Social Media Archive
Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
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Building on the topic I started yesterday about social media monitoring and engagement, let's dig a bit deeper into engagement and response.
Heading into Mplanet 2009, the four major topics are: Brand Building in a digital world, Connecting with empowered consumers, Marketing mix in a fragmented world & Global marketing on a borderless planet.
Engagement at the organizational level bridges two of those topics....let's call it 'Connecting in a Fragmented World.' However, the fragmentation is internal.
It's always fun when a blogger says a company just doesn't get it because they won't respond to an issue or complaint. If they only knew what was going on internally.
Responding online gets really tricky when you deal with large organizations with a number of different business units. I know that customers don't care about internal organization charts, but they're still a reality in corporations.
From yesterday's post, it doesn't matter if there is a Centralized of De-Centralized approach to social media monitoring. An issue is flagged and somebody else has to respond, somebody in another business unit.
First off, there might not be open lines of communication between the units. If there are, it's often at a high level. I can just see one SVP asking another SVP at a direct reports meeting if somebody can respond to a blog post.
The task is now to track down the proper person and reach out to them...and just like you, they're very busy. Not only do you have to convince them to take the time to respond, you often have to counsel them on the why, what and how. That education process is often the major pain point.
Some organizations are taking a proactive approach and attempting to develop internal ambassadors within business units to lead the charge, but once again that take time...not to mention finding the right people for the job. Just because somebody is eager (and has a personal blog) doesn't mean they're the prime candidate.
Another side of this is the agency association factor. What I mean by this is those of us that work on high profile client projects are also associated with the brands.
In two cases last year issues came up online and I had people e-mail me directly, first off asking if we knew anything about the issue, secondly asking if we could help. In both cases, I had to say, that's two or three business units away. We can try to communicate with the right people, but it will be hard. Not really the best answer, but it's a reality you need to deal with.
The American Marketing Association's Mplanet conference is coming up at the end of this month, January 26-28th, in my backyard (Orlando). I attended the first version in 2006, yes that's right three years ago.
It's actually an interesting concept, the three year gap ensures that the content is fresh and not simply a rehash of last year....after all much can happen in three years :-)
I'm honored once again to be one of the invited bloggers to help cover the event along with Toby Bloomberg and Peter Kim. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting a bit more about some of the trends/issues related to the event here, and on the Mplanet blog.
Will you be attending Mplanet?
And I'm in the audience, expect the first two questions to be:
1. Do you have any recent examples of how you've executed a program for a client?
2. How are you measuring the output/outcomes of this program?
If you don't have valid answers to those questions, then why are we even listening to you?
I want to revisit a topic that my colleague Mike Manuel brought up in August of last year: Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Strategy. As Mike pointed out, for many firms the strategy is rather shallow, that is, 'We listen and respond'...but as he asked, how? why? and the ever important question, how are you measuring the effectiveness of that engagement?
As more organizations pay attention to the social web and begin to engage what is the best structure for this?
What is the best model for online engagement? Centralized or De-Centralized?
Right now I see a mix of two models for companies doing a good job of social media monitoring and engagement:
1. De-centralized: A number of folks all have their own feedreaders and custom RSS searches. What they monitor and respond too is limited to what interests them, or the work they do. This may be aligned by business units or product groups. There is little or no oversight, coordination or measurement.
There are pros/cons to this structure. Obviously it's good that those who are passionate are getting engaged, but there are risks with this. Also, without any type of metrics there is no coordinated tracking of issues for trends or determination that the time being spent is justified.
I think this is what is happening in many large organizations. As internal social media teams develop to form strategy and support internal folks this may change.
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2. Centralized: A person or department such as PR monitors conversations and then responds as needed. In some cases an internal team assists with responding, or best-case scenario the issues are flagged and sent to the appropriate person for response, i.e. customer service, product development, etc.
For large organizations the sheer conversational volume can be overwhelming for one person, or even a department. As we all know, not every conversation is important. How do you determine which issue require responses?
Tools have recently emerged that allow for proper tracking of 'issues' online and can assist with the internal assignment and follow-up. Radian6 has added this functionality, and we've developed our own tool for clients.
A centralized source can look at the whole picture and hopefully see trends and issue emerging, but that still doesn't stop employees or other business units from doing their own thing.
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That leads to perhaps a third model, which is mixed. Some business units have a centralized approach, but that's only for their fiefdom.
If you work at an organization what is your strategy? Centralized or De-Centralized? Do you see yourself shifting in the future?
I have a few more thoughts on engagement.....more on that tomorrow though.
One of the big hang-ups with social media implementation in organizations is the attempt to manage interactions between employees and customers via social media channels. What if they say something that is off-message (heh). The quick response to this is, "Those types of interactions are happening everyday in the real world."
Here's a great example. The last week of 08 we were in Atlanta and visited the World of Coke. While waiting in the lobby to enter the theater to see the Happiness Factory intro-film the guide opened up the floor to questions. The first three questions all related to the Coca-Cola/Cocaine connection.
To her credit the guide answered every question in what I would deem an appropriate way. I should have asked her about the New Coke/High Fructose Corn Syrup rumor :-)
The point is employees will be asked questions and most of the time they'll give answers, especially if the questions are being asked by friends. Beefing up internal comms helps keep folks informed about what's going on internally, so when they do talk, they're at least saying the right thing :-)
New year, and so new resolutions....how cliche...but appropriate. Mike tweeted about this earlier, and it's been on my mind as well. How will I use (or more appropriately, re-use) the social media tools at my disposal.
This blog has been somewhat stale with the last post coming a over two months ago. And up till then, much of the posting had been about photography and travel. Two things that took up much of my time in 2008.
Like many other folks, I found the true dialogue going on over at Twitter.
Moving forward I plan to spend some more time here, mostly to share what I've seen and learned over the past year. Working at Voce, specifically developing and executing social media strategies for some large brands has been an amazing opportunity.
