Jumping into Social Media? Time to answer these 3 questions.

Every business and organization now feels the pressure to have a social media presence. If it's not someone in the marketing department (easy to ignore), it's a C-Type who's been to a conference or has read articles and has made this a "priority."

There are a lot of "We need help setting up our Facebook page" requests floating around. While I love the fact that more marketing departments want to engage in dialogue marketing, I find that many of them focus on the wrong question. They ask "How?" and "Where?"

What they need to ask is: Why? Who? What?

Why will participating in social media help your business? Are you simply looking to increase sales or to get a better idea of what people say about you?  Are you looking at social media as a way to build stronger connections with current customers or for finding new prospects? The answer to Why will help you build a strategy to guide everything you do. Or you may find that what you want to do doesn't make any sense on social media. You can avoid wasting precious time on something that will most likely not work.

Who do you want to connect with? Are they current customers or new ones? Are they teens or are they retired? Do they even use social media and how? Big questions, to be sure, but thankfully there are tools like those from Forrester's Groundswell. Their Social Technology Profile Tool helps you understand whether the people you want to connect with are those that simply like consuming content or actually enjoy creating it. Knowing this will help you hone in on the tactical directions and channels your social media needs to focus on.

What will you measure to define success? The bean counters are giving social media the hairy eyeball since their not convinced of ROI. You should choose KPIs instead (key performance indicators). You can choose a number of items to measure, everything from activity on your Facebook page, to Twitter ReTweets, to number of times mentioned on blogs, to visits or purchases on your Web site. It's important to choose something. There are lots of tools and services to help you monitor activity. For example, here's one interesting list of Twitter analytics tools you can use to measure activity.

If you can answer Why, Who and What, you can fill in those other important question like How, Where and When. You'll have a social media strategy you can explain to your team and your bosses. Hopefully, you'll have a roadmap for social media success.

Because without a good roadmap, you could be going in circles for a long, long time.

VT Brands Share Smart Social Media Practices

I had the pleasure of moderating a social media roundtable at the Vermont Technology Innovation Jam yesterday. My panel consisted of Steve Wright of Jay Peak, Sarah Byers of Leonardo's Pizza, and Rob Smart of Every Kitchen Table. Each of the panelists had very different situations but the commonalities and approaches of all of them were striking.

Jay Peak is what goes for a "big" company in Vermont. At least it has more complex marketing than other businesses and has a large local, regional and international reach. Leonardo's Pizza is a hyper-local business with two locations but a large "presence." Rob Smart has led a number of businesses and marketing departments in the state but he's recently gone out on his own building up his own personal brand from scratch in the sustainable food arena.

I liked how all three of them had a clear picture of whom they wanted to talk with. Leonardo's wanted a way to reach pizza hungry college kids, and local fans. Rob Smart wanted to engage some of the leading thinkers in the category. Jay Peak actually used social media to segment its audiences, from golf, to skiers to deal seekers. None of them spoke to "everyone." They each had an idea of WHO they wanted to build relationships with.

All of them bought into the concept of a generous social media strategy. They used the channels to "shine the light back on followers."  Leonardo's does this by publicizing content and feedback they get from its followers. Rob Smart does this by quoting and highlighting other bloggers on his blog. Jay Peak does this by promoting customer content created on Flickr and YouTube. They're each allowing customers to borrow some brand equity in order to increase it. Very sharp.

Most interestingly, big or small, each of them uses social media to make their product better. Leonardo's Pizza gets real time advice on new pizza creations they may not know much about, like Vegan pizza. Jay Peak uses social media to get brand advocate feedback on TV and print campaigns, letting crowdsourcing determine which creative they run. Rob Smart has used feedback from thought leaders and audience to help him stake out his own unique, and sometimes confrontational, position.

And Steve, Sarah and Rob have different ways of measuring their KPIs (Key performance indicators). Most importantly, in one way or another, they're actively measuring.

While these are smart successful people, the overall message to business people and marketers is this: If they can succeed, so can you. But like Steve, Sarah and Rob, you have to think about what you're doing, in order to get the most out of it.

What a fun afternoon that was.

