Category Archives: Social Media

May 6, 2011 · 9:00 AM

More Marketers Getting Engaged

Two great articles from last week on marketers’ shift from impressions to engagement as key performance measures:

The first, from our good friends at the Harvard Business Review, authored by Coca-Cola Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer Joe Tripodi, profiles the corporation’s growing interest in harnessing the power of brand advocates in pursuit of doubling worldwide revenues by the year 2020.

“In the near term, ‘consumer impressions’ will remain the backbone of our measurement because it is the metric universally used to compare audiences across nearly all types of media. But impressions only tell advertisers the raw size of the audience. By definition, impressions are passive. They give us no real sense of engagement, and consumer engagement with our brands is ultimately what we’re striving to achieve. Awareness is fine, but advocacy will take your business to the next level.”

Tripodi notes that Coca-Cola-related content generated 146 million views on YouTube, but only 26 million of those views were of content actually created by Coke! Wouldn’t it be great if you had your marketing messages amplified by a factor of five-and-a-half?

The second article, by Weber Shandwick’s Tim Marklein, offers an excellent practical guide for marketers seeking to align impressions with expressions when measuring the impact of traditional and social media messages. His advice:

  1. Integrate analytics across multiple channels;
  2. Track engagement and impressions in parallel; and
  3. “Contextualize,” which is my favorite point of all:

“[I]f you’re targeting consumers, then USA Today (3.3 million daily readers) might be valuable to you because of the audience and media context within which it appears. If you’re targeting business leaders, then  WSJ.com (12 million monthly readers) is probably more beneficial in reaching your broad audience.  The industry blog (10,000 daily readers) might be a more targeted way to reach specific decision-makers who would buy your company’s product.

Now let’s add engagement into the mix. Generally speaking, people consume daily newspapers in a passive way with limited engagement.  While newspapers certainly impact opinions and behaviors, that impact is hard to track and fragmented across a broad audience.  With the WSJ.com piece, by contrast, advocates and detractors alike can easily share it via email, blogs and Twitter.  The industry blog might only have 10,000 readers, but they might be ‘the right 10,000′ — and if it’s a good blog, then they’re actively sharing, debating and commenting on the post, which extends the reach through trusted peers and leads to even more engagement.”

There is strength in numbers to be sure, but real growth comes from engagement.

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May 5, 2011 · 8:18 AM

Social Media As Customer Service #Fail

Peter Himler, aka The Flack, has a great post today on the gap between how companies should be using social media to enhance customer service, and the reality of their continuing failure to do so.

Himler picks up a thread from TechCrunch co-editors Erick Schonfeld and Paul Carr took American Airlines to the cyber woodshed for issuing Tweets promising to resolve a customer service issue and then failing to deliver on the promise.

As I reported a while back, social media works best when marketing and customer service departments are able to share information and resolve complaints in a timely and satisfactory manner.

Few companies have mastered this feat, which is understandable considering the challenges involved in “hearing,” evaluating, routing and resolving every single complaint that hits the Internet. Especially if you’re a corporation the size of American Airlines.

Carr lambastes Corporate America for hiring “19-year-old, disaffected, invent-your-own-job-title millennials” to manage their social media programs, whose mission is to get complainers to take their issues private and out of the public’s view.

Out of sight, out of mind…until an aggressive complainer, whose problem is still not resolved, decides to call out Company X for not only its lousy customer service, but also its failure to make good on the promise to fix the problem.

The time has come for marketing and customer service to divide the labor and share responsibilities for social media. One should focus on promoting the brand and the other should be responsible for responding when the brand fails to live up to the promise in the eyes of an angry customer.

How this would work in a garden variety multi-billion dollar corporation, where different departments are often housed several floors apart, or in different buildings or in different hemispheres, is a major challenge.

Especially when social media responsibilities are deemed unimportant enough to be placed in the hands of someone who could—oh, I don’t know—drop a curse word into the corporate Twitter feed.

Social media can be a powerful tool for marketing and customer service…if you have the guts to make the investment and integrate these important functions through one seamless interface.

Good luck.

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April 21, 2011 · 11:53 AM

In The Race to Be First, You Lose

A thought-provoking post from Tom Gable in today’s Daily Dog, responding to a claim by the Harvard Business Review’s Joshua Gans that, “Facebook is the largest news organization ever.”

