. It's also feels risky because there is less control then there is in other channels. With that said, I personally believe that B2B companies stand to benefit the most from social media because they live and die based on the strength of their customer relationships. On top of that, many B2B companies actually know exactly know who their prospective customers are so seeking those folks out in a meaningful way and creating relationships with them can have a huge impact on the bottom line.

Given that I'm a prescriptive kind of guy, I'd feel remiss if I didn't offer up some ways that companies can start thinking about putting social media into practice. There are obviously tons of ways but here are a few (including a diagram that provides more color commentary on item number three):

1. Start listening. This is easier to do than you think. Set up a Google alert for your company's name, your competitors' names and keywords for your industry. If you're already doing this, consider hiring a "listening" service like Techrigy, Radian6 or Meltwater Buzz. This will help you find out where all the relevant conversations in your space are happening.
   
2. Create a Twitter account for your business. However, resist the urge to put up links to press releases, product specs and links to press that are signing your business's praises (at least out of the gate). Instead, talk about things that people in your industry care about. For instance, if you create bill payment software, talk about the needs of small to medium sized businesses across the financial spectrum (payroll, credit, vendor managment, etc.) Link to reports and industry analysis. Point out other people's blog posts and magazine articles.
3. Set up a blog. Before you do this though, make sure you have someone (ideally internal) that is willing to commit to posting at least 5-6 times/month. This can be someone on your marketing, product, or PR teams or even better, one of your executives. Think about creating an editorial calendar to help guide your topics. Most importantly, spend time looking at other industry related blogs -- in fact, you should spend at least a month doing this before you set up your own blog. Be sure to comment on those blogs (talk about the topic, not your company). This will help with getting to know the relevant "social" people in the space.
4. Create an online community. Once you've gotten comfortable with items 1-3, start thinking about a online community. Ideally, this is for both customers and prospective customers. Some businesses feel more comfortable about creating private communities where customers can talk to one another. The key either way is to hire a great community manager and let them help you create relevant content via webinars, blog posts and conference calls (see diagram below). A community manager will also help you draw out your customers and insure that conversations stay relevant and productive.
5. Measure, measure, measure. This is less difficult than you might imagine. This really should start with looking at your current goals i.e. new customers, greater retention, larger share of wallet, referrals, etc. Then make sure you benchmark e.g. look at your webstats and current KPI's before you launch your social efforts. Then look at how your moving the bar over time. A key place to look is at your web analytics to see what kind of traffic and engagement your Twitter feed and/or blog efforts are driving. Also, it doesn't hurt to survey customers and ask them if your efforts are impacting their loyalty to your company.

I won't lie to you, everything I mentioned above takes effort. But it's worth trying, especially when it's done right, because it will yield results. One thing that I failed to mention is the importance of integrating the recommendations above with your existing marketing/channel activity. Social media doesn't live in a vacuum and if nobody can find the fruit of your efforts, you may as well not have exerted the time and resources.

Am I missing anything? You bet I am. But that's where you come in. What types of social media have you tried? What's worked? Please feel free to share in the comments section below.

Engaging Your Customers Across the Social Web

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to over a hundred of Dallas, TX's brightest social media minds at the monthly Social Media Club, Dallas meeting. Not only did I meet dozens of new people that I look forward to staying in touch with at the event but I had the opportunity to bounce some ideas, suggestions and case studies off of the crowd. I also fielded some pretty awesome questions like:

• Should we be paying attention to Google Buzz?
• Are branded online communities a real trend?
• How do you let a client know when they are doing social wrong?

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone documented the occasion with video but I did put my slides up on Slideshare. I've also included links to the pictures that Cynthia Smoot put up on her Gangway Advertising Flickr page.

The presentation is here:

Engaging your Customers Across the Social Web

View more presentations from Aaron Strout.

And if you check quickly enough (those folks at the Dallas Social Media Club are very conversational AND are really good at incorporating the #smcdallas hashtag), you can catch some of the highlights from the crowd. You can also click on the collage below to see Cynthia's pics.

A big thanks to Mike D. Merrill and Colin Alsheimer for inviting me to speak. Props also go to Jessica Nunez for her awesome intro, Aaron Bollinger of KickApps for sponsoring and kicking things off, the fine folks over at Zoe's Kitchen for providing an amazing spread and Muroch Partners for hosting. And finally, big ups to Bill Fanning for driving with me for three hours up and three hours back from Austin to Dallas back to Austin. Viva la Genesis!

