Last week Google announced on their blog the addition of a new feature called the Google SideWiki. This new feature is being positioned as a feature that allows you to learn and get help from others.
The Google Sidewiki, allows you to contribute comments, information, point of view directly to any webpage. The Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. You can then syndicate your posts through other social media channels including Twitter and Facebook.
The ramifications for marketers, I believe, are significant if this takes off, and I have no reason to doubt that it won’t. First it makes every web page on your company web site social. That means that as prospects, customers, partners, media come to your website they can see the comments that others have left, both good and bad and post their own comments. I would imagine competitors can even leave comments now on your website if they would like to.
Why is this important? Word of Mouth is the #1 or 2 (depending on what survey you read) influencing factor on your buying cycles. Through Sidewiki Google has now brought word of mouth right to your companies door step.
This ultimately means that if you aren’t listening or monitoring what’s being said about you that you really need to start, as your website is your company’s primary communication and marketing vehicle today. If you’re not engaging, or conversing through social media channels, than you better start thinking about it.
Jeremiah Owyang does a great job of providing some key steps to take to help you formulate your strategy in response to this at his website. I recommend you read them. After reading those suggestions I recommend you do two things:
1.Download Sidewiki at google.com/sidewikiand contribute your own entries alongside some web pages and syndicate out to some social media channels, so you see it and get it
2.Have a meeting with your team to discuss what this means to website strategy, how you will monitor, and how you will respond to disgruntled customers, employees, and competitors.
Should you care if some irate client complains on Twitter that he wasn’t happy with your service? After all he only has a few followers. Most people look askance when you ask them if they blog, or tweet. What’s a tweet ?, is a common question I get. According to Forrester most people are really not engaged all that much across any social media channel. So does it really matter?
Here is a great example of when the power of publishing is put into the hands of a disgruntled customer. Apparently United Airlines broke this guy’s guitar and according to him after a year of going round, and round they refused to replace/repair or fix it.
Being a creative chap with creative friends he did a “protest” video, and put it on You Tube. Well 550K views later, after being picked up on national news broadcasts United’s brand is taking a hit in the world of web 2.0 and beyond and is being positionedby a single individual as “The Brand that Breaks Guitars”.
Should brands care when people complain in social media? Granted there are only a few of us who are active and make our voices heard across social media channels. @Delatsucks tweeted that “Last Delta representative I spoke with literally said, "We do not care about social media. It has no impact on our business model."
Well social media may not have a direct impact on your ability to sell tickets and fly planes, but it can and will have an ever increasing impact on your brand, and that does have a direct impact on your business model. The change today is that a single individual could conceivably position your brand to millions of prospective customers without your knowing or control. Does United really want to be positioned across 550K people (& growing every second) that it is the airline that breaks guitars?
Perhaps the guitar carrying segment is fairly small and would have a negligible impact on United. However what about the larger population who could be influenced to think about United as a company that does not provide good customer service, or cares very little about its customer. Would United care about that?
The real question is does any brand care when anyone complains regardless of communication channel, and are they authentic in their desire to resolve the issue in a fair and amendable manner. This directly relates to the brand experience the company wants to create. In today’s environment companies big and small must take into account the frictionless word of mouth communication era that we live in, where there is unlimited publishing capacity for creative individuals. Today’s brands must begin to view complaints as an opportunity to engage and build a positive brand experience. Just as the age old adage goes” I’d rather know when someone is unhappy versus not knowing, and then I can do something about it. Nuff said.
BtoB Online caught up with several CMO’s to get their take on what they are doing different this year versus last year. In short:
·Trend to Online media
·Much more use of social media in marketing programs
·Greater use of rich media (i.e Video)
·Using marketing tactics in a more integrated way to build thought leadership
·Leveraging social media to bring the voice of the customer into play.
I’m very surprised at the number of CMO’s who use the term social media, marketing, and lead generation/sales in the same sentence. I have a hard time bringing social media into that context. Social media, in my view, is about the conversation first and foremost and in being authentic, transparent and honest in that conversation. Lead-gen, and sales are nice things that may, or may not happen, but to focus on those areas as the primary objectives of bringing social media into the mix still confirms to me that most of us in B2B marketing view social media as tactics instead of communication.