While Gable spends a lot of time distinguishing between the “news” value of your cousin Sally’s Facebook post about her labradoodle puppy and, say, the situation in Libya, the larger point he makes about social media and the importance of “being first” should keep your CEO and IR department awake at night. Gable writes:

“Professional journalism traditionally aims for accuracy, enlightenment and fairness. Some Bloggers and Twits claim to practice citizen journalism, which others dismiss as fluff, hype and churnalism. Legitimate media, including top bloggers, post corrections and updates when stories are wrong. Doing a search for corrections on Twitter doesn’t turn up much. Younger consumers of news and information may have difficulty discerning the difference between professional journalism and faux fast news. The race to be first is having an impact on financial news coverage as well.”

Gable cites an article entitled, “Twitter, tech bubbles, and the nostalgia of the technology press” by Tim Carmody, which notes that Twitter, bloggers and Quora are driving corporate stock prices, with information moving as fast or faster than the traditional journalists covering the industry.

When anonymous messages appearing from out of the ether have the same or greater impact as well-researched articles published by reputable news organizations, millions of dollars and jobs are at stake.

Today’s investor relations officer must spend at least as much time monitoring what’s being said about his company as he does getting the word out. It’s like playing Whac-a-Mole while simultaneously making a phone call and typing a press release.

Hope your multitasking skills are up to snuff.

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April 12, 2011 · 8:45 AM

When Who You Are Matches Who You Say You Are

I’ve puzzled over the value of social media for a long time, vacillating between “snake oil” and “the next big thing.” So far, the only concrete conclusions I’ve reached are:

  • Social media is a time suck.
  • Social media can elect a president.
  • Social media is a powerful branding tool if you have an unlimited amount of time and money.
  • Social media is nearly impossible to quantify using traditional ROI measures.

But leave it to Brian Solis to point out the true value of social media.

I think Solis is under the impression he gets paid by the word, and one has to sort through the psychobabble to get to the meat, but the point is clear: honest engagement in social media enables a brand (or an individual) to demonstrate that you truly are who you say you are.

In his April 8 post, “How do you increase social influence? Don’t think about the score,” Solis states that one should not mistake “influence” (the number of connections, posts, “likes,” retweets, friends, etc. one acquires) with “social capital,” defined by Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam as, “[the] collective value of all ‘social networks’ and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other.”

“[Putnam] believes social capital can be ‘measured by the amount of trust and reciprocity in a community or between individuals’.”

In other words, your ability to influence action is in direct proportion to the amount of trust you engender from those in your social community.

“Influence is not measured by a score, but instead by the culmination of resulting actions…If you invest in the value of the community and seek to improve the experiences of those to whom you’re connected, your influence and presence is in turn symbolic of something that escapes a number. Your investment then pays off in the form of self actualization [emphasis mine], reaching higher potential without any attachment to success or reward.”

Capitalists (myself included) will have a difficult time grasping this altruistic philosophy, especially if our number one goal is to sell stuff.

However, when paired with more traditional marketing communications, social media efforts over time build trust and demonstrate a commitment to the well-being of those you value the most—your customers.

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March 14, 2011 · 10:31 AM

Chrysler, Twitter and the #FBomb

Gini Dietrich and others have already weighed in on this issue, but I have my own take that I thought I should share.

In case you’ve missed it, last week, a representative of Chrysler’s now-former social media agency, posted the following tweet via the @ChryslerAutos Twitter account:

“I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f**king drive”

Both the employee and his agency, New Media Strategies, found themselves out of work and out of a client, respectively, in short order.

In my opinion, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.

My heart goes out to the newly pink-slipped employee, who just learned a valuable career lesson. Trust me, it’ll make for a good war story when you’re older. Don’t ask me how I know.

The larger issue is how much faith companies and agencies are placing in the hands of youngsters whose thought processes and judgment haven’t necessarily caught up with their social media savvy.

My inference is that the employee in question may very well have been managing multiple Twitter accounts using Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or some other aggregator, and simply didn’t realize which account he was using when he chose to opine on the driving acumen of Detroit motorists.

I’ll bet he dropped another F-bomb just after he pressed “tweet” and realized his thoughts were now attributed to an important client and would be preserved in the Twittersphere for all eternity.

Should he have lost his job? You bet. Some mistakes an employer cannot forgive.

But should New Media Strategies have had safeguards in place to prevent something like this from happening in the first place? Absolutely.

You wouldn’t send a med student into the OR to perform an appendectomy, so why would an agency risk its clients’ reputations and its own livelihood on a system that is one thumbstroke away from disaster?

I find the response to New Media Strategies’ CEO Pete Snyder’s blog post regarding the fiasco of great interest. You can check those out by clicking HERE.

