The Transformation of Business
Gone are the days when consumers would walk into a store and get all of their information and questions answered by store clerks prior to purchasing a product. Even consumers who formerly would do research online prior to making purchases, online or face-to-face, now research products, check ratings, poll their friends on Twitter or Facebook, search for infographics, whitepapers, and FAQs, as well as read countless reviews, blog posts, and forum discussions before making an online purchase or stepping foot inside a retail store.

In addition, marketers need to customize digital experiences and downloads for consumers with an eye to potentially more than one device including web, notebook, netbook, tablet or mobile device.

Layer Listening in Social Networks with Goals of Establishing Relationships and Delivering Expert Customer Service
Are you listening to what your customers are saying about you in social networks? And are you participating in those networks and providing content to help influence how consumers perceive your brand? Or even asking customers to contribute ideas to improve your products and services? Pearson indicates that these areas provide huge pre-commerce opportunity areas for brands.

Let’s Say You Get the Argument: What are Next Steps?
Pearson & his colleagues at WCG have developed what they call the Four As — awareness, assessment, action, and ambasadors to understand and create your new digital strategy. Here are some action steps for you to follow to begin to craft your new pre-commerce strategy:

Awareness: brand awareness is now created when customers can evidence your participation and engagement
1. Listen to what consumers are saying online
2. Join in appropriate conversations at appropriate times
3. Provide the right content at the right times

Assessment
1. Provide content consumers can “download, view, read, and act upon” when, where and how customers need it
2. Assess how well you’re meeting customers’ needs prior to purchase or purchase intent.

Action:
1. Customers have acted on your offer in some way

Assessment
1. Assess how well you’re doing in social media by measuring interactions and ranking sentiment to arrive at positive share of conversation

Ambassadors
1. Build relationships with these loyal customers
2. Provide them with even more information
3. Give them opportunities to share their positive experiences of your brand

Note: It’s no mistake that assessment is listed twice — Pearson argues it’s critical to regularly keep score on how well you’re doing. See page 20 for a list of questions to ask if you’re ready to begin (or improve) your efforts on these fronts. Please note that Pearson has some caveats for this model:

“It is driven by customers, not corporations. The customers will decide when they listen, what they’ll discuss on the internet, where they’ll research their purchases, and where they’ll make them. Brand loyalty won’t come from the cave-wall paintings, it will come from persistent, positive interaction between a company, its brand, and its customers” (18).

Check out his text for more information on how to do each of these well. Then, you can use the following four criteria to measure how well you’re doing:

1. Search — where does your brand show up in search results and “within the customer-search journey?”
2. Peers — how do influencers rate and recommend your products and services?
3. Active Sharing — how often do influencers in step #2 above share your content?
4. Available Content — how often do you provide fresh content for influencers to share and are you providing it in the form they want to share?

Pearson gets social media. You will too — once you read and apply the important and timely advice he offers in Pre-commerce. After reading, you’ll be able to outline imperatives specific for your brand in order to create real change in the ways you connect with consumers and in the results you help your company achieve.

You have to understand, however, SXSW is huge. To get the most out of it, you have to go with a plan.

Then, you have to come back and organize your notes and mine slideshare for the panels you missed in order to get real value from it.

Here are the 5 Big Ideas I (re)learned and want to share from SXSW Interactive 2011.

1. It’s critical to uplevel focus on content and content marketing

• People try to fix a web presence in one or two ways: add new technology or redesign; no focus on content.

From panel: Not My Job: The Ultimate Content Strategy Smackdown (click through for audio)
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-1

• A discussion about content strategy should come around to how you leverage the content you have. The content is raw material, some of it good or great, some of it perhaps less so. But how you use it, package it, distribute it … can all add value and ensure a valuable asset, a value to both the audience and to the company.

From Blog Post:
http://rjiblog.org/2011/03/11/sxsw-ultimate-content-strategy-smackdown/

• By giving content away, you enable the ability to dramatically increase your global reach, ability to inspire, spread ideas, and engage a passionate user base.

From: TED: Radical Openness (click through for audio) http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-3-7309997

2. It’s critical to create many different types of content.

• It’s not just text. It’s convergence. Think apps, games, infographics, PPTs, PDFs, video, FAQs, etc.

