The Right Social Media Marketing Components for an Agency?

For the past few months, I’ve been rethinking what it means to have a Social Media Marketing line in a Strategy-focused Interactive agency. As Alisa Leonard-Hansen from iCrossing says, there’s technically no such thing as Social Media – it is just that the web is social. So where does this leave us:

1. Clients asking about “What to do with Social Media?”;
2. Clients rushing towards Social Media without understanding it or identifying the right metrics or modeling the ROI;
3. Continued media fragmentation while also continuing need to integrate across CRM, Social Media, Mobile, Search Marketing, Display, Online Video, Television, etc.

Very head spinning stuff. So I created a PowerPoint to take my first crack at this question. The answer will evolve as a process, since the Internet (and now Mobile) are moving at light speed.

Please check it out and let me know your feedback – where I’m right, wrong or whatever else.

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We need to keep in mind two things:

1. “There is not such thing as Social Media ROI”; and,
2. “We should be asking ‘What is the big-picture goal and how do we appropriately measure this when using social media as a platform?’”

Indeed, talking about the “Social Media ROI” is like asking “What is the ROI of being in Newsweek?” The answer is: “Well that depends.” Are you placing an ad with a coupon for Lead Generation? Or perhaps doing a Branding-focused Ad? Is the CEO being interviewed in by Newsweek to address customer service issues? Or perhaps its a thought-leadership piece the President of your company has penned about the environment and your industry?

As a lazy marketer, I’ll choose to “stand on the shoulder of giants” and point you to three fantastic pieces that addresses how to really view the “ROI of Social Media” issue: 1) The Right Metrics for the Right Channels/Marketing; 2) Understanding the Right Metrics by understanding the Right Stakeholders; and 3) Remembering how the social media activity fits into the Customer Lifecycle.

1. Social Media Stakeholders
   Laura Lippay, Director of Technical Marketing at Yahoo!
2. Social Media Analytics
   Coremetrics Whitepaper
3. Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagements
   Chris Kenton, CEO of SocialRep

See more below:

1. “Social Media Stakeholders” by Laura Lippay (PDF Link: http://bit.ly/1zhEtO)

Laura Lippay resets the “You need to do Social Media” mantra that many are following and instead reminds us the following: 1) Remember what you’re using social media for (Customer Service, Branding etc); and 2) Do you have the right stakeholders in place to strategize, plan, and execute?

Her outline of the goals and stakeholders involved is not only a greater outline of understanding who needs to be invovled in what to succeed, but a great reminder that how you measure your Branding-based Social Media activity or your Lead-Gen focused Social Media Activity is dependent on who your stakeholders are.

All in all, it is a great piece and surprising that according to Bit.ly it has less than 30 clicks.

2. “Social Media Analytics” Whitepaper by CoreMetrics (Link)
Coremetrics’s whitepaper on Social Media Analytics goes into detail on how each type of social media activity (by channel) should be tracked on the tactical level.

3. “Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagements” by SocialRep (Webinar)

Chris Kenton, CEO of SocialRep, gives a great webinar on reminding digital marketers to look beyond the tool and the platform to focus on remembering what it is the appropriate channels – not only for the audience – but also for what part of the lifecycle.

See EM's coverage: Click on the graph above

Closing Summary

As we continue to figure out how to measure Social Media and where it fits in Advertising, Marketing and Customer Relationships, it is important to go back to understanding the Customer Lifecycle and figuring out: 1) The Social Media activity impacts what part of the cycle; 2) Who are the typical stakeholders in the particular parts of the cycle; and 3) How do you translate what the stakeholders need to measure to what you can measure in the Social Media activity?

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Last week, I decided to review the number of followers an official agency twitter account had versus some of their high-profile employees. For most Social Media Practitioners, the results I found were not surprising: More people followed the individual behind the Agency name, rather than the official Agency presence themselves.

But rather this data go to waste, I figure I share some of it with you…

A look at 360i, iCrossing, and SEOmoz and their high-profile team members.

.

How Does This Apply To Your Company?

If you have a consumer facing company (B2C) or are focusing on Twitter for customer support (like ComcastCares), a strong twitter-based brand is needed on Twitter for instant recognizability by current/potential customers on Twitter. But, if you’re looking at thought leadership and building B2B connections, you need to have strong people communicating and engaging with your industry colleagues on Twitter.

There will be companies that will be reluctant to throw their weight on thought-leaders representing the brand versus an official brand twitter account. What happens when the person says something inappropriate? Do they have to clear everything with legal? What if the person leaves?

It is all a matter of priorities and appropriateness. If you want your agency to be seen as a thought leader and build relationships with others, this is best communicated through the brightest and energetic minds at your company. If your agency values consistency of a message over creative energy, then stick with your Twitter.com/CompanyX account.

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Stanford's iPhone Application Programming Course Online

1 Million iPhone Application Course Downloads…

It was announced yesterday that Stanford’s iPhone Application Programming courses have been downloaded over 1 million times on Apple’s iTunes University. Stanford University’s move to allow anyone with access to iTunes to download a high-quality video of their iPhone Application Programming course was obviously not a move to convince people to apply to Stanford. It is part of a university’s value to provide greater value to the world at large. However, it was also very successful branding campaign to associate Stanford with the cutting edge and sexiness that is the iPhone.

…That’s 1 Million Brand Engagements

As a marketer, I consider each iPhone course download a branding engagement event. Those one million people are not only aware of Stanford’s iPhone courses, they are actively engaging the Stanford plan by downloading the videos. How much would you pay for 1 million people to actively interact with your brand (in this case a +300mb video file)?

And at least $1 Million Dollars of Branding Engagement

If you just put a value of $1 per brand engagement, you’re already saying that Stanford gained at least one million dollars worth of brand engagement by leveraging a very cheap form of social media (recording classes to post online). Of course, this is not counting the millions who are aware about Stanford’s iPhone courses online, but did not download it.