(Too be fair to all. These comments are short and may not represent the ideal context of their intentions)
Tom Haas, of Siemens, did say that their goal was to really support a conversation between their company and its customers and I think that is the right goal to have. I also liked the thoughts from Jack Mason, of IBM, who said that IBM has launched a new program using rich media to capture a much more personal, and real side of the people that make up the their brand. This is a brilliant agenda, in my view, as we too often hide behind technology, and don’t get the individuals that make the brand out in front. Of course it may be that I’m the one who doesn’t get it. Nuff said
Lois Paul co-founded LP&P in 1986, with the aim of building an agency that did high-tech public relations a different way. Prior to founding LP&P, Lois was executive editor/features and a founding member of PC Week (now eWeek). During her tenure, she was responsible for more than 50 percent of the newspaper’s editorial content and specialized in reporting on the computer software industry. Prior to the launch of PC Week, Lois was senior editor/software at Computerworld, the leading computer weekly publication at the time.
Disclaimer: The Company I work for, “Lumension”, is a client of LP&P.
1. There has been a lot said and written in recent months that with the advent of social media there is no longer a need for Public Relations firms. What’s your take on that point of view?
There is no question that Public Relations has had to evolve over the past few years, in particular, as the marketplace has changed and social media has become a more critical communication channel to customers and the industry.The Public Relations professionals who have embraced this change are in higher demand than ever.Social media adds a new element to a marketing mix that requires careful strategy, monitoring and measurement to be truly successful and high ROI.It fits perfectly into a good Public Relations firm’s mix of programs that are customized based on each client’s market and needs.Beyond this, the opportunity afforded by social media to speak directly to customers means companies need to speak their language.A good Public Relations firm can help with this.
2. Lots of companies today are trying to figure out how to use social media tools within their business. What is your advice to those companies on how to begin?
Just this week I talked with several companies who are at this beginning point.My advice is always to determine your end game – who are you trying to reach with social media and what is your ultimate goal for the conversations you want to engage in with those people.Once you clarify your target and mission, you need to assemble your assets to determine what content you have and what you need to assemble; who will ultimately own content development, monitoring services, etc.Essentially you need to build a social media plan, just as you strategically plan all aspects of a solid communications program and measure their results.At the same time, you should spend time listening to online conversations on blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, and others to learn who is talking about you, your products, competitors and problems you’re trying to solve.This provides valuable data that can help formulate the strategy.
3. What are your thoughts on the “Social Media Press Release”? Does it replace the tried and true press release we all grew up with?
In short, there’s a place for both social and more traditional news releases.We have used the social media style releases for many of our clients, but not in all circumstances.A strategy release that really needs to document a story cannot be handled as well with this type of release, for example.In many ways, the traditional press release needs an overhaul, whether or not it is to shift it to the series of links that is essentially the format of a social media release.We often suggest news advisories or bypass releases entirely and strategically target news dissemination.Many sales forces feel that a win hasn’t happened unless there is a press release.In those companies, we suggest a shorter format for releases that are less labor intensive and will require shorter review cycles to achieve their ultimate goals.
That said, companies should use social media releases to offer atomized pieces of content that complement the information in the release itself.This allows bloggers, (increasingly) traditional media and members of a company's buying community that are publishers/ creators of information to embed in their own posts or online articles about the subject of the release.The other aspect that's more important now in the age of microsharing is to include triggers that prompt people to share the news, such as a "Tweet This" summary that is hyperlinked so someone can more easily distribute it.
The other view we have is that there is not a one-size-fits-all template that should be followed for every release. That said, the templates that are out there help to determine what people and companies should consider adding to releases.There are certain elements that should be in every release (links to company web site, Twitter summaries, straight URL's to content/channels on third party services like Flickr, YouTube, related links, calls to action with simple links to a purpose landing page for the release so it is measurable, etc.), but not every release should be in a bulleted format, nor should every release include multimedia content.
4. What type of policy issues should a company consider before embarking on a social media/blogging program? Do we now need safe zones in the company where twittering or blogging on items discussed is not allowed?