Whether you’re a corporate communicator or work for an agency with access to its clients’ social media accounts, now would be a good time to review your safeguards and make sure you’re not one F-bomb away from the unemployment line.

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March 8, 2011 · 10:41 AM

Can Marketing and Customer Service Share Social Media Responsibilities?

Thought-provoking article in MediaPost today on how companies plan to use Twitter and Facebook for customer service in the coming year.

According to a Gartner, Inc. report referenced in the story, roughly one in three large companies will begin using their online communities to improve customer service in the coming year (that’s up from a mere five percent in 2010).

Right now, most companies manage their social media presence through their marketing departments, which works pretty well for proactive communication, but few companies have found a way to effectively respond to customer complaints and constructive criticism using social media (after all, marketing is about making promises, not keeping them)

“[Gartner] identified several hurdles slowing the shift to customer care through social sites. Despite the hype surrounding social media as a customer service tool, there is a lack of back-end technology in place to support customer service operations through online social channels. ‘There are a myriad of technology and process issues that arise when you go from ad hoc support to scalable and structured support,’ said Drew Kraus, research vice president at Gartner.

Kraus cites HP and Drugstore.com as two companies that have figured out a way to use social media to improve customer response, but they are on a very short list.

In recent years, we’ve all been working hard to integrate sales and marketing to ensure that the promise (marketing) is living up to the customer’s expectations and serving her needs (sales).

We now need to incorporate customer service into the mix. I think that’s what Philip Kotler et al. are talking about in their book Marketing 3.0. Randall Ringer has a nice viewpoint that you can read HERE.

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February 25, 2011 · 9:16 AM

Social Media Spreads More Than Soundbites

Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist, shares an interesting counterpoint to the notion that social media is about sharing ideas in tidbits and 140-character clips.

In “The Internet Helps Us Get Serious,” she notes with optimism that the ability for politicians to engage in serious political and philosophical debate has been greatly enhanced by Web-based technologies—an important and often-overlooked counter trend to the mass media soundbite world we’ve been living in for the past few decades.

Noonan credits social media for enabling citizens to share and digest “serious speeches” that enable them to analyze and understand where our political leaders stand on key issues, and to make informed decisions based on this knowledge:

“People in politics think it’s all Facebook and Twitter now, but it’s not. Not everything is fractured and in pieces, some things are becoming more whole. People hunger for serious, fleshed-out ideas about what is happening in our country. We all know it’s a pivotal time.”

Often, we in the communications business get so caught up in creating a clever headline or breaking off a quick Tweet in the hopes of garnering the attention that we forget to include the ideas that actually sell the product. And getting attention is a critical first step, as Alec Baldwin will tell you (starting at the 3:27 mark), but that doesn’t mean we should be afraid to put our ideas out there.

If you have 20 minutes worth of stuff to say, go ahead and put it out there…chances are good someone wants to hear what you have to say.

Just ask U.S. Senator Ron Johnson. Again from Noonan:

“[Johnson] was thinking of running for the Senate against an incumbent, Democratic heavy-hitter Russ Feingold. He started making speeches talking about his conception of freedom. They were serious, sober, and not sound-bitey at all. A conservative radio host named Charlie Sykes got hold of a speech Mr. Johnson gave at a Lincoln Day dinner in Oshkosh. He liked it and read it aloud on his show for 20 minutes. A speech! The audience listened and loved it. A man called in and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Another said, ‘I have to agree with everything that guy said.’ Mr. Johnson decided to run because of that reaction, and in November he won. This week he said, ‘The reason I’m a U.S. senator is because Charlie Sykes did that.’ But the reason Mr. Sykes did it is that Mr. Johnson made a serious speech.”

Don’t discount what you have to say. The people who care want to hear you.

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February 17, 2011 · 8:43 AM

Is Obama Bypassing the MSM? And If So, Is That a Bad Thing?

A thought-provoking story published Tuesday on ABC News.com asks whether the Obama administration is attempting to bypass the mainstream media in an effort to both control its message and connect with the American public.

Reporter Devin Dwyer observes:

“The White House Press Office now not only produces a website, blog, YouTube channel, Flickr photo stream, and Facebook and Twitter profiles, but also a mix of daily video programming, including live coverage of the president’s appearances and news-like shows that highlight his accomplishments.”

The White House recently has launched a series of online programs, including “West Wing Week,” “Open for Questions” and “Advise the Adviser: Your Direct Line to the White House.”