From panel: Future 15, Convergence, Dan Shust
http://www.slideshare.net/ResourceInteractive/dan-shust-sxsw-future15-convergence

3. Learn how to create great content for the right context: Or, Say it short and make it a story.

• The less you say, the more they’ll remember.
• Our brains are wired for stories. Make it a short story (even though it takes longer to create because it’s more difficult).
• Data isn’t a story. Data: the king died. Then, the queen died. Story: The king died. Then, the queen died of grief.
• Successful communication is not about technology. It’s about story.

From: Saying It Short Writing Workshop with Betty Draper (click through for audio)
http://www.slideshare.net/helenkleinross/saying-it-short-preso-for-slideshare

4. What are the necessary elements of a content strategy? OR, Cultivating relationships and building trust matter.

1. Creation: the trick to marketing is having something so cool that you want to talk about it even if you weren’t in the business. (Hugh MacLeod)
2. Curation: Brands have the expertise, the time, and the money to be great editors and curators of digital content. It seems reasonable to conclude that one part of being a great brand is now also being a great curator. (Steven Rosenbaum)
3. Cultivation: We have entered a new era in which developing strong consumer relationships is pivotal to a brand or company’s success.(Gary Vaynerchuk)

• The creation and curation of relevant content, coupled with the cultivation of a relationship, leads to trust.

Ok, so this panel wasn’t at SXSW 2011, but it’s a preso entitled Creating, curating, and Cultivating the Social Web, by Esteban Contreras, Social Media Manager at Samsung for the Marketing 2.0 and Social Media Conference 2011 in Paris on 3/28/2011, and it’s based on SXSWi 2011 so I’m including it here.

http://www.slideshare.net/socialnerdia/creating-curating-and-cultivating-the-social-web-by-esteban-contreras

See slide 9 for tips on how to create.
See slide 26 for tips on how to curate.
See page 40 for tips on cultivation.

5. Rest/renewal breaks, game play, and doing social good can make us better more engaged people.

• We’re more productive when we build in intermittent renewal along the way
• We’re not meant to operate the way computers do – at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time
• Your sense of purpose–to serve something greater than yourself–is a source of great energy
• 4 nights in a row of 5 or fewer hours of sleep = functionally intoxicated.
• The critical issue is the value you create, not the hours you work.
• Myth: One hour less of sleep will add one hour of productivity to your day.

From panel: The 90 Minute Solution: Live Like a Sprinter (click through for audio)
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-2

• Gaming unleashes our natural ability to be the best version of ourselves.
• Our generation will achieve 10,000 hrs of gaming by the age of 21. We can harness that for good instead of escapism.
• The opposite of play isn’t work – it’s depression.
• 3-4 hours of Call of Duty decreases PTSD response in veterans. vs. 6 hrs of gym time for the same response.

From panel: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How they can change the world (click through for audio)
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-2

• For every pair of shoes that are bought, Tom’s Shoes gives one pair away.
• The best thing you can give your employees is the opportunity to be part of something bigger than themselves.
• You don’t need advertising: just focus on giving and that story will be told by your raving fans.

From keynote: Blake Mycoskie, Toms Shoes
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-5-7309926

]]> http://marciahansen.com/blog/5-big-ideas-from-sxsw-uplevel-your-digital-marketing/feed/ 0 http://marciahansen.com/blog/real-social-media-conversations/ http://marciahansen.com/blog/real-social-media-conversations/#comments Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:13:28 +0000 Marcia Hansen http://marciahansen.com/blog/?p=1134 In a couple conversations with people yesterday, friends suggested they are attempting to get greater meaning and value from the social communities where they participate.

Real conversations — not imitation, not facsimiles.

One of the people I follow (sorry — I can’t remember who) said something along the lines of — let’s have real conversations, not just collect friends.

Then, I was on the phone with another friend and he asked about getting value from Twitter because the people he follows just post the same things to Twitter and Facebook. In other words — they’re just publishing and not having (or truly seeking) real conversation.

So here’s my call/plea — let’s really connect more.

I am as guilty as the next person. I get busy or something comes up. However, in an ideal world, I would have remembered who made the comment about not just collecting friends and so I could have quoted him or her rather than just paraphrasing.

How do we do it? How do we connect more and have more real social media conversations?