Mostly it's to rise above the chatter, too much of that going on. People talking and talking, but not really doing anything client-wise (and going into a company for a one-day seminar on 'what is social media' doesn't count in my book).
Everybody is a social media consultant these days :-)
Time to take it up a notch folks.
"Does Design Matter?" That's the question I asked during my presentation with Matt Jones from Dopplr at the Sarasota International Design Summit this past Tuesday.
Before I was crucified by the audience, I quickly said it still does, but perhaps not as much.
Why? I threw out the concept last week, asking, "when so much of a brand's content is consumed via RSS, Facebook, Twitter...does design matter?"
Sure you can design a good looking blog, but if a large percentage of the readers use an RSS reader, does the design matter? Also, what is going to keep you coming back to a corporate blog? It's the content, not the design.
Many organizations are realizing the interactions they have with customers on sites like Twitter and Facebook are very rewarding, however you have very limited design flexibility on those sites. In the case of Twitter you can tweak some of the page settings, but your primary brand-design element is a 48 x 48 pixel avatar.
We recently dealt with a client that had a logo that didn't shrink well, that is when it was 48 x 48 you couldn't really tell what it was. It sounds funny, but things like that are now a design consideration. I remember a while back when a brand was always worried about how a color logo would transition to black & white for print purposes, now it's shrinkage :-)
In a post over on the Mplanet blog I touch on some of these same subjects. However one point I made was that perhaps in this new world of distributed content that small branding you can supply (even if it's 48 x 48) might help you stand out in the crowd. Those that are customers or evangelists can look for that 'official' seal.
As I said at the Design Summit, I don't have the easy answer. But, it's an interesting issue that I think that every organization that engages in social media will have to deal with.
Cross-posted to VoceNation
The big 'idea' news last week was Oracle's launch of Oracle Listens. A campaign where they solicit ideas from end users. Charlene Li blogged about it and gave Oracle kudos for the effort. My big question is what does legal think of this? Oracle does things a bit differently than the other idea-submission sites like Dell's Ideastorm or My Starbucks Idea. We'll come back to that difference in a second.
Many corporations have a number of legal hang-ups when it comes to social media. Among entertainment and media organizations a special concern is idea submission. For example, I want to sue NBC, because six years ago at a conference reception I told an executive about my idea for a TV show based on regular folks who are superheroes. Just kidding, but you get the gist.
Enter the new concept in social media sites, the ideastorms. I name the genre after Dell's launch of the self-titled Ideastorm last year. Dell asked for your ideas and then allows the community to vote on them. The top vote recipients hopefully get the nod from Dell and enter production. But what about those lawyers and idea submission?
In Dell's case you need to register and agree to their terms of service before submitting an idea. In those terms are language that states you give all rights to the idea to Dell. Here's a snippet:
You grant to Dell and its designees a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive fully-paid up and royalty free license to use any ideas, expression of ideas or other materials you submit (collectively, “Materials”) to IdeaStorm without restrictions of any kind and without any payment or other consideration of any kind, or permission or notification, to you or any third party. The license shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known.
However they do offer $1000 to purchase some ideas or concepts:
Dell shall have the exclusive option to purchase from you and acquire all right, title and interest, including, without limitation, any copyrights and other intellectual property law in and to the Materials you submit, which rights shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license and apply for copyright registration for any or all of the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known. The option shall be exercisable by us from the date you submit the Materials until 1 year from that date. If we exercise the option, you agree to accept payment in the amount of $1000 USD or value in kind at Dell’s discretion, and you agree to execute, acknowledge and deliver such other instruments consistent with an assignment of the intellectual property as may be reasonably necessary to carry out or effectuate the purposes or intent of the assignment of the Materials.
Starbucks has a similar model. You need to create an account and agree to terms before submitting an idea.
A general counsel at one firm we met with recently said those terms would never hold up in court. Of course I will insert the standard IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) statement, but it did give me pause.
Ok, back to Oracle. With their implementation you can submit an idea, receive confirmation it's been received without agreeing to any terms. Entering something on the homepage and clicking submit you receive this screenshot which says, "Thank you! We received your feedback." At that point you can create an account and continue on, or just leave. If the legal counsel we talked to didn't like the terms of Dell or Starbuck's concepts, I wonder how they'd feel about Oracle's lack of terms (sorry that's a rhetorical question).
Ok, I do think that it's a bit of overacting. Yes, many of the people submitting ideas are genuinely interested in seeing the companies they support succeed. But what happens if that simple idea you submit does turn into let's say a 1% profit growth for Dell, Starbucks or Oracle. Mention that to any attorney and I think they might be willing to challenge those terms.
This October I'll be speaking at the Sarasota International Design Summit. The speaker line-up is quite impressive, so I'm honored to be part of the mix. On Day 2 I'll be leading a session briefly titled, "Does Design Matter?" Following me will be Matt Jones from Dopplr, who will answer that question.
The gist is, in a social media world where a large percentage of your customers/fans consume your content via RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or some other third-party location how can you maintain a brand experience, if at all....and does it matter?
One unique thing the conference organizers have done is print Moo cards for the speakers. As you can see the cards promote the event. They also threw in one of the new Moo card holders. Nice touch.
This week's edition of PRWeek features a story about the Sony PlayStation program that I am proud to be a part of. Mike has posted some thoughts over at VoceNation.
I promised a bit more on this topic (and Rex asked for it) so here we go....
First off, read Rex Hammock's comment on that last post. Rex was referencing a project his firm did for a client.....a client, not his on firm. Yes there is a great deal of 'learn by doing' going on in agencies everywhere and it's something I've always advocated. Rex's team benefited from their knowledge of not only how to use the tools, but to 'use' them for a client.
That client experience now gives Rex a leg-up on competitors. For the next job that requires those services, Rex can say, "here's what we did for client x". Why is that important? Well first off somebody paid you to do it. Second, as we all know, things can sometimes get sticky in the heat of battle, and that experience always pays off.