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This morning, word spread quickly of a legal letter from Intuit asking Mint.com (rival of Intuit’s Quicken) to clarify how they count the number of user they have, declaring that:

“While we do not wish to suggest that Mint.com is engaging in false advertising, the substantial difference in claimed user numbers over a short period time [from 600,000 to 800,000] is of some concern. As a result, we’re requesting that you provide us with the Substantiation and evidence that you rely upon to support the above reference claims… before February 6, 2009″

Of course, such a threatening sounding letter was eventually leaked to the public by TechCrunch. TechCrunch both released the entirety of Intuit’s letter with an article titled “Quicken Cannot Believe Mint Doing So Well; Sends Threat Letter,” where it sarcastically mocks Intuit:

Note that the letter says that Intuit doesn’t “wish to suggest that Mint is engaging in false advertising”, despite the fact that that was the entire purpose of the letter. Nice. [Emphasis Mine]

There was obviously a high level of negative fallout with nearly 400 blog postings (via Google Blog Search) covering Intuit’s letter appearing in a under 24 hours.

So how did Intuit respond?

How did Intuit Respond to their Mint.com Letter? What Are the Takeways?

1. Documents Will Be Leaked. Do You Have a Plan To Handle When It Happens? These days any document has the potential to be leaked and online; and when it does, it’ll spread quickly. Do you have a plant to respond for such contingencies? The threatening sounding letter from Intuit to Mint.com may well be “traditional legalese”, but once leaked to the public – it took a life of its own.
2. Be Ready to Respond to Negative Fallout Promptly and Multiple Channels I directly twittered Intuit (http://www.twitter.com/intuit) telling them that I thought they gave publicity for Mint.com at the expense of their brand. Within hours, Intuit responded to my tweet and others personally with a link of their response to TechCrunch’s article.

   

   

   Indeed, whenever a potential customer is reaching out and saying something about your brand – that’s an opportunity to address them and win them back. The fact that an Intuit representative replied back personally and promptly with an actual response meant that they knew it was an issue and were addressing it.

3. Respond Directly, Publicly, Personally…and Give Back When You CanThe founder [Both Mint.com and Intuit have informed it was actually Scott Gulbransen] of Intuit quickly responded to the TechCrunch article – not by releasing an official statement on some forgotten corporate blog, but by writing a clear, non-PR speak response directly on the same TechCrunch article. Some commenters felt that his response fell short, but Scott both apologized for the threatening sound of the letter and also disclosed their own membership numbers. So his response was also an apology and attempt to make amends by disclosing something about themselves.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that when asked about the “ROI of social media” that social media is not single platform, but is a term that covers many different websites – twitter to YouTube to Wikipedia – where people can share information. In some cases, social media websites can help support sales (for example, Dell made $1 million in sales via Twitter) and with others it being a forum for customer service and public relations.

In this case, Intuit’s active response on Twitter and the blog TechCrunch helped addressed negative brand and PR fallout. There are plenty of other cases invovling hard ROI numbers, which will be covered here later on.

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Below is my presentation, which attempts go beyond the usual “Social Media” is the new SEO “linkbait” and also talk a little about the DAO (digtial asset optimization) of social media assets for SEO. (Mouthful, I know!).

If you have any questions, don’t hestiate to contact me – email or a comment below.

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Verizon Customer Service: Viral Video of the Day (February 5th)

Today, the FAIL Blog website posted a humorous recording between a Verizon customer and a customer service representatives over a billing issue. As of the the time of this writing (only 8:39 PM of the day of the post), there are over 1,000 comments on the FAIL Blog post, 469k views of the video on YouTube and over 3,900 mentions on other blogs and other websites. And oh, if you type “verizon customer service” on Google, the top 10 search results have two webpages pointing to the video.

The Video is Actually Over Two Years Old

The viral video on Verizon’s customer service has been spreading on the Internet, but rarely is it mentioned when this recording occurred. Indeed, if you see multiple blogs citing this Verizon video you would think the customer service recording was very recent.

George Vaccaro, the man on the Verizon customer service call, actually recorded the call in December 2006!

Lesson for PR, Customer Service and Community Managers: Not only does bad news spread fast, it can have a second or third life spreading around the Internet.

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While there has been much discussion – including here – how “Social Media is a Conversation”, it is clear that marketers need more concrete and less theoretical lens to view Social Media. Basically, “how does this make me and my boss look good?”

This is Social Media. But which is PR? Or Marketing?

First, we need to cast off the idea of Social Media as some hippie “Joining the Conversation” thing. It’s more of like the behavior of users or a characteristic of a website. But to make it concrete let’s call Social Media a Platform, just like how the Internet is a general platforms from which you can conduct advertising. There are lots of channels/tactics within a platform.

Above is a fairly comprehensive chart of Social Media by Brian Solis, which defines all of the various components that make the Social Media Platform. Understanding the “Social Media Platform” is important, but we also need to start thinking about the next stage:

Social Media. I get it. But what does each Social Media channel do? And who should do it? What’s the goal and ROI?

Looking at the graph, there are only many channels but many ways it can correspond to different areas of advertising. For simplicity sake, let’s focus on Marketing, Public Relations, Customer Relations and Community Building – looks pretty limiting.

In the rest of the post, I’ve sketched out a basic model of how to approach 10 of the channels/tactics – document sharing, link baits to microblogging – but ultimately, you should do the following:

Print out a few copies of Brian Solis’s Social Media Prism chart, bring the PR, Customer Service, Marketing, and Evangelist folks. Go through each channel and brainstorm how it could apply to them and their goals.