1. Primarily, we should have more conversations and publish less canned content.

2. When we do publish our thoughts, opinions, information, etc., we should publish different content on each social platform so as to create more value for our different friends and followers.

3. We should comment more on others’ posts and in the forums in which we belong.

That’s what I’m going to be doing to try and really connect with the people I follow and in the communities where I belong. I hope to talk with you soon.

Can we do it? We can if we have integrity and value the commitment of our fans, friends, and followers to join us on multiple platforms.

Hugh writes:

If enough people like the gift, it’ll build up goodwill, they’ll tell their friends, and the list will grow. The more the list grows, the more people discover the trail of breadcrumbs that leads back to the work I actually get paid for.

Bob Pearson uses the term Pre-Commerce to describe the need for businesses to build business relationships in new ways before the actual sale in Why Pre-Commerce is the Next Frontier. As Bob points out, it’s a huge opportunity for businesses to transform their business models from waiting for customers to come to you into actively interacting with consumers prior to the sale and integrating it into your traditional ecommerce website.

To mix these ideas, I think big businesses, and not just independent entrepreneurs, need to consider gift giving as part of their business development plans. However, as Hugh points out, when you do it, it really needs to come across as a gift.

Here are 4 business development 2.0 gifts that companies should consider:

1. informational/educational products — Many entrepreneurs these days are offering informational products in the form of free ebooks. One of the popular informational products on Allstate.com is Bumper-to-Bumper Basics. The tool has interactive video guides that can help people learn more about insurance. It’s two years old now, and while it’s still effective and I’d say enjoyable to use, maybe a new iteration of the tool could combine it with Chat, or the ability for users to add comments to make it more “social” and truly interactive media.

2. casual games — On Vehicle Vibes (Allstate automotive blog) we have four different games that people can play. Within each one is a small call to action to get a quote when users are done playing. The games are fun to play. I’m addicted to Spider Solitare right now.

3. entertaining videos — With YouTube being the second most popular search engine, I think companies need to consider doing more fun and entertaining videos. This past summer I did some fun quiz show type casual videos, called Car Smarts. However, I think the Coca-Cola Happiness Machine is fantastic if you’ve got some budget dollars to play with.

4. Twitter posts — Even if you don’t have budget dollars to work with, all is not lost. One easy way to start small is to use Twitter as a community building tool. Even if you don’t have a blog or content to share, you can still provide small little gifts in the form of links to content that your followers would find useful. In that way, you’re providing value far in advance of when you might ask for something in return.

What do you think? What are additional cost-effective ways that businesses can provide gifts to consumers in advance of the traditional sale?

Organizations that can bring humanity and flexibility to their interactions with other human beings will thrive.

Seth Godin, Linchpin

I really believe what Godin is saying in the above quote, and I’ve tried to put it into action in the work that I’ve done. From responding in a personal voice on Twitter, to doing man/woman-on-the-street video interviews myself, to hosting a weekly Internet radio show, these are all projects in which I’ve tried to bring a personal face and greater level of connection to a very conservative Fortune 100 brand. If you work for a large business, then you know that we usually hire out creatives for these types of things. So from that perspective, I’ve also taken risks in my career by doing more creative projects than simply managing the project or content that is produced.

In fact, I think more Fortune 500 brand social media managers, directors, and executives need to actually “do” social media for the reason Godin states, rather than delegating it to agencies or entry-level employees. However, that is not to say I’m recommending that big brands to abandon all caution and do something like the new TV show Undercover Boss, which I think is too risky for most brands, especially those that are already very risk-averse.

Below are 3 ways simple ways the people working for big brands can show a little humanity in the social media world without freaking out their more conservative colleagues.

1. small group events – There are several variations on this theme that start with bringing a small group of people together, treating them well, and asking for their help, opinions, and feedback. I’d also recommend doing social media PR around the event to generate word of mouth conversations in social networks. Also, don’t forget to follow-up with attendees to further build those relationships.

2. conference sponsorships – you don’t have to drop huge sums of money here, and yet you can show up in small but very visible ways that leave social media footprints. One of my favorite sponsorships from last year was at BlogWorldExpo. We sponsored the conference programs every day and I gave out a fixed number of Starbucks gift cards to attendees who found me and shared driving safety tips with my radio show listeners.