Like I said before, referencing your own internal or personal blog is not the standard anymore. Sure it shows you can work with the medium....but can you use the medium to achieve objectives for a client? Can you measure those achievements and then build/evolve the program for the client?
It's a similar adoption/business curve to the early days of the web. At first the teams that could 'do' the work were getting the jobs (remember those awesome web designs from the IT guy). As more firms became savvy with the tools, the work began to go to those that could do the best work.
Got to catch a flight...still a bit more coming....
At a PR conference a few weeks ago I think I heard the term 'Walking the Walk' a bit too many times. The reference is about PR firms and their social media chops. You know the drill, you have to use the tools yourself to know how to implement them for clients. Tom Foremski recently brought this subject up and there are some good comments on that post.
Let's talk about this a bit more.
Sure it's nice that some agencies and 'consultants' are 'walking the walk' but if your only example of social media experience is your own agency/personal blog, well then...er, sorry.
Let's try running instead of walking, as in what programs have you 'run' for clients?
As Annie pointed out in the comments of Tom's post, most smart folks I know have cut back on blogging, or talk more about personal interests. Longtime colleagues like Phil Gomes, Constantin Basturea and Tom Biro to name a few. My colleague Mike Manuel made a similar observation a few weeks ago. Hell, look at this blog...it's mostly pictures :-)
People can talk all they want at conferences and theorize and strategize, it's the real work that I'm looking for.
An old local friend that's a pretty well-known architect always laments about architecture professors, he says, 'They can talk all they want about theory and design, but most of them have never built anything in their lives....so I just can't trust what they're saying.'
More on this in a bit.
Over at VoceNation I talk briefly about measurement. Like I said there, when an organization asks 'How will you measure?' I always ask right back 'How do you measure?'
What's amazing is the number of times a company doesn't have a perfect answer for how they measure things.....so why is a social media project being held to a higher standard?
A few friends in the newspaper industry have always said that the birth/death of online media was the page view. The page view (and related stats) allows online media to sell/display targeting advertising, i.e. monetize their product. The page view also shows them how little interest their is in some of their product.
The same goes for social media measurement, stats will quickly show you if you're doing a good job, or a very bad job.
Mike's supposed to be on vacation, but I think he's doing one of those Bill Gate's-type retreats, i.e. spending some time away to get smarter :-)
During his vacation he posted this entry with two tips about 'corporate engagement' online. It's about finding purpose and relevance in what you do online.
As Mike points out, not every conversation is relevant. Think of the retail world, do you need to have your product in every single store? After all, there are probably plenty of places where your product is not a good fit.
With the launch of the eBay Ink blog we (meaning Voce and cnp_studio) had a nice hat trick on the WordPress.org site. The screenshot below shows the 'Powered by WP' in the lower right. I'm proud to say that they're all ours :-)
Jackie Huba finally wrote about something that's been bothering me for the past few weeks. Somehow, my name/e-mail ended up on a list at Vocus, so now 90% of all the unsolicited e-mail pitches I get are from Vocus clients. How do I know this? Well at the bottom of these e-mails is the standard 'unsubscribe' link. That link takes me back to a site run by Vocus.
Jakie took the time to contact Vocus and asked them some questions when they never responded via e-mail.
Four times in four months I used the contact info on the Vocus website (info@vocus.com) to ask for full removal. No reply to any email. Finally, I called Vocus' main number and asked to speak with someone. Julie returned my call 30 minutes later and promised to remove my name from their system. It seemed like a good time to ask Julie about Vocus' practices:
How do bloggers get added to the database? Vocus monitors top blogs in certain categories then adds their contact information to the database. Without permission, I asked? Yes, she said. Most bloggers are OK with that, she said. How does she know if they don't ask first?
Why couldn't I opt out entirely? We're working on that, she said, and promised to investigate why no one responded to my four emails.
Julie also said a client could have copied my email address from the system and might continue to send me emails. Lovely.
What's sad is that Vocus is a sponsor of NewComm Forum. Hopefully a number of attendees will stop by their booth and ask them to stop this practice. While you're at it, Vocus, please remove me from your list :-)
One of the questions I am now often asked is, "So how are you liking agency life?" So far, I love it. Sure, I enjoyed the freedom and flexibility of being on my own, but there was one big drawback, I can't scale. Or perhaps to use the trendy term, limited personal bandwidth. You have to make a decision, do I want to continue working on small-to-medium sized projects, or go bigger?
I'm fortunate that at Voce I get to work with companies like Sony, Yahoo, eBay and another big name soon to be announced. The simple fact of the matter is a single, sole-practioner can't help a major organization run a large social media program on a day-to-day basis, we're talking 20-30 hours a week minumum. I guess you could, but it would be your only client, or would limit what else you can do on your own.
You need to have a team. We're fortunate to have a number of smart people on staff that can all work together.
A colleague that operates on their own recently asked me about a growth plan for their services. One of their goals was to work with enterprise firms on internal collaboration. I said I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but I just didn't see a firm with 10,000+ employees turning to a 1-person shop for a project of that nature.
There is plenty of room/business for internal education though. I spent plenty of time under the 'Hyku' banner conducting workshops for firms, but those engagements are often limited in time/scope.
I wanted more.
Yes it was a tough decision, but I'm glad I made it.
In my screencasts for Radian6 the example I used was the current Presidential election. I created a basic topic profile to monitor all 'conversation' involving the four major candidates at that time, McCain, Romney, Clinton and Obama.
It's been interesting to watch the level of conversation related to select topics within the profile. Here are two trend graphs looking at the past 30 days. Looking at the first, guess when Romney dropped out :-)
Looking at the second, it's interesting to see how conversation involving states with primaries rises and falls in somewhat perfect time. At the far left, we were just coming off of the South Carolina and then Florida primaries. It's interesting to see the dip for Texas and Ohio come before the primary next week. Perhaps people are tired of talking about it :-)
Over at work we've been using Radian6 for quite a while for a variety of clients. Yesterday we sent out one of those 'announcement' releases, but more importantly we put up some information on our approach to social media monitoring and measurement.