Other great people I met (I know I'm leaving some out so sorry in advance)... Lauren Fernandez, Jill McFarland, Cosmin Ghiurau, Erica Martinez, Amanda Hawkins,  Cameron Gawley, Kirby Sander, Kathy Catoe, Alyssa Gardina, Tom McCracken, David Swinney, Ivan Leon, Kat Farmer, Scott Duke, Barbar Bhatti,  Kelly Welborn, Connie Hannon, Matt Smith, Kate Aronson, @vsellis, John Langdon, 

Show Me Da Monies: Live from OMMA Social

This morning, I had the pleasure of listening in on a panel at OMMA Social titled, Social Media - Hot to Connect Metrics with Objectives. As you can imagine, the focus was on the Holy Grail of social media i.e., measurement. The list of panelists are below (David B. moderated the panel). Since I'm live blogging, the write up will be more of a collection of notes/tweets vs. a cohesive write up. Depending on where this goes, I may go back and do a second look. Here goes:

• David Berkowitz - sr. director of emerging media & innovaiton at 360i
• Carla Bourque - VP of sales and bizdev at Six Apart
• Steve Kerho, SVP, analytics , media & marketing optimization, Organic, Inc.
• Amber Naslund, director of community, Radian6
• Bill Stephenson, VP social media & client services, Nielsen Online
• Jim Sterne, President Target Marketing of Santa Barbara
  

The panel started off with a discussion of a basic principal of measurement (could be applied to any marketing discipline) namely that it starts with goals. Any company needs to know what they are trying to achieve and ideally, what the benchmarks look like for those measurements. Amber (Radian6) cited a case recently where a company wanted help with measurement yet wasn't benchmarking across other channels. Of course this isn't unique but might lead to future frustration as marketers hope/expect that agencies/service providers in the world of "social" will magicially be able to pull meaningfull statistics out of thin air.

David (360i) asked the question of the panelists, "what one thing do you hear that marketers wish they could measure better?" Some of the answers that came back were:

• Which of all the stuff going on (Facebook, blogging, Twitter) is the most successful?
• What is the reach (personally, this is a huge one and likely will make or break many social media campaigns this year).
• Who are my most influential advocates? What spurs them to take action?

Another question (this time from Twitter), "when will predictive analytics take hold in social media?" A good response to this was captured by DaveYamon on Twitter...

@jimsterne says predictive analytics is data poor, SM is data rich: "Chocolate and peanut butter waiting to happen" #ommasocial

Amber chimed in and said that a lot of companies that Radian6 is working with are still in the early phases of adoption. So understanding second and third level impact is still on the horizon. She also emphasized the need for commonality in language between brand marketers and the C-suite. Knowing what "ROI" means and what the expectations are of what's getting measured (and what's possible) is key.

Carla (Six Apart) mentioned the importance of letting go a little bit of the rigid structure of traditional measurement.

Another good Twitter comment by Forrester Analyst, Augie Ray...

What is the value of a follower? Depends on what they're saying! #OMMASocial panel<-the tweet that proves its own rule

My new friend, Siouxsie Jennett, asked a question that built on Augie's point. She mentioned that the CEO of a client company was complaining about only having 200 followers on Twitter. Her question was how to make the C-suite better understand the relative value of a follow. For instance, the aforementioned company only targeted 1,200 companies worldwide. From that perspective, 200 out of 1,200 looked pretty darn good.

Another topic of focus was share of conversation. This metric measures the share of possible conversation that a company could be part of. For instance, a small B2B company should expect to get the same interaction/share of conversation as Nike. But this company should be looking at the amount of conversation around their industry and specifically, among their competitors.

Bottom line, panels like these never dig as deep into the world of metrics as we'd like but there definitely were some interesting perspectives shared. To that end, keep an eye on the Twitter stream coming from OMMA today for other interesting nuggets.

Ten Most Poplular Citizen Marketer 2.1 Posts of 2009

For the record, I'm totally following the pack on this one -- something I don't normally do. But give the fact that I had a lot of posts this year, I couldn't resist putting out a list of the ten most popular posts on Citizen Marketer 2.1 aka "Stroutmeister.com."

