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.

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.

Listen. Connect. Correct. Repeat.

In the last two weeks I've seen and heard social media stories from two Vermont ski resorts that provide good lessons for the rest of us. If you're still wondering how or why you should use social media, these stories should show you the value of participating in social media (and the risk of ignoring social media).

At last week's #BTVSMB meeting, Karen Boushie from Smuggs told the group about a posting someone made showing brown, dirty liquid gushing from a pipe on one of Smuggs downhill trails. I can tell you from experience, if there's one thing ski resorts hate it's anything associating its mountains with the color brown! The post implied that Smuggs was polluting the mountain, as witnessed by the picture.

But Smuggs was listening. They picked up on the post quickly and saw that one of their snowmaking pipes had sprung a leak. The water spouting from it was just that, dirty water and not any bad pollutants. They did two things: They found and fixed the leak and they informed the poster that it was last year's snowmaking water that was the issue, not pollutants.

The poster acknowledged Smuggs actions and quickly sent out a clarification and admitted he was mistaken. Smuggs impressed him by how quickly and thoroughly they reacted.

The other story happened earlier this week here on this blog. I'm not going to rehash that here. But needless to say, ski resort Jay Peak was listening. They have a lot of moving parts to their marketing and it turned out that there were a couple of missteps. And very, very quickly, everyone jumped in, apologized, made changes and started broadcasting (!) that they had made a mistake and corrected it.

That last part was amazing. Owning up to mistakes and errors is probably the best relationship and authenticity builder out there (now, if only the politicians could learn this). It showed that Jay was walking the walk.

I know this isn't a Vermont thing, as much as I wish it were. These two business show how social media should be done right, in four simple steps:

Listen, connect, correct, repeat.

Openness vs. Spin in Social Media

A friend of mine passed on a blog post this weekend. It was a post by Origin Design + Communication effusively praising Jay Peak's resort social media efforts. Jay Peak was apparently running a Twitter contest giving away free ski passes if you could show a receipt proving you had purchased (but not read) Mitch Joel's book "Six Pixels of Separation."

Why is Jay Peak worth this praise? The number one reason, according to Origin, is because "they are using social media." I have no problem with people praising Jay Peak. I follow Jay's PR director Steve Wright on Twitter, he seems like a very smart professional who's doing a good job in social media.

The problem I have is that Origin Design is Jay Peak's agency and that nowhere in this article do they acknowledge the fact. To be honest, the only way you can find this out is by clicking on a link on the left, almost all the way down where it says "Origin Design."

I don't know whether Origin has anything to do with Jay Peak's social media program. What I do know is that transparency is key in social media. Without it, there's no reason to follow or believe anyone. Origin has a clear vested and monetary interest in Jay Peak. They should have clearly stated their connection.

The goal is to have the post serve as an expert, third party validation for Jay's social media efforts. Even Jay Peak is re-tweeting Origin's post in a "gosh, we're so honored" manner.

The fact is, it's an inside ping-pong game, aimed at misleading people. Origin, if you want to write about Jay Peak, great, just tell us what you're relationship is. And maybe talk about which of your other clients could use help.

Come on guys, put the cards on the table. You're all good at what you do, but if you're trying to fool the consumer, shame on you.

If Origin and Jay want to be really good in social media, try being transparent.

“Social Media’s Collective Wisdom” e-Book

This is from Christine Whittemore's Simple Marketing Blog, it is a complete reprint, nothing original here.

Whittemore Publishes “Social Media’s Collective Wisdom” e-Book

Simplifies marketing with social media for corporate marketers

Kinnelon, NJ – Christine Whittemore, chief simplifier of Simple Marketing Now LLC, has published “Social Media’s Collective Wisdom: Simplifying Marketing With Social Media” in which 26 prominent social media practitioners answer the question “what suggestions do you have for companies to implement so they can more effectively bridge old media with new media and connect with end users?”