As part of the monitoring/Radian6 content, I created a series of screencasts on Radian6. You can check them all out here. The first one is shown below:
Cross posted from Media Bullseye:
A number of social media/pr bloggers are slowly becoming avid photographers...toting their Nikon or Canon DSLRs around wherever they go. They're always snapping photos at events, at home, just about anywhere. However, there is a method to their madness though (I think).
We're all familiar with the phrase, 'A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words'. A picture is an easy way to tell a story, to set a scene. Sure you can do it with words, but as we all know, sometimes words can't quite capture the moment like a picture can. If a picture is worth a thousand words, is it also a substitute for a blog post or a good addition to one? Of course!
A photo can be a great compliment to a blog post, but it can also be a blog post...just a simple photo, with a sentence or two. In that way it's a very efficient way of blogging that involves less writing. The right picture can also be a great inspiration for a post. Many times when I'm stuck in a blog-rut, just looking at photos can inspire a number of different ideas. The downside is that I find myself writing less and posting more photos.
Ask any friend that is a photography buff, "Would you rather spend an hour writing a blog article, or taking photos outside?" I think you already know the answer.
Like many of my blogging friends I was recently bitten by the photography bug. My interest came from the conference circuit. I was attending a number of events in 2006 (NewComm Forum, BlogHer, Gnomedex) doing the live-blogging thing at most of them. At each event I was always impressed with the photos that people like Scott Beale and Kris Krug were taking and posting. I wanted to do the same. Great photos could enhance the blogging I was already doing.
My gateway drug was the tiny Nikon Coolpix I carried around. Sure it served its purpose, but I needed to upgrade. In September of 2006 I purchased a Nikon D80 and haven't looked back.
But let's be honest, many of us are gadget geeks, and nice cameras are a big gadget. It's also easier to 'sell' the purchase of a nice camera to the loved ones, "Honey, think of the great pictures I can take of the kids!"
I think for many of us photography is an evolution of the social media work we do in our everyday lives. Pictures allow us to communicate and convey messages in a different way. As I said earlier, photos can replace the written word, or enhance it.
It's another tool at our disposal, but it's also a gadget! (It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!)
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In preparing to write this article I began to think about the friends/colleagues that now carry around DSLR cameras. The list is long, and got longer after the holiday season...many friends found DSLRs under the tree :-)
Of course there is the eternal Nikon/Canon debate, but among my friends Nikon is the clear winner. In the Nikon camp there are: David Parmet (D80), Brian Oberkirch (D70s), Jake McKee (D50), Dave Coustan (D80), David Alston (D80), Tris Hussey (D80), Jeremy Pepper (D80), Chris Scott (D40), Judson Collier (D40), Chris Gent (D50), Erik Hersman (D40), Tom Biro (D80), Paul Stamatiou (D80), Mike Manuel (D80), Stephanie Roberts (D80) and Mario Sundar (D80).
In the Canon camp there are: Chris Heuer (XTI), Brian Solis (XTI), Chip Griffin (30D), Howard Greenstein (XTI) and Alex de Carvalho (XTI).
With all these friends, photography is another touchpoint. It's a frequent topic of conversation at dinners and conference meet-ups.
People are always trying to create the next X, where X could be MySpace, Facebook, etc. When building a product you always look to improve on what somebody else is doing. But what about the worst traits of products? Is there a double-negative cancellation thing?
With that, I'm looking to build something that has:
- The teen-appeal of LinkedIn
- The reliability of Twitter
- The design quality of MySpace
All kidding aside, well not really....what's the worst mash-up you can think of with current products?
The full title should probably be, "In our own minds, we all think what we blog is relevant to other people." That's one of the major appeals of blogging, it's self publishing. We get to say what we want and then other people read and respond (hopefully). There is a scary truth though and that is the 'importance' of what we say may not be that important.
As an experiment, a few months ago I unsubscribed from a number of 'influential' blogs....some might call them the dreaded A-list term, or in today's political climate 'agents of change'. Would I miss their commentary, would I miss out on the latest trends or topics?
Well a funny thing happened. Many of the folks I unsubscribed from were not missed at all. In fact I also never heard their names mentioned on other related blogs, or were directed there via links. Maybe this is a function of the blogging they're doing, less conversation, more talking at. Perhaps the real conversation has moved to Twitter?
The people I did miss though were what I would call friends or colleagues. I found myself missing their blogs not because of what they wrote about, I just missed them.
I'm still chewing through what this means in the evolution of social interactions online, but it does point back to the relationship aspect of things.
How many of the blogs you follow religiously are from 'industry leaders' and how many are from friends? In my experience my top folder in NetNewsWire is my friends folder.
Jake has some good points and there of course is interesting discussion going on in the commentary in his post about 'expertise'. There are those that talk and those that do.
I think some of it has to do with the work/blogging balance that many professionals have to face. When you're not busy with 'work' you have plenty of time to blog and participate in conversations. When work gets busy, the extra stuff tends to drop off. But then again that's not following our own advice, we always tell clients to make time for blogging, so we should as well :-)
I think it was last year that Tom Biro said something to like, "the reason I'm not blogging is because I"m busy doing actual client work." I chuckled at that statement and now with the full-time gig I understand what he means.
Should people follow the example one leads on a blog, or the example they provide via the work they do with their clients?
There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Blog Council, some positive, some moderate. David's initial thoughts were that it might not be a good idea and Geoff took issue with the 'closed door' approach. Here are some follow-up thoughts:
1. Like I said in the previous post, some groups like to meet among their peers and talk shop without outside influence/distractions. That can sometimes be good, or perhaps bad. One similar organization I have worked with is the Insurers Public Relations Council. It's a gathering of the top PR pros at the top insurance firms in the US. The meetings they have are part business, part fun. But ultimately they can get down to business fast since they all work in the same industry, all face the same issues, and all speak the same language. They still seek outside council though....but they're very clear, if you're speaking you're there to educate, not pitch.