One funny aside, my Experts in the Industry interview with Ken Burbary - a good friend and the head of digital strategy and social media at Ernst & Young -- got 6,786 hits in one day. Why did this not make it into your top ten you ask? It's certainly not because I get so much traffic that Ken's post didn't rate. But rather, it was due to a misdirected shortened URL in a tweet by a Ms. Demi Moore. Yes, that Demi Moore. I wonder if any of the 6,786 people that visited Ken's interview that day actually stayed and read the post.

With that as the backdrop, here are the top ten in reverse order. I tried to provide a one sentence summary to help you decide whether or not you want to spend the time reading. Enjoy!

10. Experts in the Industry: Jennifer Leggio - I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the popularity of this post is 50% due to Jennifer being a rock star and 50% due to her being my Quick-n-Dirty podcast partner. #justsayin

9. What's the Deal with Movember - While the post itself was shit, I am most proud of this one because of what #TeamAustin did with Movember [hint: it had something do with raising $17,800 to fight cancer in men]

8. The Virtual Tongue: How to NOT Use Facebook for Business - In fairness, this one was a little bit of a rant but it got a surprising number of comments and retweets, mainly because I think many folks knew exactly what I was talking about.

7. Five Reasons Why Your Comany's Website Sucks - To be honest, this one is a little bit of a headscratcher because while the topic is an interesting one, it was definitely not one of my better posts.

6. How We Market - This was definitely one of my favorites, probably because it spoked to the value of "eating one's own dogfood." The fact that it got 19 comments also didn't hurt.

5. Experts in the Industry: Diane Hessan - No real shocker here. Diane, the CEO of Communispace is a smart woman and one of my favorite people in the world of community.

4. Marketers Beware the Age Wave - I co-penned this post with my good friend, and now semi-regular blogging partner partner, John Cass. It speaks to the risk that marketers face if they ignore the impact of GenY consumers in the coming years.

3. Can Social Marketing Save the Auto Industry - this post (which wasn't really even a post but rather a teaser for a kick ass webcast I did for my company, Powered) was an amazing discussion with the heads of social media at Ford  - Scott Monty and GM - Christopher Barger, along with the fabulous executive director of community at Edmunds.com, Sylvia Marino. Definitely worth the hour of time investment.

2. Social Marketing Challenge: In 100 Words or Less... - Amazing what a $20 iTunes giftcard and a challenge to describe "social marketing" in a 100 words or less can do. 54 comments on this one and one winner in the smart and witty, Shannon Paul.

1. Experts in the Industry: 45 Interviews in 45 Days - I would have been shocked if this handn't been the winner (it was twice as popular as #2 on this list). In short, the concept of creating a series of 45 interviews with smart online/social people leading up to South by Southwest was one of the better ideas. Not only was it great blog fodder but it had crazy SEO implications. I've also had at least half a dozen people ask me if they stole the concept - of course I agreed. Oh yeah, I ended up interviewing closer to 75 people and ran way past SXSW but that was neither here nor there.

So these are according to the numbers. What was your favorite post on Citizen Marketer 2.1? Let me know in the comments so I can better plan my content calendar for next year.

Weekly Social Marketing Links: Week of 10/28

Cross-posted on Powered's blog

Yup. It's been a few week's since we last posted our team's weekly social marketing links. As some of you know, I try and do a weekly digest of the links that my team (marketing, sales and product) come up with for our recurring staff meeting. Unfortunately, (work) life just gets in the way sometimes. Here's what we've got for this week:

Beth Lopez (Marketing)

Found How to Do Social Marketing in Heavily Regulated Industries to be an interesting read on how regulated industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare and Pharma should tap into social marketing and how best to do it. The thinking is that since social marketing is a “pull” technique and not a “push” technique (where traditional regulations apply), advertisers and marketers in regulated industries should focus on…wait for it…wait for it…listening to consumers on social networks to gather research and insight (doesn’t everyone say that these days?). The author also goes on to state that for pharma (look in comments), marketers should be thinking about conversations around the disease versus the actual drugs (which is where they can get into trouble). All in all, an interesting perspective.


DP Rabalais (Marketing)

This article from Adweek, The Revolution Will Be Mobile, talks about how the worldwide adoption of mobile phones (61% of the world's population has access to a mobile phone) is influencing how marketers connect with consumers. Mobile Internet usage in the U.S. has more than doubled in barely two years, and mobile communities are emerging.