The Obama campaign was widely applauded for the successful use of social media that helped sweep him into office in 2008, but now it seems those very same strategies are running afoul of the mainstream media, who bemoan the lack of access to the President they feel they should have.

Dwyer reports that the White House press corps were barred from the President’s START Treaty signing ceremony and from his post-State of the Union cabinet meeting, and that reporters were limited to one question each during a joint Q&A session with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I strongly believe in the role of a strong media apparatus and its role in questioning our leaders and providing the public with the information we need in order to make informed decisions and ensure that we’re appropriately represented in Washington and elsewhere. The White House should be open and allow journalists to do their jobs.

On the other hand, creating a direct-to-the-consumer (or electorate) news channel is a brilliant strategy that can and does help the governors connect more directly to the governed, and one that my friend Ed Lallo of Newsroom Ink has employed this “private label news strategy” for clients including Imperial Sugar and Louisiana Seafood.

In an age when newspaper staffs and news-gathering budgets are shrinking and the race to be first is more important than the responsibility to be accurate, the Web offers a wealth of opportunities for your organization to share “what’s really happening” with stakeholders and balance what’s being reported by the mainstream media.

Are you relying on the news media to tell your story? If so, are you missing out on ways to share your story directly with those whose opinions and perceptions truly affect your business?

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February 1, 2011 · 10:53 AM

Facebook-Generated Depression = Exploitation for Profit

Unscrupulous marketers looking for ways to exploit human frailty for profit may find a recent Stanford study of interest.

As reported by Slate.com last week, the study, entitled, “Misery Has More Company Than People Think,” published in the January issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (I know I never miss an issue), our human tendency to assume that others are happier than we are is made worse by social media, resulting in higher anxiety and even depression.

The study, led by one-time Stanford Ph.D. candidate Alex Jordan, observed:

“By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people’s lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles’ heel of human nature. And women—an especially unhappy bunch of late—may be especially vulnerable to keeping up with what they imagine is the happiness of the Joneses.”

Essentially, we’re all BSing each other through our own narcissism, and in the process making ourselves less happy than ever. How messed up is that?

What really scares me, though, is that marketers who typically prey upon human insecurity to sell stuff have probably figured out how to leverage the “happiness” of others to generate greater sales and profits.

Diet plans, cosmetics companies, fashion clothiers, etc. could make a comfortable living exploiting consumers’ anxiety for profit.

The technique is not that different than the way many companies have marketed through the mass media over the years, but it’s probably a lot more effective—especially when your “happy” friend “likes” the way she was able to drop 15 pounds thanks to Company X.

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December 21, 2010 · 12:02 PM

#BrianSheehan Taken to Woodshed for Social Media Column

Poor Brian Sheehan. He’s taking a real beating for his column in Ad Age last week on how big brands are beating the little guys in the realm of social media.

Sheehan cites campaigns such as the Ford Fiesta and the Old Spice Guy as examples of how big brands have leveraged social media to connect with consumers.

To date, he’s attracted 21 comments, the majority of which read like this gem from pedels01:

“Do many small brands have the budgets to locate and enlist 100 major influencers and hand them all cars? Do they have the resources to create one of the most popular ads of the year and THEN create a series of viral videos that people go wild over? Do ANY of the small brands have the kind of brand name, awareness and connection that gains instant attention, awareness, and engagement?

This isn’t a crisis of imagination–it’s a crisis of resources. Sure, you have some small brand outliers who do clever things, but reality is, more resources, more people thinking at your behest, and more agency support yields more buzz, and that’s final.”

There’s no doubt that both Ford, Procter & Gamble and others have done a masterful job of leveraging social media to drive awareness and sales, but consider that the Fiesta launched involved giving away 100 cars to socially connected millennials and Old Spice invested millions in mass media advertising to drive its social media campaign and his argument falls short.

The best-ever example of the little guy using social media to get ahead is BlendTec, with its “Will it Blend?” video series, which remains the all-time most-watched viral video series, and in my opinion, does what any good marketing campaign should do—it showcases the superior features and benefits of the BlendTec blender.

If their blender is good enough to pulverize an iPad, it can probably handle a frozen margarita.

As I see it, social media works and can work well, provided you abide by the tried-and-true principles of marketing communications. If you can answer four basic questions, you dramatically improve your chances for success:

  1. Who are you?
  2. What do you do/what are you selling?
  3. How is your product/service better than your competitions’?
  4. Why should I care?

Sheehan’s not wrong; he’s just comparing apples and oranges.

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