3. shoot casual video – One of the first social media projects I managed was back in 2008. We shot a series of eight informational videos that are more casual and friendly than the usual scripted ways we show up in regular TV advertising. It was a small but cautious step forward – we still had a video crew and scripts, but there were no suit and ties nor contrived set. We shot at a crew member’s house in their driveway. I know the customary advice is to interview employees about new programs or products, but inside a big corporation, it could likely involve multiple departments and a more lengthy approval process. If you go with more conservative video, then you also have the option of choosing less conventional distribution options — say on websites where you don’t traditionally appear or even on Facebook.

These are just a few ideas. There are lots of ways conservative big brands can show up in social media. If you’re working for a conservative brand, I’d recommend taking it one small step at a time. You can still find ways to put on a human face and create flexibility for the brand.

I’d like to expand on these three categories and offer possible success metrics for each.

Organic social media — This type of social media originates from dedicated fans or employees and is focused on building relationships. Success metrics should be based on level of engagement and participation.

I think organic social media can also cross over into programmatic or campaign-based when you ask employees to share particular offers or information to their fans or followers at particular times.

Programmatic social media — it’s a specified activity to meet business results. It’s not just creating a Twitter account to build fans, but creating an account like @DellOutlet to increase sales. Or, it’s using Twitter as part of your overall customer service response strategy because your goal is to serve customers where they are. Success metrics should be aligned with the business objective. For example, if the goal of your strategy is to increase brand visibility, then one metric I would include is organic branded-term search results.

RSS Feeds or content that is syndicated can be considered a type of programmatic social media. Often, the success metric associated with this type of social media is number of subscribers or reach. However, if you have the type of company that offers location-based deals, then part of your social media strategy to increase sales could be to provide geo-targeted content that includes location-specific offerings via RSS feeds. It’s not necessarily sexy, but you could be providing information to your customers the way they want to receive it because they are opt-ing in to receive it.

Campaign-based social media — For example, back in 2008 we created a series of 8 educational and entertaining podcasts that were syndicated on various media channels for a set period of time. Success metrics for this type of social media should have some aspect of participation or engagement measurement (after all, anything else would more closely resemble a banner campaign), but when working with traditional media companies, impressions and click-throughs will still be some part of the success metrics and likely determine the cost of the campaign.

I’d argue that any best-in-class social media program needs all three types of social media, but as Shel states, any social media strategy needs to have people who are coordinating efforts. A few dedicated employees can bring more visibility and necessary protocols to a program, and a paid-campaign can help launch a program with well-defined success criteria. However, that’s not to say that programmatic social media will automatically be successful if you bring enough organic attention or paid campaign-based activity to it.

Yet, all of the different types of social media can, and should, have specific success metrics associated with it. Otherwise, you’ve just a bunch of keys without knowing which devices they go with.

While I truly believe that large corporations need to learn how to act like small, local businesses again in order to be more successful in the social media space, large corporations that are just now considering their social media strategies face their own unique challenges.

In addition to feeling pressure that they’re behind the adoption curve, leaders in these organizations may face additional challenges than those faced by small businesses [see Small Business Social Media Starting Points]. However, I would suggest the following four broad strategies.

1. Do your research. Find out what your competition is doing and where your target consumers are already participating. You can learn a great deal from the conversations that are already taking place.

2. Bring legal on board. Find out what questions and concerns they have and alleviate those pain points. In all likelihood, they are only trying to protect you from litigation, not stonewall you completely. Remember, they are the ones that will likely have to sign off on all of the content you publish so it’s important to preview your plans and get their buy-in before you get too far down the road.

3. Start with established platforms. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube offer established networks from which to build a social media presence. Building your own site means more internal politics to negotiate. Plus, you may not have enough content to start your own blog or have the best product for a community, so plan accordingly. If you can only dip your toes in the water, maybe Twitter is the place to start by participating at 140 characters at a time. Or, perhaps you have a stellar website that just lacks ratings and reviews to connect with your huge fan base. Existing sites also have moderation options to aid you protecting/managing your corporate reputation. Key here would be to build from your strengths or start with what’s easiest or most cost effective and go from there.