Public companies in general need to be mindful of all of the rules related to selective disclosure before they embark on a social media policy.Public or not, all companies really should establish a policy that helps everyone understand how to proceed – whether it is with regard to a company-sponsored blog or Twitter channel or a personal blog, Twitter feed or Facebook or MySpace pages.Just yesterday I talked with a company that has some strong contributors to Twitter building relationships on that channel.Their CEO wants to pull them back a tad, just to make sure they are careful about disclosing information too soon that might come out of conversations with clients, prospects or partners.Twitter is such an immediate medium that it’s key that all heavy users are well versed in corporate guidelines before they inadvertently reveal information prematurely or inappropriately.
5. The approach Johnson and Johnson took to its product tampering issues in the 80’s has long been viewed as the gold standard in crisis communication. How does this approach to crisis communications hold up in the world of web 2.0?
I think J&J’s approach, which I remember well, still stands up today.I have done many blog posts talking about how companies or even individuals would have been better served by being straightforward in the face of a crisis.It’s important to determine the facts, the key stakeholders, and the designated official spokesperson.Then it is key to be as clear and transparent as possible, using all appropriate channels.If you cannot answer a question, you should be clear about that.But you should provide as much information as you can as quickly as you can.Social media is just another channel in this type of communications approach.A corporate blog gives companies a perfect forum to disclose information in a controlled way, linking to press releases, videos, etc. that will help them communicate the facts in a clear way.Twitter is a way to push this out more broadly.When I was a journalist, I always sensed that information one of us would dig out was always bigger news that information that was revealed to us.I think that still holds in the world of Web 2.0 and social media gives companies new tools to control and self-publish that information.
Kogi is the latest phenomenon in LA dining. Chef, at world famous restaurant, decides to forgo glitz and glamour and create a unique fusion of Korean and Mexican food and serves up these delectable concoctions in roving catering vans all over LA.
I’m not making this up folks, and it’s the stuff that Hollywood is made of. I’m sure the food network is already doing a show on it. While I’m a foodie at heart, the real story is one of a relatively unknown (until recently) mobile catering truck that used Twitter and awesome food, to create a following, and help lubricate word of mouth in America’s 2nd largest city and now the world.
As Kogi is a mobile business, and a small one at that, it needed a way to tap into the following that it had created, and who was already talking about Kogi on Facebook, other social networking sites and blogs. Kogi’s brand director, in a recent Reuters article, stated that they decided to use Twitter as a way to communicate with their “tribe” and facilitate gathering places based on the trucks location. Kogi turned to Twitter. Today you and Kogi’s 23,000 followers can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/kogibbq.
This shows the amazing capability of utilizing a social media tool to facilitate a small business with a large following, and an excellent product. So let’s look at Kogi’s ingredients for success:
1.Great Product: Kogi obviously has a tremendous product. Social media success and for that matter any business, starts with an amazing product or service.
2.The Tribe of Kogi: Kogi’s customers wanted to talk about their experience, and in fact had became a tribe. Seth Godin writes that “a tribe is any group of people connected to each other through an idea or experience”. In this case, Kogi’s customers had become a tribe, but we’re missing a leader. When Kogi stepped in, and utilized social tools Kogi become the leader of its own tribe. A place where a brand wants to be at the end of the day.
3.Honesty: The social community in this case is honest. Kogi delivers an amazing product, people want to talk about, and others want to experience it and Kogi facilitates this. Kogi’s goal is not about selling or hyping, at least not yet, and let’s hopes it stays that way.
4.Word of Mouth: WOM is the best advertising around. This is as old, as the hills, and still true. Kogi couldn’t buy the brand awareness it has now, and is getting through the facilitation of communication across its tribe. Social Media can help any small business if the intent is to converse with the community of customers and prospects; not sales or advertising.
5.With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility: Kogi must now realize the importance of its brand experience, and promise that its customers have come to expect. Any degradation in service and experience will travel at the speed of light in Kogi’s social universe.
6.Innovation: While Kogi’s responsibility to its brand experience is now much greater it has an amazing community of people to listen to, and engage with, and in doing that develop new innovation in its business.
This story shows how small businesses can take advantage of building and tapping into their community. Today, McDonalds and Burger King do not have Twitter accounts and Domino’s only recently started one to help combat the recent wave of bad publicity. Why haven’t the brands, with all the resources in the world, tapped into the tools that help them engage with their customers? Probably because they are still strategizing, and trying to figure out the ROI of a conversation. Nuff said.