According to the article, "For a brand that would like to learn more about what its customers and potential customers want, social networks via mobile are the perfect platform with massive scale. The Japanese mobile community "Mobage Town," for example, includes 12 million people. Anyone who wants to can listen in or join discussions, and anyone who wants to sell a product or service is enabled to do so."


Bill Fanning (BizDev)

This week’s post was written by Francois Gossieaux titled, Why Brand Communities Don’t Exist. Notice he refers to “Brand” communities, not “Branded” communities. To be clear, when we say “Branded” communities we are referring to where the community is hosted (on the brands site as opposed to Facebook or other external communities) not to the Brand being the topic of the community.

Francois makes a very important point (one that we at Powered built a business on) that people don’t participate in branded communities simply because they like the brand and enjoy their products. They participate because they are passionate about the lifestyle associated with the brand. The community gives them a place to get valuable information, interact with other people with similar interests and engage with the company. He notes several examples like the communities hosted by Harley, Jeep, Mini Cooper and Fiskars….we could add several others as well.

Good post!

Doug Wick (BizDev)

[Okay, so Doug has been up to his eyeballs with RFP's, contracts and keeping his blogging hat on. So I'm going to include his most recent post on Powered as his entree of the week...]

Almost anyone who knows anything about interfacing with customers or prospective customers through the Networks (Facebook, Twitter, et al.) will tell you that you should start by listening.

So most marketers' first step is to set up a monitoring tool (maybe expensive, maybe as simple as a free keyword search on Twitter). Then, the first experience that almost every media marketer (or marketer, period) has after listening to the Networks for a bit is that the brand, product, or company they are representing will be mentioned. When this happens (“just bought a Honda at Carmax, great experience!”), it will make a positive and socially important impression on everyone who views it. This is exciting because it is essentially a free media placement, a nugget of gold dropped into people's news or Twitter feeds that didn’t cost you anything! This type of mention is often called “earned media,” earned because your company created a great customer experience that made someone tell their friends.


Jay MacIntosh (BizDev)

The Tribalization of Business Study (2009) by Deloitte and Beeline Labs.

Disclaimer: I don’t understand why anyone would refer to a group of people sharing an interest as tribes. I’ve always thought of tribes, similar to the clans of my Scottish background, as having to do with ancestry (i.e. people who came before us like forefathers/mothers). Do we really need to “dress-up” social media to get more people to pay attention to the significance of the online social phenomena? I guess so…

Anyhow, this recently released study from Deloitte paints a broad picture of where companies are at with their adoption of social media. As suspected, backed up by the conversations I’ve had with over 50 such companies the past several months, I’d say they’re at the preadolescent stage. Characterized by - beginning to care somewhat about if/how they fit in, have a rough idea of some goals, more focused on the future, beginning to care about how their appearance, etc.

I won’t go into the details (which you’ll get in the 10 minutes it takes you to look through the 28 slides), but here are a couple of the most interesting findings:

• It looks like only about 20% of these communities have members in the thousands.
• Approximately 60% of their company’s oldest community have been in existence for less than 1 year.
• Stated goals (i.e. what they want to achieve) and metrics (i.e. how they keep score) are out of whack.
• 45% plan to increase their investment in social media and online communities while only 6% plan to decrease investment.

Don Sedota (Product)

Good perspectives by Jeremiah Owyang on the Google/Twitter/Bing deal announced earlier last week. Basically Google and Bing will now start incorporating URL tweets/re-tweets and the influence/reach of corresponding tweeters into search rankings (i.e., consumers now have a direct impact on search rankings).

His key takeaways include:

• Companies must focus even more on listening to make sure PR flare ups and the like on Twitter are quickly extinguished
• It’s becoming increasingly important for companies offer easy social sharing (e.g., via Twitter) for site content. (Also of note is that Facebook will be offering public status updates to Bing so sharing via FB/FBC becomes more valuable to companies from a search results perspective)
• Companies must continue to develop in-house influencers on Twitter in order to juice the search rankings of corresponding tweets (URLs)

How about you? Any good articles/posts/research to share? We're always looking for fresh inspiration.