Make Your Media Hybrid

I wrote a post earlier this year about how we (marketers) need to become hybrids. I've been thinking about hybrids a lot lately, and not only because I'm in the market for a Prius. I think it's time to declare Integrated Marketing dead. We're entering into the age of hybrid media. I'll have more on that later this week, but here's an example of what I'm talking about.

 This weekend I took my family out to a local, old-style family restaurant in Winooski. Right away, this card (leaning against the Parmesan cheese) grabbed my attention. At one point in my career, I would have loved to see this. The restaurant, Papa Frank's, has not only embraced online, it's using its table space to promote it. I like how this shows Papa Frank's thinking around building its database.

Only, it's not enough any more. The problem isn't the idea; the problem is that the card is not a hybrid. It's not interactive or actionable, except to ask someone for yet another piece of paper. At its most basic, Papa Frank's could've put the e-mail address right on the card. But in this day and age of smart phones and iPhones, they missed an opportunity to make this into a hybrid. Such as:

• Facebook - Rather than an entry ticket, Papa Frank's could've asked people to Fan it on Facebook, along with comments about their experiences. Its Facebook page would become, de facto, the rewards mechanism for its fans. Not only is that easy, but if they have a computer on the premise, they could make a big deal right in the restaurant. That would connect the experience to online back to the restaurant in real time.
• Yelp - Names are great. Online reviews are better. Papa Frank's might have made the entry a review on Yelp. The database would come from reviewers and they could reward people who wrote. More importantly, the call to action on the card not only helps the writer, it impacts the business through important word-of-mouth. Right now they have 9 reviews. They should shoot for 99 or 199. The contest becomes the action driven right from the table.
  
• Twitter - Again, an easy way to let people sign up is to allow them to follow Papa Frank's on Twitter. As an added hybridization, ask people to take a picture of themselves and their meal and post it as a Tweet for entry. Papa Frank's could make the photos into a Flickr gallery, which would increase search results.

Each of those ideas takes a broadcast media and connects it with a dialogue media. The bigger point is that the actions themselves go beyond signing up: they extend the campaign and, potentially, impact others.

It's not integrated; it's hybrid. Just like the gas engine powers the electric engine in the Prius, the hybrid marketing part power completely separate parts and makes them better. Integration depends on silos. Hybridization depends on breaking down the silos.

Hybrid marketing touches everything. More on that later. 

Social Media, like Rust, Never Sleeps. Neither should your brand.

I read a great post by Armando Alves last week about the rise of social zombies. He talked about the detritus of old microsites (they're like space debris, just waiting to smash something) and how he's seeing the same thing with social media initiatives. They probably look like some houseplants I used to have: good ideas at the time, but lacking the nurturing they deserved and ending up as withered vines in the garbage.

In one of his blog posts last week, Inaki Escudero captured a talk by R/GA's Bob Greenberg and Barry Wackman about the need to stop thinking about campaigns and to start thinking about platforms. They pointed specifically to agencies about the need for them to adapt and get rid of short-term thinking.

Both of these great blogs illustrate one of the key changes social media brings to the table: It never stops.

Campaigns have a beginning and an end. They're very much connected to sales initiatives inside of companies. Time to ramp up back to school or holiday, they say. We have a new product and we need to promote it. Agencies are only too happy to oblige. A new campaign usually means a lot of fresh money to create fresh ideas. That keeps everyone happy, from the bean counters to the rookie designers.

I recognize the ebbs and flows of the business seasons. What's changed, though, is a matter of control. Used to be that advertisers had control: they bought media to turn on the message and stopped it to turn it off. They can still do this, but the conversations and comments about the products and businesses don't stop once the radio spot is off the air. Brands and advertisers need to keep paying attention even though they might want to think instead about the next new, shiny campaign.

It's actually more challenging, and sometimes more rewarding to look at extending existing campaigns or platforms and allowing them to develop like true relationships. That's one of the big issues with social media and brands - you can't ignore someone and then expect them to come running back to you.

Look at a "campaign" that didn't quite stop: Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. Not only was this a well-integrated effort with a heavy Web focus at the time, but also Dove continued to evolve it. They realized that if they let this drop, people would see this as blatant falsehood and as an attempt at manipulation. If you visit the site today, you'll see a site focused on raising young girls self-esteem. It's now part of the Dove site itself. They now extend the site into a Facebook Fan page with 45,000 fans.