To help you guys start, I’ve started jotting down a few thoughts below. There are plenty more Social Media channels to explore and more creativity ways to exploit opportunity in a way that gives you ROI and not just “joining the conversation.”

Social Media Channels: Which One? For What and Why?

1. Widgets on Facebook to iPhones to the Google Homepage
Marketing, Public Relations, Community Building

This is an easy one. Widgets are basically mini-applications so they’re capable of being anything. From sweepstakes, to viral marketing, to letting users get in touch with other users and providing instant reviews on services or products.

2. Blogging: Blog Outreach
Public Relations, Customer Relations, Marketing (SEO Focus)

Blog Outreach is connecting with bloggers to understand their feedback on a product or service, as well as, help spread news (usually via seeding viral content) and for my purposes – SEO. Blog Outreach is something I’ve done over at e-Storm for SEO purposes with some great results for the SEO campaign.

3. Document Sharing – Sharing Online Documents, Presentations
Thought Leadership, Branding

Document sharing communities like Slideshare.net (PowerPoint sharing website) is a perfect place to reach the B2B Audience – other business people who are looking for knowledge in specific areas, case studies, industry trends and presentations from conferences. One can find all sorts of material from Social Media/SEO/PPC presentation from yours truely to Morgan Stanley’s annual report on the Technology Industry.

There is also an SEO benefit as you can use leverage SlideShare.net’s authority to get your content ranked well. Your content will be under SlideShare.net, but it will still be your content in front of users in the top 10 search results.

3. Linkbait – Creating & Sharing Content to Encourage Viral Lift
Public Relations, Branding, Link Building for for SEO

Linkbait – creating content that will be virally picked up and discussed – is basically one step above “viral videos”. It is about creating viral content – videos, tools, content, photos etc – that will be talked about, Digged, Blogged about…and hopefully linked to. As you may know, the more links pointing to a website, the better the chances the website will rank well on Google. Heck even Google says Social Media is great for SEO.

4. Blog Community
Customer Relations (Developer Community/Brand Loyalty)

A few companies, such as Ugobe (former client), which creates a sophisticated dinosaur robot called the Pleo, has created a community for Pleo owners which allow them to exchange their Pleo dinosaur experience with each other through their own “Plogs” (basically, Pleo blogs).

A company that provides a product that customers will have a strong connection to (like Pleo owners treating their robot dinosaurs like real pets) would be an ideal environment for allow users to connect and share via an internal blogging community.

5. Blogging on Corporate Blogs
Customer Relations, Public Relations

The United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to Marriot CEO Bill Marriot now have blogs. Blog are officially the mainstream for interactive marketers and public relation folks. They perform as a non-traditional communication tool – SEC recently declared that you can make official financial statements on blogs – that goes beyond the stiffness of a press release. And more interestingly of all, people are generally allowed and encourages to leave comments, provide feedback, and link to them.

6. Microblogging
Customer Relations, Public Relations, Marketing

Microblogging services like Twitter are a fast paced version of a blog and chat room rolled up in one. As I’ve written on previously, Zappos, HR Block, and Downing Street (UK equivalent to the US White House) have effectively used Twitter as a way to not only “microblog” new happenings but interactive with the twitter community.

Payoffs can be measured as real ROI, as Dell made +$1 million in sales via Twitter, or in terms of branding and reputation where disgruntled customers can be readily and transparent addressed (See Comcast example on the New York Times).

7. Social Networks: Advertising
Marketing, Branding, Engagement

Putting display ads on Facebook is not a Social Media plan. And ditto for placing ads on blogs, that’s still just good old fashioned ads.

It is as innovative as putting a banner ad the iWon search engine in 1999 (You guys remember iWon, right?). While Social Networks are known for having horrible CTR, Facebook SocialAds and MySpace Hypertargeting at the best hope for marketers and those with shares in social networks.

However, Facebook’s Social Ads and other new forms of social network advertising do show signs of promise when well executed as part of an integrated campaign.

8. Social Networks: Engagement
Customer Relations, Public Relations, Marketing

This can be anything from having a Facebook Page that you actually make active or something like the Expedia campaign, which had the lovable Expedia Gnome leaving comments on MySpace users’ profiles.

9. Social Networks: Presence (Creating Profile, Fan Page)
Public Relations, Customer Relations

United States Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome have frequently updated Facebook profiles. The Gavin Newsome staff have used Gavin Newsome’s profile active with news on Mayor Newsome’s upcoming events, videos of recent talks and even updates on his status message (to reflect his position on relevant news stories).

10. Wiki Collaboration
Customer Relations (Developer Community)

Wiki can be an interesting way of “crowdsourcing” a company’s help and support page or at the very least augmenting. Central Desktop, a project management SaaS tool, is one company that allows its users to contribute guides on new ways to use Central Desktop.

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Hello All,

This month we are joined by Jose Nuñez from Hirank and Daniel Riveong from E-Storm who will share tips and best practices on integrating SEO and Social Media, explaining how they relate to and benefit each other.

Bring your list of questions and scenarios as we plan to spend a lot of the time doing a Q&A to make sure you walk out the door ready to implement some strategies.

Please register for the event at http://smcsfsv.eventbrite.com/ - tickets are $10 (plus $.99 fee) online before the event or $15 at the door. Social Media Club Professional Members get in for free.

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Last Sunday after brunch, I happened upon a sign in Noe Valley in San Francisco which said “Fuck Mormons” in bright pink (fuchsia?) colors that was a response to the recent Prop 8 Gay Marriage ban that was passed in California.

Click to See URL Referrals for photo (24-36 Hours)

I uploaded the photo to Flickr on Monday. That photo made it to SFist.com (a local website covering San Francisco) and quickly sparked an intense discussion of over 100 comments. In a mere 2-3 hours, it made it to Reddit, Facebook, Stumbleupon and other social media websites quickly generating over 800 visits (as of now, over 1,800 people have viewed the photo).