Dan Schawbel recently launched his new book Me 2.0. In it, Dan introduces the reader to the idea that in the 21st century you really need to think about building, and enhancing your personal brand via online and offline methods. Dan participated in a blog interview I did last year, and you can read that here.
One of the reasons for introducing this concept to people is that everything you do, or don’t do is indexed on the web. What’s the first thing you do when you’re looking to hire a new employee? Most people these days “Google” them. Everything that person has done, or not done, online is instantly brought forward. In this environment, with an extremely competitive job market, its time to start managing your reputation more as a brand, and not letting your name be defined by others.
Don’t get me wrong. Most of us will never truly have a brand with the equity of Oprah, or Bill Gates or Beyonce. However; we all need to start taking a more professional approach to building, and managing our online persona more like a brand, especially in a digital world.
Tom Peters first introduce the concept of personal branding in an, article called “The Brand Called You”. In it, he remarked “The real action is at the other end: the main chance is becoming a free agent in an economy of free agents, looking to have the best season you can imagine in your field, looking to do your best work and chalk up a remarkable track record, and looking to establish your own micro equivalent of the Nike swoosh. Because if you do, you'll not only reach out toward every opportunity within arm's (or laptop's) length, you'll not only make a noteworthy contribution to your team's success—you'll also put yourself in a great bargaining position for next season's free-agency market." (Fast Company, August 1997). I think we can all agree that we are in the “next season’s free agency market”, and that our personal reputation is what matters most.
While most of us think that all we have to do to build an online brand is to have a Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin account, however we will have not done anything to build our personal brand equity with just these sign-ons. My belief is that, just as in the business world, the same is true for our personal brand in that we must build equity, and reputation. In a 2.0 world that means conversing, sharing, and participating in your relevant communities, while adding value and proving your personal brand promise. It does take work and effort to build a personal brand.
My blog is really targeted to those over 40 marketers, and to that audience I can’t stress enough the need to get engaged within relevant communities, and to start managing your personal persona offline and online more as a brand, with the goal to build equity in that brand. If you don’t, you will not be as competitive as someone who does. In a world that is increasingly outsourcing talent we all need to be cognizant of our personal brands, and manage them in a serious and astute way especially in the context of a digitally networked world.
Me 2.0 provides a framework on how to start on that endeavor, and in how to track, and build your online reputation. Me 2.0 goes a step further by bringing in the offline world through networking and relationship building that must take place in an integrated approach to building a sustainable personal brand. Dan has a great blog loaded with information that I recommend everyone read. Nuff said.
Recently I have heard several of my professional colleagues across small and large companies, but all over 40, commenting that they didn’t get twitter, thought it was stupid, and didn’t have time for it. I have heard these same musings from work colleagues, and other marketing professionals. In fact I think it’s a badge of honor for some us to say that we just don’t get the social media thing and all its hype, and that we like to do it old school.
I can understand these feelings. Most of us are managing departments, have huge pressures, and we were brought up in a different marketing age, operating under different rules. However; we must begin to understand the paradigm shift taking place in how we communicate, and how we need to market going forward. I won’t go into a long diatribe of all the changes, but I do want to focus on twitter as I believe it to be one of the more significant tools, that we over 40 marketers really need to understand. We need to understand, why our customers are using it, and how it impacts our brand experience and marketing strategy.
To start things off twitter is a communications platform or, as some would call it, a micro blogging platform with over 4M users. It allows its users to send short text messages, about 140 characters in length, on anything they wish. These text messages are called “tweets”. If you like someone and their message you can choose to follow them. The more people that follow you, then the more people you ultimately communicate your messages to.
Twitter can sometimes get a bad rap as most people new to twitter start off by tweeting about their day, as in “I just ate breakfast”. However there are many communities that exist within twitter. For example, I follow people related to social media, marketing, demand generation, and b2b marketing. These people tweet on points of view, and even share linkable information within their tweets. So every time these folks tweet, I get an alert, and I can see what they are saying or simply look at the feeds later in the day. Today, twitter has now become my #1 source of news across my professional peer group.