2. Following-up on that last thought.....if you remember my rant from a few weeks ago about the standard presentation-as-pitch issue. If I could join a comms/professional group that promised to deliver good quality content that was pitch-free...sign me up.
3. Give them time. Hell the group was just announced. Ultimately the members will be able to see if there is any value in the organization. If it's good it will survive, it not it will die a slow death :-)
What is ANTB? That stands for Andy's Next Big Thing. Who is Andy? Andy Sernovitz, he used to run the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and now he's launched the Blog Council.
Back in early October, Andy shared his plans for me, and it's great to see this finally launch (and stay true to the original vision he set out):
The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.
Representing thought leaders from corporate departments as diverse as corporate communications, global communities, marketing and customer service, the Blog Council's advocacy role functions as a collective voice in support of responsible, ethics-based corporate blogs. Other issues the Council will address include:
- How do global brands manage blogs in more than one language?
- What do you do when 2000 employees have personal blogs?
- What is the role of the corporate brand in a media landscape increasingly geared toward consumer-generated media?
- What is the correct way to engage and respond to bloggers who write about your company?
It's true that major brands have issues unique to them. They also like to interact/share with their peers, in confidence.
I was fortunate enough to present to the group earlier this week along with John Bell on the topic of blogger relations.
Some companies are loved, others are hated. That general perception carries over to media coverage and public discussions of their mistakes. At the recent PRSA International Conference panel on ethics in Philly my colleague Rick Murray pointed out this double-standard when it comes to Wal-Mart and Target. People generally hate Wal-Mart and love Target.
Granted, Wal-Mart has made a few social media mistakes and has been raked over the coals for it, but how about Target?
Recently Kaye Sweetser posted about a situation with Target's Rounders program and one of her students. You can read the entire post to get all the details.
In short, Target instructed their Rounders to keep their relationship with Target a secret. When one of her students questioned this on Target's Facebook wall the thread was removed.
Was there a mass outcry over this? Not really. A front page article on the New York Times? Nope. Why? A double standard? What do you think?
This post has been simmering for a while, but I just can't take it anymore. I was driven over the edge by a few things:
1. Todd's post of the state of 'practices' by some firms.
2. David's follow-up to that
3. Recent conference statements/events
Rant start//
Many times recently I've been sitting in conferences listening to 'experts' talk about various subjects. I've always said my definition of expert, especially when it comes to social media, is loosely defined as 'a few years ahead of you on the learning curve'. It's funny though that these experts were asking 'what is social media?' just a short time ago.
I sit in these conference session and I try not to be a Dave Winer and call out all the bullshit and look like an ass, but it has to stop. Some of us have been using Twitter to make our snarky comments, but the rest of the audience just sits and soaks up this knowledge. They don't know any better.
The other day at Executing Social Media conference in Atlanta, Paull Young reports that a speaker advocated that corporations edit their Wikipedia entries and insert links. Nice.
At the same conference a speaker used most of their time to pitch their product and subscriptions to their newsletter. Classy.
I've joked about making up simple little 'Bullshit' signs that we can hold up as a silent protest. Perhaps the speakers would see these and change course.
What to do? Ask your next social media 'expert' for some recent client projects they've developed. They don't have any? They've just been 'consulting' Nice.
Yes, you can still provide clients with a baseline of education without having much of a project base to draw from, but until you've actually run a social media campaign/project you just don't know it all. I'm not saying I know it all, it's a relative scale. If I say something you think is BS in a speech, call me on it, question it. Let's talk about it.
In the end the level of 'expert' and 'conference speaker/keynote' needs to be examined.
Rant over//
So what do we do? Start to publicly name the folks spewing BS and blatantly pitching audiences under the veil of an 'expert speaking'?
(Cross posted from the VoceNation)
Social media strategy doesn't always involve blogging or launching a social network. I always say, why start your own, when you can join an existing one? Social media/commuity initiatives can start out small and focussed....and use existing networks. A great example is the recent Flickr photogroup created by the Georgia Aquarium.
The Georgia Aquarium is fortunate that their location is often photographed, and the results are usually quite stunning. A number of amateur photographers and just regular users upload their aquarium photos to Flickr....why not join the party? Or at least help cultivate the interest? That's what the Georgia Aquarium has done.
Back in October I received the following e-mail invite via Flickr. Of course I joined the group, and as of today there are 89 members with close to 400 photos. Why only 400? The aquarium has asked members to submit their best five photos. I don' agree with that entirely, but I can see their point.
The photo collection was part of their web site relaunch slated for November (which is now up). The plan is to feature the photography and stories of visitors from around the globe. Not a unique idea, but it still works well with destinations. Below is a screenshot of the new site featuring one of my photos.
The 'how-to' section instructs users to join Flickr, then join the Georgia Aquarium group...then upload their photos into the group. The description on the photo will be used as the 'story'. This use of Flickr is similar to what the University of Florida did with GoGatorNation.com. Rather than creating some proprietary and hard-to-use photo-upload system, why not just use something that everybody is using already? Smart.
Let's recap. Finding the photos is simple, just do a Flickr photo search for 'Georgia Aquarium'. As of this post there are 43,574 photos, not bad, but it pales to the 883,000+ you'll find for Disney. Once you've found the photos, create a group and begin to invite the users to the group. Of course you need a purpose or strategy for the group. In the aquarium's case it was to build out a sharing/story function on their web site.