4. Be prepared to tell your story.Operating at a best-in-class level according to innovators in the space takes time, budget, and headcount. There will always be new vendors and social media “experts” who come along and tell you how you can do it better, cheaper, or faster. Or, on the flip side, try and sell you a myriad of tactics that look interactive and engaging for your users, but cost a million and don’t deliver much long-term value for the price. Just remember — there are different criteria for success. Plan in advance to make sure you have enough data to illustrate how and why you’re participating in the ways you are. For example, because of budget and headcount limitations, your social strategy may need to rely more on optimizing for organic search, rather than on seeding your efforts with paid advertising that would bring in larger quantities of traffic. Because of time constraints, you may be limited to how many sites you can manage and listen in at the same time. Figure out what’s feasible and most important to the organization.

In a nutshell, you need to do your research, develop your strategy, plan your tactics, and communicate effectively. If you had to focus the advice you’d give large businesses into 3-4 broad tips, what would you suggest?

Because, let’s face it — not every small business owner is ready to start a blog, Facebook Fan page, YouTube channel, or community site. Before you consider establishing a handful, or even one, social media site for your business, you may want to check the following 3 items off your list.

1. Clean up your website. Does your main website represent you in the way that it should? Do you have a professional design? Can users find the information they need or do you have a bunch of broken links that you need to fix? You’ll want to spruce up your main site because this is where you’ll be pointing the new traffic you generate in social media.

2. Evaluate your schedule and interests. Managing multiple sites and showing up online in meaningful ways takes time and creative energy. Is having conversations and marketing yourself online something you would enjoy? It will be a lot easier to maintain your presence in one or multiple social communities, if you can make time in your schedule and would enjoy the process.

3. Consider your content sources. Do you have an opinion or something to say? It can be a challenge to generate enough text, audio, images, or video to keep a site going. Perhaps you can manage 140 characters, but not a blog post every day. Offering enough entertaining, educational, or informative content to keep your fans, followers and subscribers coming back regularly is key, so think about how much you can publish on a regular basis.

In my next post, I’ll offer some tips for large organizations that are trying to figure out where to start in social media. For now, what tips or suggestions would you share with small business owners who have limited time and resources? What should they consider before they hit the start button on their social media plans?

As I think about my plans for this year and how I can again go above and beyond, I happened to read a post on Nuts About Southwest, Seriously. This *really* is what we do, and who we are. If you click through, you can read about Southest Airlines employees, who on their own time, did a home renovation for someone who lives in one of their employee’s communities. Talk about customer service above and beyond!

Ally bank is another brand that I think is getting customer service and support right. If you visit the ally website, you’ll see:

1) In the top right corner, they publish their phone number and the current wait time in the queue. Not only does this signal that they welcome consumers’ calls, but it also shows they value our time by publishing how long we might have to wait in the queue.

2) Ally also offers additional features at exactly the right time. When I clicked on a term to learn more and then closed the window, the site offered a secure chat option, with the question, Want to learn more?

3. Lastly, Ally’s twitter channel (@AllyBank) advises they are “always open” and I can chat with an actual person any time I want. Love it! I can talk to a real person, and not an automated service, at any time. Now I think that’s good service.

What are other brands to do?

Is it time for more brands to offer 24/7, “Always Open” customer service and support on Twitter?

Should Twitter be seen as a regular customer service channel, with staffing coverage during the times our customers are shopping, not necessarily just during business hours where our branch or headquarters is located? If so, brands would need to staff for that.

As I look at what I can accomplish, I know I can help make every person I help on Twitter feel like they’re getting the star treatment. But let’s face it, that should be just standard operating procedure. I’m looking to take it to the next level.

3 Challenges to a Public Video Shoot

1. Sounds
Shooting at a public event means there can be airplanes overhead, trains rolling by on nearby tracks, and especially at car shows, lots of cars revving their engines. Even when doing shoots at parks or at homes, there are customary traffic sounds of cars driving by, brakes squealing and drivers honking car horns.

2. Weather
I’ve learned that shooting in sunlight makes for a better video product, but looking into the sun while on camera is significantly more tiring than shooting in the shade. Also, if it is hot, then I start getting sticky, and that doesn’t make for an ideal look on camera.

3. Distractions
Inquisitive little ones who ask questions and walk in and out of the frame, and opinionated observers can make for loud background noises and multiple takes.

I’m glad there are crew members and production managers like @bethrosen to help me along when the day starts getting long.