So here's today's challenge:
Take a campaign you're working on now, or one that just ended, and rather than pitch something entirely different, pitch extensions. Social media can help.

Teach Your Dumb Media to Speak

I had an interesting conversation yesterday that started about social media but turned into a discussion about two-way communication. Right now, there's so much buzz about social media and things like Twitter's billion dollar valuation that we might be missing the whole point of what's going on.

The business of Twitter isn't that important. The functionality Twitter introduced is. That's why companies like Facebook are trying to duplicate it.

Twitter and social media created a giant leap forward in dialogue branding. They provided ways we could have two-way connections in real time with people and brands all over the world. The connections are immediate and public. That combination is unique and is changing the way brands communicate.

What's lacking right now is the way companies connect its overall marketing to its social media presence. That's why everyone talks so much about Starbucks, Dell or HBO when they actually do something like this.

Since you can access social media from any connected device, like laptops or cell phones, it's surprising that we don't see more marketing that connects fixed and dumb media (think billboards, taxi tops, truck siding, or products like cups, hats or food wrappers) to social media.

Think of all the McDonalds paper wrappers people open up to eat their burgers. For most people its garbage. How many of those do they produce each year? Imagine if there were something fun you could actually do with those, connecting to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare?

How about if billboards and truck siding encouraged you to do something on social media and you received rewards for acting? In that way, social media could make ignorable media worth participating in.

Now I know that some of these do have response mechanisms. But they broadcast: "Everybody look at this and call this number of visit this Web site." It's not immediate, and it's not public. That's where the fun of social media comes in and that's where the difference is. McDonalds burger wrappers might be a stupid idea, except when you can see that other people in the restaurant participate at the same time you do. Then you've built some unexpected and sometimes odd connections. But they're usually pretty fun and memorable.

Every company has a ton of fixed and dumb (that is, it can't speak) media. It's time to teach your dumb beasts to speak and create dialogue with your audience.

Digital Lacks a Storytelling Paradigm

We all hear the stories about the upcoming downfall of traditional media: Newspapers going under by 2042, Hollywood and TV soon to follow the troubles of the music industry, Books - all electronic, and Radio, well, what's that? While I'm not discounting the troubles the industries, or rather the economics of the industries, face, I think it's one thing to say they're in trouble, another to discount them entirely.

Despite the shift in media attention, the digital space still hasn't found its paradigm in how it tells stories. Personally, I can't compare anything I see online to the pleasure in watching a well-crafted movie or TV show. That story format moves me in ways online hasn't approached.  In fact, the promise of digital (non-linear and interactive) seems to reach its pinnacle from a storytelling perspective in, of all places, video games.

Obviously digital is great at the non-linear, the immediate and at the two-way interactivity (although we still have a ways to go on that). Right now it seems to thrive on information retrieval and transactions, two important items for any business or individual. Maybe that's enough. But it seems that if this medium is truly revolutionary then it should start developing its story telling paradigm.

When you bring this to the marketing space, it's absolutely critical. Paid search works because it's informational, transactional and intent driven. Brand advertising, on the other hand flounders online because there are few good digital storytellers there, and even fewer who are willing to push the limits, unfortunately.

One of the most interesting examples, lately, is the Pringles banner ad. Whether or not you like the content, that banner was one of the few places where people had to see how the banner ended. And that's a great definition of a good story: you have to stay around to see the end.

That's what video games do. Now I played way more video games before I had kids.  There are a lot of reasons they're so addictive: I'm in control, everything I do causes the game to do something (interactivity), I get rewards or penalties for my actions, I discover things and I play in a story continuum. Now, I can even play with people all over the world. The goal is to get to the end, to see how the story concludes. Great games try to keep adding on endings so you won't stop. This is great digital storytelling.

I may choose to go online instead of watching TV or a movie. But I'm not swapping consuming one story for another. I go online to snack information, I watch movies to enjoy a story. When we go online to enjoy stories, that's how we'll know digital has arrived.