What's next? You have a community, but you need to provide something of value to the community. I'm not sure what their plans are, but here are some ideas:
1. Host a private function at the Aquarium for the photogroup members and invite in a professional aquatic photographer to host an instructional seminar. Then give the photogroup access to the aquarium for a few hours all to themselves (before of after normal hours). I can't speak for everybody, but if they offered that, I'd fly to Atlanta on my own to take part
2. Provide photogroup members access to behind-the-scenes area for pictures.
3. Feature select photos on the primary home page of the Georgia Aquarium Site.
4. Take the best 12 shots (determined by a user vote) and produce a calendar.
What other innovative campaigns have you seen built upon user photos? For me the Nikon campaigns come to mind..how about you?
During a recent presentation a few weeks ago I noticed a pretty big drop in the number of results Technorati was returning. A search that normally returned 15,000+ results, now only showed less than 2,000. The irony of course is that conducting a search right now, shows 0 results, a common occurrence on Technorati.
Heading over to Google Blog search, the same query returns almost 15,000 results. I talked about these anomalies with Peter Himler at PRSA and he blogged about it. Technorati soon responded, and now TechCrunch has posted a similar thread. The official Technorati response, one to Peter:
Hit counts are often dubious metrics. Index rebuilds, spam purges and other search engine management functions will always cause fluctuations. As part of Technorati's cost and performance management efforts, we've been running the service with the data sets of historic data scaled back. We may bring that data back online in the future but the days of monotonically ascending hit counts are currently suspended.
and a similar comment on TechCrunch:
We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling that have required taking some data offline. The data is not lost but our priorities are to prefer keeping recent data online. Most people don’t notice We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.
On TC, some of the comments have said, 'who looks beyond 36 hours,' or why do we even need the old data?
Here's the issue, the client. When you're dealing with a newbie client that is just learning the world of social media and you show them the search services and one shows a few thousand results and the other ten thousand or more the question will always come up, "Why is Google finding more?" or something similar. Now we can talk till we're blue in the face about relevance and community context, etc, but so many times it's just about raw numbers to a client.
With that, they prefer to use Google and Technorati moves even closer to.....(insert witty comment here).
This will sound ironic from somebody that just took a job with a Silicon Valley PR firm, but there is life beyond the valley. That comment was inspired by a post from Dave Coustan analyzing Scoble's blogging is over meme. Here, here Dave. Good stuff.
When you get ingrained in a culture you do lose some relativity, especially the ability to see the world around you. At the recent PRSA International Conference, there are hundreds (and thousands) of folks that are just learning about blogging. It's all new to them. The excitement and discovery is there.
Robert's comment about TechMeme is also somewhat narrow, "We’ve gotten too caught up in the TechMeme games." What's funny is that I speak with PR groups all the time about blogging/social media....and I never mention TechMeme because it doesn't really matter to a large percentage of people/clients. As Jeremy might say, it's not sexy either :-)
If you are my age, then you know where the last part of that title comes from (inconceivable!). If not, ask around :-)
What does the word conversation mean to you and to your company?
We say the word conversation quite a bit in the social media world. But like some words, when you say it over and over, it sometimes loses all meaning.....sort of like social media. When I started my breakout session at the PRSA International Conference last week I joked with the audience was probably sick and tired of the term 'social media'. They had to be, they had been in sessions for three days hearing it over and over again.
Back to the word conversation though. I think when I say it and hopefully when some of the organizations I work with say it, they mean they want a two way dialogue. Both sides learn something from each other. There is a give and take.
Unfortunately conversation is also becoming a strategy, a marketing plan.
Politicians also use the word conversation. They say, "We need to sit down and have a conversation about that issue." I don't know about you, but when I hear that from a politician I usually think, "I am going to speak with you to give you the appearance that I actually care what you have to say, but in reality I am just going to use this opportunity to force my ideas upon you." Not my idea of conversation.
Are politicians and corporations giving conversation a bad name?
You remember the Spirit Airlines story I blogged about a few weeks ago. Well it just keeps getting better. Yet another paper has mentioned it, this time the Chicago Tribune. What is Spirit's response? I'll let them speak for themselves:
"We wouldn't respond to a blog post," said spokeswoman Alison Russell, who noted that their original tickets cost a little more than $35 each and they turned down the offer of $100 in travel vouchers. "This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great."
Nice. Spirit says their customer service is great. Well Alex has about 400+ people who have commented that don't agree.
Some friends have noticed some hints in my blog posts recently, something about a change. Well a change has been made. On October 1st I joined Voce Communications as a New Media Strategist. I'm really stoked to be joining a great group of friends, specifically the social media team of Mike Manuel, Andrea Weckerle and Scott Sigler. As part of this Voce expansion we're also launching the Voce Nation blog. The Voce Nation will be the collecting point for all the shared knowledge of the team.
This move has been in the works for some time, officially and un-officially. Officially in the sense that Mike Manuel and I really started talking about it in July of this year. Un-officially in the sense that I've been working with Voce for almost two years on projects.
What happens to Hyku? Well two things, first off Hyku has become my personal brand and will remain as such, but the focus will change. You may notice a slight design update to this blog, well that's part of the change. I'll still continue to post here on all types of subjects (plus photography), but I'll reserve much of my serious social media posts to Voce Nation.
Second, as a company Hyku will not being going away (just yet). I still have a number of clients that I will continue to serve. I will also continue many of my speaking engagements, I'll just be wearing a Voce hat during most of them.
Are you moving? Nope, I'm staying in Florida. What's been great about working with Voce over the past two years is that much of what I do can be done remotely. I will be taking more trips to San Francisco and Palo Alto though.
I'm excited that I'll be working more with great clients like Sony and Yahoo to name a few.
In my previous post I put forth an analogy to illustrate a point. I do that quite a bit in training sessions. I'm constantly comparing online/social media situations to things we see in everyday life. Analogies help those just learning about social media find a relationship to what they're used to. (Big Social Media Consultant Secret: Many of rules you use in personal interaction offline, apply online :-) pass that along.)