Why should marketers care about twitter? There are many reasons, but here a few that may get you thinking:
1.Twitter enables your brand to have voice. I started a branded twitter feed about 5 months ago. You can check out it here at http://twitter.com/_Lumension . I did this, as I wanted to communicate on key news and events across Lumension and in the IT Security industry. We now communicate on Lumension news, blog posts and our own commentary on industry events. We have over 250 followers of IT professionals that share a passion on all things information security. We have also learned a few things within the industry that enabled us to respond ahead of the curve. There is debate about whether brands should tweet or if individuals from your company should tweet. My answer is yes. Just start doing it, and you will learn and find what works best for you.
2.Twitter enables your brand to be conversational. Now that we are “tweeting”, people can converse with us. This is where we really want to expand our use of twitter, in getting more conversational with our community. We’re not there yet, but we know that’s where things will get exciting for us. Imagine real-time communication with your brand and customers, partners, prospects, analysts, press etc. Here’s an example of how a major brand like Whole Foods is using twitter to connect with their base.
Here are some of the major brands found on twitter today:
3.Twitter enables you to listen in on your Brand. In my view this is the single most powerful feature of twitter. In the past we had to conduct research to see what people we’re thinking or saying about our brands. Today, twitter now gives us a real-time snapshot into what people are saying about our brands, products, and their perspectives on the experience they have when dealing with us. This is incredibly powerful to marketers. Imagine seeing and knowing what people are saying, and their feelings, complaints, all in near real-time. Then imagine being able to converse with those people in real-time. Starting to get it now? Here’s a video from Gary Vaynerchuk on this and I recommend you watch it.
4.Twitter enables you to extend your brand experience. Imagine being able to see that someone has a question about your product and immediately extending an offer to help. Or more importantly, let’s say you see a complaint. Instead of letting it linger you reach out, and offer additional support or an explanation. No other platform out there can scale this type of brand engagement for so little cost. Twitter is free for now.
In another announcement twitter, Federated Media, and Microsoft announced a Brand sponsored twitter aggregation platform called ExecTweet. Basically ExecTweet aggregates all major CEO tweets into one place, with some community features, while Microsoft sponsors it. Now imagine the opportunity to be the sole brand sponsoring aggregated tweets from key people on topics within your industry.
So how do you get started? A Few recommendations:
1.Get Started. I’m sure that several companies are still trying to figure out who owns social media, what the strategy is (or rather what new power point deck looks best), and how they should get started, let alone deal with the cultural shift on how to deal with open and honest feedback about your company. The point is to get started. Start a twitter feed today. I don’t pretend to be some expert on all this, and we are evolving our thinking everyday in how to best use social media, but at least we are evolving and getting more enlightened. Get started now no matter what your company’s size is.
2.Start Listening: As I mentioned this is the single most powerful feature of twitter. It’s easy to do and I’ll show you Ed’s budget way to aggregate tweets about your company or any topic into one place. First go to http://search.twitter.com/. Enter the brands you want to follow (your own, products, competitors, or other topics). When you get the results then click on the rss “feed for this inquiry”. You will be taken to the rss page where you can then click on “Subscribe to this feed”.
Try it. You will be amazed and see the real power behind this platform.
3.Get Educated. Educate yourself on the changing rules of marketing, pr, and technology. Here are a couple of great twitter feeds that I would recommend you get started with:
Yes, we as marketing leaders are in a new environment where the rules we once knew are changing rapidly, but the fundamentals are still the same. The worst thing we can do is not to educate ourselves, and understand the impact of the changing marketing paradigm. Start opening up today, and I guarantee you will begin to see things in a new light, and with a different perspective. Feel free to share your thoughts, comments and ideas with me on twitter at http://twitter.com/cedwardbrice
To start lets define social media for Starbucks. From a tactic point of view they deploy four discernable tactics:
1.Twitter: Mindless feeds veiled as cool employees hawking the latest beverage or card promo. Why anyone would want to recive a Twitter feed from a coffee company is beyond me but they have some 70K who do. Do they give away free coffee?
3.Youtube channel: Social oriented videos extending the brand to be viewed as something more than just a coffee hack.
4.Idea Exchange: Online forum to vote on ideas to make Starbucks better
It’s the Idea Exchange that my beef is with. The idea is that by tapping into the community of passionate Starbucks customers’ you can leverage the wisdom of crowds. In theory the crowds identify and vote on ideas and as a result the best ideas would rise to the top thus propelling your companies offerings, and brand beyond all competitors.