Click to Google Search Results. Achieved in 3-4 Hours.

What’s also interesting is that SFist became ranked within the top 10 Google search results for “Fuck Mormons” within 3-4 hours of the posting going live. But yet as of today, SFist has fallen off the top ten ranking, with SFCitizen and Reddit’s coverage of the sign in the ten instead.

And by Tuesday, the photo caused enough of a stir that the home owner was interviewed by a local news team from CBS 5, which asked him: “You’ve been following the discussion on SFist. While some comments support you, others are saying, ‘this isn’t going to help.’”

And apparently, some people thought it was photoshopped: “CBS 5 walked the neighborhood in search of the home. There have been concerns the photo might have been photo-shopped, but it does not appear to be the case.”

Yes, I’m kinda Internet famous now, but more important this event does have some interesting social media lessons….

Social Media Lesson

• Social Media travels fast. From a Flickr upload on Monday to a news reporter on Tuesday.
• Context is Everything: SFist editor Brock Keeling took a simple photo and turned it into a political question by posting the photo and asking if the sign was an appropriate response to prop 8. If it was uploaded to Flickr without any such questions, I’m sure news wouldn’t spread as fast (or far).
• Don’t underestimate traffic from “second tier” websites like Reddit, which brought more traffic than all other channels.
• Surprisingly, Facebook didn’t carry as that many visits to the photo as I thought it would, considering the size of Facebook.
• Google ranks news pages very fast, putting SFist within #10 for the “fuck mormon” keyword in 3-4 hours of the blog post going live. Yet at the same time, they got quickly outranked by Reddit and other local blogs covering the event.

Personal Feelings about the Photo

I wasn’t trying to be a citizen journalist or even trying to make a political statement. Additionally, I don’t want to make a political statement on this blog and would like to ask any commenter here to not do so either.

I took the photo because I found it humorous at the time and I’m surprised by the intensity of the discussion stirred by this photo. I hope everyone involved – from the home owners to their neighbors – are doing okay and I hope that photo generated positive discussions on political expression.

In any case, I feel that the photo is not really “mine” per se. Someone, somewhere would have taken the photo eventually and it is likely the same thing that happened to my photo would happen to anyone else’s. Obviously, the “F*ck Mormon” sign was exactly that – a sign – which by definition is made to be noticed by the public. And get noticed by the public it did.

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Which can be brokendown into specific tactics and channels:

I could go on, but I suggest you signup for SocialRep’s webinar and read Ron Frederick’s notes on it. I would love to get in touch with Chris Kenton, SocialRep CEO, and converse with him. I’m surprised I havn’t heard or bumped into Chris.

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Last week, I presented at the Social Media: The Marketing Summit panel on Reputation Management. The SMMS is a sister conference of Online Market World, which is held in San Francisco. Speakers at SMMS included everyone from Best Buy, Nokia and Wells Fargo (real companies!) to the vanguard of Social Media, such as Brian Solis, Charlene Li, and Tara Hunt.

Above is the presentation I gave at the panel. You can find my other presentations at:
http://www.slideshare.net/EmergenceMedia

And as always, any feedback, questions and comments are welcome and encouraged.

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With over 25 speakers from the social media world, the Social Media: The Marketing Summit will be kicking off soon the at Moscone West in San Francisco, October 1-2. If you’d like some discount codes to attend the event, let me know and I’ll get them to you.

I feel very lucky to join such a highly esteemed ensemble of experts and speakers such as:

• Shel Israel:  Naked Conversations co-author
• Tara Hunt: Author of Whuffie Factor, Citizen Agency
• Charlene Li: formerly of Forrester, co-author of The Groundswell
• Brian Solis: CEO of FutureWorks PR, PR 2.0 blogger
• And many speakers from major companies such as Cisco and BestBuy and Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Wells Fargo Bank.

I’ll be speaking with several panelists on the topic of Reputation Monitoring with several other speakers. More info to come!

And of course, if there is a certain issue relating to Reputation Monitoring you’d like to see us cover, please let me know and I’ll pass the word to all the panelists.

And last, but not least: Thanks to Lisa Picarille for inviting me to speak!

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So who in 2005 ever thought that SAP, a gigantic enterprise software company, would be on a service called “Twitter” asking people what they think of a “Chumby“? Not me.

See the second Twitter post below.

SAP on Twitter talking about the Chumby

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“Let’s face it, the news is more about entertainment and ad revenue than it is about reporting facts and accuracy. Just because it happened online doesn’t make it real.”

Unfortunately, he’s incorrect. If enough people believe in something it can be as good as real. Like I blogged about yesterday, anecdotal stories are powerful forces effecting products, brands and company images. And it is part of how our brains are generally wired.

People believing the Internet is why PR and and Social Media matters. Your brand is not under your control, it is beholden by the same people – that’s everyday people like you and me – who may believe an email forward, word-of-mouth story via an Amazon.com review or a powerful brand-bruising blog like the Consumerist.

Take a look at one of the top articles on Consumerist today “Delta Makes Woman With Muscular Dystrophy Crawl Off Plane“.

” Julianna, who has muscular dystrophy, missed the connecting flight because nobody came with a wheelchair until 8:05—the same time the connecting flight took off. To make matters worse, the plane crew told Julianna she might make the flight anyway if she stopped waiting for help and got off the plane right now, so she crawled down the stairs on her own.

While I have no reason to not believe what Julianna says, what if the Consumerist or any similar site not “double-checked the source” like Jeremy Toeman asks for? That doesn’t matter. Despite 4-5 pages of commenters denouncing Delta, no Delta community manager has responded to the article. Does Delta have a tool like Radian6 to monitor their brand online? Or a community manager to address issues?

