All the Pieces are in Place

I don't often talk specifically about my day job on here, but I felt the need to do so since I am excited about some of the work I have been lucky enough to be a part of.

For the past year I have been working on launching and building the Social Media presence of SAVO. Yes, the past year. The process was long, but well thought out and well worth the effort. The final piece of the puzzle was put in place last week, Blog.SAVO.

Blog.SAVO offers the company the opportunity to extend the conversation and share expertise and experience with the public. One thing that is noticeably different compared to many other corporate blogs is that multiple voices, from all levels in the company are represented. This is core to some of the central thinking at SAVO that Tribal Knowledge can come from anyone within the company. I am lucky to work with a lot of very talented people every day -  and in time, as the content on the site grows, this wealth of information will be shared well beyond the walls of the company.

For me this marks a very exciting time - my vision is coming together. While we have implemented multiple pieces of the strategy already, the blog is my personal crown jewel (if it weren't for the birth of my son Logan three weeks ago I would have called it my baby.)

The Danger of rushing in to Social Media

As an advocate of how social media can be effective when incorporated into a corporation’s larger marketing program, it is painful for me to see when companies do it wrong.

A recent example of this was Marsh supermarkets and its Facebook Coupon. Marsh sent a $10 coupon to their Facebook Fans thinking that they would forward it to a few people – the result, mass produced coupons and some being sold for individual profit… Question here, what is the going rate for a $10 coupon?

As a result Marsh has decided not to honor the coupons resulting in an expected backlash. A Marsh statement reveals that this is one of the company’s initial initiatives to use social media as marketing.

This should serve as a lesson to any corporation jumping into social media (be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) – make sure you have a solid plan in place, and like all marketing initiatives think through the campaign completely before launching it to the public. Something KFC hopefully learned from the Oprah debacle.

Social Media is hot, and it is smart for corporations to get in on it now… but only after you have decided what your desired outcomes will be. I think the Marsh coupon idea was a smart idea, but in my opinion they should have limited it to the actual Fans.

I don’t think Marsh should suspend future Social Media plans, but I think they need to realize the power of viral before launching the next campaign. I also think this should serve as a lesson for any other company wanting to jump the gun without having a plan in place.

Brand Bombing on Twitter

This past Friday I came across an interesting question on LinkedIn posted by Emily Luiz - The question was: Calling attention to negative review of competitor product via Twitter: Cool or not cool?

The post in question was tweeted by Red Mango and said the following: "OMG - The New Worst Drink in America Cold Stone Creamery PB&C Shake, with 2,010 calories + 131 grams of fat!!!!" The tweet linked to this article in Men's Health.

I will admit that I have never heard of Red Mango prior to this, so in a way it did a good job by raising awareness, heck, they are getting a blog post by me out of it - but, the question Emily posted is a very good one, is this a cool strategy or not?

A look at the answers to the questions shows that people view this as a bad move and in poor taste. But is it any worse than when Subway calls out Burger King and McDonalds in their ads, and on their napkins - spelling out that Subway is the much healthier choice and if you chose the other options you are basically a cow?

For the most part we accept this tactic when it is used in traditional advertising, of course Subway never starts and ad with OMG or calls a Big Mac the Worst Sandwich in America (that would be a straight out lie, at least to this dough boy.)

But is social media different? Is a move like this a poor attempt at a brand bomb? And in a case like this are you actually doing more harm to your brand than that of your rival?

Social media, twitter in this specific example, has become a place for brands to interact directly with consumers and prospects - it has changed advertising from interruption based to an actual dialogue where the end user has a voice - The brand takes on a living breathing role, there is a person running these accounts and it is no longer just a pushed message from the faceless corporation - that is why this specific brand bomb resonates.

I am sure the folks at Red Mango had to love the fact that a rival got called out, a few high fives at corporate were probably had - but to post the link to twitter, from your account, directly tied to your brand? That does hit a little low - because it is no longer the cold faceless corporation and an ad agency - it is your social persona, and your persona just came off as kind of a dick.

In reality, is a move like this any worse than what Horizon Group did when they sued a tenant over a tweet? To me they both are poor examples of how to participate in the message community, one example happened to get picked up by the MSM, the other just kind of passed through the Twitter silo.

I think this does give an opportunity to open the dialogue on what should be expected out of brands as they migrate to social media. Let me know what you think - was this brand bomb laid out by Red Mango a smart move? Or is it in poor taste and an example not to be followed?