The question is whether that story will be passive like TV or active like gaming. Right now I think the industry could use more gaming stories to promote brands and products. I'm still surprised to see the Orbitz banner games still around; I used to have colleagues who'd play on those all day. When was the last time you could say that about an ad?

Brands will need help taking story-telling risks like this. But social media will help, because it will help extend the stories to those who haven't seen them yet. Good stories cause people to talk about them. We need to start pushing the limits of how we currently use this medium to tell those stories.

Listening Means More Than Social Media

Social media puts a lot of emphasis on listening. The first advice for those jumping into social media is to listen to what customers say about your company. It's funny, but companies listen all the time, whether they know it or not. Or rather, they hear, but they don't listen. While listening in social media is a good thing, companies need to get better to its customers and prospects as part of its regular business as well.

I was struck by how Alice.com allowed you to list how long a product lasts in your household. Their idea is to offer service or reminders when they see that it's time for you to reorder something. Collecting this data isn't new; using it is. Alice.com listens to what its customers do.

It reminded me of the time I was pitching a major grocery chain in the northeast many years ago. My idea was similar to what Alice.com does now. Since the chain used customer cards, they had a rich, thorough picture of everyone's shopping habits. How about using that to make life easier for your customers? I suggested. No way, they said, we wouldn't dare use that information. Crazy as it sounds they heard what customers did, and perhaps they used it to manage the stock in its stores. But they refused to use it to personalize the experience.

Smaller companies do this too. They know who its customers are and who its prospects are. When it comes time to market, these companies usually create one campaign - one size fits all. But customers don't want companies to treat them the same. How about adjusting your campaigns to segment each group? With email and online advertising, creating segmented creative is easy (although you still have to think of different sets of content). How about creating different offers for heavy buyers and light buyers? Or separate connections for happy customers and less happy customers? Or offers to people who've inquired but never bought?

The reality is that most business these days collect lots of information about its customers but most rarely use the data for any type of individualized marketing. It's too bad; we like it when you pay attention to us.

Listening involves not only hearing what customers say, but also acting on what you hear in some way. Listening is interactive since it involves two moving parts. Hearing is passive; you can take in lots of information, but it never moves past your eardrums.

Companies hear a lot, every day. It's time they use listening skills inside the existing business. Companies don't need new social media programs or Facebook profiles to make this happen. They just need to pay attention.

If the data feels overwhelming, start small. I'm sure you'll be surprised at what happens.

Wanted: Digital Storytellers

There's a superb scene in one of my all time favorites, the English TV series "The Singing Detective" written by the brilliant Dennis Potter and starring the great Michael Gambon. Sexy nurse Mills is greasing the skin challenged Marlowe and has to attend to his "private parts." To keep himself from getting overly aroused, Marlowe tries to focus on something boring and finally zeroes in on: The Story (his book).

When it comes to online marketing (and offline as well) it seems like we've lost track of the importance of the story. There's no doubt of the importance of storytelling with social media (like here, here, and here) but there are far too few examples of great online storytelling. Just like in the film, we have a hard time taking our mind off of the sexiness and glitz, on Web sites, in online advertising, on Twitter, and focusing on the hard stuff: crafting the story.

Recently I saw a great example from Johnny Walker online: a one-take story of the walker. While it was fun that it went out online, it still used a traditional, proven media: film. We're still looking for the great online storytellers who use the new medium, with all of its non-linear and two-way power to tell stories in such compelling way.

Nowhere is this more evident than in online advertising. Web sites have done a better job but still are in its infancy as it relates to storytelling. I've always been impressed by the old Burma Shave billboard campaign of putting up its jingles along the highway at different intervals. Yes, they had a captive audience, but I bet that after the first two, people were dying to see how the story continued.

Wanting to know how a story ends (or even what happens in the next chapter) is the sign of a good story. Ever seen an online promotion or Web site where you couldn't wait to come back to see what happens next?  I haven't. If you have, please comment below!

One challenge for marketers is that we don't do sequential well. We get something up, and let it run. An ongoing content strategy for a Web site and social media is crucial yet sometimes marketers cut this first, due to budget requirements. An ongoing content strategy for online advertising is almost non-existent.

Not to mention that marketers often confuse talking about promotions with telling stories. You can do the former in the latter, but seldom vice versa. The more we can get marketers to speak like human beings, the better the chance of telling good stories.