Instead we are left with comments after comments of these:

I’m utterly aghast and disgusted. My sister also suffers from MS and I, for one, was furious to read about your treatment. Delta Airlines will no longer be seeing any more of my travel money.

For these Consumerist readers, Delta’s brand has been killed and there is no one at Delta responding.

Is Julianna’s account accurate? As of now, we don’t know and it does not matter. Damage has been done to the Delta brand for everyone who has seen the article.

Who cares if you should believe everything on the Internet? If you know enough of your audience does, you should be there to protect your brand. What are consumers saying about your brand right now?

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Conversations image from b_d_solis

Survey after survey have shown how word-of-mouth is a powerful force in helping people form decisions on what to buy or what to think of brands and products. Fresh Chat has list of some of the latest data on word-of-mouth:

• “Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchase” (AdAge, April, 2008)
• Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendations (65% trust friends, 27% trust experts, 8% trust celebrities). (Yankelovich)

Such trust among friends and connections only has been the basis of the allure of social media and why it is one of the pivotal forces in shaping a brand. But why? Why are anecdotal evidence – like user reviews – so convincing? It’s apparently hardwired into our brains.

Recently, an article in the Scientific American declared that “These anecdotal associations are so powerful that they cause people to ignore contrary evidence”.

The article goes in further to describe brains as more geared towards “belief engines” rather than scientifically-centric:

The reason for this cognitive disconnect is that we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old. So it is that any medical huckster promising that A will cure B has only to advertise a handful of successful anecdotes in the form of testimonials.

The article goes on describe beliefs that continue to prove popularity despite like solid scientific evidence: from concerns about vaccines and autism to health benefits of wheatgrass.

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Twitter – the mobile-based microblogging service – has become the new darling among social media marketers and internet geeks since the SXSWi conference in 2007. Lacking any kind of monetization model, Twitter seems a trendy but not sustainable company, like PointCast in the 1990s.

Maybe Twitter wont be around to see 2010, yet many major brands have moved in to communicate with consumers and the world via Twitter: H&R Block (Finance), 10 Downing Street (The UK equivalent of US “White House”), Zappos (Online Retailer) and countless others like BBC News to Yahoo’s Marketing Team and Amazon.com to the New York LaGuardia airport. Is this wasted energy by the PR/Marketing offices of H&R Block or even US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s social media team?

The short answer is: no.

But to expand more, let’s discuss two subjects:

1. Two Quick Reasons to Consider Twittering for your Brand
2. Case Studies on the 3 different types of Twitters:
   Conversational, News Item and Reputation Monitoring Twitter Users

Two Reasons to Twitter

1. Understanding Social Media Better

Just by utilizing twitter, these brands through experimentation are learning and understanding more about social media and their customers. Twitter may not have a business model yet, but reaching out and getting to know customers is part of the business process these brands need to have to survive. Be it blogging, facebook-ing or twittering – the same core skills in understanding how to reach customers are similar. Learning how to do it on twitter is a skillset that can be applied to feature social media mediums.

2. Keeping Track of the “Linkerati” (Highly vocal and connected influencers)

Despite the buzz and activity of Twitter.com, their membership of just over 1 million users seem a paltry sum compared to MySpace, Facebook , Bebo and others.

However, Twitter is definitely on the bleeding edge of early adopters, specifically the “Linkerati” (as coined by Rand Fishkin). The Linkerati are the special type of early adopters who are very vocal on the Internet – be it twittering, blogging or doing a Yelp/Amazon review of your business or product. Current Twitter members, due to their Linkerati demographic, may have a higher than average say on influencing your brand.

The 3 Different Types of Twittering Brands

1. Conversational Twitters: H&R Block, Zappos, 10 Downing Street

H&R Block, Zappos and 10 Downing Street are incredibly innovate in that they truly embrace twitter as a conversational & microblogging platform.

H&R Block

H&R Block reaches out to Twitter members complaining about taxes and assist as customer service for those dissatisfied with their H&R Block experience. And yes, H&R Block – a financial services company – even does the occasional fart-related humor on twitter.

Zappos

Zappos‘ twitter is run by the Zappos CEO. He covers daily events and going-ons at Zappos to askings for feedback on their new beta website and throwing a free shoe prize here and there. His comments go from the serious and jovial. The Zappos CEO is twittering as someone who just happens to work for Zappos (Steve from Zappos) instead of sounding like a press release channel for Zappos.

10 Downing Street

10 Downing Street, while a highly public and political office, attempts to humanize itself with mentions of everything from how a visit from George Clooney caused “quite the stir” with the 10 Downing Street staff to answering questions from fellow twitter members.

2. News Item Twitters: Amazon.com, New York Times

Both Amazon.com and New York Times utilize Twitter as another distribution platform to send their audience updates. For Amazon.com, this means pushing out news about their news sales (Gold Box), while the New York Times publishes their latest headlines. For them twitter is based used as a one way microblogging platform.

This is definitely not very *social* media, but it allows yet another route by which to reach their audience in a relatively low cost (same mechanism as an RSS feed) method. They are embracing the idea that they benefit from being present wherever and how ever people view and digest information, specifically their information.

3. Reputation Monitoring Twitters: Radian6 & GeekSquad

Finally, there companies like Radian6 and the GeekSquad, which while not necessarily on Twitter, they do monitor, track and respond to Twitter comments. Of course, tracking and responding to Twitter messages are more important than being on Twitter itself.

GeekSquad is fairly well known American at-home computer servicing company. Recently, a fellow blogger friend, Michael Brito, twittered about a poor experience he received from Geek Squad on Twitter:

Only a few hours after twitter, Michael learns:

A few hours later, I get an email from Robert Stephens, the Founder and Chief Inspector of the Geek Squad. He asked me what my issues were and that he would look into it. Let’s see if he lives up to his promise of personally resolving the complaints of those who read the The Consumerist(lol, not really a consumerist reader though).