Social Media and the #IranElection

In a world where our nightly news gives us stories about the love affairs of Jon and Kate and the trivial goings on of Heidi and Spencer it was hardly shocking that when news of protests came out of Iran main stream media was not leading the story. The protests, based on the controversial election results, came through the blogosphere via social media, and only now, days later, main stream media is trying to catch up on news that has become common knowledge to those who actively utilize social media.

Twitter has become the main source of information where a handful of trusted people are tweeting out of Iran, and at a high risk to their personal safety. The tweets are carrying messages about what is happening on the streets, warning people of dangers and countering the messages being put out by the state run media. Even more impactful are the images and videos being captured on cell phones and uploaded to photo sharing sites and youtube. The images are sometimes graphic and show a firsthand look at an uprising in the making. These images are not the ones that are typically screened and edited before making their way to the nightly news here in the US.

Another site, not really a social media site, is news aggregator Fark. This site has been an incredible source of information and conversation about what is happening real time, specifically from a regular poster that posts under the name Tatsuma.

What we are witnessing is not only a potential revolution in Iran, it is a revolution on how we consume news and information. Personally, as someone who is a consumer of social media I appreciate being one of the first in the know - however, as someone who frequents social media I know how fast misinformation can spread. This is a time where the world is starving for information from trusted sources, has this "revolution" shown us the irrelevance of traditional media? I hope not.

How Big is Your Social Media Ripple?

Social media is quickly becoming the “it” phrase for marketers. We have flocked to twitter and are pumping out tweets to add to the collective conversation. We are using tools like tweetdeck to manage feeds and conversations of interest. We have put up a fan page on facebook to supplement our existing websites as a way to connect immediately with people who are our fans. We also are creating and joining groups on LinkedIn to leverage our position as thought leaders…but, this is not where it ends.

To truly understand social media and your place in this online world is to understand that almost every day there is a new channel rising up. Certainly a lot of these tools will come and go, but what about the ones that stick? Are you there, are you speaking to these audiences? If not, are your competitors? Have you looked to see if your brand is still available as a user name?

This last point is a big one. As social media grows, we marketers lose an element of control over our brands and place it squarely in the hands of the community at large. This can be a great thing, if you are using social media to its fullest as that is actually one of the goals. You want others to speak about your company to their followers, but what if someone takes your existing brand and starts a presence on an up and coming site? Celebrities deal with this all the time and it isn’t something that businesses should think they are immune to.

It is important to be aware of not only what is hot now, but what might be hot in the future. Even if you don’t have the time to manage every possible social community there are tools that can assist you in easily distributing your message over multiple platforms without much additional effort or time commitment. Even if you decide a certain channel is not appropriate for you, which is highly likely, it still might be in your interests to create a profile to secure no one else does first. In addition, a lot of these communities offer the ability to include your URL in the profile so at a minimum you are placing that link across a broader spectrum of the internet.

Following is a list of some of the larger social media sites, including a little basic information on each.

My.mashable.com: Mashable is a site you should be familiar with. Mashable is the leading blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Networking. It is frequently linked on other social media networks. Basically my.mashable is your profile on this site where you can also add links to your other social networks along with other basic information. The site allows you to list your current activity, join and create groups and friend other members of the community.

Plaxo.com: Plaxo bills itself as “not a place to see how many online friends you can collect” It is basically an address book that allows you to post updates to the people in your book. It is a place to share blogs, photos, etc. Pulse works as a dashboard to view others social media platforms in one place. It is kind of the more grown up version of the better known aggregator friendfeed.

Friendfeed: it is just what its name is – a feed of all of you friends other social media activities – you can link twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc here and see everyone’s update in real time. What if your friends aren’t on friendfeed? No problem, it allows you to create a virtual profile for them until they eventually do jump on the wagon like they did for twitter and facebook. Also, you can segment your feeds into categories like personal, business, etc. You can also create and join groups relevant to you or your business interests.

LinkedIn: At the most basic level LI allows you to connect with all of your business contacts made over the years and serves as a living resume for you. LinkedIn also allows you to become a member or create groups with business professionals with like interests where you can share your insights and content with others who have opted in. Also, another big portion on the LI site is Answers – if you haven’t made yourself familiar with answers yet I recommend you do so soon.