Slides from my Presentation at Driving Sales Exec Summit

Today I had the privilege of speaking in front of 150 VERY smart folks from the automotive industry at an event called the DrivingSales Executive Summit. Many work in large auto dealerships and have started using social media in a number of innovative ways. Equally exciting was the opportunity to meet folks like JD Rucker, Eric Miltsch, Gary May and Jared Hamilton to name a few. Oh yeah, some dude named Chris Brogan also showed up to speak. I was like, "whatever."

Driving Sales Exec Summit - Using Social to Drive Business

View more presentations from Aaron Strout.

To see the Twitter back channel from the event, head over here.

Hat tip to Sylvia Marino and Kyle Flaherty for helping supply some of the case study content.

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 3 Recap

The third episode of Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast (#qnd) was a little smoother than episodes one and two. For starters, I remembered to set the length of the show for 45 minutes vs. 15 so all the listeners could follow along for the duration. I was also able to play our new bumper music, Bring Back the Bass, at least at the tail end of the show (thanks to Brett Petersel for providing). Next week, I promised co-host, Jennifer Leggio, that our show would go off without a hitch... we'll just have to see!

If you missed this week's show, here’s what we discussed:

1. Featured Social Network: Glue. They are doing some very cool things with social browsing. They also just released a press release that said that they are exposing some of their APIs so that developers can use Glue's functionality in their sites. Jen and I both like what Glue is doing a lot and will continue to keep my eye on them.
2. Case Study: This week's focus was all about the small business. Ever see one of those mobile food carts floating around the city? Yeah, the ones that sell bagels or tacos or sausages? Well guess what. They are starting to use Twitter and the results are paying off. In regard to Korean BBQ purveyor, Kogi, Kate Krader, restaurant editor for Food & Wine magazine says in the background article "That [Kogi's recognizable brand name is] 90 percent thanks to Twitter."
3. Special Guest: Mike Murray, CSIO of Foreground Security was kind enough to join us to discuss true social engineering in social networking / social media. Pretty powerful stuff. If you weren't a little wary about who you "friend" in the socialsphere before, you might be after listening to Mike speak.
4. Executive on Twitter: Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak. I had the pleasure of meeting Jeffrey and hearing him speak at this week's 140 Character Conference. I was pleased to see that he was as funny and genuine in real life as he was on Twitter. Definitely worth the follow.
5. Point / Counterpoint: This week was a little less of a "square off" and more of a recap of Jeff Pulver's recent 140 Character Conference. If you weren't lucky enough to attend, the videos from the event are up. I loved the conference and while Jen didn't exactly disagree with me, she decided that conference producers need to be careful to focus less on the tools and more on the goals of we business folk (think "lead gen" vs. "e-mail marketing" for instance). I agreed but my take was that we needed to ratchet it up a notch and apply that thinking to all social media events, not just those focused on Twitter.
6. Special Bonus: one of our listeners encouraged us to talk a little about Twitter and it's role in the latest Iranian elections. We didn't have much time to cover such an important topic but did manage to spend a couple of minutes opining on the subject.

Jennifer and I are in the process of working on next week's show but we promise it won't dissapoint. At a minimum, Jennifer has a special announcement that should get folks excited. If I say more than that, Jen may disown me as a co-host.

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast Launches Today

The Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast kicks off today at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, this project is a joint one withAaron Strout, and it came about after a dinner debate in San Francisco. We’ll be doing all kinds of fun stuff — point / counterpoint, case studies, highlighting lesser known social networks, spotlighting cool members of the social media community, and we’ll even have regular guests. Our first show is going to be a little less formal since we want a chance to play with the format and get some feedback, so we won’t have a guest this week. But we will have other fun stuff.

Speaking of fun stuff, we’d also hosted a two-week long logo design contest. Well, you see the logo above. We love it! Big thanks to Kenneth Lim who designed the winning logo. He went above and beyond and gave us several options, and the design was so clean and fun that we had to go with it. Kenneth has won the following:

• Seagate: Free Agent Go portable hard drive
• Intel: A coveted Ajay Bhatt t-shirt
• Scate Ignite: Copy of Scate Ignite 4 multi-media presentation and e-learning software
• EuSecWest: Conference ticket -OR- MIMO UM710 mini monitor

I am sure we will do other giveaways and prize incentives in the future, so be sure to listen to the podcast. The BlogTalkRadio link is here. Will you join us?