The wisdom collected in this e-book originates from a social media interview series about Bridging New & Old that Whittemore launched in December 2008 on her blog Flooring The Consumer. This first volume of “Social Media’s Collective Wisdom” captures responses from the first 26 participants in this ongoing series.

“Social media is here to stay,” says Whittemore, “but the tools and approaches aren’t yet fully understood particularly as it relates to organizations. How better to jump start the process by absorbing the collective wisdom of these insightful social media professionals.”

Responses from the following social media experts are included in “Social Media’s Collective Wisdom: Simplifying Marketing With Social Media” - Book I:

• Susan Abbott from Customer Experience Crossroads
• Toby Bloomberg from Diva Marketing Blog
• Laurence Borel from Blog Till You Drop
• Jeanne Byington from The Importance of Earnest Service
• Mack Collier from MackCollier.com
• Yvonne DiVita from LipSticking
• Jay Ehret from The Marketing Spot
• Kristin Golliher from Otterbox
• Kristin Gorski from Write Now Is Good
• Lewis Green from BizSolutionsPlus
• Ann Handley from Annarchy
• Karin Hermans from Wood You Like
• Chris Kieff from 1 Good Reason
• Andrea Learned from Learned On Women
• Lori Magno from Moda Di Magno Blog For Stylish Living
• Valeria Maltoni from Conversation Agent
• Doug Meacham from NextUp
• Peg Mulligan from Peg Mulligan’s Blog
• Rich Nadworny from Digital Strategy Blog
• Amber Naslund from Altitude Branding
• David Polinchock from Experience Manifesto
• Arun Rajagopal from Arun Rajagopal’s Blog
• Dan Schawbel from Personal Branding Blog
• Mario Vellandi from Melodies in Marketing
• Steve Woodruff from StickyFigure
• Alan Woody from Carpets By Otto

The e-book - Social Media's Collective Wisdom: Simplifying Marketing With Social Media - Book I - is available for free download by visiting http://simplemarketingnow.com/Services.html.

Ads are like hookups; Social Media is like dating

It's amazing to see how businesses are going nuts over social media. Everyone wants to talk about it. Everyone wants to do social media marketing even if they don't really understand what it is. Robert Scoble had an interesting article about how he monetarily values Twitter and everyone I talk to in the industry says the same thing: All of their clients want Social Media.

While it's great that there's such a desire for this relationship marketing, the people asking for it often view it as the same type of quickie marketing they're used to: Create a sexy ad and let it run. It's like a hookup: Fun, flashy, not much commitment and you can walk away in the morning.  You have the idea that people are waiting for you to show up in a place they can't avoid you, too.

Social media might not cost as much as advertising but it takes a longer commitment and honest assessment of your brand. You might actually find that you need to change a few things (gasp!) to really attract the people you want and need. It's more like dating because it's going to take some time, you'll make mistakes along the way, and your ultimate measure of success will be how much you put into it. The end prize is also the same: A real relationship.

So here's my dating advice for Brands dipping their toes into the Social Media scene:

1. Most people are not that into you - One of the most eye opening experiences for businesses is when they find out how little chatter there is about their brands online. Yes, if you have a big national brand that's done lots of advertising over many years, there's probably some chatter. But the reality is that once you start listening, you often don't hear that much. And why should you? Most people have much more important things to talk about beside your brand. Like their lives or their interests. You didn't honestly think they were obsessing over your product or service, did you? Like all self-centered daters, it's a challenge to realize that you're not that interesting naturally. You'll actually have to work at making yourself interesting so more people will talk about you.
2. People tire quickly of other people who talk incessantly about themselves - One common mistake in dating and social media is that you burst on the scene and talk only about yourself. In social media, this can result in a stream of tweets and Facebook updates which are nothing more than small sales blurbs. If you run a discount business, or one where your value proposition is low price or deals, this may work for you. JetBlue and Southwest do this successfully with Twitter as does Dell. For people looking for a specific low cost deal, this is a good social media strategy.  For the rest, restating your marketing and sales pitches in social media is, well, boring. Hard to get a second date when you're boring us on the first one.
3. Take the long-term view - Getting social media right requires planning. If you whisk your first date off to a moonlit dinner in the Bahamas, with champagne and calypso band, what on earth are you going to do on the second or third date? Taking a longer view means you have to have a content plan online on what you want to share and talk about. While this usually doesn't require lots of outside costs, it does require internal staff time, since they're the ones with the stories. You need to gather your stories, figure out how to tell them correctly, and decide how and when to put them online. Whether you're Scheherazade and the 1,001 nights or Salome with the Seven Veils (ooh, bad endings both), stretching things out to see what will happen next works. This is the hardest part but it's the one you need to keep your people coming back.
4. Reward good behavior - Remember, in dating you want to show what parts you like too. If your date does something good, make sure you reward them, whether that's publicity, deals or letting them get to second base. You better start thinking about your reward system too, so they don't get unrealistic expectations.
5. Own up to your mistakes quickly - Boy, the last thing you want is to have your date hear something bad about you first without addressing it. If you've made a mistake, online or offline, own up to it. Hearing it from you is better than hearing about it from others, especially if you're in denial. Things like this can be the kiss of death for a budding relationship. Make sure you have a process in place for dealing with this.

Of course, once you pass the dating phase and into a real relationship, you'll have to keep that spiced up as well. But that's really another blog post.

If you're the Eliot Spitzer of Social Media and just want to pay for it with no emotional ties, you can expect a bad ending. If you just want the quick hook up, well don't start complaining about feeling lonely or some unwanted "attachment" you might've picked up.

Social media is a commitment. If you're not ready for one, you should probably stay away.

The End of the Beginning for Twitter?

Robert Scoble had an interesting comment on yesterday's blog. Once you get through his bluster, he seems like a guy dealing with an out of control monster, i.e. his Twitter followers. In trying to do the right thing for everyone, the whole Twitter experience became unworkable.

Maybe it's time to put in some limits to Twitter. On the upper scale, these would only apply to a few, but in doing so, Twitter might be able to make its tool more manageable

• Set the Free Twitter limit of followers and people you can follow to 5,000 (or 10,000 or 1,000) - Limiting who you're following is easy. Limiting and changing who's following you would be harder. But they're clever guys at Twitter. One of the interesting things that might happen here is that have to refresh followers and follows regularly. This might be a good thing, forcing Twitterers to make new contacts, and listen to new people, continually.
• Make people pay, for various levels of followers (25K, 50K, 100K) - This might be an acceptable business model for Twitter and would work for those who need big followers (brands or social media superstars). It would hurt spammers and some big swinging Tweets who have big followings but no biz model. Twitter would have to build some type of spam filters if they're going to make people pay, so that they don't run into Scoble-type issues.

Look at the top 100 on Twitterholic.com. They are all (pretty much) celebs or businesses. All of them can afford to pay for their following. There's almost no one on that top list you'd have any type of personal relationship with.

Of course, as soon as you limit who can follow you, it starts feeling more like Facebook, i.e. not a good thing.

It seems like we're starting to see the end of the beginning for Twitter. When it's top social media evangelists can't use it, there's trouble. Of course, I think it's worthwhile to think of this is a small or medium connection place rather than a big one. And I think when you take the auto-follow out of the equation, there's still a question of how many people you can manage (See Armano's 50-50 Rule post).

But something's got to give, when top social media evangelists start complaining about having too many people to deal with. It's kind of sad, actually. This has been a fun year on Twitter, the wild west of online.

It's Time to Purge the Purgers

The big news last week was that social media superstar Robert Scoble had purged the people he followed from his Twitter account. He went from following 90,000 to none in no time. Scoble had instituted an Auto-Follow for his Twitter crowd, meaning that if you followed him, he would automatically follow you back. Lots of big swinging Tweets, like Guy Kawasaki, do this. The problem for Scoble is that he says he received too much spam. Now that he wasn't following anyone, the spam problem disappeared.