Streetmavens: This operates similar to twitter with its microblog quality, but at a very local level. If you are a small business working in a specific geographic area it is something to consider as it is a place where people go to find out what is happening in their area. Plus, it offers a search feature that allows people to find what they are looking for happening in their city.

Twitter: The biggest microblog in the game

Ping.fm: this in itself is not a social tool you go to find information, rather it is a tool to use to create a message in one place and then it does the work of submitting it to your feeds on all of your other social sites. It is a blessing for those of us trying to easily get a message out to more than one channel fast.

Identi.ca: when of the up and comers in the world of microblogging. Its interface is not as clean as twitter, but navigating based on the tab based system is pretty easy. It does not have close to the community size as twitter, and is filled primarily with early adopters. A feature that identi.ca has that twitter does not on its mane site is the ability to create and join groups.

Koornk: Basically a twitter clone with clucks as opposed to tweets, which offers localization and opened support.

Kwippy: again, another microblog which offers the ability to share Gtalk, Yahoo and Facebook status messages with friends and have conversations around them. You can add kwippy as a contact in your IM and your statuses get stored and you get IM notifications whenever someone comments. Kwippy is still in early adopter phase and you need to submit your email to be invited to the community.

Multiply: Multiply is a community that allows you to update status, add photos, your blog, music, reviews and contacts all to one main dash. You can also create and join groups add videos and links to your profile. You can use the site for free, but Multiply also features a paid subscription that allows you to sort high res originals of photos and video, gives access to others hi-res content, higher video upload limits, ad-free browsing and one click album downloads.

Plurk: another in the growing number of microblogs, with a twist. Plurk shoes your 140 character updates in a timeline format instead of the traditional linear format used by other microblogs.

Tumblr: This site allows you to post photos, text, links, music, videos etc. You can post from your desktop, browser phone or even email. Tumblr also allows you to create an audio post from your phone. An added cool feature is the ability to add tags.

Vox: A blogging tool that allows easy integration with Flickr and YouTube.

jaiku: Yet another microblog, this time with the power of the name Google behind it. Jaiku operates a lot like twitter and allows the creation of channels (basically hash tagging) the biggest problem with jaiku right now is the lack of a good search feature, but with Google behind the scenes it may only be a matter of time.

Brightkite: Again a microblog, but the difference with Brightkite is that it is based on geography where you can check in to let people know where you are and add a photo of your current location – it is also a good tool to find out what is going on in the area you are. But in the end, functions like a microblog with pictures.

Youare: Basically, again, a microblog that was started in Spanish and moved to French and English speaking communities. Like twitter you can post updates in 140 characters, but you can also share video and pictures. However, here is where it is really different – full bios, including work life and education and the ability to add favorites and import from Flickr, YouTube and Delicious.

claimed / OpenID: A one stop place to create a log-in that can be used on sites like Livejournal, Magnolia, Technorati and Twurl (to name a few.) On your page you create a profile of all the sites that comprise your identity allowing you to easily prove ownership.

Slideshare: Have a cool presentation, this is the place to share it with the world – SS allows you to also embed shows onto blog or website, share publicly or privately, synch audio to slides, market events and join groups.

Delicious.com, Digg, diigo, Reddit, MisterWong: social bookmarking tools - start these accounts today and get to bookmarking your content today to help others discover what you offer.

Facebook: the standard line for facebook is it is an a living directory of everyone you care to keep connected with from birth to today and share what is going on in your world. On the business side there are fan pages where you can connect with the entire facebook universe if they become a fan. You can add events, pictures, updates and send messages to all of your fans quickly.

Bit.ly: URL shrinker with advanced analytics

Twurl.cc: URL shrinker that allows you to track number of clicks

Vimeo: A place for you to share videos

Seesmic: another place to add personal videos – the cool twist is the ability to create conversations with other people submitting their video updates.

YouTube: Beyond just uploading video you need to look at the benefits of creating a YouTube channel where you can add a detailed bio and links to your site – post recent activity updates and comment back and forth with viewers of the channel. Plus as you get subscribers to your channel they can be notified of new updates.

 

So, that is my list. Like I said earlier the world of social media is ever growing and in short time this list will be obsolete supplemented by the next 30 sites of interest. In the big ocean of Social Media, do you know if you have even begun to create a ripple? 

Little Green Truth?