Conversational monitoring, blog monitoring, persistent keyword searches...whatever you call them are a standard item in any social media toolkit, but what do you do with the results? As in what is actionable? What is important and needs immediate response, and what can wait? None of the paid services offer this function (that I've seen). You need to be involved with the community to know the impact.
Here's another analogy:
Imagine you're at a coffee shop and you overhear somebody talking about a subject/client in a positive/negative way. What are your options?
A. If it's your local coffee shop and you've lived in that community for a number of years chances are you might know the person or the subject very well. You would know that person's standing in the community. Are they like E.F. Hutton? When they talk do others listen? Or are they the village idiot? In this case you could start up a conversation in a natural manner, or introduce yourself. Chances are the other person knows you, or at least has 'seen you around'.
Once you start that conversation the discussion is wide open. Maybe you state your case, perhaps you change their mind, or at least get them to see your side of the issue. The point is you know all the social intricacies of the situation. You know that talking to one person will take care of the issue, and that person will talk to you.
or...
B. You're on a trip far from home and the 'local' coffee shop is somewhere you've never been before. You're the 'stranger' sitting by themselves in the corner, the locals are asking, "Who's that?" How did you get here? Some search dropped you here.
When that person across the room talks, you have no idea who they are and what their standing in the community is. You have no idea what the impact of their statements are. How do you approach them and introduce yourself? We've been in situations like this before. Introductions like that can be awkward to say the least.
Talking to that person might actually make the situation worse. You just don't know.
Spend a week in the coffee shop though, and your situation changes.
If you've been doing your homework and have built a presence in a particular community, we can add an Option C:
C. It's your local coffee shop and you've lived in that community for a number of years. Somebody has a problem/comment. Rather than saying something to a group of folks, they come directly to you first. Perhaps it's a genuine issue, or it's a simple misperception. However, a few quick, private words between friends takes care of everything.
This post wraps-up to my series on the individuals involved with corporate social media programs. In the first part I looked at the downsides of an organization becoming too reliant upon an individual with a social media/community initiatives. The second post looked at the same issue from the standpoint of the individual who may become overshadowed by the brand they serve. I wish this third post could come under better circumstances, but in business things don't always turn out the way you want them to. What happens when you layoff the staff that runs your corporate blog?
Earthlink corporation has been undergoing some tough times recently that culminated with a number of staff being laid off last month. One of those was their official corporate blogger, Dave Coustan. Dave was hired in 2005, to be the first 'blogmaster' for Earthlink. Longtime readers of this blog may remember that Toby Bloomberg first spotted Earthlnk's ad for this position back in 2005.
If you have a corporate blog and you take away the blogger, well you guessed it, the blog probably goes away too. Dave talked recently about the changes going on at Earthlink and what it will mean for Earthling, the corporate blog.
While many corporate blogs are indeed that, a 'corporate' blog, the people reading them often follow the personalities that write them. This is very similar to how people follow columnists in the print media. While I read SI.com, I usually seek out the work of Peter King. If Peter ever left SI, I'd probably visit SI.com less frequently.
One of Dave's major responsibilities was writing the blog, in his absence what can/will Earthlink do? I don't think turning the blog over to a group of people that can't give it their full attention would be wise. Also, Earthlink says one of their goals is to concentrate on doing a better job for their existing customers. It's a bit ironic then that they'd take away a communication vehicle between company and customer.
Tying back to my first two posts on this subject: 1. What could/should happen to the blog and 2. What should Dave, the individual, or in this case the Earthling do?
I've recently started to blog over at MarketingProfs DailyFix. This is the first post and is cross-posted. I am going to try to avoid cross-posting in the future though.
Seth Godin recently talked about a SEO firm that promises to move negative reviews down the page on Google. Rather than spending money to fix the original problem, firms will spend money on making the criticism go away. (sarcasm) Smart (/sarcasm)
Earlier this year I asked, are you willing to take from your pr/marketing budget to fix a problem in another department? A great case in point was the recent Spirit Airlines dust-up. For a quick refresher:
- Alex has customer service issue with Spirit Airlines
- Alex blogs about it
- Other people comment, sharing their customer service horror stories
- Google ranks post #3 for "Spirit Airlines" search
- Even more people comment, sharing more horror stories
- Aviation Week blogs about it
- Traditional media picks up the story
- Rinse & repeat
If you read through the blogs posts, Alex's issue revolves around the customer support line. From his experience it just doesn't work. Many of the people who commented on his post shared the same view.
When I was interviewed by the media for the story about Spirit Airlines I was asked, "What would be your counsel? How can they make peace with the bloggers?" My response:
Well there is what I would tell them they should do, and then there is what they will do, which are two entirely different things.
What they should do.....It seems that the majority of their issues are related to their customer support line, they should fix that problem first. Fix the customer support lines and then go back to the bloggers and say, 'We're sorry for the issues you encountered. It seems that we had some problems with our customer support lines and we heard that from you and the other commenters. We've fixed those issues by increasing our staff at our major call centers. We'd love to have you fly with us again and if you ever need to call our customer service line again the level of service will be much better.'
Of course they won't do that. Each time something like this comes up again their communications depart will apologize. But we all know that it's a hollow apology since they really don't plan on fixing the problem.
I know budgets are really tight at a low-cost airlines, but at what point does the time and effort spent dealing with PR issues related to this (not to mention the lost sales) outweigh the cost to fix it?
I often hear old-school PR practitioners complaining that all this 'blog stuff' is negative. It depends on where you're sitting of course. Social media is great for shining a light on the broken parts of your business. You can take the exposure of faults as a negative, or as an opportunity to fix things and make your products/services better. Which will you do?
One of the elements crucial to corporate social media initiatives are the individuals who blog for organizations. Often these individuals become somewhat official spokespersons for the organization, but that's what they're supposed to be correct? It's the humanization thing. What are the downsides though?