Well good for him. But the problem is that a number of other people followed suit (it wouldn't be social media if they didn't now, would it) and it raises an interesting question about Twitter. 

Why should you really follow someone if they don't follow you back?

The great excitement and promise for Twitter is that it is the best two-way thing out there. We've been talking interactive and one-to-one for almost 15 years now, and Twitter is probably the closest we've come. But it's playing out in two ways:

• Individuals who you can actually listen to and connect with in real time; and
• Broadcasters who are using Twitter to blast out their message, seeing it as another outreach medium

The problems start when broadcasters start posing as individuals. Pete Cashmore isn't really on Twitter, Mashable is. And now Robert Scoble is removing himself from Twitter as well, it's a Scobleizer broadcast instead. They're more like CNN and USAToday then they are like Chris Brogan.

The biggest problem I have with this is that it's not authentic. Seth Godin, as usual, is a good model here. He's realized that he can't have relationships with so many people at once, so rather than using the relationship tool Twitter and faking it, he eschews it completely. He's being very honest. However, over the years, every time I've sent Seth an email, no matter how trivial, he's answered it within 24 hours. Talk about authentic! He obviously doesn't need Twitter and will not compromise what he stands for.

I mentioned Chris Brogan before. He has as many followers as Scoble. Right now, he's still following them back. And Chris is great at answering DMs and email. He's been a huge help in the few things I've asked him.

I think we need to #PURGE the broadcasters posing as individuals. The reality is that it hurts them more than it hurts us. If someone unfollows me, big deal, I'm not basing my marketability on the number of Twitter followers I have. But broadcasters do. It's the only measure they have, since they're in a one-way conversation. It's like Nielsen TV ratings for them.

And if they broadcast something really interesting, some of their remaining followers will probably ReTweet it, so we're not really missing anything.

Except a two-way relationship.

So long, @scobleizer, I hardly new you. #PURGE

Business Culture and the Social Media Subversive

We hear a lot about how social media helps companies gain authenticity; how it enables people throughout the organization to make decisions; how it allows employees to connect directly with customers and solve their problems.

Well, what if your organization or business doesn't work that way? What happens if your culture is one of making sure the boss Okays everything? How can companies engage in social media if they haven't empowered people to take initiatives without second guessing them constantly?

I'm sure some of you will say that in today's world those questions lack relevance. But I've seen this in action. It's usually the case with a strong executive, sometimes the company's founder. While the organization might be quite successful, it's a very much command and control culture.

So if social media authentically reflects you, and your reflection isn't a good one, maybe your business should just forget about social media. PRSarahEvans made a great point at the social media breakfast yesterday when someone asked her about what to do when a company is afraid to jump into social media. She answered that companies should take a look internally about what causes the fear and start to address it before doing anything. (I think she'd make a great coach, by the way).

I think the companies who have this command and control culture are the ones who pop up in social media and then disappear after a few months. There's no commitment to the process or patience with building relationships. It's probably the same inside the company. And since cultures like these HATE hearing anything negative about themselves, they'd rather ignore the negative comments than address them.

Do you recognize yourself in one of these organizations? If you do, and you feel frustrated by this, I think you should become a Social Media Subversive. Start the revolution baby!

Only you'll have to do it surreptitiously. Set up your secret listening posts about your brand and category. Create your accounts and engage people who talk about you. Build a relationship that leads to a sale or inquiry, and keep doing it.

Probably someone at work will get mad at you, but if you have results, what's the problem? They probably won't find out until you reveal your success (since they're not monitoring anything). Take a page from the military: Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Of course you could risk your job for insubordination. But if you do, even after your success, why would you want to work at a place like that? And you can take your social media success and market it to other companies.

The worst case would be that the success makes others jealous and they take the social media duties away and give them to someone else, someone with the "right" credentials who doesn't really get social media and drives this right into the ground.

Even if this happens, you'll still have a great story to tell.

Does anyone know of companies with this command and control culture where social media has flourished? I'd love to know...