Nonetheless, this is a great illustration of how a company can use social media to track conversations and (hopefully) take action. We will soon find out if the Geek Squad is going to create a loyal customer, with lots and lots of friends, family and acquaintances. ; )

Radian6 is a social media monitoring company, so no surprise here. Recently, a representative from Radian6 reached out to me and mentioned he saw my twitter on social media and wanted to know if I needed a demo.

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They say what you say online is there forever. But how trackable is it?

The ultimate allure of online marketing is accountability. You cannot count how many people saw a billboard on the 280 freeway, but you can count how many saw a banner ad on CNN. And even, if that click became a sale.

But just as tracking clicks online have limitation, so does tracking conversations, influence and word of mouth. How do you track conversations that occurs between different social media websites?

From Todd Defren:

You write a blog post. You tweet about it. It gets posted to your FriendFeed profile. You share it via Facebook. You save it to del.icio.us.

…

Or, they comment directly via your FriendFeed profile. Or they comment on your Facebook post.

Social Media’s Broken Conversations & Broken Tools

Such “broken conversations” can have potential implications for the social media monitoring, as Todd Defren smartly points out:

Social Media Monitoring vendors like Radian6, Buzzmetrics, etc. who may judge a bloggers’ level of importance & engagement by evaluating the comment threads that follow each post. If those comment streams are happening in Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc., I doubt it’s being captured and evaluated by the measurement gurus – thus undervaluing many bloggers’ influence (and certainly discounting their level of “engagement”).

So, is it time to panic? Not quite.

Limitations for Online Analytics: From Visitors to Marketing Influence

Let’s go back to “clicking on banners and tracking to a sale” point earlier. While it is definitely trackable compared to a billboard in a highway, it is not absolutely trackable. That is – things happen: cookie blockers, problems with defining a “user” or a “visitor”, and more. WebTrends, Omniture, and Google Analytics will all track the same events differently, sometimes differing by as much as 20%.

Some let’s look at the limitations:

• Social Monitoring Tools are Limited
  From BuzzLogic to Cymphony: All of these vendors need to improve, but they will all have their limitations. Brand managers, marketers and PR people must be very aware of the limitations. These tools all all literally crawl millions of pages of the web, but there are billions upon billions of total conversations going on in the web.
• How common are Cross-Media Conversations?
  Todd’s example of cross-media conversations (people responding to a blog via twitter, someone responding to a forum posting on a blog) are probably (at least for now) in the minority of conversations in the web.
• Are we aiming for the “Forrest” or for the “Trees”
  Even if these individual conversations are not being tracked. How much of the picture is missing? Yes a conversation will be missed here and there, but if a blogger really is influential – wouldnt we expect some (if not most) of conversations still happening via comments, trackbacks and links back to the post?
• Customer Service Issue
  But if customer service is the chief objective, should we worry about the missed conversations? Isn’t this that what a community manager is for (to add to what social monitoring tools cannot do)? Or is this asking too much? Can we reasonably have good customer service, if we can only follow 80% of the conversation? How about 65%?

Todd Defren has definitely asked a particularly interesting question and indeed that’s gonna be a question I’ll ask the social media monitoring guys over at ad:tech San Francisco next week.

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The past five years have been marked with “social” and “viral” buzzwords about how to best do marketing and advertising. We’ve been hearing everything from “Tipping Point” and”Mavens” to lots of mentions of “influencer” and “A-List Bloggers”. Yet, the increasingly popularity of these terms also breeds confusion. That’s how I feel about Steve Rubel’s latest posting called “Trust in Peers Trumps the ‘A-List,” Study Finds’“.

In it Steve Rubel writes:

There’s an ongoing debate online and in marketing circles as well over who “matters”: the super node influencers or basically anyone that a particular peer group looks to for information, entertainment, inspiration and more.

This meme got kicked around in the ’sphere a few weeks back when Duncan Watts released some research that contradicts Malcolm Gladwell’s theory outlined in The Tipping Point. Today, however, there’s new data that to me may just reveal that Watts is right. The key factor, once again, all comes down to trust. (Emphasis is mine.)

His specific evidence?

Mediapost reports that a new study from Pollara found that people who engage in social networks and communities put far more trust in friends and family who are online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace “friends.”

Unfortunately, Steve Rubel is conflating several separate issues on what is Word of Mouth, an influencer and an “A-Lister”.

What Do We Mean by Word of Mouth, A Listers and Influencers

Let us set-up our definitions (at least according to me):

• Word of Mouth is the Strength of Personal Trust
  Word of Mouth works because you generally trust someone you know more than a stranger. So yes, you’d probably trust your friend more than a blogger off the Internet.
• A-Listers *does not equal* Word-of-Mouth
  A popular media publisher (be it a blogger or CNN) does not correlate to a high-trust factor. Just because Mike Arrington is a popular blogger doesn’t mean I trust everything he says. Yes, he has immense influence in terms of audience reach, but just not necessarily trust.
• Influencer does not mean A-Lister: Remembering 150
  Malcom Gladwell talked about Connectors, Mavens and Salespersons – not “A-Listers” or “Popular Bloggers”.

  Indeed, Gladwell dedicated a chapter to “150″: the ceiling level of how many social relationships a person can have. A person with “10,000 MySpace Friends” does not count. You trust your actual personal friend, not the guy who is “friends” with 10,000 people on MySpace. The “10,000 People on MySpace” guy is able to pass information quickly, but not necessarily influence decisions directly.

In short, you probably need the mass audience of an A-Lister to connect with the influencer (connectors, mavens, salespersons), who tell their friends what to buy, etc. The A-Lister is the medium.