When I decided to start this blog my focus was to discuss things that were important to me and also to share the marketing knowledge and tips I have acquired though the years. Even with my experience in social media I never expected to get so personally involved in a story that was buzzing in the twitter world. But that is exactly what happened when I recently wrote about how Seventh Generation was handling a public relations issue via twitter.

Even more than that, I never thought that I would be so publicly involved in a story about the environmental impact of diapers, but sometimes stuff happens. Full disclosure, my wife and I are planning on using cloth diapers when our second child is born this summer. I joke that it is because we are hippies, but there really is a lot more to it than that. Part of the reason we decided to go the cloth route is because we do try, as a family, to do all that we can to help the planet - but we also looked at the economic benefits of cloth diapers and that is what finally pushed us to go the cloth route.

We did consider using Seventh Generation's chlorine free diapers since (more disclosure) we do use a variety of their cleaning products. But in reality the final decision was strictly one of cost (since we thought either way we were doing the right thing for the planet.) The website diaperdecision.com breaks out the total expected cost of multiple cloth options versus standard disposable diapers. The site finds that a parent will spend roughly $900-$1,200 more for disposable diapers over the time their child will be in diapers. So we thought hey, we are doing something good for the environment and saving money in the process, it is a no lose situation.

But then a funny thing happened...Earth Day. It all started with the  premier of the Fine Living Networks "Big Green Lies." The show was created by Jeffrey Hollender, the Chief Protagonist" & CEO of Seventh Generation. In the show they discussed both sides of the argument of cloth vs disposable and in the video it appeared to many in twitterverse that BGL downplays the impact disposable diapers have in increasing waste in landfills but puts added emphasis on the fact that cloth diapers use more water in their lifetime. Thus, the show concludes the result is a tie and everyone should feel good about whichever path they chose.

I agree, nobody should be made to feel guilty about their choice, but is it fair for Jeffrey Hollender to be leading this public discourse as the show basically could act as a commercial for his products (as many people pointed out on Twitter.) Wouldn't this be akin to the CEO of a fast food chain creating a show explaining that you should not feel guilty about eating a double cheeseburger and large fries daily because he has data to prove that it isn't as bad as it seems?

So this is where my little blog comes into play. My wife is on twitter and follows multiple manufacturers and sellers of cloth diapers, she told me about a trending conversation regarding people being upset about BGL and the content on the show. So, I decided to follow the conversation and to look at Seventh Generations twitter feed to see how they were reacting - and they were reacting and doing, what I called, damage control. To be honest, I thought it was good that they were responding - they had their talking points in order and put the replies out there. I did mention that I wished the PR team luck, since as someone in the industry you never want to deal with negative PR, especially when it is coming from people who are buying your products.

Well, my article picked up some steam and was retweeted a few times (which I am thankful for, by the way.) It eventually found it's way to the people at Seventh Generation and this morning Meghan contacted me asking for a conversation. I gladly accepted Meghan's offer and we exchanged email information, so I am currently waiting for a conversation with her, or someone at Seventh Generation, to get their full side of the story and to get their answers to some questions about the cloth versus disposable debate.

In the meantime I have been doing some research, and have contacted some people on the other side of the issue and I am learning even more than I ever thought I would about diapers. I also learned about a really cool project being done by Sloomb called one diaper-one treetm. I personally found out more about this company by following their replies on twitter. 

Sloomb, was one of the more active twitterers, along with bum genius and Babyworks when diapergate hit. These companies were using the power of social media to push their issue to the forefront, and it is obviously working. 

This is why I love social media, and also why it can be scary for people who protect brands. We are able to have instant feedback on issues that impact so many and no longer can we assume that there are walls to hide behind. Hopefully I will have the follow up to this in the coming days where I can share some of the great information I have already obtained, and combine that with the information I get from Seventh Generation. I hope, in the end, that I can help clear up any confusion and can share a collection of data from all points of view so everyone can feel comfortable in the fact that they were given some Little Green Truth.

Moving Beyond Twitter

So, you finally figured out twitter, set Tweedeck up on your desktop to manage your feed and monitor chatter. You have begun using analytics to measure traffic and have figured out how to best utilize landing pages to capture leads or sell your products. You have figured out who to follow and have begun adding your twitter link on your email signatures, your corporate site and blogs. 