How are you telling your story online? Is it worth listening to? Will anyone really care how it continues or how it ends?

Remember The Singing Detective and stop concentrating on greasing your private parts and focus on your story!

[For those of you who only know of the bastardization of The Singing Detective through the Robert Downey movie, here's a clip from the real deal].

The Social Media Guy

Locally, when I run into people at business functions, I'm starting to get the "Oh, you're the social media guy!" On the one hand, it's good that people pay attention to what they read and hear. On the other hand, what I'm finding is that a lot of business people keep removing the word "marketing" from social media.

Yes, I do social media marketing. It's a small but growing part of what I do. The biggest reaction I get is when I talk about how social media marketing is a small but interesting part of online and offline marketing. Once that conversation revs up I notice something changes in the business people.

What changes? They're all looking for the digital silver bullet. I've seen this at it relates to online for the last 13 years, when the new "new thing" hits the streets. First banners, then things like search, forums, flash microsites, mobile and now, social media all blipped on and off the radar.

I'm sensing a desire from marketers, as they search for the digital silver bullet, to have the same type of relationship with online media that marketers had with offline media - distance. When you made a TV ad, the agency took care of making it and placing it in the media. It was a very hands off relationship.

But online is all about dialogue. You can't have a hands off dialogue (well you can, it just won't work) in online marketing. A good dialogue, as any good marriage counselor will tell you, means showing up and working at it.

Social media is bright, shiny and a lot of fun! But it's not a silver bullet. It works best when you connect it with other online and offline marketing initiatives, if you have them. You need to connect to your customer service. While you won't have to spend big money on media dollars or creative, you'll have to spend time listening, responding, sharing and informing.

Marketers and companies have to personally invest in it, and they still need to keep doing other online marketing.

Really, I'm the online marketing guy. All of the tools I use aim to recognize the promise of digital - two-way, real people communication. Social media just happens to be the newest, and one of the most effective ways yet to do this.

LendingTree: Rebranding vs. Change

LendingTree is in the news today. It's rebranded itself, with the help of Boston advertising firm Mullen. LendingTree, described as a mortgage Web site operator, saw its fortunes dip in our mortgage-backed melt down. But, with Mullen's help, it's rising again, with its call of "You to the rescue." And, of course, central to all of this are TV commercials with actors dressed up like super heroes.

Which raises the biggest question: How has LendingTree truly changed?

Apparently the Web site changed. It's a good Web site with lots of financial tools that walks you step-by-step through different scenarios. And then leads you to apply. The site has a friendly design and is easy to use. So far so good.

LendingTree is on Twitter. Not that much on, to be honest, and they seem to talk mostly about the Web site, the TV commercials and the articles written about Mullen. Hmmm.

If consumers don't have as much trust in financial institutions because many of them have acted irresponsibly and perhaps criminally, is rebranding with a big TV campaign, a new Web site and a Twitter account enough? Should the tag line change from "You to the rescue" to "Ag Agency to the rescue?" http://twitter.com/lendingtree

Actually, it's not even the first time in the last few years LendingTree switched from it's old tag line "When banks compete, you win" in a new ad campaign. Back in September 2007, it saw the writing on the wall and started running ads about "smart borrowing."

Where I'm going with all of this is that the way LendingTree works or connects with its customers doesn't seem to have changed at all. The façade has changed. The "message" has changed. But what I can't see are any substantial operational or customer service changes, things that would tell a consumer that this financial institution is not one of the bad guys, that it doesn't say it's on your side, it proves it.

Tools are great and the ads are cute but what are they really doing to improve their customer engagement with personal connections? Not much, from what I can see. Not in social media and barely on its own site. For example, whereas financial institutions such as Bank of America make Live Chat a big part of their online experience, the chat on LendingTree is pretty hard to find. Something that simple sends a message.

With Mullen founder Edward Boches  so active on Twitter, I somehow expected a place like Mullen to lead with connections to real people and using the medium to build relationships. Maybe that's phase 2. Or maybe it's too difficult to pull off, so ads and a new Web site were the way to go.

Whether it increases trust in LendingTree is the big question. Hopefully, new TV ads won't be enough.