So rest assured, Malcom Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” is not wrong. Nor is the study that the MediaPost article cites forcing us to choose between the “Tipping Point” and Word-of-Mouth’s emphasis on the trust of friends and family.

And what about Steve Rubel mention that people said “Duncan Watts released some research that contradicts Malcolm Gladwell’s theory”?

Duncan Watt: Does he really say “No” to the Tipping Point?

Duncan Watt’s criticism of the “Tipping Point” has been overblown in proportion. Watt never said that there is no such thing as influencer. What Watt is reminding us that an endorsement by an influencer is no guarantee that a large trend will start:

Perhaps the problem with viral marketing is that the disease metaphor is misleading. Watts thinks trends are more like forest fires: There are thousands a year, but only a few become roaring monsters. That’s because in those rare situations, the landscape was ripe: sparse rain, dry woods, badly equipped fire departments. If these conditions exist, any old match will do. “And nobody,” Watts says wryly, “will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire.”

Following the analogy above, Watt is not saying that you shouldnt worry about dry wood and sparse rain. He’s just saying that that only a few fires become large forrest fires each time.

If anything, all of this just affirms the 80/20 rule. Even with similar conditions, there’ll be lots of small fires but only a few major, raging firestorms. And not everything a trendy person will say will become trendy, but enough will for people to pay attention.

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When reading U.S. Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race this month, one particular line caught this marketer’s eye:

And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way. (Emphasis mine)

In Obama’s pivotal election year speech to the American people, Obama not only mention YouTube but does it in the same breath as television. We’ve come along way from when YouTube was just a way for Americans to see clips of shows like Saturday Night Live.

While Social Media is not the end all be all of media, the influence is wide ranging – from the U.S. 2008 elections to the TSA Blog/YouTube Channel to helping organizing mass street protests against FARC in Columbia.

See below for a run down…

Contents:

1. TSA does Blogging and YouTube
2. Facebook helps organize millions of Columbians protests against FARC
3. Churches live stream their services on Ustream.TV

United States Transportation Security Authority

TSA Agent Bob explains why the MacBookAir can cause issues in airports

One of the biggest questions major brands have is “If we start a blog and someone comments something nasty about us, what do we do?” Our response always has been “there will always be someone being negative, but the best thing to do is to address it and be open”.

One major “brand” that has taken the step on sticking its own neck out is the US Transportation Security Authority (TSA), a name many travelers in the US has made synonymous with frustration. Starting last month, the TSA has started their very own blog called “Evolution in Security” in their attempt to address travelers concerns and frustrations.

And what happens when a bad comment arise? Surprisingly, for the most part, most of the comments are left uncensored and brutal. And they also respond to blog postings about the TSA:

1. “Rumor Alert: Conflict of Interest at TSA?”
   This blog post is a response to a blogger at PajamaMedia: “Blogger and pundit Annie Jacobsen published a piece titled, “Top TSA Officials in Cheating Scandal Also Ran Private Consulting Firm” on Saturday, March 15. This piece has been linked to from several blogs and other sites in the past day.”
2. MacBook Air YouTube Response
   There’s been a story circulated by a blogger on how he was missed his flight because his MacBook Air arouse suspicion from TSA agents who didnt believe the MacBook Air was a real computer. TSA did a YouTube response explaining the situation.

Facebook and Mass Protests in Columbia and the World

Source: Paul White/The Associated Press from IHT.com

As reported by IHT in February 2008:

Facebook has helped bring public protest to Colombia, a country with no real history of mass demonstrations.

A young Colombian engineer used the social networking site last week to organize a massive protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces, known as FARC. On Feb. 4, millions of Colombians marched simultaneously in 27 cities throughout the country and 104 major cities around the world shouting “No more kidnappings! No more lies! No more deaths! No more FARC!”

The Churches are Steaming on the Internet

Beyond politics and government, Social Media is also possibly changing how many people worship. A quick look at the video streaming website Ustream shows over 150 churches using Ustream.TV delivering their Sunday services and sermons live on the Internet. Will the next Billy Graham, the famous TV evangelical preacher, come not from television but on some future version of YouTube? And yes, there is a service called GodTube.

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Among the usual top Delicious articles about twitter and social networks were three adult websites. All seeded by the same account and all had tags added by same users. Going back to what I’ve been talking about the past 2-3 weeks, Social Media Spam is a real problem. Just don’t call it an SEO problem.

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Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion caused a stir in the SEO community last week by declaring that “SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media“, writing:

“I have recently witnessed a disturbing trend. Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

Having started this blog because I saw the increasingly link between SEO and Social Media, Steve and I are definitely on the opposite sides of the fence here. But, I think we can unite behind three central arguments:

1. We Marketers, Advertisers and PR People don’t make Social Media…
   What makes something viral or social is how involved the people get with the media. There are no such things as “Viral Vidoes” or “Social Networks” unless people use them. What we make has have to be interesting, authentic and worthy of being passed on to friends.
2. …But we can help encourage Social Media to happen easier.
   As PR, Marketers and SEO folks: our role is to only encourage “word of mouth” and social media participation, we cannot create it; that’s what “Social Media Optimization” is about. But to not to inform clients on the benefits of “Add to Del.icio.us links” or “Start a Blog to start a buzz” would be a failure of the part of the Agency. Of course, we must align tactics (Social Media) with goals (Building Community, Links) and the appropriateness (building real content people want to talk about) of the overall strategy.
3. Social Media and ROI: What do you tell the COO & CEO?
   In the end of the day, many clients ask “What’s the ROI on this?”. To say we’re going to use “Social Media to be part of the Community” will not cut it for many C-Level executives. Tell them that going long term on Social Media mans better SEO, Word of Mouth, Brand Awareness and Customer Service will make them listen.