Recently I was on a teleconference panel with a few organizations. One of the panelists talked about all the major social media initiatives that were handled by a member of their staff, let's call them John. John had become their spokesperson. Previously they never had one. The relationships that John built within communities online (and offline) were invaluable to the organization. During the Q&A, the questions mostly focussed on technology issues and we ran out of time before I could ask, "What happens when John leaves?" From the earlier discussion it would seem that if they left their entire community outreach efforts would vanish and so would a portion of sales.
Another issue related to business blogging is ego and internal politics. In some cases a junior staffer suddenly becomes an invaluable asset, sometimes that goes to your head. However, most of the corporate bloggers I know firmly have their egos in check, but it could be an issue. When Robert Scoble worked at Microsoft one of the questions that often came up was what do others in the company think of his profile? Here was a person that recently joined the company and suddenly is mentioned in the same breath as Gates and Ballmer. There were probably quite a few folks that said to themselves, who is this guy? I've been here a decade....etc.
Then of course Robert left Redmond and some folks foolishly asked, "What will Microsoft do?" I think Microsoft is doing just fine. Along the same lines, does anybody remember Cooper/Katz? (if you do, you somewhat date yourself in the PR blogging world.)
In Scoble's case, PodTech knew one of the things they were getting with Robert was his celebrity/followers. There is attention/publicity that comes with that, and to some degree that can be of value. You could compare this to pro sports before free agency. Often the star player would remain with one team for their entire careers, today that's a rarity. In the gadget blogging world the editors/writers seem to change teams quite a bit.
It will be interesting to see how situations like this play out in the coming years. Could you imagine a Ford press release: "Ford hires former GM Chairman Bob Lutz to launch new F-150 Fanatics blog!"
But let's go back to my initial example, if/when that person at a small operation leaves there would be huge consequences. That person is a communication channel and that suddenly disappears. It is possible to move on, but since much of the community is built upon relationships with an individual, you can't easily swap people out. That's been standard operating procedure for companies though. If it's a faceless corporation, then you can swap out the 'faces' as much as you want :-)
On the flip side, what about an individual that becomes associated with a brand. In some cases they're not an individual, they're the company's blogger. I've seen it happen at conferences, "Oh hey, John....you're X's blogger?" They're always introduced as John, X's Blogger, never just John. It's like without that qualifier at the end they wouldn't be anybody.
What happens when they want to move on but the corporate brand overshadows their own? Part two coming soon.
This is a neat milestone. Marcomblog is a collaborative blog written by 'industry' folks for students at Auburn University. Yesterday one of the former students has joined the contributor list. Auburn professor Robert French introduces a post from Mary Metcalf, a recent Auburn grad who now works for Edelman in Chicago:
The first post in Marcomblog happened on Saturday, November 13, 2004. We’ll celebrate our third anniversary in just a few months. That’s a long time ago. Many students have passed through my classes and participated in our social media activities. So, I had this funny idea. Hundreds of those students have graduated and gone on to careers in public relations and marketing communications. Why not hear from one of them? I asked Mary Kneeland (MK) if she would write a post reflecting on the transition from student to practitioner. Here it is.
Yes it's been a bit too long since I posted something to Marcomblog, need to get back in that habit.
In the past few days I have been receiving the following message when I visit Flickr. Needless to say it scares the shit out of me. I have close to 12,000 photos on Flickr, so when they say they don't have them....well it's not a good feeling.
A number of us use external services like Flickr or YouTube to store our content. Most of the time it's free and easy. In the case of Flickr it's not free, I pay the yearly subscription fee. In the end though, we're putting a tremendous amount of faith in their hands.
Brandweek has published an interview with Brice Ertmann, Toyota's corporate manager of consumer-generated media (there is that phrase again):
When bloggers write smack about Toyota, Bruce Ertmann is there to read every word and, in some cases, respond. As corporate manager of consumer-generated media at the Torrance, Calif.-based automaker, Ertmann constantly trolls the Web to see what people are saying. This includes both the gray anonymity or the way-too-public blogger world, and not just the good and the bad, but also the ugly. Although other car companies also have people who track and write blogs, Ertmann's title is believed to be the first in the U.S. auto trade.
The interview is decent, and shows how often the 'voice' of a corporation online falls to one person.
Recently Brian Oberkirch posted about the anonymous editing of corporate Wikipedia articles. There was some spirited discussion in the comments among some good friends. However, the major issue was anonymous edits. My general view is that if you're stupid enough to try something like that, then you're stupid enough not to cover your tracks...and will be caught.
But what about claimed edits? The Talk/Discussion channel is there for a reason, but what if there is no talk? Can a corporation start it?
There is of course a reason I am asking. I have a situation with a corporate client (who shall remain nameless for now). Their current entry has almost nothing on it. They want to edit it, but want to do it in the right way. But what is the right way?
Like I said before there is no discussion about this entry, so they can't really go to the 'community' and present their case.
Here is what I have proposed:
- I'll post something about the situation and see what some colleagues think (done)
- Post an item in the Discussion thread outlining who they are and the edits they propose
- Allow the discussion to take place for a set period of time, take in suggestions (if any)
- With community approval post their edit
- Welcome community edits of their entry
The sticking point is that third item...we don't expect their to be much discussion (might be wrong there). I want to be clear that during the entire process they'll be open about who they are and the edits they're making.
What are your thoughts?
Mindy McAdams from the University of Florida blogs about some new classes she is teaching. They focus on new tools available to journalists.
The idea behind this class (and the follow-up, Journalists’ Toolkit 2) is that students will learn to use some of the common tools of today’s cross-platform reporting through assignments based in regular reporting practice. The primary tools in the first class are audio, audio slideshows and blogs. In the second class, the focus will be on video and other motion visuals.
She has the
syllabus online.
We've heard this story before....blogger has bad experience with company, blogs about it, then Google works its magic. In this case it's Alex Rudloff who had a problem with Spirit Airlines.
Alex's post is now #2 on Google for 'Spirit Airlines'. It's even ranked higher than Wikipedia. That has attracted a number of co