Cross-posted from http://mediaphyter.com

Weekly Social Marketing Links: May 25, 2009

Each week, the members of Powered's marketing, business development and product teams pick a news article, blog post or research report that “speaks” to them. With that article, they need to come to our weekly staff meeting prepared to give a 120 second update on what the article was about and why they found it useful. Links are below:

Beth Lopez (Marketing)

Found the article, The One Word You Can't Say, quite amusing given how we have always advocated the need to view social marketing as a long-term strategy. Seems that it's starting to become a mantra at all of the social marketing events and tradeshows. Per the article, the word you can't say is "campaign" when referring to social marketing...preferred alternatives include terms like "program," "initiative," or even "conversation."

DP Rabalais (Marketing)

Great article aimed at CEO / CMO level. Do You Need a Social Media Marketer? Measurement & analystic seems to be the big reason more companies aren’t embracing social media / social marketing. Another reason we need to continue to plug our analytics/insights capabilities at Powered. To that end, I called out a paragraph from the article that drives our point home:

A recent survey of 110 of the top CMOs by recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles in Atlanta seems to echo Schwartz’s point. The report found that social media was a relatively low priority—ranked in the bottom third. “Mostly it’s because of analytics,” said Lynne Seid, a partner at the firm. “The things that are measurable are a top priority. Most marketers see [social media] as an experiment.

Bill Fanning (Business Development)

This weeks article is titled Social Media vs. Social Responsibility, written by Reid Carr (president of Red Door Interactive). It's an interesting look at Social Media being the great equalizer to the companies who over the years have behaved more like magicians trying to trick people into buying their product or service rather than honestly marketing and selling their products and services.

His premise is that this behavior has lead to a severe distrust with consumers and social media allows consumers to have a powerful vioce, finally balancing the power that traditional businesses and media outlets once owned. He notes that it's our responsibility as consumers to not only support our favorite businesses by purchasing from them but also by talking about them in various social media outlets. Likewise, it's our duty to responsibly talk about the poor experiences we've had with businesses.

Jay McIntosh (Business Development)
On a self-appointed hiatus this week.

Doug Wick (Business Development)

A very short article about the brand innovation behind Cereality, a café concept based on our favorite cereals. This article struck a chord because of the way that they developed the idea for Cereality, by building on the brand equity of popular cereal brands and focusing on a food category that is both ubiquitous and taps into brand passion. The approach put forth is similar to the process behind the conception of branded online communities, which tap into passion points and truly put the consumer at the center of the experience.

A salient quote from Cereality’s founder – “When you hit that zeitgeist and people are excited and find it relevant to their lives, they start a conversation and you have to be at the center of that conversation.”

Don Sedota (Product Management)
This week I picked a report written by Forrester analyst, Laura Ramos, titled Effective Customer Reference Management Anchors B2B Community Marketing Efforts, that might be helpful to our program managers in the context of setting up community customer reference strategies for our clients and/or for our own corporate marketing efforts. Hopefully validates/supplements our current strategies in both arenas.

Cross-posted on http://blog.powered.com

May 19: Weekly Content/Social Marketing Links

Each week, the members of Powered's marketing, business development and product teams pick a news article, blog post or research report that “speaks” to them. With that article, they need to come to our weekly staff meeting prepared to give a 120 second update on what the article was about and why they found it useful. Links are below:

Beth Lopez (Marketing)
Kicking butt on next week's webcast and our new website this week - she gets a hall pass...

DP Rabalais (Marketing)

Two articles this week. One on how Retailers are Shifting Marketing Dollars. The other speaks for itself...

• Study: Retailers Shift Marketing Dollars Towards Social Media


• Forrester: Social Technology is Like Sex

Bill Fanning (Business Development)
The article I’d like to share was published in Tech Crunch and is titled, Jump Into The Stream. The author, Erick Schonefeld, discusses the evolving distribution of online information, from a collection of web pages to a real-time stream, and the impact on web business and consumers of information. The interesting part of this article is the idea of the new metaphor being “streams” instead of “pages”. Web business are transforming from being owners of content to providing a place to present the most relevant stream of information, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Digg, Google Reader, and a bunch of others. Consequently, the way we consume information has been forever altered.After reading the article, I started thinking about how this applies to branded communities. I think it re-enforces the importance of being able to share your activity in a branded community with the “stream”. For example, the ability to publish a particular activity to your Facebook feed, or the ability to share an article through sites like digg or de.li.ci.ous. Participating in these types of distribution networks are, and will increasingly be important traffic drivers to the community. It also re-enforces the need to supply a steady stream of new and relevant content to keep the community engaged. The content could be professional, user generated or both, but it needs to constantly evolve.