Like Google Says: “The best way to create good links is to have good content”

A Google Ad: From Danny Sullivan’s Flickr Stream

As long as the SEO drive for “linkbait” (creating content to attract people to link back to the site) serves to create relevant and authentic Social Media content people will be interested in, the Community will benefit. The Community will quickly discern what’s worthy of being talked about, and what’s not. That’s the power of Word of Mouth and Social Media.

Read more on other points where I take a differing view from Steve:

1. Social Media Spam: Just from SEO people?
2. The SEO Community has been in Social Media as long as PR has, even Google encourages linkbait and writes on being Diggable
3. Social Media as SEO: Social Media is the Ultimate Search Engine Algorithm

1. Social Media Spam: Just from SEO people?
Steve is worried about how every SEO person will join Del.icio.us, vote on StumbleUpon and start blogs and twitters in some vague hopes of getting more links and getting better SEO. SEO spam is a real danger, but Social Media already has it’s own problems.

Last year, TechCrunch featured an article entitled “The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos“, which basically walked through a process of how to game and spam YouTube for viral video marketing success:

“Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. So do we. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video.We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this)”

…Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment.”

What this shows is that Social Media has always been targeted by shady Social Media Marketers and has always been under the fear of someone trying to “game” Social Media for publicity, branding, eyeballs on videos and links for SEO. Sony’s fake blog called “All I want for Xmas is a P2P” comes to mind.

I think it is unfair to point a figure directly at SEO alone. This is a Social Media problem.

2. The SEO Community has been in Social Media as long as PR has, even Google encourages linkbait and writes on being Diggable

Far from what Steve calls a “disturbing trend”, SEO’s love of Social Media has existed at least since 2005 (if not earlier). SEOMoz was one of the first companies talking about linkbait back in 2005: “Rand, How do I make Link-Worthy Content?“, “When Money Can’t Buy You Link Love”Even Google has gotten into the act with declaring in a UK ad that : “The more people you have linking to your site, the better. And the bet way to create good links is to have good content”

In the end of 2006, Stefanie at the Google Webmaster Blog, write in “Building Link Based Popularity“:

“Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity: Classically this involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice. A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites. One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com.”

3. Social Media as SEO: Social Media is the Ultimate Search Engine Algorithm

As I’ve written about in the past, SEO is no longer SEO. It is Website Positioning Strategy. As noted in the Google Webmaster Blog and Google Guidelines, high rankings in Google comes from strong relevancy: building content people want to view and content people want to link to.

The more strategic goal of SEO is then the same as Social Media:

• Building an online presence (website to blog to ecommerce shop) with the Community in mind
• Building relevant content your audience wants
• Understanding how you can participate in that desired community
• Be present where ever your potential customers are: optimize for being on Yelp.com, Flickr.com – not just Google.com
• Making your website “optimized” for conversion: make it as easy as possible for visitors to buy, register etc
• Optimize your site to be portable, linkable, “mash-up able” with Social Media Optimization

Basically, the above asks “Can you build an online presence that is open, relevant and active in the community you want to be belong to”. If you can do the above, you will naturally be a strong leader in building an online brand, brand awareness, customer satisfaction and SEO.

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I recently asked the “Twittersphere” on their thoughts on wikis (specifically, I was thinking for use with Emergence-Media). Should I use PBWik or try out WetPaint? I’ve used PBWiki for a long time and belong to over 10 PBwikis, but I was compelled by WetPaint’s refreshing interface. What I didn’t find so refreshing was PBWiki’s initial response to my Twitter:

Now, I’ve met PBWiki folks and they’re good people. But, their simple comment “I would go with PBWiki” completely turned me off. Why?

I had a really bad taste in my mouth for being so directly pitched to by what felt like was a one-to-one person medium. I was expecting not a “pitch” but “customer service”: “What are you looking for in a wiki? Would you like to try our free trial?”

Am I nitpicking? Maybe, and again I love the PBwiki guys so I hate to use them as an example (albeit small example). But, I fear how may other consumers out there could be so easily turned-off by something so small, yet so big.

The ability to deliver context and proper conversation right off the bat is everything and in this one small case, that didnt happen.

The lesson (as best done in humor of Hugh MacLeod):

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During the February 5th US Elections (aka “Super Tuesday”), I noticed on Twitter that people were participating in the New York Times’ “Polling Place Photo Project” website, a place to share photos and experiences of voting in the US on election day.

This New York Times website serves two interesting thought pieces on Social Media and Newspapers:

1. Changes: Business and Website Strategy
2. Search Engine Optimization: Linkbait Opportunity

Changing Business, Changing Website Strategy

At the surface, the introduction of bloggers and websites like New York Times’ “Polling Place Photo Project” seem just as a value add to bring additional awareness to the newspapers. However, this appears part of general trend where newspapers are becoming news-focused websites that happen to have a printed paper-edition.

Indeed, New York Times and Wall Street Journal continue to new content – add bloggers (Freakonomics), exclusive online content, video essays, and website spinoffs (OpinionJournal.com for WSJ and Blogrunner.com for NY Times) – that are changing the very meaning of what a newspaper is.

Remember what NY Times was back in the 1990s? Merely a literal online version of the newspaper:

Polling Photos Project as Linkabit and Missed SEO Opportunity

The NY Times “Polling Place Photo Project” website also represents genuinely interesting content, beyond the “forward to a friend video” viral approach, with a fairly scalable user-generated structure.

The website has attracted over 2,000 links to the New York Times domain and has fairly descent positioning for keywords like “San Francisco Polling Place”. The website has not be search engine optimized, yet by its inherent relevancy and strength of the link popularity has attained fairly descent rankings (usually within the top 20-30). With a proper SEO campaign and increased emphasis as a resource for polling places in the US, New York Times could have a very strong website in time for the November 2008 elections. And really, why not?

Anyone from NY Times wanna give me a call? :)

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