But what happens if twitter becomes Friendster, Myspace or even Classmates? Tools that were once thought to be sure ways to speak directly  to your audience that were quickly eclipsed by the next big thing, facebook. That does not mean that facebook is going to go away or even twitter for that matter, but you would be best served to see where else your audience might be.

If you have figured out twitter you should also look at Plurk or identi.ca? These two micro blogs also utilize 140 character messaging. Plurk uses a timeline which is a nice feature to easily go back and find old messages if you remember when they were posted, however this same feature can seem kind of annoying and cumbersome to people that are familiar to the twitter feed. Identi.ca allows people to join or create groups that let  you find and talk to others with similar interests. While I find this to be a cool function for identi.ca, the web interface is a lot more cluttered than twitter and there are not enough applications created at this point to effectively utilize this like twitter.

But moving beyond twitter means moving your social media strategy beyond mini blogging too. Creating a full corporate blog that can be linked through twitter, creating landing pages on your site that can be linked, linking to content on your site like white papers or newsletter articles... these are only scratching the surface. You need to evaluate all the tools available to you.

Do you have videos that you want to share with the public, then create a YouTube channel. Creating a channel offers another venue for you to craft specific messages to share with your audience. But YouTube is not the only game in town. If you have videos you will also want to look at 12seconds for short video updates, DailyMotion, Seesmic, and Vimeo. Another place you can post your video is facebook.

Facebook has risen to the top versus Myspace and the creation of fan pages has allowed corporations a spot on the powerful networking tool. Facebook allows you to post videos and other content to your page. You can promote events and webinars on your page and you can send messages directly to everyone that has opted in as a fan on your page. It allows you another source to link your twitter, Plurk and identi.ca feeds too.

Another piece of the pie is social bookmarking and news feeds. If you have content on your blogs or your corporate site that you want to drive additional traffic too then make sure you have it linked on some of the most popular sites, including: digg, reddit, delicious, diigo, Mister Wong, StumbleUpon and Twine.

The last thing I want to focus on is FriendFeed. If you are not familiar with FriendFeed then you should make yourself familiar. FF is a tool that aggregates all of your individual social media tools (including all of the ones I have listed in this piece) and allows you to gather all of your feeds in one place. A great feature for marketers includes the ability to create rooms. These rooms are basically a place where people of a shared interests come together to share content and comments. It is a good place for marketers to either create a group based on their product or service, or something aligned to their field. It also is a place to find users of the other social media tools who have opted in to a room that natters to your organization. It also aggregates all of your feeds for your friends to see in one place. If you post something to reddit its here, same thing for YouTube, twitter or any of the other feeds you add to your page.

As you can see, social media is more and deeper than just facebook, LinkedIn and twitter - the safe havens for those trying to push campaigns in the office. What I ask you to do is look deeper, explore the other tools available. You never know when you might be a trailblazer, and you never know when the tool you base your campaign around has become obsolete.

It has been a while since I have updated this - I am so ashamed. 

First things first, congratulations Boilers on winning the Big 10 Tourney and congrats on winning the first round game in the tourney - keep it up.

So far this tourney in general has not been too exciting, but something that is interesting to note is how slow twitter has been due to what I am guessing is a high tweet volume due to the tournament. The power of social media again shows that it is the future, marketers please keep paying attention. Traditional advertising is dead - there, I said it.

Sure, there were some OK ads at the Super Bowl like Shanapotomus - and the Jordan commercial with Rip Hamelton running right now is clever, but print ads are being pulled from budgets in B2B and B2C both and even when the economy comes back I don't see money going back - the smart money is going to Sales Enablement and Lead Generation and the smart strategy is social media, SEO and your corporate website. Working for the leading Sales Enablement software obviously biases me to what technology you should use for SE, but even if you don't use our software, make sure as marketers you are doing something to make sure your focus is on making sure your sales reps are having smarter, more efficient and effective communications in the field. Don't just make flashy glossies and white sheets, make sure you have tools that are easily customized for specific selling situations. Make sure sales can take what you have given them and customize it to the right audience at the right point in the selling situation (but make sure you do it in a way that they don't destroy your branding.) It is tough, but necessary.

The smart companies are the ones laying the groundwork now in both Sales Enablement and Social Media. Although all of these channels may not make sense for your business, some of them will - look at twitter, look at blogs, look at YouTube and Facebook, make sure you are represented on LinkedIn - but make sure you have a unified strategy in mind - also, above all remember to be authentic.