Well my friends (as John McCain would say) it has been a failure. Don’t get me wrong I think the idea of leveraging your customer community to drive co-innovation is a great idea, and has some merit. However; we have to remember that the wisdom of crowds is not always correct, and in fact some of the greatest innovations never would have been validated by crowds as they could not understand the innovation.
Let’s take the Sony Walkman for example. A famous story goes that when the inventor of the Walkman showed his idea to potential customers no one understood the value of the proposed product. This promoted several in Sony to say that customers do not want the Walkman. To which the engineer replied "Sometimes the customer doesn’t know what they want”. I’m paraphrasing but the story is well known in Sony circles as I used to work there.
In fact we need to understand who is actually participating in our social communities. Forrester points out in their latest research that only 21% are creators and some 37% are critics. The rest are inactive, join for the sake of joining, or just like to watch the show.
So in reality the feedback we are getting from these forums is imited and may not represent the true base of the audience as we think it does, in fact it may represent more of a vocal minority which is not the wisdom we may want.
So back to my view yhat the Starbucks idea exchange is a complete failure. First let’s look at the all time most popular vote getters:
#1 at 95K votes: Great Conversation @ Starbucks:
"My idea is simple - Starbucks does a lot of things well - good coffee, interesting locations. One of its challenges though I believe is to create a sense of conversation and community within its locations.
One way of doing this would be to use the power of media and wireless new media in particular to foster a sense of conversation about the arts, current events, etc. In other words to stimulate Starbucks patrons that wish to interact as part of a 21st century "cafe society" such as they have in Europe traditionally - people gathering together to discuss the arts, world events and culture.
For instance one of the ones that springs to mind is a new online program called "The Alcove with Mark Molaro" which is based in New York. They have wonderful conversations with fascinating world-class guests and it seems to me that this sort of program is the kind of thing that would foster subsequent conversation and community within Starbucks locations.
The key is to provide cultural leadership through media to promote conversation and community within Starbucks locations. That would be a quantum leap in terms of engagement and experience at Starbucks. Thank you."
You’ve got to be kidding right? Now for #2.
#2@58K Votes A Punch Card System
"From the My Starbucks Idea team: We have moved this idea into the review process! Please check our "Ideas in Action" section for updates. Offer customers a free drink, after purchasing a set number of drinks. Similar to a punch card system or by tracking it thru their Starbucks Card. - From a customer in Feb. 08"
This is the #2 innovation folks, a frequent buyer program. You mean that all the totaled salary for the brilliant marketing minds Starbucks must pay for never thought of a frequent buyer program. I wonder how much all that salary plus the cost of licensing the Salesforce Idea Exchange platform adds up to in order to come up with that brilliant concept. Which by the way I might add is still not introduced.
Now if the Idea Exchange was truly working what would it identify? Hmmmmmmmm let me think. How about a new coffee lid that works! This is why all this technology has failed. Here is a company that sells millions of cups each day around the world, and they have the worst lid. It doesn’t work.
The most basic element to the product delivery system doesn’t work because coffee spills allover you, your car, everywhere. What do the brilliant minds come up with in cup land? A green stick to plug the hole in the lid that doesn’t work. What does the great Idea Exchange say about it (40 votes).
Now lets look at Dunkin Donuts. Same Twitter and Facebook approach. Although the YouTube channel is really more about promoting Dunkin Donuts coffee, and no Idea Exchange. However the lid at Dunkin Donuts works. Hmmmmmmmmmm wonder if there is a correlation somewhere here.
What is working for Starbucks? Building a community the old school way. Its apparent that local employees are now trained to know all their regulars’ names, and there is a pointed outreach into local civic groups to get involved with local activities. Old school in that they want the store to become part of the fabric of the local community, just like the coffee shops of yesterday. Imagine that. No fancy YouTube channel, no Twitter, no Facebook, and certainly no Idea Exchange. Just “Good morning Ed. Venti drip bold, with a green thing right? Nuff said.
Details the fundamental changes taking shape in marketing approaches, under of the context of marketing 1.0 vs 2.0. Francois has also started an online marketing community (of which I am a member), that you may find of interest. It is called “Marketing 2.0” . Nuff Said.