This article is loosely based on a blog post by John Borthwick, CEO of Betaworks (Twitter, bit.ly, Tweedeck, etc.) titled, Distribution ...Now, which he references several times. Also, well worth the read!

Jay McIntosh (Business Development)
My article this week presents a perspective on the challenges of seller vs. buyer interactions. It’s written by an experienced marketer who has been on both sides of the “fence” at different times in her career. I too have spent several years on both sides and completely understand where the author is coming from when she points out the all-too-common salesy approach taken with potential buyers. A salesy approach is when the sales person thinks, talks and acts as if it’s about them, their product, their company. This is the way the majority of salespeople (and companies) approach buyers even today. They want to tell their market all about themselves and why they’re the best…blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, I switched over from the buy side to the sales side about 12 years ago. At that time, the promises of the Internet and all the new technologies and tools made it okay to sell/push products. Actually, it was more about just taking the customer’s orders and getting the contract/PO in place. That doesn’t, won’t and can’t work today or any time in the foreseeable future. It is all about the buyer and what the seller can do to grow their business. Start with this as the foundation of developing a business relationship. This foundation based on the seller delivering the goods, provides an ongoing compelling reason for the buyer to buy…it really is that simple!

Doug Wick (Business Development)
This week's article is taken from Business Week’s Executive Guide to Social Media, How CEOs use Twitter. The individual stories are interesting, but the common story is that these CEOs need to be able to hear individual voices, and to choose whose voices are important to listen to at any given time. The power of social is just that, to introduce not only the voices of peers, but the voices of individuals inside companies and inside brands. Within brand communities, the consumer can listen to all of these voices and decide which ones are important given their needs and where they are in the customer life cycle.

Don Sedota (Product Management)
On vacation this week - he gets a hall pass...

Cross-posted on http://blog.powered.com

Getting Started with Social

In a few weeks, I'm giving a presentation to a large company about ways they can be thinking about social media. I haven't fleshed out the PPT yet but thought it might be helpful for other folks that are trying to find a "toe hold" in their companies (big OR small) to get started.

1. What social isn’t:
   - One way conversation
   - Just another PR tool
   - Technology
   - A fad
2. What social is:
   - Vehicle for Many-to-many conversations
   - Way to deepen customer relationships and create referrals
   - Great feedback mechanism
   - The phenomenon that happens when you bring content AND conversation together
3. Uses for social within a brand:
   - Customer service (reduce phone/e-mail costs)
   - Marketing/sales (generate leads, deepen loyalty, lengthen customer tenure, increase referrals)
   - Market research (ongoing vs. episodic)
   - Product innovation (co-create w/ your customers)
   - An early warning mechanism (canary in the coal mine)
4. Brands that are doing social well:
   - Zappos (Twitter, blog)
   - H&R Block (Twitter, Facebook)
   - Dell Inc. (Ideastorm, blogs, Twitter)
   - USAA (Facebook, Twitter)
   - Best Buy (Blog, Twitter)
   - American Express (Open Forum community)
   - Allstate (Twitter, blog, Youtube, Facebook)
5. Key considerations:
   - Create a strategy (make sure it ties in with existing business goals)
   - Pick an audience/customer segment
   - Start listening (Google alerts, Twitter Search, Get Satisfaction, Radian6, Cymphony, BuzzGain)
   - Identify executive sponsors (an individual or small committee)
   - Plan to “give before you get”
   - Measure, measure, measure
6. Twitter
   - What is it?
   - How is it different than LinkedIn or Facebook?
   - Why is it gaining momentum?
   - How are companies using it?
   - List of top companies/brands using
   - Best practices (from Tim Walker of Hoovers)
   - Pitfalls
   - Who "mans" the account? Who needs to be involved? 
   

As always, additions/subtractions/corrections are welcome.

Photo Credit: Robert Scoble